Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Where does the good go?

It's really awkward to come back to this blog after leaving it alone for the last month. I'm just still processing everything, and I'm in the throws of new transitions. I want to write about culture shock, the craziness of re-entry, how much I learned and how much I miss and how nice it was to watch a movie for the first time in nine months. I could tell you that I know I'll never consider a gas station bathroom "too gross" after my time in abroad, or how I'll spend the next few years biting my nails as Tanzania steadily boils over into violence. There's a lot I could say, but I'm still working out how to say it.

For now, there's plenty to keep me busy. I had been working 30 hours a week in retail since I gt back to Hingham, and this morning I got my wisdom teeth out. In two days I'll be in Michigan, in three I'll be on Walloon, in eleven I'll be in Ann Arbor, in 18 I'll be skiing Whistler/Blackcomb, and in 28 I'll be in Geneva, Switzerland where I will stay to study and intern for the spring semester.

There's a lot going on, and it feels like I'm about to be swept up into something that's moving very, very fast, when that's the exact opposite of what I want. I was talking about this to my Dad tonight as he took a break from reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." I said I want to just breathe into the now and not tire myself out like I did living in Arusha, and he reminded me that the best athletes are the ones who think in slow motion during the times of crisis.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. So I seriously need to breathe.

I'll try to write about Tanzania and re-entry to the states. I want to, it's just... daunting.

Happy Holidays, and THINK SNOW.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Take Me Back to the Start

Well, most of you know, but I'm stateside again.

I came home about ten days early and I've been home about 13 days now. This makes it really tough to finish filling in about the African adventures that didn't make it into the blog before I left. It's weird, and oddly anxiety-provoking to go back and write about what happened a few weeks ago, but I do want to talk about some of what happened, so I will try to get to it eventually.

For now.... I'm in Hingham.

I have a part time job, I'm riding horses once in a while and planning on going to hockey clinics soon, and I'm starting a pottery class next week. I'm also woking on transfer applications for finishing my last two years at a University other than Vermont. I'm working winter camp, bumming around A2 afterwards, going on a ski trip with the fam, and finally leaving for study abroad in Switzerland on January 17th, 2010. I'm also waiting for bloodwork results. I've been tired with headaches and dizziness for a few weeks now, and I finally went to get it checked out yesterday.

It's weird to be home, back here, in my parents' house. I'm trying to learn how to do it well, since I wasn't very good at it the first time around.

Stay tuned for memories of Africa and my lame attempts to process the whole thing.

Hope you had a nice holiday!

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Strangers

The blog is called Something Cliche... and if you're not in the mood for exactly that, you should absolutely 100% skip this entry. You've been warned.

The subtitle of this blog is taken from the lyrics of one of my favorite songs, "Strangers" by The Kinks.

Where you going I don't know
I've killed my world and I've killed my time
Well where do I go, what do I see?
I see many people comin' after me
So where are you going to I don't mind

If I live too long I'm afriad I'll die
So I will follow you wherever you go
If your offered hand is still open to me
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one

I first heard this song in one of my favorite movies, Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Limited. It plays during an intricate traditional Indian funeral procession- a stunning example of artistic direction- and it always grabs at my heart strings when I hear it. Do you ever hear like your insides are literally a harp? Like you have harp strings instead of heartstrings? That's what it feels like when I listen to it. It's like someone is grabbing my "harp strings." It's everything I'm feeling and everything I've been looking for. Peace in wandering, the ability to "just be" instead of always having to "be something", maybe the chance to learn from mistakes instead of learning the hard way over and over and over again. And over again.

So you've been where I've just come
From the land that brings losers on
And we will share this road we walk
And mind our mouths, and beware our talk
Until peace we find tell you what I'll do
All the things I own I will share with you
If I feel tomorrow like I feel today
We'll take what we want and give the rest away
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one


It can be lonely. I've been grateful and happy to be here everyday. I have also been homesick every day. Homesick for camp, for family, for friends, for foods and weather. I've found more peace here than I expected. In all of my frustrations and through all the harassment, there has been a lot of learning and development. Growth is cliche, and I don't know if it's the right word. Development in personality, beliefs, goals, passion, drive, anger, forgiveness. Riding the daladala still makes me want to throw myself in front of a daladala, but we live for experiences, right?

I'm a little ready to go home. I twist and rage and gloom over leaving without seeing more, doing more, learning more, but I'll be ready to arrive home three weeks from today. As I said in my last entry, it's hard to know what I'm "passing up" to leave here. On the phone with my Padre the other night I confessed through tears that I was scared to get home, look back on this, and feel like I had messed up somehow- like I didn't make the most of things. It's a little tricky because the friends I have here now are staying longer (or some of them live here) and they are all older with more travel experience. I keep up just fine because I've been here longer than some of them, but I'm still processing a lot of things that they are encountering for the second, third, one hundredth time. When I shared this with my dad he said "It will take months or years for you to process what has happened for you on this trip. And you'll go back. You know you'll go back." After hearing him say things like that, I felt a lot better. Shocker, eh? Sometimes I just need to throw something out there and have someone throw it back from the dark. So I'm okay with it all at this point. I've started lists of memories and lessons in my journal and going back and reading old blog posts. I've been frantically sending the last stack of postcards. I'm doing my best to enjoy my last few weeks here and brace myself for returning home... and it's complicated sometimes.

Holy man and Holy priest
This love of life makes me weak at my knees
And when we get there make your play
Cause soon I feel you're going to carry us away
In a promised lie to made us believe
For many men there is so much grief
And my mind is proud but it aches with rage
And if I live too long I'm afraid I'll die

I'm glad I'm here. I'm glad I came. I'm glad I'll be going home in a few weeks. It was the perfect amount of time for this sort of adventure. All last week I was thinking that if I stayed here longer I would understand this better. I was afraid to leave without some sort of processing period, some greater awareness and acceptance of these changes and this place. I don't think I would find that by staying, and I don't think it will magically appear by leaving. I've stepped up my game by coming here, I've engaged in the calm madness of growing up even if I did look at this trip as "running away to Tanzania."

I feel like I'm on the road now. Here for the here and what is the what. I feel older than before and younger than I ever have all at once.

I'm still a stranger, and the road is long.

Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Life As I Know It

"Okay, guys, repeat after me: 'Anal Sex.'"

Welcome to teaching sex-ed to a group of 53 preteens. Friday was "Graduation" so they're all done with our program, and I've got to say, I'm really proud of them. They had puberty, menstruation, anatomy, reproduction, pregnancy, and HIV prevention down pat by the end of it. They were curious, hilarious, and full of personality.

I love teaching! I loved running at them yelling and waving my arms when they weren't paying attention, I loved singing with them to wake them up, I loved making them say the words they were shy about all together at the top of our lungs. I loved answering their questions, and I love that they are so well equipped now. I'm going to miss them.

This week I'm teaching another group of kids from 8pm-Noon every day. In the afternoons I'm going around to various NGOs I've contacted and researched. My plan is to bat my eyes and/or badger them into letting me ask a few questions.

Last night was Halloween but instead of going to the wazungu costume party at Maasai Camp Jenna and I went to our favorite restaurant- Spice and Herbs, the Ethiopian place with the great terrace- and had a good meal. Originally I was going to go to the club dressed as a Mzungu (white zinc on the nose, cargo shorts, hiking boots, sun glasses, etc) but we had gone out dancing on Thursday night and we were tired.

Thursday night at the club pretty much satisfied any remote need of ours to go clubbing in Arusha. Locals can't afford to go out, and those who can are going to try and pick up white girls. Overall, it's not much of an experience- unless of course I get a desperate need to meet 100 girls like myself and listen to bad remixes of American hip hop. Nah, we're sticking to local bars and people's houses. Tonight we're planning to cook dinner for our work friend Thomas.

On Friday after work we all trooped over to the Njiro shopping complex to investigate. The grocery store was nicer than some of the ones I've been to at home, with just as much selection and every American brand you could imagine. They had shredded cheese, deli meat, jim beam, pet food, and pasafiers. That may not sound all that appetizing, but the fact that it was in the middle of nowhere Arusha, Tanzania was a shining beacon to globalization at its most extreme. The mini-mall also has a movie theater and an outdoor patio where waiters from at least six different restaurants bring you menus for Indo-Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Italian, and Sushi. It was nothing short of ridiulous. I've been eating rice and beans for seven weeks so to say I was a bit overwhelmed would hardly do the madness justice. I can't even imagine what I'll feel like when I go back to the states. Granted, Mary Ellen's potato and cheese burrito ended up being chips (french fries) in a tortilla... but my spinache ravioli in red sauce was scrumptious.

I do not like or reccomend Arusha.

I love Africa, and I've met some great people... but Arusha can kiss my mzungu butt. It's intensely and overtly racist and sexist, and although it has been an enormous learning experience that I am very grateful for, that doesn't mean for one second that I particularly like this city. I loved living in the villages and I'll breathe an enormous sigh of relief when I leave here to go travel.

On that note, I don't especially want to leave Africa. I keep thinking over and over again how much it costs to get on the continent, so the prospect of leaving before I've seen more of it is a little discouraging. Although I maintain that I used my early weekends and afternoons after work to the best of my all-by-my-onesome ability, it's still frustrating to know what I'll be leaving. I have great friends that want to go on adventures. I've been offered two weeks of free lodging in Zanzibar this December in exchange for working at a cross-cultural music festival that will benefit a microfinancing NGO. My friends are planning an at-cost safari to the Serengetti with a guide we know and I could go along if I was still here. It's tough to say "No, I can't" to all of that.

BUT (because Nicola says, "everybody has a but") I'm getting excited for Kenya and I'm hoping to climb Mt. Meru here in TZ. The truth is after 7 weeks of being harassed about booking this safari or that one, and which parks have I been to, and yadda yadda yadda, I've been essentially turned off to the idea of exploring Tanzania on my own. I'm going to Kenya, dude. There will always be more to see, and I just want to get the heck away from Arusha for a while.

I keep sending postcards, let me know if yours gets there safely. :-)

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

T.I.A.

