Out of Africa

I'm writing this from the comfort of the barcalounger in front of cable television while eating a "colossal" piece of carrot cake. I've experienced no reverse culture shock. Only reverse culture delight.

I returned exactly one week ago and have been busy sleeping, eating bacon, and not helping people. I thought I might write one last blog post to catch people up on the end of my trip and basically round out my experience.

We spend about 36 hours in Nairobi, which didn't seem to be the hell that everyone cracks it up to be. Then again, we didn't spend any time in the slums or the ghettos surrounding the city. We went our separate ways from Nairobi: Ali flew back to England, Jo went back to Tanzania to try to find a job, and I left for Mombasa on a solo adventure.

Mombasa was a cute little coastal town. I splurged on a $10 a-night hotel, (they had a TV that showed the Tyra Banks Show!!!) and did some exploring. The coastal African cities have been conquered and reconquered several hundred times so they have heavy Muslim, Indian, and even European influences. The people there belong to the "Swahili" tribe and are a product of these miscellaneous ethnicities. I travelled to Diani Beach, which is a resort area on the Indian Ocean about an hour from Mombasa. It was filled with old Germans wearing entirely too little clothing and really, really high Africans. I also got to see the prolific prostitution that goes on in these parts: there was a disconcerting number of creepy old European men in the company of pretty young Kenyan women. I got tired of it really fast because everyone was acting so stupid and returned to Mombasa where I could at least watch the Tyra Banks show, which is stupid but at least funny.

The next day I returned to Dar es Salaam, and felt comforted in the familiar craziness that is Tanzania. I stayed for two nights with my friend Tom, a 2008 SPW volunteer who now lives in Dar and works for Grassroots Soccer. While at an outdoor bar on what was supposed to be my last night in Tanzania, (more on that later) we were enjoying some Kilimanjaro beers when an SUV came barrelling around the corner and crashed into three cars parked about ten feet away from us. The SUV then backed up and sped away before anyone could realize what had happened. The whole bar got up, looked at the cars, collectively muttered a few curse words and then resumed drinking as if nothing had happened.


I got to the airport the next day only to find out that I had arrived a day early for my flight. I asked a nice lady who worked for Qatar airways if there was a hotel nearby, and she told be not to worry and just to stay the night at her house. It's actually not abnormal for Tanzanians to invite random strangers to stay at their homes. It's quite sweet, actually, unless it's your house that they are inviting people to. I would regularly come home in village to find several random people in the house who would stay overnight and eat our rice and beans. I have no idea where they slept but I didn't care as long as it wasn't with me.

Side note: Tanzanians love sleeping with each other, and not just in the HIV-transmission way. The girls especially are afraid to sleep alone and often entire families will stuff themselves into one bed. I'm not really sure what they're scared of, (uh...wizards maybe?) but Rehema basically
gave me no choice but to sleep with her the entire time we were in village. Whenever she left village, all the villagers would ask me if I was scared to sleep alone. When my friend Ali's partner left the village for a few days, her partner said, "I could get a schoolchild to come sleep with you if you're scared." My other friend, Laura, had a huge fight with her partner because she refused to sleep in the same bed with her. So Laura's partner recruited a girl from their village to come each night and share the bed.


Anyway, I accept the offer and went home with my adopted Tanzanian mother. Her house was fantastic - the best I've ever seen in Tanzania. She had a wide screen TV and immediately turned on the Style channel, which we both love, and broke out a liter-bottle of Konyagi, (there's really no snobbery there when it comes to drinking...I guess Konyagi is the ultimate equalizer). She did the ultimate Tanzanian hostess act and broke out the pictures of every celebrated religious sacrament that has happened to every family member in the past 15 years. But I was sort of drunk and mostly listening to a TV program about gay guys making over fat people, so it was bearable. Then Steve, the husband, came home and laughed at everything I said, and then they tucked me into bed and I woke up the next morning with 400 mosquito bites but it had all been worth it.

By the time I arrived on American soil I had had about 3 hours of sleep in the past 40, but was awake enough to eat the large Italian hoagie that my mom and brother had brought to the airport. It was probably one of the happiest moments of my life.

Another story I forgot to mention that you might enjoy: When traveling from Rwanda to Kampala, Uganda, we stupidly decided to catch an overnight bus. It was long and uncomfortable and made everyone bitchy. As soon as we boarded, we heard a chorus of beer cans cracking. In the absence of Xanax, the Africans use alcohol to help them get to sleep on long journeys. Unfortunately, the entire bus smelled like liquor and it seemed to make everyone much more chatty than sleepy. Anyway, about four hours into the trip we got stuck behind a broken-down truck and for some reason, everyone on the bus decided to get outside. We just stayed on, figuring this was just a pee-break for those who were drunk, but the bus started moving and after about 500 feet it stopped again and the passengers re-boarded. Jo, who had been sitting next to a completely loaded Rwandan man who was among those who disbanded, asked him why he had done so. He told us that the bus was passing the broken-down truck on a very precarious cliff and everyone thought that the bus would fall off, so they disembarked.

Ugh. and they didn't even say anything to us!

So, this is pretty much where my story ends. I want to thank everyone for reading! I've touched on the much lighter, funnier side of my trip in this blog, but to be honest, the experience was very difficult. I came to Tanzania to find out whether I wanted to work in International Development and public health, and I'm not sure that's what I want to do anymore. If the HIV problem was as easy to fix as having starry-eyed young people come over to impart their knowledge and ideals on African villagers, then it would have all been fixed years ago. I'm not sure Westerners should have as much of a role in this as they do. In fact, we might be doing more harm than good. To be completely blunt, foreign aid seems to have created a welfare state among African countries, and the results have trickled from corrupt African politicians pocketing the money, to unmotivated Tanzanian NGO workers, to village people who demand money and services from anyone with white skin. There is an extremely lax work ethic here - and why shouldn't there be when foreign aid comes to pick up all the broken pieces? That said, there were several people in my village who were extremely dedicated to helping their community, and those are the ones who will save the rest. But I was so surprised at the lack of concern for fellow countrymen who were dying at an alarming rate from a horrible and preventable disease. More than once I threw up my hands and said to Rehema, (though directed at Tanzania itself) "these aren't my people dying from AIDS, these are your people. Why don't you seem to care more?" I've often wondered how bad the problem has to get before more people take more responsibility. As if a 13% HIV infection rate wasn't bad enough. The dilemma is, what if we pull out altogether? How bad will things have to get before the government decides to require comprehensive sex education in all schools and actually enforces it? If you look at the worst-hit province in South Africa, the HIV infection rate is 40% and that is with foreign aid.

Changing behavior, I think, will be the most effective, but also the most difficult part of reducing the HIV rate, mostly because it requires responsibility on the part of the individual. I know from working with teenagers and being a teenager myself that you can tell people all you want that reckless behavior is bad for them, but they're still going to do it...because in the end it's their choice. If you ask the young people in my village what HIV is and how it's transmitted, they will tell you the right answers, but that's not going to stop them from having unprotected sex, (and there's that enormous problem of believing that condoms actually cause HIV). Behavior change is also difficult for cultural reasons. From the health workers, SPW staff and Tanzanian men and women who I've talked to, I've found that infidelity is an enormous problem in the country. Despite a changing climate, women still have very little say in their partnerships - both in and out of the bedroom. If the women accept that their men will cheat, what's stopping the men?