I just left the post office after a failed attempt to find out if I need a special country code to mail to the U.S. On my last batch of postcards the postal worker shrugged me off and I assume she took care of it since some of the post cards seem to have made it. Today the lady sassed me like I was crazy for asking, and I was like, "This is the post office! Where else would I ask?" She just shook her head and said something along the lines of "This is Africa, we don't use country codes." Whatever. I just left and laughed my way to the internet cafe where I could wrap myself up in the comforts of "Google.:

T.I.A.: This. Is. Africa.

It's a phrase I first heard in the movie Blood Diamond, but over the last six weeks it has been a way of life, a constant buzz in my ear. Africa. Girafffes, monkeys, and malaria- oh my! There might be a road, the truck might make it, you might find an ATM that works, the power might be on, you may find a restaurant that's open on Sunday. T.I.A. and you just never know.

The last few days have been the epitome of the phrase, and I've been laughing all the way.

On Sunday morning, after our night out, the girls and I ate breakfast at the hostel's rooftop restaurant. I had a shower that morning. It was the first time I had a shower instead of a bucket bath in six weeks. It was heavenly. Afterwards I came here, to The Patisserie, to try to blog about my epic night. After an hour and a half of emails and blogging, we lost power and I was unable to post. "Oh, well, maybe tomorrow..."

I live on a continent of tomorrows. "Kesho, kesho..."

Afterwards Jenna, Mary Ellen, Jessica and I met Ras Dixon and some of his friends up by a beautiful river in the shadow of Mt. Meru. The night before he had invited us over for lunch, saying his Mama would cook us whatever we wanted. Mary Ellen had jokingly demanded macaroni and cheese- "Don't forget the cheese! Not just macaroni! Macaroni and CHEESE!" So we lounged by the river, walked around in the sunshine, and then moseyed over to his Mama's house for lunch. We were served a big pot of plain macaroni noodles, a pot of Makande (a wicked tasty corn and bean dish), and some yummy vegetables. Half way through the meal Dixon asked Mary Ellen if she wanted chili, and she told him that she didn't like chili because it was too spicy. "No?! But you say las night- Macaroni an Chili! Don' forget da chili! And I DID forget da chili, Mary, but I went back! I went back to da store because Mary say don' forget da chili!"

We exploded with laughter.

"Mary Ellen, you jokster! Why would you say you don't like chili?! You LOVE Macaroni and Chili! You asked for it! Don't forget the chili! Remember?"

Mary was in hysterics. What could she do except pile on the chili sauce and smile for a picture? It was excellent. Dixon is really crafty with beads and he has been making each of us a bracelet with our name on it. Every single time I look at my bright yellow bracelet I will hear Dixon's voice chiding Mary about her Macaroni and Chili.

This week we are working with a group of kids ages 12-14 at the Olkariyon village school outside of Arusha. This is the same village we've been working in for the last two weeks, but it's been so different and so fun each time. Most of the staff (Sommy, Javesson, Crispin, and Harry) have been staying out in rural areas during the week to do bio-intensive agriculture training and chicken vaccinations, so they take the big GSC truck with them. It was so great to see them yesterday before they took off for the village- I miss them! Since they take the truck, we have been using a hired driver with a little rickety old daladala. When the daladala showed up yesterday the roads were sloshing with clay-like mud from the rains that carried on from the night and through the morning.

Let's review: daladala + muddy dirt road + driver who avoids driving in inclement weather

Hm.

We slipped and sloshed and ooooohed and eeked all over the roads, until we finally slid in slow motion, backwards into a shallow ditch. In my experience, locals who aren't used to dirt roads are essentially useless when they do use them. It's not their fault, they just don't know what to do. They are afraid to gun it when necessary and have no concept of the disaster that spinning tires create. They're also sure as hell not going to listen to car advice from wazungu girls.

The dala was more and more entrenched as the driver made one mistake after another, and we were late for our first day of class. So the volunteers and translators gathered up all the teaching materials and started walking, leaving the daladala driver behind with a growing crowd of men who each had the perfect advice for fixing the situation, despite the fact that none of them drove. The mud out there was sticky and our shoes quickly became platform shoes with branches sticking out- African clown shoes, perhaps? When we were halfway out into a field that we thought might be a shortcut to the school, the daladala showed up on the road behind us and we trudged back to pile in and go to school.

The first day of class was pretty uneventful, except that we had 103 students instead of the 60 we were expecting, meaning that we were short of booklets, pens, soda, and peanuts. I went to buy candy to supplement the pitiful snack supply, and get this: they didn't want it. Kids have been demanding candy from me since I set foot on the continent and the one time I buy it they don't want it? Whatever. I made them repeat after me in a loud chorus as I listed off all those giggle inducing words about the human body and reproduction. After class we had a bit of extra time so I taught them the Camp Michigania version of "Singing in the Rain" so they could practice a little English. They were hilarious.

It was really downpouring by the time class let out and the dala driver was nowhere in sight. We huddled in a classroom torturing the GSC Coordinator Mike by talking about the good food we craved from home- he's a Kiwi in serious cheese withdrawal. At this point it was 2:00pm, and even then we had an incling that we wouldn't be eating "lunch" before 4 or 5. When the driver came to get us he brought an old truck with a shotty transmission- better than the daladala, but not exactly the GSC truck. We piled three people in the front, four in the back, and four more in the trunk with the three crates of soda. Once again we slished and sloshed and slid right off the road while our students laughed from the roadside.

Suddenly, one of the translators, a Maasai Polar Bear named Tom, hopped out of the front seat. He took off his nice jacket, whipped a machete out of nowhere and started hacking down bushed to lay underneath the tires for traction. This worked for a little while, and when it didn't he just pushed the truck out of the mud bank. As he pushedthe truck I said, "Hold on. I just want to make sure everyone is on the same page: Thomas just whipped out a machete, chopped down some bushes, and now he's pushing a truck carrying 10 people." Everyone burst out laughing. When he got back in the front seat someone asked him where the machete came from. "I always have it," he replied casually, "just in case." More laughter. "Good little Maasai warrior!" laughed Mike. And off we went.

Today our driver arrived with an even smaller truck, and we had almost as many people, plus an additional crate of soda. Three people in the front seat, six on trunk benches with a tower of four crates of bottled soda in the middle. Somehow we made it there without anything exciting happening.

I showed up today expecting to teach an HIV crash course to a group of teachers at the school, but the headmaster (who had already changed our student program times and dates twice) forgot to ask the teachers in advance, so instead I helped teach 53 giggling preteens about puberty, reproductive anatomy, menstruation, and sex. I loved it.

To get things started I taught them to sing Boom Chicka Boom and they were fantastic. We stressed that the couldn't laugh at people's questions, but periodically when I saw them giggling (at pads and tampons, or when we put up the posters of sex organs) I would pause and tell them all to laugh it out. It seemed to work pretty well. We have a ton of information to cover, but they're all really into it and asking questions. I felt great when we left this afternoon because I felt like I was really doing something. By the end of this week 103 kids will have more knowledge about human anatomy, body development, menstruation, sex, and sexual health than the majority of the human population. Weird, eh?

I like teaching this stuff to kids because I don't feel awkward about it. We make them yell the words they're so embarrassed of, we answer questions, encourage them to laugh. Bodies are weird, man. They make noises, and smells, and they do confusing things. Most kids- hell, most adults- haven't got the faintest idea how their bodies work. I sometimes felt weird living in a house I didn't know very well. Can you imagine feeling like that in your own body?

The kids are great. They think I'm funny, they sing my songs, and they make me smile. I definitely want to teach for a little bit after college. Teach for America or something, I dunno. It's just amazing. It would be cool if I could talk to them without a tanslator, but it's also incredible how much communication is nonverbal.

Ahhhhh Africa.

Just a few weeks left now and I'm starting to plan my free time after my GSC stint ends. It's crazy how long I've been here and how much I have and haven't done. At one point last week I was a little grumpy because my funds and timing will limit my adventures. "Why didn't I make more of my early weekends?" I grumbled a little. But OF COURSE I feel that way on some level! That's how traveling works! I'm over it now. I've gotten so much out of being here, and I'll have a blast in the next four weeks.

Cause I'm that lucky.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

You Chase a Waterfall, You Get a Scrub

Remember the girl group T.L.C? They wisely warned us not to go chasing waterfalls, and they also sang a song called "No Scrubs" a song that, in all seriousness, I did not fully understand or appreciate until I came to Tanzania. To be more specific: until last night.

Let's refresh our memories, shall we?

A scrub is a guy that thinks he's fine
And is also known as a buster
Always talkin' about what he wants
And just sits on his broke ass
So (no)

I don't want your number (no)
I don't want to give you mine and (no)
I don't want to meet you nowhere (no)
I don't want none of your time and (no)

I don't want no scrub


Word, TLC. I agree.

Let me preface this whole rant with the fact that in Tanzania, if you ask someone if they want to join you for a meal, they frequently expect you to pay. Let me add, that this is particularly observed when an mzungu invites a Tanzanian. So, "I'm starving and need to go eat, do you want to come along?" translates into "I'm buying you a meal." Oops. Been there. I later changed my tactics to, "I'm gonna grab a beer, you can come but I'm only paying for mine." Sounds harsh, right? Think again. Not everyone abuses this charming little price maneuver. For example, when I took my homestay brother Michael to the circus, he paid for our cab ride home. Even steven. Square. Legit. GSC staffers have bought me a soda or a beer before, and then the next night I buy one for them. It works. It's normal. It's how Mama should have raised you.

So last night the girls and I (5 of us in total) booked beds at the hostel and went out for dinner, drinks, dancing, and mini disasters. We wanted to have a good group of people we knew, so we called anyone we knew and liked, and set out on the town. So it began.

When we got to the first place to eat dinner, we immediately realized our mistake. We invited them, and they're broke. Think about a weekend night in the states. You're broke, you stay in. Here? You're broke, you accept an invite from bleeding heart wazungu girls. Jenna and I consulted: we had made the mistake, we would pay for that round, set boundaries, and move on. Did I include "naive" when I called us bleeding heart wazungu? It should go without saying.

In the course of the night I spent a week's budget, because frankly, what was I gonna do? I wanted to have fun, and the girls did too, and we couldn't shake the guys. I tried to make things clear at dinner when I said "The girls have got this round, then everyone's on their own" but the guys either didn't hear me, didn't understand me, or couldn't care less. The one exception to this was a crazy rasta named Dixon (the guy everyone calls Bob, remember him?) Yeah. Ras Dixon proved to be a pretty awesome dude. I really didn't know what to make of him the first time we met, but the kid paid his own way all night and chipped in to the group's bill- and that's way more than I can say for the other three guys who just hung around expectantly.

The worst part of the night was our taxi to the club. This skeazy guy who knew one of our leeches was trying to bum into on of our group's cabs and I got a horrible vibe from him. I managed to get his abrasive ass out of the group, and we drove on to Maasai Camp. When we got there the two others in my cab got out immediately and I got my cash out. The cabbie and I had agreed on 5,000 TSH (about $4) but he didn't have change for my 10,000 and was trying to just take it. I told him he could take 3,500 or find change for my 10,000 and when he wouldn't listen I yelled for the guyy who had been in my cab so he would help.

The cab driver hit me.

He slapped me on the back. Hard. For calling in reinforcements.

I was so in shock at first that time seemed to stop. I've never been hit before. Not really. I screamed at him not to touch me and I could see he was scared that I would attract attention. I cursed him blind, got out of the cab and said "You'll take 3,500 and you'll like it because you're lucky I pay you anything after you just hit me." My useless guy "friend" came skipping over and I stormed off while they talked. Want to know the worst part? I'm pretty sure I left my 10 bill in the cab. Oh the ugliness I could spew out of my keyboard right now.

If I had been thinking clearly I wouldn't have paid him at all. I would have gotten the guard from the club to beat him up. I would have spit on him. But I wasn't thinking. I was just pissed and upset and in shock.

I went up to the gate and tried to call my brother. Then I realized I didn't have enough money for it so I tried to get him to call me. He tried.

Then my guy "friend" who's broke behind I foolishly invited out and then resentfully carried around all night, called me over. He was in line to get into the club, waiting at the counter for me so we could go in. I went up there and handed the women money, and she asked if I was paying for one or two. Alex was trying to call me. I had just been smacked. There's a line full of people staring at me. Now she wants to know if I'm paying for one or two and hot damn I really didn't want to pay for him. But there he was. Waiting. "Whatever," I said weakly, "I don't care. Whatever." Eventually I paid for us both, we went inside, and I was essentially out of cash.

The rest of our time in the club is kind of a blur. We danced like mad, had a few drinks, had various mini crises that always crop up in the course of an evening regardless of the continent, ate an amazing pizza, had a fun time overall, and then it was time to go home. We took a taxi back to the hostel, I suppressed the desire to be slightly hostile towards our leeches as we said goodnight, and then the night was done.

An ongoing theme of my time in Tanzania has been the "mzungu" phenomenon, but I have spent very little time on the "Mzungu Girl" obsession that has swept East Africa.

When guys get (or take) your number they spend thousands of shillings sending pathetic love poems all day long, and then send you hate mail if you don't respond. I've blocked a number and a friend of mine is getting a new sim card. These guys say they miss you, they love you, they want to be your boyfriend, they fight with other guys about who talks to who. It's ridiculous.

We occasionally get cursed out on the street if we don't drop everything to stop and chit chat with perfect strangers. Teenage and adolescent men yelling "F*ck You!" isn't exactly my idea of romance. The one time it happened to me was last week, and I was so surprised that I turned around and said it right back. He said it again, I walked away. The one upside of this experience was that afterward I was disappointed in myself instead of him. People can be losers anywhere and anytime. Guys who scream obscenities at women who tell them to let go of them and allow them to continue on their way? Those guys are losers. Plain and simple.

I haven't made it through a week without a marriage proposal.

So what's up guys? On what planet can you possibly miss someone you don't know or love someone you just met? This b.s. must work sometimes because why else would they use it, right? Some foreign women must show up to study abroad, or volunteer, or go on safari, and some of them must love this attention. Their prayers are answered when a beautiful young Tanzanian man with dreadlocks call them beautiful and say they miss them, and take them dancing. (Yes, they are frequently beautiful young Tanzanian men with dreadlocks. I said they were rude not unattractive.)

At the club on Saturday we saw some of these women and plenty of leeches. You gotta ask yourself: how often do these guys do this? I asked my friend Mary Ellen when we took a break from dancing, and we decided it must be every week. Every new caravan of tourists or wave of volunteers. Some of these guys buy new clothes all the time, and then don't have money to foot their own dinner or drinks bill. But the tourists? The wazungu? Sure! Let them pay, right? Not me. Not ever again.

It's a tricky thing, this money business. My friend Jenna and I talked about it a lot yesterday. How do you approach this? I cannot and will not pay another person's way. Part of it is limited means, and it's partly because I just don't think you can have a healthy relationship in which one person always foots the bill. What kind of expectations are those? Who is getting what out of that friendship? I've got trust issues to start with, I'm sure as heck not throwing money into the equation.

I'll get this round if you get next, man. You're tight on cash? Okay you buy the pizza next week. You just got a speeding ticket? Okay you pay the gas next time. That's how I operate. One person I know here keeps harping on these guys' economic hardship. It's not that I'm insensitive to the circumstances, I'm just opposed to the racism, the use and abuse of niceties. Yes, I did say racism. When I'm getting overcharged on everything and singled out to purchase certain items or pay for certain people, that's a form of racism. Racism is a system of advantages based on race. Look it up.

There are some exceptions to these ugly familiarities. I can say gladly and with confidence that I know some guys here who have been very driven, hard-working, and interesting. They have jobs. They have interests. They don't send creepy and flirtatious text messages. In other words: they are human. When I pointed out the existence of some of these anomalies to my friends, they agreed, and said they were proof that normal men do live in Tanzania, even if they were an endangered species. "Like polar bears" I added. Mary Ellen thought about this for a second and said "Fewer than polar bears." I didn't argue.

To know that these "polar bears" exist is comforting, I guess. They're good friends to have around, and it's a relief to know that there is some hope for Tanzanian women looking for love. Love. Hm. I'm not even looking to date. I'm not even remotely happy when guys come talk to me on the street. So never you mind this "love" thing that all these guys are talking and texting about. What do they know?

I will continue to withhold my cell phone number, and the girls and I decided that we are going out without the leeches from now on. I'm buying my own way and my own way only.

Cause I don't want no scrub.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Umm... No title?

I'm a little spacey right now. I think it's the humidity- iz gon rain fo sho. I can't really remember what I was going to write about, but here goes...

I've spent one week in my Arusha homestay, and it's been pretty legit. I was pretty damn timid going into the first homestay out in Tengeru, because it's weird, man, and I had never done it before. Moving into the second one, on the other hand, was pretty easy. Where's the drinking water? I don't eat meat, I like brown bread, and I love fruits and vegetables. Bing. Bam. Boom. End of story- good to go. The homestay has become so normal, that sometimes I forget what's going on. I honestly forget that it should be kinda weird. Once in a while I realize I'm sitting at the dinner table with a whole other family, here and there I'm reading while they watch bad Christian rock music videos, and so it goes. Poh tee weet.

That all being said, my second house could not be more different from Mama Salome's set-up. The house is smaller, the people bigger, and way more stuff. Way more.

The father owns a safari company, so he's essentially living the dream here in East Africa. Talk to ten random guys on a street in Arusha, and I would bet my stipend that 8 out of 10 will say they want to own a Safari company. I find it kind of depressing, but do with it what you will. They say that Zimbabwe's President Mugabe is desperate to be/remain the "Last Big Man" in Africa- and if that's not ringing a bell, pick up some African literature or a history book... it's important. Anyway, I would argue that Safari Company owner is it's own personal level of prestige in Tanzania. They're not exactly loaded, but filthy rich by local standards.

I started paying close attention to things around the house. What does a family of means living in town fill their house with? The answers might surprise you.

First of all. There are two televisions in the living room. I have yet to discover why, but they're there.

The china cabinet has enough plates to feed well over 100 people. This isn't like, "having the family over for the holidays- oh no we need more plates!" This is extreme, and it's quite telling. Most households here do not have many plates, and there's very little silverware. Everyone shares. To have over 50x the amount of plates you need to feed your family of four is a major statement. It says, "not only can I feed my family, but I feed them in style, and excessively" and there's something very American about that... meh.

There are also at least four calandars, and three clocks by my current count. Remember that everyone here lives on "Africa Time" which essentially means no concept of time. There's a saying that "Whites have all the watches but Africans have all the time" and it seems to be true. People here go crazy for watches- frankly, it's a miracle that I still have mine- but no one seems to care what time or day it is. Except for Sunday. No one forgets Sunday, because that's when you have a legitimate reason to chillax. However, when your kids are in a private school, and your business is based on the expectations and schedule of tourists, you wear a watch and you sure as heck pay attention to it.

My homestay father is all about being the ultimate host. He keeps calling me "Madame" and encourages me to "be free." He's also very clearly the Man of the House- and it is a Man's house. For example, in this house, the wife, housegirl, and two daughters put the seats up after they use the bathroom. I am a firm believer in seat and lid down, and if you want to know the truth, I've been practicing "If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down" since I got here. We're in a flippin drought, people! These toilets are ancient and useless- they use like 10 gallons of water with each flush! So right on, Baba Abraham, I will "be free" to conserve water and put down the seats after I've lifted my "Madame" off of them.

So it's a man's house. It's a fancy house. It's basically where I keep my stuff- which I did end up buying some baskets for, so I didn't resort to using the moldy fridge. It's all pretty good.

We had a tricky time at work this week. No one showed up for the first two days of class, which was a major bummer, but we did recruit a class and give condensed lessons over the last three days. Next week we're all set to teach 60 fourteen year olds about anatomy and puberty, sex-ed, HIV prevention, and nutrition. Oh snap. I'm really excited to work with kids, especially since we've gotten to know them a little bit in the last two weeks spent at their village. Condom demonstration for giggling teenagers? HECK YES. haha.