As I mentioned before, many people in my village were skeptical about condom efficacy. They had heard from their mothers, fathers, friends, neighbors, etc. that condoms cause cancer, condoms cause HIV, condoms make it easier to get HIV and the like. I think I mentioned that even the HIV testing counselor in my village asked me if condoms really did prevent HIV. I had always responded in disbelief, and trying to be as reassuring as possible, but I'm not sure what effect that had...I mean, if you were an African living in a tiny village, who would you listen to? Some random white girl or your mom? I found some anti-Western sentiment from the kids, actually. While trying to explain the origins of HIV, (we don't know for sure, but the best theory is that it came from an early virus called SIV - Simian Immunodeficiency virus - that was transferred from infected monkey blood to human blood through open wounds during hunting) but some raucous 15 year olds kept insisting that we had brought it over from America to eliminate Africans. Sigh.

I'm sure I just made a few grand generalizations that could generate thousands of angry blog replies, but I thought this blog would be incomplete without revealing how difficult the circumstances were, in my own opinion. It is hard enough to live in a village where there is no running water, spotty electricity, no PROJECT RUNWAY for chrissakes, where most people don't speak your language and hell, where people don't even look like you, but to feel like you're not doing any good and that you don't have much support, well that's pretty rough.

I may not want to go into International Development right now, but I do have enough opinions about it to try to change the way that International Development works. If we're going to be pouring money into these countries (which I'm not even sure we should be doing) then we need to be vigilant about where the money goes. To put it in metaphorical terms, Africa is the 30 year old living in the basement of the Western countries, spending his allowance on Bud Light and video games. It's time for Africa to grow up.

I'll be taking this blog down in a couple of weeks. I don't want to get in trouble with the Tanzanian government or get sued for using "Out of Africa" without permission. So if you'd like to read more/again then you'll just have to buy the book.

Uganda

So I'm writing this on the eve of our departure for Nairobi from Kampala, Uganda. Not sure if you all heard, but a few weeks ago there was a bunch of unrest within Kampala because the King wanted to go somewhere and the government wouldn't let him, so the King's tribespeople started rioting and then the government just shot everyone and it stopped. Makes perfect sense, right?

I actually have an interesting story about this, but I wanted to wait until now to tell it for my mother's sake. While hiking in Southern Rwanda, we flagged down a big bus to take us back to our crappy hotel. When we boarded the bus, we realized there were no passengers because the entire aisle was taken up by a large coffin. We asked the guy in the front seat what happened, and he said that the unfortunate victim had been shot in Kampala during the riots and that they were taking him back to his family's home in the Congo. We were a little freaked because we were heading to Kampala in two days time.

But we're fine!

Anyway, Kampala is just large and dirty and EXTREMELY crowded. They have these fantastic motorcycle taxis called "boda-bodas," which obey absolutely no traffic laws, (not that there are any...I still can't figure out which side of the road people are actually supposed to drive on). They are super fast and super fun and I swear to God, mom, I won't ride one ever again.

I've become a lonely-planet nazi and have thus dragged my compatriots on suggested excursions. We went to Queen Elizabeth National Park, which we didn't actually bother reading about and then went on an accidental safari during the cab ride, running into a bunch of elephants and getting accosted by baboons. On our bus ride to QENP we met a young Ugandan teacher named Robert who made it his personal mission to show us around the place. Unbeknownst to us, he had an entire itinerary mapped out, complete with a visit to a crater lake, a visit to his school, and a visit to his friend John's house, where John wasn't home but a girl gave us peanuts and bananas. We have often run into very helpful Africans. They seem to take on mzungu caretaking as some kind of pro-bono work. Robert was the most helpful of all, though it was kind of overkill when he accompanied us on the 4 hour bus ride from Queen Elizabeth to our second destionation, Lake Bunyoni, in the south, "just to make sure we got there safe." He also drank beer through a straw, which he told us all Ugandans do, but apparently that's crap.

We relaxed on Lake Bunyoni for a few days and then returned to Kampala to go white water rafting on the Nile! Grade 5 rapids - It was fantastic and terrifying and everyone ended up bleeding but that's ok. I also randomly ran into a girl I went to high school with who is now working as a kayak instructor on the Nile. I asked her if they had any job openings, but told her I wasn't really into paddling, so I think that hurt my chances.

Uganda is great because most people speak English! We had asked a Ugandan man in Mwanza, Tanzania, if they speak Swahili in Uganda and he said, "why not?" which is the same kind of ambiguous answer we get whenever we try to ask for directions: the answer is always, "over there." There doesn't seem to be too much difference in culture between here and Tanzania, though their traditional dress looks kind of crazy, like someone trying to dress up as a birthday present with shoulder pads. Uganda is also much greener than Tanzania and very beautiful.

I will be in Kenya for about 5 days, and I fly out in 7...back to the land of hoagies, toilet seats, paved roads, common courtesy, and most importantly, shopping malls. I will try to write one more blog post before I come home and can talk in person!

Rwanda

Since I last wrote, we've been in Rwanda for about a week. We crossed Lake Victoria on an overnight ferry, which was kind of like the Titanic, except it didn't sink. We got to the Rwandan border using a series of long, confusing and bumpy taxi and daladala rides with several stops at deserted Tanzanian villages along the way.

We crossed the Tanzanian-Rwandan border by foot, (of course). Some random guy in a hut checked our luggage for plastic bags. They outlawed plastic bags in Rwanda in 2005 because apparently they found over 1 million on the streets of Kigali and somebody got mad about it. We could have been carrying AK-47s and a kilo of cocaine but the Rwandan authorities would have just asked us to put the coke in a more environmentally friendly receptical.

We noticed an immediate change when we got on a bus to Kigali. The roads were paved, the person to seat ratio was 1:1 as opposed to 45:1 and there was no livestock on the bus. Rwanda seems much less chaotic than Tanzania. People don't scream "Mzungu" and try to touch you all the time, and nobody is running around clutching a chicken -but they stare. Jo, Ali and I will be sitting at a bus stop and within five minutes a crowd of 15 people will have gathered in front of us, just staring stupidly.

Rwanda is also incredibly beautiful. It is called "the land of 1,000 hills" which is an underestimation. There is almost no flat land. All the bus routes are curvy and barf-inducing. It's a little ironic that the country with probably the highest rate of car sickness is also the only one that has outlawed plastic bags. We are currently in a town called Kibuye, which is on the coast of Lake Kivu. It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, but getting here was a nightmare. We went on a very un-Rwandan bus with metal seats and horrendous overcrowding. I sat in-between Jo and a woman who started puking almost immediately after she got on the bus. Besides being insanely curvy, the ride was so bumpy that you needed a sports bra. The sick woman puked for the entire 5 hour ride and kept passing out on me, even though I would push her off every 5 minutes.

They speak Kinyarwanda, French and Swahili here, so we are usually able to get by on our swahili. Apparently my brain only has room for 1.5 languages, so I've forgotten all 12 years of school and college french and have been unable to use it.

We were surpised to find that Kigali is completely modern. In fact, it looks a little bit like New Jersey! It's hard to believe that 15 years ago the streets were littered with body parts. We've been pretty hesistant to ask a lot of people about the genocide, but most of those we have asked were out of the country as refugees. Our tour guide for Nyungwe National Park, (in SE Rwanda - full of monkeys and chimps!) was in the country for the genocide but all he would say is that it was "horrible, just horrible."