An upside of last week was that I got more kids to sing Boom Chicka Boom with me. They love it. I love them. We have a killer time.

A lot of times when kids stare at me with funny looks on their faces I just start jabbering away- "What's up homes? How you rollin? These cats seem pretty groovy, man. I'm just straight chillin up in dis bidness, you get what I'm sayin? You pickin up what I'm puttin down?" etc etc etc. They laugh... and laugh... and laugh....

Last night we went out to dinner at the Ethiopian restaurant again. Yummmm. Afterwards I begged and pleaded with a taxi driver to take me home for only 2,000 shillings. That's about $1.50 and about half of what I would normally pay... "It's all I have! I swear! Please, it's not that far. No, I'm not fooling you, look- see? Here's my wallet, only 2,000 TSH! I'm a student!" It ended up being a cabbie I've had before. The last time he drove me he claimed that he didn't have enough change for me to pay our pre-arranged amount. I called his bluff, "I don't believe you, check again" and he laughed and gave me my change. Given our history I think he felt like he owed me or something. So, he gave in and drove me home last night for a measley 2,000 shillings. I was pleased.

This morning I went with Jenaya and Mike (two of the GSC coordinators) to a drama workshop for local high schoolers who are putting on skits at the World AIDS Day program at the Arusha stadium on December 1st. It was really fun, but the teacher was a women from Barcelona who works at the international school and doesn't teach Swahili. It wasn't exactly a class for beginners, and she had no way of really helping them since she spoke less Swahili than I do- and she's been living here for 14 months! The kids were great, and there were student organizers who could translate and who had done this before, but it just added to my general feeling of the need to "train trainers" so that the appropriate skills cross the language barrier, but local context is incorporated. Why are we talking to 14 year old Tanzanians about the structure Shakespeare used in his plays? I mean, that's good to know, but are we skipping a few dozen basic steps before that? The kids are quick, and quite the performers, but I dunno, man. I just don't know.

Tonight the GSC girls and I are going to a club to hear live Reggae music with a group of locals we know. Should be fun. We can exactly stumble into the homestays late at night so we'll taxi to a hostel afterwards. One of the guys who is coming with us tonight, is a Rasta that people call "Bob" who has lived in Arusha his whole life but speaks his limited English in a Jamaican accent. I'm convinced it's because he learned English from Bob Marley songs. The other day he was going on and on about the problems and suffering that surround us, littering his observations with the phrase "I tell you true!" When he got to the end of one jive and I was thoroughly lost on what he was saying he turned to me and said, "But I tell you true, Sista, I tell you true: Ev'ryting's gonna be alright!" I felt like I was in a movie, or on a record cover, or in a Jack Kerouac book. It took everything I had to keep from laughing and say "So no woman, no cry, right?" He's pretty awesome, and it was hilarious.

On a final note: I am jealous of all of you who are already skiing in VT, or stepping on crunchy leaves, or drinking cider, or wearing sweaters. I am mad at all of you. Enjoy it to the max or I will attempt to haunt your dreams.

Dreams! Okay, I lied. One more thing. The other day I was talking with a GSC translator about teeth. Brushing your teeth is tricky when you can't afford toothpaste. A lot of people here have really brown teeth. Yay. It makes me brush and mouthwash all the more ferociously, but the other night I had a dream that my teeth were rotting out of my head. WELL. Today I found out that a lot of people have brown teeth because the ground water has too much natural flouride in it! Isn't that interesting? I mean, tragic, obviously, but interesting too.

Okay! Go brush your teeth and enjoy the fall weather!

Monday, October 19, 2009

Rise Above It

It's wonderful having people here in town who want to go do things! This weekend was probably my favorite two days of the trip so far.

On Saturday we went to the circus and an Ethiopian restaurant. Yesterday my friend Roger led me, Mary Ellen, Jessica, Jenna, and Nadia on a hike to the Mt. Meru waterfalls (maporomoco ya maji) and it was incredible.

We walked up through the village of Sanawari (just across the main road from my new homestay) and up, up, up, winding among the farms where I did agriculture training follow ups a few weeks ago. The raw, jagged summit of Meru stood tall against the sky, cloaked by incoming rainclouds without disturbing the sunny jungle of the mountain's base and hillsides. It was beautiful. A bunch of local kids joined us for part of the hike and we made a chain of friends- it's surprisingly tricky to hike without free use of your arms... no balance!

At one point, a little after we left our friends behind, we climbed to a new level of mountain ecology and walked through a shady forest of tall evergreens. When we left the forest the mountainside opened up into a huge meadow covered valley and Jenna and I threw out our arms and ran laughing down the narrow path like we were flying. The air up there is incredible. I love wind. At the edge of our meadow was an enormous, majestic mahogany tree abstractly covered in rich patches of fat moss. I want to be that tree. From there we started down, down, down into the valley. Along the way we saw the biggest banana tree in the entire world. (Okay, I don't know that, but it probably came close!) Absolutely enormous. I love the tropics. Just after that one of the other girls asked if there were any monkeys over here, I looked up at that moment and saw one immediately- "There is literally a blue monkey RIGHT. THERE. Look..." I love Tanzania.

At the bottom of the valley we hopped along rocks and climbed over boulders to follow the stream up to its waterfall origin. It was downright surreal and the huge trumpet flowers made it smell so good! Finally we got to point where the lush gardens fell away and the sides of the creek were steep, scooped away rock. We were there.

The waterfall was about a hundred feet tall, a clear fountain of raw power flying off the cliff above in a long narrow tube. We got some sick pictures.

The waterfall was great but the hike was incredible. After the waterfall, we went back to Roger's family's house which stood about halfway down the mountain. We ate a late lunch and then continued down to Sanawari where we were greeted with a wedding party complete with a band in the bed of the truck, ribbons on the cars, and endless horn honking. Typical. We all went to relax at a great outdoor bar on the main road, and from there I just hopped across the street and went home. I love living in town.

Grateful, grateful, grateful.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Let The Wild Rumpus Start

"And now," cried Max, "Let the wild rumpus start!"
-Where The Wild Things Are

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This is one of my favorite quotes, and when I saw it strut across my facebook hompage news feed, I was reminded of how jealous I am that it's opening in American Theaters tonight. At least I think it's tonight. Either way, I'm just hoping it's still playing when I get home for Thanksgiving. Can you believe that I saw a commercial for it playing in a restaurant last week? The song "Wake Up" by Arcade Fire is the music for the trailer, and it's one of my all time favorite songs. I used to dance around to it outside the Nature Center when no one was at Rock Polishing, and it was a symphony stuck in my head for most of Ultimate Nature Night- good memories all around.


This morning I moved out of my beautiful little home in Tengeru, and into a new homestay in the heart of Arusha.

Mama Salome handled the whole thing with the same grace that she brings to everything. She's a tough lady, and I was terrified at the prospect of offending her, but she took the whole thing in stride. Last night she invited over her sister and a few little cousins, toasted me with a cold beer (straight up luxury in that neck of the woods) and gave me her blessing with a few small gifts. She was gone early this morning for an errand out in Moshi, so I made a quiet departure.

There were a few things I had to do before leaving.

First, I went next door to visit Jackie Chan (an uber skinny dog that looks like a chihuahua was stretched to five times the normal size) and her five puppies. Jackie Chan was my first friend in Tanzania, and Mama Salome surprised me when she started feeding her occasionally- "She must feed her babies!" The puppies are fat and happy, Jackie is skinny and miserable but oh so sweet. Jackie and her puppies have been a huge moral dilemma for me. Do I tend to that suffering? Do I feed them so that they are happy for a little while, survive, and the pups grow up to be one more generation of un-fixed starving dogs to get rocks thrown at them? This continent needs a frickin Veterinarians Without Borders program- not instead of human welfare, but as a tangent. It's so incredibly easy to sterilize male dogs by a non-surgical process called banding. A week of moderate discomfort, and then BINGO no starving offspring from that Papa Pup. In the end, I just loved up Jackie and the puppies, cringing as their baby skin crawled with bugs. When I went to leave today, I was ready to say "screw it" and buy the biggest slab of steak I could find at the market and give it to Jackie Chan, but I didn't have the faintest idea where to look in the market, so I failed on that point. Meh.

The hardest part about leaving was saying Goodbye to Neema. She works in the house for Mama Salome, but I hate the housegirl system, and she is way too smart to be stuck in a house. She loved school and she always made me smile. We would laugh at each other as we tried to give simultaneous Kiswahili/English lessons. Before I left I asked her if she liked working or if she wanted to go back to school. She immediately said school and I said I would try to help. There is no reason for a 14 year old girl to work as hard as she does, especially not when she's so excited about learning and would make so much of a completed education. We exchanged information, I got the name of her primary school, and I gave her a Swahili-English dictionary and a GSC Swahili pamphlet on HIV and Nutrition. I don't have the faintest idea what I can do for her, but it will take very little effort to find out, and would probably take very little to put her through high school. I can afford $10 a year for my Tanzanian sister.

I know I'm just another bleeding heart Mzungu, but feeding a puppy isn't going to do anything- sending a girl from a rural area to Secondary School very well could.

So I went up to Tengeru town to catch a taxi for the move, stopping along the way to say goodbye to my horses, and getting blatantly ripped off on daladala fare (damn mzungu prices.) The last couple of days in Tengeru have been picture perfect. Absolutely beautiful, to the point where I seriously reconsidered moving... more than once. It was like Tengeru was trying to seduce me into staying. The trees there that I love so much, stretched and yawned and sang over the useless dirt road. The kids all chased after me yelling "Daniella!" and I truly wondered why I was leaving. Unfortunately for my favorite trees and little friends, I did know and I do know why I had to leave Tengeru.

And so I did.