That's it for now.

We will be in Rwanda for the next few days and are planning to head to Uganda. Til then!

Nimemaliza!

I'm finished!

The SPW program has ended and I am no longer a resident of Mdilidili village. My last few weeks were bittersweet, but I can safely say that an African village is not the place I want to spend the rest of my life. Also, I left not a moment too soon because they found a lion in one of the neighboring villages and it was eating everyone's goats. This resulted in an unofficial 7pm curfew.

We had a big sherehe (party) on the last night and invited our favorite Mdilidilians for a little bamboo juice and some conversation. We got three chickens as parting gifts. Unfortunately, two of them were not ready to die. One kept me up all night sqwaking and then managed to escape, (he went home, apparently, because we found him there the next day acting as if nothing had happened) and the other one got really rowdy and managed to get herself stuck upside-down between the table and the wall, where she promptly fell asleep.

As soon as all the fowl was accounted for, my favorite mama killed and cooked them. We didn't actually have bamboo liquor at the party because we couldn't find any in the village. Someone had died that day and apparently they don't make bamboo juice on the days when people die. However, we scored some corn alcohol which tasted like dirt. I'll stick with the whiskey flavored gin they sell in plastic pouches.

Things got a little crazy on account of the corn alcohol and everyone put on their Obama t-shirts (a gift for the guests, courtesy of a care package from my Aunt Rosemary) and danced around shouting, "Mwinyo Kwivava!" We took a lot of pictures with everyone making the gang sign for Mdilidili. A ridiculous end to a ridiculous experience.

The week before I left I also attended a goat roast which was hosted by a Peace Corps volunteer who lives in a village about 50 km away from Mdilidili. I got to hang out with a bunch of Peace Corps, who are quite the fun-loving bunch: expats in Tanzania clearly take a cue from the village bibis in their hard-partying ways. We slaughtered the goat in the backyard. It was quite sickening. The man who killed the goat used a dull knife, so it took a long time for the goat to die. Eventually Brian, the Peace Corps volunteer who lives in my village and is a hunter-gatherer mountain man from Minnesota, jumped in yelling, "We have to sever the spinal cord!" and starting hacking away at the poor goat. I almost threw up. Anyway, my threshhold for watching things die is getting higher and I'm working my way up to a human sacrifice! Also, for anyone who hasn't tried it, goat is delicious. I'm going to open up a restaurant in the US that sells bacon and cheese goatburgers.

The day after the goat roast, with my judgement and vision still clouded by whiskey-flavored gin, I decided to start walking back to Mdilidili in an attempt to catch a ride. Unlike in America, where hitchhiking is reserved for the criminally insane, it is pretty common here. Besides, I had no other way home. Luck was not on my side because I barely saw another human being for 3 hours. After 10 or 12 miles I was hot and delirious and about to die when I saw a pikipiki (motorcycle) and basically jumped in front of it. There were already two people riding, but they were nice enough to sqeeze me on the back and give me a "lifti" (ride) the rest of the way back.

I'm writing this post from Mwanza, Tanzania, which is in the north or the country and on the southern coast of Lake Victoria. Two other SPW volunteers, (Jo and Ali) and I are making our way through Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. We traveled from the southern city of Mbeya, TZ to Mwanza in four days, via two 15 hour bus rides. We stopped midway in the capital city of Dodoma, to visit my friend Alex, (Kyler's Tanzanian partner and resident of the neighboring village) where we proceeded to be introduced to everyone in the city. As Ali says, the Tanzanians love to show off their white people. Also, Tanzanians refer to everyone as brother, sister, mother or father, which can be confusing when you're trying to figure out how people are related. Alex introduced us two four of his different mamas and no less than six fathers, non of whom were actually his parents.

The bus ride from Dodoma to Mwanza was horrendous. The driver treated the bus like a daladala, stuffing people into the aisles. I finally hit my breaking point when the requisite chicken arrived on board. I had a man sitting on my armrest and nodding off on top of me for four hours. There are police checks every 100 miles or so, whose sole purpose is to stop this kind of overcrowding. Yet every time we passed a police check, the driver would yell at all the people standing in the aisles to crouch down and hide. Then the policeman would mount the bus, survey the situation, shake his head and tell the driver that there are too many people on the bus, then turn around and get off the bus and wave the bus driver on his way. The driver was also extremely unsympathetic to those who had to go to the bathroom. Every time I got off the bus to go, I would return to find the bus pulling away and I would have to run after it screaming. Also, most pit stops consisted of the bus pulling over to the side of a deserted road in the middle of a desert. The ladies room was one side of the road and the men's was another.

Another couple of random observations on Tanzanians:

It is perfectly acceptable to pick your nose in public. You'll be talking to someone and they'll just start digging in. It's not just a little wipe, but oftentimes a huge double-finger pick, often requiring observation of the findings and then a little flick to get rid of the booger. This is all done without losing train of thought in the conversation. Because I've adapted so well to my surroundings, I apologize in advance if I come back to the US and start picking my nose while you're talking to me.

Cell phones are extremely important to Tanzanians and they never ever reject a call. During meetings, the village officers would be talking to a crowd of 50 people and their phone would ring and they would pick up the phone and have a five minute conversation while the crowd waited patiently. Teachers often pick up their cell phones in the middle of the class and leave for ten minutes and Rehema regularly got calls at 4am and picked them up, oblivious to the fact that I was trying to sleep right next to her.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I'll be in East Africa for the next six weeks or so and will continue the blog. I will definitely miss this part of the world, mostly because at least 700 crazy things happen every day. I'll keep everyone updated on the inevitable wacky things to come.

Pictures

1. We even have Eagles fans in Tanzania! Sorry it's sideways.





2. Me, cooking beans.

3. This lady wanted to bow while giving me cooking oil. Do you like my outfit?

4. Rehema explaining puberty. I think.

5 and 6: This is the big Mwenge Festival.

The last stretch...

So I'm taking the requisite bi-monthly vacation in Iringa, which meant, of course, a twelve hour ride on the Tanzanian's public transportation system. I spent the first five hours stuffed between a lady with a chicken in her shirt and some wasted dude who passed out on me.

Well, first of all, I came back to village two weeks ago to find that the day before Rehema had accidentally burned down the pig pen. We had an essay competition in the primary school and she was burning all the bad ones. Apparently she wasn't too careful about where she was throwing them. The pig didn't escape, but I think it has PTSD now.

We are almost finished our program. We only have two weeks left in the village and almost all of our activities have been completed. We had an "Environmental Day," which turned out to be somewhat of a disaster. We bought three hundred trees to be donated to the three villages in our ward. Somehow, 299 trees went missing, (we managed to plant one - I think it was actually just a stick) and the guy who was in charge of the tree transaction left the village the next day and changed his phone number.

We also had a Secondary School Festival, which was a lot of fun! the theme was "gender," so we pitted the girls against the boys in a bunch of relay races and competitions. The boys ended up winning the "female" competitions: cooking and carrying bottles on their heads and the girls won most of the relay races! We also had a fantastic game called a chicken chase, where we let a chicken loose in the middle of a field and the teachers all ran after it. Whoever caught the chicken got to keep it. We are totally having one of these at my next birthday party. Perhaps in the parking lot of TGIFridays or something.