Today was grey and muggy, and overall terrible for picture taking. It was like Tengeru was saying, "Fine, go. We tried to convince you but clearly you don't care. Who needs you?" The last thing I did before leaving was hunt down my friend Edie- a boy who I originally met because I wanted to take a picture of him wearing his Michigan State t-shirt. He wants to go to college and study international law, so it's my mission to bring him with me to the Rwanda Tribunals being held at the U.N. Int'l Criminal Court in Arusha. We exchanged email addresses, said goodbye, and I really hope it will work out for him to come with me.

The cab took me up the road and all the way to the GSC office in Arusha. We passed through Market Day in Tengeru and I waved to the people I knew and the ones who waved to me.

My new homestay baba (father) picked me up at the GSC office and brought me down the road to his house. I was psyched to hear that he owned a Safari company, because I figured that meant that there was a real toilet in the house. True story. The house is smaller than Mama Salome's, but it's gated and oh my word the CONVENIENCE. It is a 10 minute walk from GSC and 15 or 20 minutes from La Patisserie (internet!) There are the parents, two girls ages 6 and 10, and a housegirl who is not 14. I have a big bed in my new room, a small table, and a retired refridgerator. And that's it. I'm going to buy some baskets to use for storage, since they're fairly cheap and easy to come by. I might get a cheap rug too. They took the vegetarian thing in stride, and I begged for vegetables. Fresh. Raw. Veggies.

So I'm a city girl now. Remember that book Town Mouse Country Mouse? Me either, but I thought of it today when all of a sudden I realized that I was living right by one of the busiest intersections in Arusha- it's the only stoplight in town, dude. Did I mention they have a DVD player? I'll admit it, I'm a little excited to buy a cheap ripoff DVD on the street and watch it sometime. I haven't seen a movie since the plane ride from Amsterdam five weeks ago, and it's not like I watch T.V. normally never mind here.

In a few hours I'm meeting up with the new GSC volunteers- Jenna, Mary Ellen, Nadia, and maybe Jessica- to go to the Circus (again! it's that good!) and out to dinner. I'm thinking I'll like living in town, especially with people to enjoy it with. It's been kinda cool to help the others with a few things around town. It's nice to be in on the loop for once, instead of being randomly plopped down in East Africa. I'm so glad that they're here. I'm also really grateful for those five weeks of being on my own, living out in Tengeru. It was really good for me. I learned a lot- perhaps most importantly that I could do it, I could just show up in a new country and not have a full on panic or meltdown. I spent plenty of time as a borderline hermit, but I also explored and was willing to embarrass myself with my Swahili attempts. It was fun. I would do it again.

So bring it.

Friday, October 16, 2009

On The Road Again

Tomorrow I move out of Tengeru and into Arusha town. Tengeru is the most beautiful place I could ever hope to live in, I have a great house, I like my Mama and Neema, but I'm moving out nonetheless. It's just too damn far, man. It takes at least an hour to get in and out of town without a cab, and taxi fares have been eating away at my spare funds. There are three new long-term GSC volunteers who just got here and will be living with Arusha, so in moving to town I'm getting easy access to work and play, and people to hang out with. I'm bummed to be leaving Tengeru, and it was awful to have to bridge the subject with Mama Salome last night, but I think this will be a good thing. It's also interesting because I'm moving at the half-way point of my GSC program time, meaning that I'm really facilitating a new and exciting second half.

I've got my bearings now, that much is for sure. After my angry 'mzungu' venting session in my last entry I found a new sort of peace with the whole thing. As I walked home that night fully prepared to punch someone in the nose (a feeling shared at times by my East African counterpart, Miss Anna Chapin of Nairobi) I had a thought: "I really thought I was thicker skinned than this." I've always been overly sensative, but the whole thing was really getting to me. The truth is I had a very lonely first month, and as I've said before, it didn't exactly help for everyone to be constantly reminding me that I was alone. So that night I decided that I had to change tactics. I decided that I would try smiling all day, and if that didn't work, I would try not responding to anyone for a whole day, and the experiments would carry on from there. I just needed to be more consistently calm and happy. I'm in Tanzania for crying out loud! It's amazing here and I've known that, but it's hard to be alone. Happiness wasn't going to come by itself (it never is, I guess) so I had to go catch it. Well, smiling worked. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you could have told me that blah blah blah aren't you smart. I had to come to it on my own terms. I'm grumpy, okay? I get pissed.

So now when I go through my day I'm sassy smiley: brisk enough to keep people from bothering me, comfortable with ignoring people and rolling my eyes, and generally breezy about smiling. It's not easy, I'm not suddenly some zen guru, but it's a process that I'm now willing to engage in- and it's paying off.

Today was the last day of my first group's HIV training. They were quite the educational experience- for me just as much as them. I taught the majority of today's lesson on nutrition and I was really happy with how it went. This week in itself has been a lesson in the structural shortcomings and easy fixes when it comes to public health and community development.

I hate the term community development. But then, I also kind of hate the term culture. Not really, I just spent too much time with groovy UVMers with fluffy ideas devoid of substance. "Eh, it's their culture. Meh, community development."

This week started to show me what is actually needed, and how many concepts of training skip crucial steps for understanding and value. For example, the group we taught this week had many questions that needed answering, but they had already had an HIV training course last year. So while we were building on their knowledge, thus empowering them to train friends and relatives, these women have had two courses and many women (and especially men) have not had any training at all. We spent part of this morning distributing flyers and there will be announcements at the church this weekend, so hopefully there will be two full groups of newbies next week.

Aright, more musings later. I'm dehydrated.

ppppppppppeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaccccceeeeeeeeeeeee

Monday, October 12, 2009

One Month Later, and Mzungu: Revisited

It's been a month.

I love what I've been doing, even if the program is frustrating sometimes. I love the people I work with, even if I get really lonely by myself out in Tengeru. Weekends kind of suck. I just don't have much to do, and it takes at least an hour to get into Arusha. I'm going to try to be more proactive with my weekends, and now that four new volunteers are here, I think I'll have more fun.

This past week we were back in Makoyuni, and our calls for busier, more demanding days were heeded and then some. As opposed to the week before when we were overstaffed during chicken vaccinations that lasted just a few hours each morning, ending our work day by noon, this week we were completely exhausted. Bio-intensive agriculture training, HIV training, chicken vaccinations, and digging enormous rainwater collection wells called "Hafirs." We were uber busy but it was great to be in Makoyuni where everyone knew us. We were happy to work- it's why we came here. The drought here has worsensed considerably in these last remaining weeks before the rains come. We came up with some great new editions to Andrew's game show premise, "What's That Smell?!" Sweat and animal carcass being among them, with outhouses still in the lead. One day Jordan suggested that we might stumble upon a Global Service Corpse, and I laughed so hard that I had to sit down for a while.

I've realized that I have only taken about two dozen pictures. When Mum asked me about pictures the other night, I said that it was hard to take a lot of pictures. For one thing, it makes you look like a tourist and you can attract a lot of unwanted attention. More often, though, it attracts attention of people who want their pictures taken so that they can see it on the digital screen. Most people here don't have mirrors, so they don't generally have a good concept of what they look like on any given day. There isn't a mirror in my homestay- I use the back of my ipod or take a picture if I want to see. Regardless of all this, I need to suck it up and take more pictures, because it truly is gorgeous here.

One thing I will be taking more pictures of is the crazy collections of second hand clothing flying around. If you haven't seen the movie "T-Shirt Travels" you really should, because I'm living in it. Most clothing donations from the states end up not donated, but sold here and in in other developing nations. They arrive by the bundle to the used clothing market and other individuals who sell them to locals. The result is a nation clad in hilarious and sometimes downright offensive English phrases on them. You know those t-shirts you get for fundraisers and sports teams? They're here. Those shirts that get pulled from shelves because people have threatened legal action against the store? They're here too. Sometimes it's Wolverines, MSU, Insurance companies, Buffalo Women's Volleyball, Relay For Life, or Mississippi Teacher's Conference. The highlight of last week was I (heart) Gay Porn. I keep looking to see one of my shirts that I gave up years before- who knows what, when, or where.

These shirts have raised interesting questions among the Americans and those who speak English. Does it matter if it says something offensive in a language you don't speak? Is English lettering trendy or just by accident?

This morning when I was walking up to Tengeru town to catch the daladala into Arusha, and I froze in my tracks when I spotted a confederate flag t-shirt. The craziest part was that at first, I straight up hallucinated: when I saw the shirt I immediately pictured it on a middle aged white guy with a big belly. Isn't that terrible? I apparently have a clearly preconcieved and prejudiced notion of who would wear that shirt and for what reason, and I was outraged and confused to see it here. This only lasted about a second or two, and when I realized who was actually wearing it (a black Tanzanian guy in his mid 30s) I approached him slowly. I asked in English if he knew what his shirt meant. He didn't understand my English and neither did his friends so I called out to see if anyone spoke English. They didn't, so I just walked off in a daze to catch the daladala. I was so out of it that I tripped getting on the bus and gave everyone a good laugh at the clumsy mzungu.

So, what do you think?

Does it matter what the symbol means if you don't recognize the symbol? Does it matter if the words are offensive if you don't know what the words mean? Who's definition counts and in what context? I thought about it for a long time. I decided that it didn't really matter what my opinion was, not really, not right now. The extent of my opinion that did matter to me was that I felt obligated to see if he knew that flag's relevance in American and African history- not so that he would see he was wrong to wear a shirt, but to make sure he had all of the information so that he could make his own decision. It might not have been my business, but I'm looking up the swahili so that I can talk to him if I see it again.

Lost in Translation: Me, English, the confederate flag, and Mzungu

I think I spent too much time in Boston, or even New England, to be particularly comfortable in Arusha. I have always felt that in general people are too hard on one another, but Tanzania has taken casual niceties to a painful degree. I stick out like a sore thumb, and when they see me, most of them take notice. The nature of their notice varies considerably. It could be "Habari" or "Huambo" or "Shikamoo" all of which are legit. It could be yelling "Mzungu" the Swahili word for "white person" or "foreigner."

MZUNGU MZUNGU point, wave, giggle, HELLO GOOD MORNING MZUNGU whistle hiss

Yeah, I'm not really down with that.