In the past two weeks we have been given 2 chickens! I guess it's the hot gift this year. We've eaten both. We still have the egg-laying chicken, whose eggs are now missing. Rehema said that they were turning into baby chickens and then there was an "accident" one day and now our chicken doesn't lay any more eggs. PTSD?

Another Tanzanian observance: Tanzanians are really welcoming, which is great unless they are welcoming people into your home. Rehema has been on a welcoming spree the past few weeks. I often come back from the bathroom to find unknown people finishing my plate of food. Another SPW volunteer has a guest who shows up every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Speaking of food, we've gotten pretty lazy about eating anything. We basically eat rice and beans only once a day now. It gets to the point where I'll say, "oh, I'm hungry. Maybe I'll just go to sleep."

Alright, I'm finished for now. Talk in two weeks!

Disclaimer

Just want to say that this blog is meant for my friends and family. If I have offended anyone, I did not mean to. These are my own (meant to be lighthearted!) observations on being an American living in an African village. I apologize for any offense taken.

Back to the Village

Have posted three pictures here of Zanzibar, (this internet cafe won't let me upload any more). The first two are of Stone Town and the second is on Kendwa beach.

Pretty, right?

I got a warm welcome home when I stepped off the bus in Mdilidili two weeks ago and someone shouted, "Mwinyo Kwivava!" Then it didn't feel so special when I talked to Kyler and he said someone had shouted "Mwinyo Kwivava!" when he came off the bus. I guess all white people, whether male or female, really do look the same.

A day after we came back to village Mdilidili was cebrating what is called "Mwenge Day," which is where a torch that has been traveling around Tanzania arrives in the village. It's kind of like the Olympic torch but instead of celebrating athletics and world unity the mwenge torch celebrates drinking. The festivities went on for 24 hours straight. On the bright side, the festival grounds were littered in condom wrappers the next day.

We also came back to find that we have a chicken! She lays 2 eggs a day and is obviously the hardest worker in Mdilidili. Rehema told me that laying eggs is like giving birth...Imagine giving birth twice a day every day! Yikes! In other developments, the dog that lives at our house, Ndizi (Banana) has gotten pregnant, despite our best efforts to teach her about the risks of having sex without a condom.

Our first week back was quite a drag. The schools just decided not to open so we didn't have much to do. Rehema and I stared at each other a lot, I read four books, tried to do sodoku but kept messing up, and irritated the chicken by checking every five minutes to see how many eggs she she had laid.

As I mentioned in my last post, Africa has inexplicably become cold. There are very few vegetables in the village nowadays. However, it's pea season! This means that I eat peas every single day. Peas taste like poison. If there's one good thing about the god-awful food we eat it's that I've lost over ten pounds. I haven't been this light since high school and I'm really excited to go home and fit into my prom dress.

It is also baby chick season! I came back to find the village ringing with a chorus of peeps. They are so cute, but God help you if you try to touch one because the mom chickens are vicious. There's a group of rogue chickens that are always coming into the house uninvited. I'll be reading on the couch and a chicken will walk by and I'll have to chase him out, only for him to walk right back in again.

Another funny thing: Tanzanian names. It seems that Tanzanians name their children the first thing that comes to mind after birth. Some common ones:

Matatizo (Problems)

Problem (just plain problem)

Jumanne (Tuesday)

Alhamisi (Thursday)

Ijumaa (Friday)

Decemba (December)

Novemba (November)

Kwanza (First)

Mwili (Second)

Mtatu (Third....and so on, this should come in handy for our neighbors, who have 27 children)

The people with 27 children, whose mother gives birth almost as often as our chicken, are building themselves are large new house. It is interesting to watch because they create their own bricks using mud and a mold. Dry season is house-building season because the mud bricks need a certain amount of time to dry completely or else they will melt when it rains. The house building is quite a daunting process, but with 27 pairs of little hands you could probably make a skyscraper.

Daily life living with a Tanzanian in Tanzania has been a challenge in itself, though not unlike having a roommate anywhere in the world. The largest area of discontent between Rehema and myself are the cleaning duties. Rehema loves to clean: I even caught her sweeping dirt the other day. I, on the other hand, could care less about cleaning anything. I am often awakened at 7 am out of some fantastic dream about lasagna or cheeseburgers to find her mopping our bedroom floor with what looks like dirty water.

We have some sort of intricate bucket system that I have yet to grasp. Only certain buckets are to be used for cleaning clothes or for washing dishes or fetching water. But I think she switches them around on me because I always seem to be using the wrong one. A few weeks ago I got a horrific stomach flu and could barely drag myself out of bed to puke in the squat toilet. So I grabbed a bucket and put it by the bed. Rehema ran into the room while I was mid-vomit, yelled at me for puking in the wrong bucket, grabbed it out from under me and replaced it with one I thought had been designated only for dishes.

I also manage to screw up the cooking on a regular basis. I feel kind of stupid...I mean, how many times can you mess up rice? But I can make a fire really well now, which will probably come in handy....never.

Speaking of puking, I don't think I've really described my health situation in Tanzania. I've actually been extremely lucky because I have yet to be very sick with malaria or typhoid, (most of the other International - and Tanzanian - volunteers have gotten ill with malaria or typhoid at least once, if not several times). I got tonsilitis on my birthday, but managed to drink a good amount of beer through the pain. Also, (and this is gross) a bug laid eggs in my foot. The bugs are actually little caterpillars called "funzi" and they are quite common. You just have to dig them out with tweezers! I've been careful to wear closed-toed shoes after that.

Another thing about Tanzanians, (and most Africans in general, I believe) is that they are extremely superstitious. I've touched on this before, but everybody, (even Rehema) believes in witches and wizards. If anything bad happens, it's usually because a wizard did it. One of our students has a bad leg and Rehema explained that it was because a wizard had cast a spell on her. In a recent conversation, the Village chairman asked me if we had wizards in America. I was like, "uh...no."

T

hey also are very unspecific about causes of death. Rehema has told me of two people who have died from headaches. In my friend Ali's village, a man died because he was crazy. The village then held a meeting to determine who cast a spell on him to make him crazy. The village drunk stood up and declared that the spell had come from Europe and that they should hang the person who was responsible. At this point, Ali, who is from England, started to get nervous. Fortunately, the village chairman told him to shut up and the whole case was eventually forgotten.

Another friend of mine, Gwen, was just evacuated from her village on Saturday because the local schoolgirls have become possessed. It all started a few weeks ago when young girls began fainting in the classrooms. As the days went on, more and more girls began fainting and going into violent spells. Last week, many of them started attacking people and cows. Gwen had rocks thrown at her and the night before she left, there were eight girls outside her house chanting and screaming. This all seems very salem-esque to me...a case of bored, repressed pubescent girls who are acting out their aggression.

I was hoping to be able to post more pictures, specifically a photoshoot of me in my African outfits that I wear every day, (I look like wallpaper!). However, my verbal descriptions will have to do for now.

Vacation

I'm on the last day of my three or four week vacation. I actually don't really know how long it's been, but I'm headed off to the village tomorrow for my last six weeks of the program. My vacation was pretty good - I had lots of grand ideas about going on safari and seeing Mt. Kilimanjaro but I ended up just sleeping and drinking beer. We first headed to Dar es Salaam, which is extremely hot and malarious. There are lots of beaches, so we rented a banda on the beach, (which is just a hut with a mattress on the floor) and didn't leave for a week. Dar is a little sketchy at times, three people we know got mugged in the space of that week. It is much more modern than the villages, of course, (they have SUBWAY!) but I still couldn't find a decent bacon cheeseburger. Dar is also a big mix of Indians, Muslims and mainland Africans.

We finally dragged ourselves off the mattresses in the huts and took the ferry from Dar to Zanzibar Island. Zanzibar is beautiful, as expected. It is a Muslim Island and was used as a main slave port from Africa to the Middle East and Asia. Like Dar, it has a huge Middle Eastern influence, (it was ruled by a sultan for a while, I believe). Stone Town, which is the port into which you arrive, is incredibly charming. It is a winding maze of tiny streets that looks vaguely European, except for the throngs of vieled women and intricately decorated doors, (Stone Town is famous for its doors). We then got a ride an hour up the east coast to a place called Kendwa, which is famous for its Full Moon Parties. We hitched a lift in the back of a van with two Rasta men who were smoking pot the whole time, (even when we were stopped by the police - "we're all friends here, so they don't care," said the rasta man) a wacky Masaii warrior named Kilimanjaro, and an enormous box of fish.

Kendwa is picturesque: clear turquoise water, white sand, etc. I didn't leave the beach for about a week and a half. We went to the Full Moon Party, which was on the fourth of July. It was basically a big dance party. Supposedly they had midgets doing acrobatics, but we missed that part. Anyway, I'm back in Iringa now, where it is COLD! AH! Who knew Africa could be cold? Hopefully I'll be back within internet reach in the next two weeks when I can have some wackier stories.

Village life, pt. 2

I've just managed to delete all the pictures on my memory card, because I'm an idiot, so there won't be any pictures this time which is sad because we did a photoshoot of me in my various African outfits that make me look like wallpaper. I also have have several pictures of me killing a chicken and subsequently questioning my humanity.

I'm at the start of a four week (!!) vacation throughout the northern part of Tanzania and Zanzibar. I'll document all the fun I'm having periodically so you all can be really jealous. The vacation could not have come at a better time. If anyone is interested in finding out what it's like to go crazy, just go to an African village and become bored. As a fellow volunteer described, "your brain starts to eat itself." If I had spent one more week in the village, I probably would have shaved my head and walked around with a glassy stare in my eye repeating, "the horror, the horror."

Anyway, on a brighter note:
I'd like to think I've become more a part of the Mdilidili community as time has gone on. The villagers have even given me a nickname, "Mwinyo Kwivava," which means "too salty" in Pongwe, the local tribal language. Here's the backstory: The mama that periodically stays at my house was trying to teach me new words in Pongwe. She mentioned "mwinyo kwivava" and I thought it sounded really funny so I just kept repeating it and singing it while dancing around the house. She and the other random people that live at my house were laughing so hard they almost choked on their ugali.
The next day, we had our daily meeting about nothing with the village chairman and the village executive officer. The village executive officer said something to me that I didn't understand, so instead of grinning stupidly like I usually do, I said, "mwinyo kwivava." They roared with laughter and kept saying "mwinyo kwivava" over and over. The next time they saw me, they screamed, "mwinyo kwivava!" and introduced me to their friends as "mwinyo kwivava." During the entire conversation, I just kept repeating mwinyo kwivava over and over again when anybody said anything to me. Everybody thought this was hilarious. Now when I walk down the street, people shout, "Mwinyo Kwivava!" and start laughing. I guess that's ok. The joke has evolved so that now we all shout "mwinyo kwinula," which means "not enough salt," and "mwinyo kwinoka," which means "the salt amount is just right."

Last weekend we held a community festival, (where they made me introduce myself as mwinyo kwivava) to raise awareness about HIV testing. To be honest, the festival really went off without a hitch, except that it started 5 hours late, (but that's ok, I was two hours late). I did a lot of standing around and looking confused, which is my usual job. We invited "Ngoma" dancers, which are traditional dancers. I'm not sure how traditional they really are, since half of them were jumping around blowing lifeguard whistles and the other half were chanting, "teenagers! stop having unprotected sex!"

It's been very interesting to be confronted on a daily basis with the challenges of working in foreign aid in an African country. As a white person, I'm just seen as somebody who will give away money, clothes, food, anything. I have students that come to my house and ask me to pay for their school fees because their parents are too poor. A few days ago a woman with a goiter the size of a melon on her neck asked me to pay for her medical care so she could have an operation. Last week a man came up to me and asked me to help find sponsors in America who would buy clothes and food for his orphanage. I said no. (well, first of all, I said no because this man, while he may very well have an orphanage, is well known as being kind of crazy). I told him to write a grant to a foundation and get the money himself. When I first got here and faced these types of questions I was really disturbed. We had been told not to give money to people, but when $40 can make the difference between whether a kid gets a secondary school certificate and can get a job or if he can't, then what are you supposed to do? If you can make that difference in one person's life, wouldn't it be worth it - more worth it than making the point that white people are NOT banks? I've been realizing that any amount of money I would give or help to give would just be detrimental to the problem. My mom said to me, "if the kids don't have shoes over there, can't we just send them shoes?" But if we sent everybody shoes, then what would happen to the shoesellers whose livelihoods depend on people actually BUYING shoes? Aren't we kind of messing with the natural order of things?

The real problem here is that there aren't enough jobs, (As my mother also wisely said, "It's not like the kid looking for school fees can just work at the local Burger King")...especially those funded by the government. Why aren't people building roads so that it doesn't take 6 hours to travel 60 km? Why isn't there a post office in my village? It seems that there are very few options besides running a shop and working in the farm if you don't have a university education, (and VERY few people have over a high school education).

There is an interesting story from last year about an SPW volunteer from Australia who used his father's inheritance to install solar panels so his village, (which is next to mine) could have electricity. SPW was pretty angry about it because they can't place another white volunteer there again because the villagers would expect something. In fact, Rehema told me that word had spread to our village and when the people saw me they were asking her which gifts I would bring.

more later...

Village Life...

So, I have finally uploaded more pictures! I'll add more in two weeks when I'm back in Iringa so you can get the whole experience. For now, here's the address:
http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=610376015/a=138243337_138243337/

I'm back from 6 consecutive weeks in the village! Living in an African village is sort of like living in a sitcom. There are so many wacky characters that you run into every day. It's kind of like Twin Peaks, third-world style. We don't have a lady that talks to logs, but we do have a crazy person that runs up and down the main road screaming.

Where to start? well, we're finally getting into the thick of things. I actually started teaching health to both the primary and secondary schools...alone. Rehema had to go home to fill out loan forms for university. She said she'd be gone for 4 days. She was gone 3 weeks. So it was pretty interesting to trudge through a sexual health curriculum in broken Swahili. On my first try, I conducted an hour-long session on "what is AIDS?" to the primary school students, complete with diagrams and posters with copied phrases from Swahili books. At the end, I asked them to write down their questions, (because I'm usually not able to understand them) and half the questions were, "What is AIDS?" So, uh, we're probably going to have to go over that topic again.

The secondary school students were a little more understanding. They all had many questions and were very accepting of my mispronounciation of bodily fluids.