Or if perhaps they know some English they will take the opportunity to practice. Sometimes they are trying to sell you something or ask you for something, a lot of the time they want to get your cell phone number, and sometimes it's totally innocent and they are just being nice.

To be a brutally honest ugly American, I am generally not down with any of those either.

Check it:

"Oh Jambo Jambo, Hallo my friend! Rafiki! Do you know what 'rafiki' means? Rafiki means friendy! Where are you from? What is your name? How long have you been here? Say 'pole pole' means slow slow, speak slow."

I have gotten this multiple times a day, every day, for one month.

Now, you must be thinking: what's the big deal? Just be nice to them or tell them you don't need help. Well, I am at the point where I know enough Swahili to get them to chill out and leave me be, but no amount of Swahili will get them to keep from approaching me. I'm sorry. I just don't think it's my responsibility to have a conversation with every tenth or fifteenth or fiftieth person who approaches me and wants my life story and cell phone number, just because my physical appearance makes it obvious that I'm not local.

Back. The Frick. Off.

Everywhere I go people assume that I don't know Swahili and that I will be magically impressed with them for teaching me something. When I went to the U.N. on Saturday to use the FedEx inside, the armed guard was trying to teach me how to say "Thank you" and other basic phrases I learned well before I got here. Once I got through the security check I could barely contain my frustration or my English curses. Leave me alone. I'm exhausted.

This doesn't happen everywhere. The laughing and mzungu calling is surprisingly bad in the township of Tengeru where my homestay is, and Arusha is downright miserable sometimes. Staying in the village of Makoyuni was wonderful, because we were there for two weeks, people got to know us, and everyone knew our names or was willing to ask politely.

Let me say it again: I don't think it's my responsibility to indulge anyone who wants to talk to me or get my number just because I stand out.

The "Mzungu" thing has other interesting qualities too. I started thinking about it one day this week, and I asked myself if it would bother me as much if they were yelling "American! American!" instead of the equivalant of "White Person! White Person!" and while I think race gets my attention more, "American" would drive me just as bonkers. They call Asians and other distinctly different ethnicities "Mzungu" as well, and I imagine that doesn't sit well with them from a racial standpoint, although that's a highly unfounded assumption since I haven't asked any. I was also thinking about the language bit. How do French, or Dutch, or Germans feel when everyone jabbers at them in English, assuming it's their first language? I haven't asked any of they either, but I think we can wager that the French do not want to be associated with any language but their own.

If you haven't noticed already, I'm been having my global identity cracked open into a blender. Stay tuned for the main course.

In other news I drew my first uterus today. I've completed the bulk of my sustainable agriculture program, and now I'll be focusing in HIV/AIDS training sessions. Today was our first of five classroom sessions with a group of about 15 women between the ages of 20 and 50. I can already tell it will be an interesting week. For example, most of the questions today were about mother to child transmission and prevention. This was fascinating and challenging, because I quickly realized that our program was skipping a few crucial steps. How do I teach HIV prevention to a group of people who have never had a proper sexed class or science class? How do you explain the nature of a virus vs. bacteria, define DNA, or talk about internal organs that most people have never seen a picture of and cannot visualize? I'm about to print out some pictures of anatomy, because I just don't think my drawing of the female reproductive organs was doing the body justice. Some might say that this is not the basic neccessity, that people need knowledge of condoms not a concrete understanding of a virus. Well, maybe, but I don't think that's necessarily true. How can I explain modes of transmission if they don't differentiate between vaginal and amniotic fluid? That's just not going to happen. We're there to educate, so we might as well do it correctly.

Yes, it's been quite a month.

I'm homesick sometimes, and lonely sometimes, but I'm glad that I'm here, and trying to make the most of it. It's been hard to be here alone, but I'm getting the hang of it, and I'm glad for the experience, and I'm thrilled that there are new volunteers here now. It's amazing the things you miss, though. I miss cereal and milk. When I get back to the states I want an enormous black bean and cheese burrito with chips and salsa. Vegetarians eat tons of beans here, but they don't have blackbeans! Cheese withdrawal hit me hard after being at camp all summer, haha. And salad! No one eats lettuce here, and it's tough to get fresh vegetables. For breakfast in Makoyuni they would fry up tortilla-like things called Chappati. I determined pretty quickly that I can't eat fried egg dough for breakfast. One day last week I ate bread and marmalade instead, ignoring the ants crawling on the loaf. A trusty advisor said the bread was fine despite them, so I just smeared blueband over them and ate breakfast for a change. Beyond the food I miss crashing in front of the couch to watch a movie. Brain candy. Zoning out. The upside of only one tv station is that I've read more this month than all last semester, but sometiemes I just want to tune out with a chick flick or something.

The bottom line is that there are ups and downs, good and bad, lessons taught and lessons learned, mistakes and room for improvement. Four weeks down, and six to go.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Terrible, Hilarious, True

"I think what you're groping for is that people need more than to be scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty. They need more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them." -Ishmael, Daniel Quinn

- - - - -

I feel like this is a long entry, but I just got back from a week in the villages.

I'm sorry to pick up on a down note, but I need to take another minute to talk about Matt Healey. Something wails inside of me to even start writing about this. When I last wrote, almost a week ago, I had literally just found out. Maybe half way through that entry, as I was checking my email and facebook. I was in shock for the next couple of hours. It didn't hit home until I started trying to make contact with my parents and Alex. During the circus intermission I got a live line with my Dad, who was in Michigan at the time after a sailing trip with the Lisiecki parents. Then I lost it.

There were the standard pains of grief and sympathy. The typical shock at the injustice. The overwhelming wash of worry for my brother and the Healey family, and everyone else at risk of any sort of fatal injury, infection, or circumstance- unexpected or drawn out.

For the first time since I've been here, I felt completely isolated. It had taken me days to get to a computer and check my email and finally discover that something had happened. I had been sending stupid text messages about baboons, and carrying on as if everything was fine. I had no idea. I couldn't have.

If you look back through my entries you'll find that my greatest worry upon leaving the states was that something bad would happen back home while I was away. My dad mentioned that when we were on the phone. I now think that it was less of an uncanny feeling, and more of a general worry that we all suppress enough to live through the day. Okay, melodramatic, but bear with me. Obviously we can't go through every day worried about what we could lose, the panic would finish you off in a matter of weeks. Bad things happen. They can, will, and do happen whether I'm home or away or whatever. Life is fragile. It just took the Atlantic Ocean, the African continent, and an absolute tragedy for it to fully register with me.

Can you all do me an enormous favor and take extra good care of yourselves?

Enough of that for now, I don't want to lose it in the middle of the internet cafe.

I spent the week in a village called Makoyuni, out in the middle of Maasai territories. Desert lands waiting for the rainy season, a quiet dusty realm just outside the entrance to a few of Tanzania's infamous national parks.

This past week we were doing chanjo ya kuku meaning vaccinating chickens for the deadly New Castle's Disease. It doesn't directly affect humans, but it is highly contagious and makes for almost certain death among chickens, thus eliminating a vital source of nutrition and market sales for many families. We essentially spent every morning this week chasing chickens, and I mean that to the fullest extent of your imagination. Chickens are ridiculous. All we needed to do was put a tiny drop of clear painless liquid into one eye, and shazam! Vaccinated! But was it shazam? No. There was no shazam. It was more like RUN GO THAT WAY NO THE YELLOW ONE RUDE THING DAMN ROOSTER oh finally. It was funny, but took a while.

This experience set into stone my long-standing dislike for roosters. River Wind Farm had a mean old black and white rooster that would chase after you if you got out. That was the beginning. This week I learned that roosters are also by far the most difficult to catch. Yesterday morning, there was one that took us over an hour. When I thought I had him cornered inside of a hut he went to fly out a whole in the roof and I ended up cutting my arm on a piece of exposed sheet metal. While the family continued to chase him, I did what any rational American who cut herself on rusty metal from a chicken farm in East Africa would do. I freaked out. I spent the next ten minutes in the truck, using my drinking water to wash my arm, my hand sanitizer to clean the cut, and my bandanna to cover it up and apply pressure. It wasn't that deep of a cut and I have been boosted for tetanus, but this mzungu ain't taking no chances. Damn roosters.

Rooster chasing aside, the time we spent among the Maasai people was incredible. The lives they lead are extraordinary in that they are extraordinarily difficult. Most traditions are firmly in tact, but occasional signs would remind you that this was not a static society. At one point Harry (our driver and my official go-to on any question) caught me glancing at a Maasai man of at least 70 chatting away on a cell phone. Harry smiled and said, "People develop."

Yes, they certainly do.

When I shared that with the rest of the group at dinner that night, I added that we shouldn't tell the western cell phone companies because they would just love that as a new ad campaign. Someone else said we shouldn't tell Apple because the iphone applications would be out of control. Can you even imagine?! We came up with some good ones: Catch the chicken- every gold coin is 5 drops of NCD vaccine! Or, how many Maasai wives can you get? Or, how much rain water can you catch in your bucket?

Terrible, hilarious, true.

The land out there is the pinnacle of harsh. It's beauty is calm but stark. The ground is smothered with dust and trash, littered with starving dogs and deranged chickens. The mudbrick houses are topped with thatched roofs and surrounded by ragtag smiling children and exhausted mamas. Huts are not houses of the history books alone, they are the past, present, and future for many of the people here.

Driving down one of the nation's main "highways" or wandering any corner of the villages you see hundreds of half-standing houses. They are either on their way up or the way down, and sometimes is takes a second look to see which are which. When people leave houses behind in favor of city living, the valuable tin roofs either go with them or are salvaged by scavenger. The mud walls stay behind, watching the road and the dust. As in the states, and much of the Takers' world (read Ishmael!) people are constantly expanding, building bigger and better things for what they hope will be bigger and better lives. Unfortunately, the flailing and thus failing economy has left most families without incomes, and so the new houses are without bricks, doors, or roofs. They wait to be completed, on a day that may or may not come.