I also managed to conduct a community seminar by myself on using male and female condoms. Our village chairman had organized that all the seminars take place at the local bars...which are basically collections of thatched huts where people drink ulanzi, (bamboo liquor) out of buckets. So, I managed to teach 32 people how to use condoms...and only some of them were totally wasted.

I've also started to teach English in the secondary school to Form 1 (high school freshman). The head of the school has been begging us to do this since we arrived because they only have 4 permanent teachers for 500-600 students. When I asked what I should teach, they just told me, "oh, you know, the students need to know nouns and verbs and stuff like that." So I have a lot of creative license with my lesson plan. They love verb conjugation races and also when I act out nouns and verbs because I look like such an idiot.

Kyler, another SPW volunteer who lives in a village 10 minutes from Mdilidili and who works in the same secondary school, has also begun to teach English. My favorite story of his is when one student asked what the past tense of "lion" was (lioned, duh).

The school is run pretty horribly. The students spend most of the day waiting in classrooms because there are so few teachers. Half of the time the teachers don't actually show up for class - they just give a student their notes to copy on the board so the class can copy from that. There is no accountability for the teachers because the headmaster doesn't care and there's no accountability for the headmaster because nobody ever comes to check up on him. For example, the Tanzanian government requires that all secondary schools teach the students how to use condoms, but the headmaster refuses for us to even talk about condoms because of his own religious beliefs. I showed up one day for class and apparently they had cancelled everything to give corporal punishment to all the students who had been truant that week, (roughly 3/4 of the school). The students would run through a line of teachers who would whip the boys on the behind with a bamboo stick and whip the girls on their hands. In another incident, rocks had been thrown at a teacher's house and they cancelled school for two days to do a thorough investigation. They ended up beating a student until he gave a few names of people who (may or may not) have thrown the rocks. So I'm basically teaching in Guantanamo Bay.

The demographics of my village are very strange. There are millions of children and students, many young people and a gaggle of bibis, (grandmothers). But there are no middle-aged people. My guess is that they are either out working in the fields or they live in faraway villages and send their children to live in Mdilidili because the schools are so close. The bibis are definitely one of my favorite parts of the village. They are so old-school African. They look about 400 years old and wander around barefoot with walking sticks, looking completely lost. None of them has more than three teeth and they wear these colorful pieces of fabric called kangas. Kangas are another very African thing. Women here use them as shirts, skirts, baby slings, headscarves, towels, mops, barf bags, hell, you could probably fry a kanga and eat it if you wanted to. Rehema asked me once if we had kangas in the United States. When I said no, she asked, "well what do women use to give birth?"

That's another question I love:
"Do you have fire in America?"
"Do you have ugali in America?"
"Do you have dinosaurs in America?"

Anyway, back to bibis. The bibis love to party. They are the biggest drinkers in the village, (which is saying a lot because everyone loves drinking here) but that could explain why they seem to get lost in the cornfields so often. They also love talking to me. They stumble up to me and grab my hand and won't let go until they've greeted me about thirty different ways in Pogwe, the tribal language of the region. I always sit in the bibi section when I go to church, because I think it's funny to be a tall white girl in a sea of tiny bibis. I have started to go to church every Sunday because everyone will think there's something wrong with me if I don't. Church is two hours long and it's the only thing in Tanzania that starts on time. It's also a good way to see everyone in the community. I've also recently joined a church singing group. I just kind of mouth the words because I don't know the songs, but I can do the funny dances they do to each of the songs.

This post is only half finished, but I'll be back at a computer in two weeks. Til Then!

I'm back from Kijijini, (village)!!! There is so much to tell, yet so little internet time:



Mdilidili is a twelve hour bus ride from Iringa. It is beautful, but very remote. Our house has electricity, but other than that it's like living in the eighteenth century. We cook on a fire, wash everything by hand, collect rainwater for washing, and boil water for drinking.


Needless to say, I'm terrible at all these things, (Hey! we have machines that do this in America!) My partner, Rehema, has so far only allowed me to wash dishes because I keep using the wrong buckets or pans whenever I do anything else. She told me that I wouldn't make a very good wife. We live with two secondary school girls and another woman just came a few weeks ago and never left. But I like her a lot because she gave me a kitten! I've named the kitten Embe, (mango) because we have a dog in the house named Ndizi (banana) and I wanted to keep with the matunda (fruit) theme. Embe keeps running away to the little store by the side of the main road so every day I have to sheepishly go retrieve her.



We've had a lot of down time in the village. I spend most of it trying to translate a Swahili pamphlet on puberty, so I've become comfortable speaking only in conversations that involve reproductive organs. We've been required to meet will the bigwigs of our village, (the Village Executive Officer and the Village Chairman) in order to start planning educational activities in the community. I spend a lot of time in the meetings saying "what?" or spacing out because I can't understand anything. The VEO and Chairman also start drinking at noon, (they keep asking me to try beer with them) and I've concluded that the Chairman has fallen in love with Rehema.



Despite their sketchy work-hour activities, the VEO and Chairman seem generally supportive of our program. They routinely show up two hours late for meetings or don't show up at all, but that's the culture here. There is no such thing as an appointment, so it is very difficult for anyone to accomplish anything. Besides, people live so far away from each other that they can walk for several hours to attend an hour meeting.



We also work in the local primary and secondary schools. The primary school staff has been very supportive of our work. They've even encouraged us to talk about condoms! The primary schoolchildren are lovely. One of them brought us a bag of fruit and beans to welcome us to the village. Tanzanians are big into sharing, even if they have nothing. They say that if they give the little that they have, God will bless them with even more, (Though I'm still waiting for God to bless me with those 4 AA batteries I gave to Rehema last week).

The poverty is very evident. Most children do not have shoes and their school uniforms are dirty and ripped or about 11 sizes too big. Having no shoes is a huge problem because little worms can get into their feet and cause them to become deformed. Many people end up having trouble walking.

The secondary school has been a different story. The headmaster is very Christian and seems to be unhappy with our presence. First he told us that he had no idea we were coming to the village, then went on a tirade about how we should never talk about condoms and lied to us about the number of teenage pregnancies they had last year, (there were 18, he said there were 3). We finally got him to agree to a day when we could pick peer educators and when we arrived he told us he had "forgotten" about us coming and refused to let us talk to the kids because they were involved in "Environmental Cleaning and Farming Day," which is where they give everyone a hoe and send them out to the fields.

The school system in Tanzania is an unbelievable mess. The test given to pass from primary school to secondary school eliminates almost half of all students. When they get to secondary school they start to learn English and are supposed to be taught completely in English. This rarely happens as most of the teachers don't know English themselves. At the end of secondary school they must take a test in order to get into levels 5 and 6, (Tanzanians have basically an extra two years of high school and most of the time it is at a boarding school far from home). The test is completely in English, so most students cannot understand the test itself. On top of that, the questions are created by Tanzanian English teachers who cannot speak English themselves, so the questions can have multiple right answers, no right asnwers, or don't even make sense. The failure rate is so high that the government has lowered the passing grade to 30%.

Even FURTHER, if you manage to graduate from level 6, (which is where my partner Rehema and the other SPW Tanzanian volunteers are right now) you must take another test to apply for university. Rehema is awaiting her results, which should be ready next week. She has been very nervous about it even though she thinks she did well. But that's not the problem. Apparently the people who grade this test are drunk all the time, so whether you pass or not depends on whether the grader can see straight when he's marking your test.