I work with the GSC staff as one of five interns. One of the interns is a girl in her mid-twenties named Jordan. Jordan and I have talked a few times about the effects of trash on moral and the environment. I truly cannot convey how beautiful it is here... or the extent to which it is completely covered in trash. As a self-esteem or national pride boost and source of several thousand jobs, it could be an extraordinary project! Hey, government! Get your dirty hands out of your fat pockets and put them to use (hands and pockets both.)

Everyone here knows the government is corrupt, but they love peace and lack resources to initiate peaceful change. Tanzanians continue to be completely in love with the first president, Julius Nyerere, and harbor not so secret hopes that he'll rise from the dead and fulfill the dreams he planted 30 odd years ago. Unity, compassion, growth, education, water, dignity. Not so very much to as, eh? You wouldn't think so.

Politics and political dissatisfaction seem like a hot topic at first glance, but if you listen long enough you hear the same three or four comments over and over again. They go something like this: "Nyerere was the greatest."... "The government is corrupt."... "What will your Obama do for us?"..."I don't like politics."

How encouraging.

At one point last week I was having chai with Some, a Tanzanian GSC staffer, and Zaina, a Tanzanian trainee with the GSC chicken vaccination program. Some started in on the same old story I've heard about politics in Tanzania. Zaina is a college student who speaks very little English, and I asked Some to translate a question for me: Colleges are the hotbeds of progressive change and political voices. What are Tanzanian college students doing about changing things?

Yeah, Some didn't exactly get me an answer.

He talked with her for a while in Swahili and when he came back to English he said that he had advised her to study agriculture instead of computers, because many of the groups she had been sent to train had told her they wanted nothing to do with computers. I countered, hoping he would translate. I told him I felt it was nearly impossible to access information here, and computers could change that. Knowledge is power, and that means computers are empowering. I said I thought what she was doing was great. Again, I don't think Some was actively participating in crossing the language barrier.

The rut Tanzanian politicians have helped create is extreme, but what's more frustrating is the lacking momentum for positive change. Two of the most well-educated, well-liked, and compassionate individuals I have met here want to go into tourism management or safari guiding. Everyone is trying to cater to tourism, but seldom few are looking to change the structures that perpetuate a failing dependency on tourism and foreign "aid." Even the few who manage to go far in their education shy away from addressing the problems that they know are hurting their communities. I don't really understand it yet. But I'm trying.

There's a lot I don't quite understand here. One thing I do know is I love kids, and I had been missing them terribly. To go from Michigania, to DREAM, to Michigania, to children running away from me yelling "Mzungu" was hardly short of traumatic.

All of that changed when we arrived in Makoyuni! Okay, so I did make the occasional village baby cry because they had never seen a white person, but other than that it was like therapy! Upon arrival we were immediately swarmed with little kids of all ages who wanted to be our friends. Before I had been there a full hour, a baby peed on me. Yeah... they don't have diapers in these places. Can you imagine 11th week in the Michigania 0-2 nursery without diapers? No way, no how.

The kids are adorable, and I quickly taught them to call me Daniella instead of mzungu (Danielle sounds too close to a boy's name for local taste, so I just introduce myself as Daniella.) Everywhere I go "Daniella! Daniella! Daniella!" and the GSC staff would always laugh and come tell me that my babies were asking for me. I'm determined to make it through my stay without giving them candy, money, or pens. That sounds cruel, right? Why not give them a treat? But the truth is some kids skip school to beg on market days, dolling out gifts increases targeting of tourists and expectations of gifts, and above all: I didn't give them presents and they STILL liked me more than some who do. That sounds conceited, I'm sure, but what I'm trying to say is that these kids need attention, not random handouts. They play on a rusty tetanus infested truck that serves as their playground of doom. They chew on batteries that they find on the ground- BATTERIES! Their mothers are exhausted, their fathers aren't around, and their school only lasts half a day so that the few available teachers can hold two sessions of classes daily. The kids are happy as clams, but they have little to do except look for trouble, and when they get old enough they'll surely find it. So we played with the kids every chance we could. I taught them all high fives-which they find hilarious- AND....drum roll please.... I taught several different groups of kids to sing "Boom Chicka Boom"!!!!!! It's HILARIOUS, and don't worry! I caught it on video, and I will upload it to facebook or youtube when I get home. Just imagine...

Sometimes when I couldn't express myself in Swahili, I would just continue to talk to them. Whispering little hopes in English, willing them into translation. Like when my two dearest girls, 7 year olds named Yunsi and Zuema, were completely immune to the ugly scene of three goats getting every step beaten out of them as they were taken past the hostel. Jordan, Andrew, and I don't eat meat, and we looked on with disgust and the occasional "oh come on! stop that!" but the girls hardly noticed. As they looked excitedly at their newly painted toe-nails, I said "You know we're all animals right? We should be nice to animals so that they will be happy too. Animals behave best when you treat them well. Beating them just makes them scared and they won't do what you want when they're scared." Yunsi held up the nail polish, asking for more, and Zu giggled her agreement with Yunsi. I sighed. I sigh a lot, it seems. Those two are so damn cute.

I'm also guilty of some of my old Michigania tricks- besides repeat after me songs. At camp I would get the 789s and preteens to cheer "Invasive Species" and here in Tanzania I had a few kids chanting "Equal Rights!" It wasn't totally random. They were trying to read the stickers off of my journal notebook and they asked about that one (probably because it was rainbow colored and looked pretty.) They ask, I oblige. "Equal Rights! Equal Rights! Equal Rights!"

Fortunately, we'll get to see the kids again this coming week when we go back to dig for water conservation and train local groups in bio-intensive agriculture. I really liked where we were staying, but I'll admit readily that I'm not stoked about leaving behind my real toilet at Mama Salome's house. Over the past week our Swahili got a lot better, but Andrew has yet to learn the one phrase he desperately wants to know: What's that smell? He claims that it could be a highly successful game show in East Africa but I insist that there's only one answer, so what's the point in asking? Waste management, folks. Shit happens, and responsible management should too. Just one more reason I'm going into public health.


So here comes another week. I don't think I'll be able to update between now and next weekend, but this entry was so long that I'm thinking we'll all manage without an update for a while.

Take good care of yourselves, be grateful for your toilet seats, read Ishmael and/or Pathologies of Power, and never curse the rain.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

So Now You've Seen The Light

If you know what life is worth
You will look for yours on earth

- - - - - - - - - - -

Wow. I'm not sure how to begin today. There's a lot flying around in my head.

I guess I'll start with Baboons.

Yesterday the GSC "volunteers" went on a Safari to Arusha National Park. We rode around in a heavy duty land cruiser, standing up through the open top so we could see the animals. We saw over 100 Baboons, 1000s of flamingos, giraffes, zebras, buffalo, warthogs, tons of birds, and at least three other kinds of monkeys. When we stopped at a waterfall for a break I was shocked and thrilled to find myself within 5ft of an enormous baboon who was just as shocked but not nearly as thrilled to see me, which he made very clear as he ran away. Several times throughout the day we stopped the truck and found ourselves surrounded by monkeys playing, eating, jumping from tree to tree. One time we inadvertently snuck up on a pair of full grown wart hogs. I don't know how they didn't hear us driving up but they snorted and took off once they noticed us. And get this: As a joke I yelled out "Pumbaa! Come back!" and one of them stopped and looked at us for a while!

It was a great day, but I don't think I'll be signing up for any more driving safaris while I'm here. I'm itching to go hiking, and Mt Meru is calling my name daily. I understand that the driving safaris are big ticket income sources for Tanzanian tourism, but the environmental logic is a little twisted. Over 25% of Tanzania is national park reserves. TWENTY FIVE PERCENT! The country itself is about the combined size of California, Nevada, and New Mexico, and 1/4 of that space is protected lands. Well that's fantastic, right? So I'm not exactly stoked about gas guzzling my way around those protected spaces, especially when hiking is more fun anyway. There are a lot of ongoing land struggles between tribal groups and the state. It's a little tricky to get a cohesive look at the situations as they have developed, since everyone I ask seems to have personal experience or family ties to the issues of concern. It's another thing I'm looking at, so I'll update when I have something worthwhile to add.

On Friday night the GSC team went to the Arusha Community Church for their music festival that had been organized by the GSC Tanzanian Coordinator, Erwin Kinsey. My homestay Mama was a tad overwhelmed with the prospect of me going into town and coming home in the dark, but like any protective mama she monitored me via text, and I promised I wouldn't be out too late- a promise I kept. The Jesus-Christ-Makes-Everything-Nice bits made me a touch uncomfortable, but the music was great! Afterwards I needed to catch a daladala back to Tengeru, where I would then take a cab home- it's a 30min walk from tengeru to my house, and walking at night is not an option. I'm officially the only foreigner living in Tengeru, but a few of the other interns waited with me at the daladala stand. I had my pocket knife rolled into the top of my skirt and I held it, closed and covered, in my hand until I got home. It's not like it would have done a whole lot in legitimate self defense, but it would have at least scared off any grabby guys stumbling out of the bar or onto the bus. A local acquaintance from GSC rode the bus with me and about half of the Tanzanian population. The bus was slightly bigger than a daladala, but they packed in more people than you would imagine possible. My swahili isn't exactly trustworthy but I'm pretty sure my new friend (Roger?) asked one of the sober guys on the bus to look out for me before he got off, and I sat with him for the rest of the ride to Tengeru. I had a straight up panic moment when I thought I had missed my stop, but I soon realized that I was where I wanted to be, and I hopped in a taxi to go home. Safe and sound.

Overall, this week has been a good one... but one of frustration, or at times just puzzlement. Global Service Corps has an excellent staff with valuable knowledge that they dispense in a sustainable fashion. They give their interns a holistic, cohesive approach laden with context and hands-on tactics. They have helped many communities, which are in turn teaching their neighbors.

That doesn't mean GSC is doing all that it could.

Technically, I'm a "volunteer" but I see myself as a student, an intern. I'm frustrated because we have an inordinate amount of downtime, and I don't feel like we're being used to the fullest. I've discussed it with my peers, and they unanimously agree. We're here! Use us! Exhaust us! Unfortunately, the program as a whole seems to operate on African time. Now, I do understand that to some degree, because we have to work within the context we're given... but there is so much to do! There's no reason our day should end at 1 or 2 o'clock. Book more sessions! Find more projects! Do SOMETHING with that time!

I'm afraid GSC might be that kid in class with all the potential in the world, but is comfortable resting on its foundation. The planet is not on Africa time. The planet is on a time crunch. People are hungry and sick, the earth has been and continues to be abused. We have the resources, and we need to use them.

So where does this leave me?

The realization came to me while we were on the safari yesterday. All week I was grumpy about not making a bigger impact, not helping more. But I think the bumpy ride through the National Park bounced some sense into me. I. Did. Not. Come. To. Change. Things. Not really. I want to change things, but I came here to learn.

Light bulb!

I claim to be here as a student, right? So I need to learn. My remaining 8 weeks in Tanzania will serve as a personal case study on public health and environmental practice.

I'm useless without conversational Swahili so I'm going to continue studying while out in the village this week, take lessons from the Swahili instructor GSC uses next week when I'm in town. In the meantime I'm going to do as much research as possible on land use, education, infrastructure, health access, the political economy etc etc etc. The GSC office has tons of information and informed staffers, and I'm going to use them to the fullest.

Once I have improved my Swahili and built a foundation (maybe even a thesis?) on Tanzanian health and environmental issues, I'm going to meet with as many health professionals, teachers, government officials, pharmacists, NGO coordinators, and social workers as possible. I want local opinions and international perspectives. What do people think they need? What do they actually need? I have some ideas of what I might find out but I'm ready to let the interviews speak for themselves.

Global Service Corps may be organizing some of my time here, but they've left me a lot of down time too, and I'm going to make the absolute most of it. The staff at GSC has many contacts they can put me in touch with, and plenty of other resources for me to use.

If you can't tell via internet... I'm really excited.

I'm continuing to read Pathologies of Power and I'm almost done with Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. Can I be so bold as to INSIST that everyone read Ishmael? It's value is indescribable. The books are very different and I agree with both of them, so I can practically feel my brain churning around as it arrives at some new platforms on which to rest my personal philosophies. Many of these concepts are things I've thought and felt for as long as I can remember... but now, as I look at health and the environment, my sense of urgency is racing, and I'm getting more and more direction and drive.

THIS IS WHY I TOOK THIS SEMESTER OFF.

In an hour or so I'm meeting with Michael to go to the circus! I'm uber excited because I haven't been in ages, and apparently this is more about acrobats and music than animals and clown cars, so it should be pretty sweet.

I probably won't be updating again until next weekend because I'll be in a village all week doing chicken vaccinations and teaching bio-intensive agriculture... and reading, reading, reading... but stay tuned! I'm sure I'll have loads that I'll want to share by the time I reunite with technology next Saturday.

((sidenote: thank you SO MUCH to everyone who's given positive feedback about this blog! i'm glad that it's been as interesting to you as it has been helpful to me!))




- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And now, I need to end this on an impossibly tragic note.

RIP Matthew Healey. I'm so lucky to have known you, and I'm so sorry that we won't be seeing you. You are a class act, a hilarious character, and an unfair loss. We'll miss you, bud.


Wednesday, September 23, 2009

"Animal, Vegetable, Miracle"

It has been a very interesting couple of days living in Tengeru.

I ended up going to the Polish Refugee cemetery by myself- 4pm real time can end up being 6:30pm Tanzania time, so I had come and gone by the time everyone showed up. It's tucked in way back off of the main road, but it's a beautiful space. The director wasn't there so there wasn't anyone to fill me in on the story, but I plan to go back. There were as many as 200 graves, but most were marked with Christian crosses, so I don't know if that's typical, or if missionaries handled the burials, or if Christians fled Nazi Poland, but regardless it confused me a bit. Most of the people lasted only a few years- probably Malaria- but some lived well into the 60s and two made it into the 21st century. When I get the whole story I'll post it because it is lost on me.

In other news, deceased Polish war refugees led me to my two best friends in Tanzania!

Yup. I finally found horses.

A very friendly mare and a gorgeous but mannerless stud live at the agriculture college's animal husbandry and care compound. I'll admit I squealed when I saw them. There are literally thousands of sheep, goats, and cows here, but these are the only horses I have seen (thank goodness, otherwise they would be food!)

They live on the way to the cemetery so on my way home from there I stopped at their fence and called to them. Well, wouldn't you know it, horse language it international because they came right over and gladly had me scritch their ears and withers, and play with their noses. A group of kids came by and were very confused by my interest in the horses. I think they were kind of afraid of them- and rightfully so, since those big brown creatures are pretty novel to the area. They made a lot of noise and my friends (the ponies) decided to bail, but once all the people had dispersed I called them again and they came back.

It made me remember why I love horses. It's not that I had forgotten to love them, I just forgot about why. Horses, many animals, are therapeutic. They don't care what you're wearing or how you did on your math test. They won't call you 'mzungu', or ask you for money, or laugh at your makeshift swahili. Animals care how you treat them, not who you are. It may sound like I'm being hard on Tanzanians, but in reality people are just hard on people. I like the people here, I just happen to love these horses.

I've found the same thing with dogs. People here don't feed their dogs, they're busy enough keeping themselves fed. Remember that poverty and unemployment are rampant in east Africa, as in much of the world. These dogs aren't pets. They are guard dogs, they are not fixed, and they are hungry and itchy. Dogs are everywhere but for the most part people are afraid of dogs and dogs are afraid of people. I've befriended the dogs near my homestay and they LOVE me. They were afraid of me at first, but now they wait in the driveway for me to come home, I scratch their ears and pull off a few bugs, and their tails wag, and wag, and wag.

Great guard dogs, eh?

Yes, the animal relationships here are very interesting. For example, it's been very tricky to explain vegetarianism. Things like "buying local" and "free range" and "animal rights" are tough for many Tanzanians to conceptualize. All meat is local! All chickens are free range! No cows are fed grain or meat, and no animals are stuffed into overcrowded, unsanitary pens. Meat is expensive, so they don't eat very much of it. It's prized even though the animals aren't exactly in prime condition. I won't pretend to know the situation of every animal on the continent, but around here they see vegetarianism as being overly sensitive or something. For the most part they can't picture mass production of food. The title of this entry is the name of a book by Barbara Kingsolver about eating locally in the U.S. One of the GSC coordinators is going to lend it to me.

Monday was the end of Ramadan, so we had the day off from GSC and instead I went with my homestay Mama and "brother" Michael to visit their extended family in a village at the base of Kilimanjaro. The ride out there brought the term "off roading" into a funny sort of light, since technically they were roads. It was beautiful out there. The staple food for the region is bananas so the whole area sways to the shade of the banana trees, and we had a cooked banana stew for lunch- not bad! They don't get many foreigners out there since it's off the beaten tourist track. I had a fan club of kids who spent the day hiding behind nearby trees and giggling, and one older man asked Michael in all seriousness if he had brought home his fiancee from Dar es Salaam. We finished our time there visiting with some of their cousins, some of whom are bicycle mechanics. I flipped when I saw a bike made entirely of wood and a few nails. I asked the kids to ride it for me so I could take pictures. At first they were very shy, but once I showed them the video feature on my digital camera the driveway turned into the set of Tanzania's Funniest Home Videos. They were hysterical! All in all it was a pretty great day. I've been really lucky to have a homestay family that includes me in things like that. It was a place I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Tuesday morning Michael and I played card games. He taught me "One Card" which is essentially Uno but with different rules, and I taught him Spit, which he picked up very quickly. We listened to all different kinds of African music- gospel from South Africa, Hip Hop from Kenya, traditional tribal from Mozambique. I'm really excited to burn a few CD's. He told me all about his uber strict boarding school in Dar. It's a "seminary" run by Turks where the students are forbidden to have cell phones, play cards, listen to music, or talk about girls. When I asked him if he knew it was like that before he went, he laughed and said he never would have gone so it's better that he didn't know. Michael wants to be a doctor and he's got his heart set on going to the U.S. for college. I'm going to send him an SAT prep book when I get home because they don't exactly have those around here, and he's worried about taking them. He's absurdly clever and his school sounds intense. I'm convinced he would thrive in any upper level American colellege or University.

In the afternoon I attempted to mail my first batch of postcards. The stamps were peeling off in the humidity, despite the postal worker's attempts to super glue them.... so fingers crossed. On my way home to pick up Michael I bought a few carrots for my friends. Michael and I walked over to the horses, passing a farming seminar at the college along our way. We pet the ponies for a bit, and after a few minutes the group of farmers approached us at the fence. They were a colorful bunch of all ages from all corners of Tanzania, dressed in their best for this clinic, and Michael would later tell me that they approached us because they thought we were professors from the college. They wanted us to teach them about horses! Well I didn't know that at the time, but I did teach them one thing. When my nosey stud came up to the fence to investigate the new arrivals, I quickly said to Michael, "Tell them he bites." Michael said it, and no sooner than he had finished, Mr. Nosey reached out to chomp on one of the farmers trying to pet him. It got a big laugh and I got some applause. Pretty funny.

After visiting with the horses Michael showed me a nearby spring where most of the town collects their water. It was a lush little jungle back there, covered in big beautiful trees, tangled vines, tons of snakes, choirs of birds, and the thunderous chatter of monkeys. We didn't see any yesterday, but this Saturday GSC is taking us on a day-trip safari to Arusha National Park, so I'm hoping to see some cool creatures then.

Now I'm about to head back to Tengeru on one of my beloved Daladalas. The one I took into Arusha this morning was possibly the slowest mechanized vehicle since the advent of the automobile. I will never curse the green line. Ever. Again.

That's what I get for riding on something with "Jesus Cares" painted on it. All of the Daladalas are decorated, and I have seen the funniest slogans and pictures. My personal favorite is "Pimp My Ride, Go To Church."

On my way home I'll be stopping to visit my friends and give them the last carrot I got for them. I'll be sure to say hello for you. :-)