Which leads us to drinking, which is another huge problem. Many of the villagers cannot afford beer or Konyagi so they drink "ulanzi" which is a homemade bamboo alcohol. Though I haven't noticed too many drunk people in my own village, some of the other SPW volunteers have told me that EVERYONE in their village is drunk all the time, including the Village Executive Officer, Chairman, and even the teachers, (before and during school!). However, every single day I'm offered bamboo juice from random people on the side of the road. (For the record, it supposedly makes white people violently ill).

On the up side of things, I did my first male and female condom demonstration. It was done in a mud shack with no electricity and we used a banana and a toilet paper role for the penis/vagina, respectively. We were training our Community Action Group, (CAG) which are 16 handpicked people chosen to help organize educational activities for the community. Of course only 5 people showed up, (2 hours late) and they promptly invited me out for bamboo juice afterwards, but they did seem generally interested in the presentation as it was happening.

In other wacky news, they found a female wizard in my village. Apparently someone found a woman lying on the road, screaming, just wearing underwear. They brought her back to the hospital where she started speaking "her own language," that nobody could understand. Rehema told me that the wizard has killed lots of people before, but I'm not sure how anyone would know that if they can't understand her. I'm pretty sure the wizard is just a lost SPW volunteer.

Also, it rains at least 7 hours every day. This is good on the one hand because we don't have to go fetch water from the faraway pump. Though one day, when it didn't rain, Rehema and I went to fill our buckets. All the women here carry things on their heads. They are amazing. They could carry a bundle of sticks, a bucket of water, four babies and a pot of ugali on their heads at one time without using their hands. When I first arrived in village, a ten year old girl grabbed my 25lb suitcase from me, plopped it on her head and started walking away. Rehema, always trying to make me better wife material, insisted that I carry the bucket on my head. I could barely stand up with it so they gave me a small bucket and only filled it halfway. As I walked back to the house, people stopped and stared and pointed at the stupid white girl who was stumbling (and soaking wet by that point). It was humiliating. Like middle school all over again.

The rain also creates mud, (matope - this is my most oft-used word in village). Everyone is always falling. It's like some slapstick African comedy show.

We finished our work early so a few volunteers and I got the chance to travel to a place called Matema Beach, which is on the northern tip of Lake Malawi. It was hell to get there, but it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. There are big green mountains, (the Livingston mountains, named after the guy who got lost in Africa for decades a few centuries ago) which go right down into the water. The lake is enormous, like the ocean, but it's so warm that you can swim at night.

Our journey was insane, but that's just the fun of being in Africa. It took us 9 hours to travel 30 miles. For 5 of those hours I was sitting on tire in an insanely crowded daladala being driven by a very drunk man. The driver at one point turned around in his seat to touch my friend's long hair and drove off the road, sending parcels on top of the daladala flying into the forest. At another point, we came across an enormous hole in the middle of the road. Tanzanians, being as they are, just filed out of the bus, (tossing babies to strangers from windows, strapping chickens to their backs) and walked around without blinking. The drunk driver then floored the daladala into the mud around the hole, where it tipped to a 45 degree angle, but miraculously righted itself. Then, without incident, babies were tossed back in the windows and everyone got right back in. Five minutes later we stopped at a town for twenty minutes while the driver had another liter of bamboo juice.

I think I've rattled off on most of the highlights (and lowlights). I'm leaving to go back to village tomorrow at 4 am (ugh) and probably won't reach a computer for another month. We have a meeting in Njombe on my birthday, may 26, so I'll get to the internet by then. Hopefully my birthday won't be spent in a a crowded bus with a terrified baby on my lap staring up at my white face, (they look at us and start crying) but I've got a pretty strong suspicion...

Ludewa

We finally got our placements last night. I will be going to a small village called Mdilidili in the very southern district of Ludewa. It is one of the furthest placements from Iringa town, (6-8 hours by daladala) and is placed right near Lake Malawi, which is supposed to be beautiful. I've also heard that Ludewa is the hottest of the Iringa region districts which means that I'll probably get lots of malaria. There is a rumor that my placement does not have electricity. Of course, like everything else in this country, I won't know exactly what's happening until I get there.

My Tanzanian partner is named Rehema. She's 21 and from a city called Mbeya, which is west of here. I don't think she was overly ecstatic to be partnered with me but that's too bad cuz she's stuck and now we're going to be best friends. And hopefully she'll cook everything. During a bonding session after the partner selection I allowed Rehema to paint my nails with this dark red-brown stuff that all the Tanzanian girls use. It turns out that is is henna, which doesn't come off nails or skin. She got it all over my fingers and now I look like I have some sort of disease. Everybody's been commenting on how ugly it looks.

The past two weeks of training have been useless, to say the least. We learn things like the definition of self-esteem or "resource mobilization," when they really should be teaching us how to dig our own toilets. We also have a lot of group work, which consists of one mzungu, (me) and six Tanzanians. They all speak to each other in swahili while I pick at my nails and then they hand me a piece of paper with nonsense English phrases and tell me to present to the rest of the class. I tried to present about Non-formal education techniques (in Swahili!) yesterday and just ended up talking about how I hated ugali.

A few days ago I got into a heated discussion with several Tanzanian boys when we we were told to advise a 16 year old girl on how to deal with her sexual desire. The boys kept suggesting that she fill her time with "sport and games" or join a math club because 16 was way too young for thoughts of that nature...No wonder this country has a problem...and to think that these are the kids that are supposed to be the sexual health advocates!

I'm looking forward to village since I will only have to live with one Tanzanian instead of 40. One of my roommates gets up at 6am, turns on the light and starts singing. She also asks me every morning if I've showered yet, (Tanzanians bathe at least twice a day but they still manage to smell bad...forget HIV, the real public health crisis here is the lack of deodorant). But I'm sad to leave the other mzungu (white) volunteers. We have all become a tight-knit family and it's going to be difficult to live without a sounding board...

This will probably be the last post I'll be able to write before I go to village, since I leave next Friday, AHHHH. So you might not hear from me for a month or so. I'll be back here on April 12th or 13th. Also, my address in the first post will be my address for the entire time I stay here, so please go ahead and sent letters if you'd like.

Ipogoro

I'm finally back at a computer. Thank God.

This week we started our teaching training. On Sunday night we were shipped out to a part of Iringa called Ipogoro, which, I'm guessing, translates directly to "hell." We were introduced to 80 21-year old Tanzanians and told that we have a week and a half to find one who we will live with and work with for the next six months.

This is probably the most difficult part yet. It's very hard to find a new best friend in ten days, especially when there is a significant language barrier. It's like speed-dating. The Tanzanian volunteers do speak English, but they get tired after 10 hours of school and just want to speak Swahili and we get tired and just want to hang out with people we know. We are crammed four to a tiny room, (two international volunteers and two Tanzanian volunteers) and among the four showers and two toilets, (which are also showers) only one has a door. This doesn't seem to bother the Tanzanians, who wash freely whereever they can get a bucket of water, but in the morning there's a 10-person line of white girls waiting for the shower/toilet with the door.

Fortunately, I've come to find that most of the Tanzanians are very sweet and open. I'd probably be happy living with any number of them. I've had to push myself to be as social as possible, even when I just want to curl up under my mosquito net and read the January issue of Marie Claire for the eighth time. As the week has gone by I've gotten much more comfortable. We all sing and braid each others hair. It's like camp!

Most of the Tanzanian volunteers are from large cities and good schools, so they have pretty worldly views, (though a lot of them still think you can get HIV from kissing and that homosexuals don't exist).

Our training is interesting, to say the least. We have been told that we have to be incredibly careful about what we do, say, wear, etc. Apparently Tanzanian villagers are huge gossips and if you do anything wrong the whole town will know about it. Since we're teaching about HIV/AIDS there are about a million things that could potentially go wrong. We've been told to concentrate heavily on abstinence. If you run into the village ranting and raving about condoms and burning your bra they will cut off your arms. Like, really.

We also have to teach lot of female empowerment. Polygamy is pretty common in the villages, as is female circumcision and widow inheritance, (if the husband passes away, his brother inherits the wife). And as I've said before, women are very much seen as second-class citizens.

Next Wednesday I will find out who my partner will be and to which village I will be going...and in two weeks I will be shipping off! I'm really excited even though I'm fully aware that it is going to be extremely difficult. I barely know Kiswahili and nobody in the village will speak English. Not really sure how this teaching thing is going to turn out, but it's been done before so I have some faith.

In other (gruesome, so be warned) news!
Last Friday, on our last day of Kiswahili, we all went to our teacher's house to learn how to cook Tanzanian food...and we killed a chicken! Don't worry, I videotaped it so you can see it later. Ali, another volunteer, was the murderer. To kill a chicken, you have to step on its wings and legs and basically saw the head off. And it really does move around for a long time after the head comes off! The disembodied head even let out a little squawk. We were all screaming and jumping around and talking about how sick we were. After the body stops moving, you have to put it immediately in hot water and pull the feathers out. It's not difficult - kind of like plucking your eyebrows! We then learned how to disembowel it, cut it up, and fry it. It was delicious.

Also, last weekend we went on Safari in Ruaha National Park, which was beautiful. We saw so many giraffes and zebras, a few baboons, and three lions. Ruaha is supposed to have the largest elephant population in Tanzania, but we didn't see very many. I'm not sure where (or how??) they were hiding. We got really close to the lions, which was a little scary because the female was crouched down like she was about to pounce on us. But then, just like a housecat, she lost interest and got up and walked away. Our guide, Michael, was a little off his rocker. He would get out of the car and throw sticks at the hippos to get them to come out of the water. Hippos are really bitchy and they kill more people than any other animal in the bush.

I must get back to Ipogoro because our authoritarian supervisor won't let us offsite for more than four hours. We are scheduled to do something called a "Gender Roleplay," which makes me a little nervous.

Until next week...

Pictures!

I finally figured out how to post pictures. I put them up on Snapfish because they loaded the fasted on that site. You might have to sign up for it, but it doesn't cost you anything. Pole sana (very sorry). Here's the link:

http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=264656179/a=138243337_138243337/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish

I'll be adding to it periodically, but snapfish was acting up so I couldn't show you the pictures of my pit toilet.

Anyway,

This is our last official week of Intensive Swahili Training! Though I am nowhere near proficient, I can now ask people how their home, work, chickens, goats, etc. are doing. That's pretty much half of all conversation here anyway. I mentioned before that Kiswahili is a swahili word - they put a "ki" before every language, i.e. Kiingareza (English) and Kifaransa, (French). It is an interesting language because everything is spelled phonetically and every letter is pronounced. Obviously it was spoken before it was written down.

Kiswahili is derived from three different sources: Bantu, which is an ancient African language, Arabic, because of the proximity to the Middle East, and new words which are borrowed from other languages, (mostly English and European languages). It is funny to see the spelling of many of these words, especially if they come from English, because when you sound it out it just sounds like you're saying the English word with a Tanzanian accent. For example:

Bia - beer!
baisikeli - bicycle (also, they add an "i" to the end of many words. Not sure why).
dolla - doller
Karoti - carrot
skirti - skirt
gauni - dress, (sounds like gowney)
pilipilihoho - green pepper (I just threw that it cuz it's funny sounding)

After Swahili training we will move into a training center where we will be living with our Tanzanian counterparts, (who we have yet to meet). They are young people from all around Tanzania who were picked to teach with us. After three weeks of teacher-training we will split into pairs, (one Tanzanian volunteer and one international volunteer) and we'll be sent to our respective villages.

In other news:



We don't get to let loose to often. Actually, we never get to let loose. Also, we've been advised not to go out at night because we glow in the dark. But on Saturday night we threw caution to the wind and went out in celebration of Bella's 18th birthday. 18 is pretty big in Australia because that's when they get to (officially) start drinking. Pretty cool because the only thing us Americans can do at 18 is go to Iraq.

We went to this place called "Shooters," which is the only bar in Iringa. There are only two types of alcohol in Tanzania: Beer and Konyagi. Konyagi is some kind of unidentifiable liquor made from fermented ugali or something. It is sold in pouches!

There are three types of beer, Kilimanjaro, Safari and Castle Lager. Do we have Castle Lager at home? I don't know, but it sounds familiar. At Shooters they played one Rihanna song over and over. It was kind of like home! But not really.

Then we went to a disco called Twisters, which was a surprisingly attractive venue. I'm not much of a disco person because I don't like to dance, (who does?) but it was fun to hang out with everyone in a laid back environment.

This weekend we are going on Safari! We'll be travelling to Ruaha National Park, (about a 3 hour trip from Iringa) which has the largest elephant population in Tanzania. My host father said he went there a few weeks ago and saw a pack of lions eating a giraffe carcass. Gross! But awesome! We'll be camping there overnight. Hopefully I won't get eaten or anything.

Back in Iringa...

I've arrived safely back in Iringa town. The daladala ride back was not quite as hectic as the one to Njombe and was inexplicably two hours shorter.


The last day in Njombe was a little strange. Houseboy Faki asked if he could keep my ipod. Apparently people here always ask you if they can have your things.

That same day, mama invited some random dude with a camera over to the house and we proceeded to have a two-hour photoshoot complete with props and wardrobe changes. They took photos of me doing everything from turning the TV on and off to squatting by a rock, (where an entire colony of fire ants crawled up my legs - which only caused a minor blip in the photoshoot schedule) then balancing on a treestump with Faki, then pretending to drive the truck with Mama, then pointing to the bumper sticker that said, "This car is protected by the blood of Christ." Afterwards the photographer asked if he could take a few pictures of just him and me. He gave the camera to Faki and held both my hands as Faki snapped away. He then thanked me, told me he would frame the pictures, and left. I'm sure that by next week all of Njombe will believe that I'm his new white wife.

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I realized that I haven't told you all much about the other volunteers. They have been a big part of the experience and I've neglected to include them in my stories! We spend most of our time relaying wacky stories about our host families and talking about our favorite pasta dishes. So without further ado, here's the cast of characters:



Krista, 18, from Kansas: The other American girl. She's funny and outspoken...typical American! Unfortunately she got sick with ameobic dysentary which was immediately followed by a terrible ear infection. We thought she was going to die for a while but now she's ok.



Kyler, 21, from Maryland: A recent graduate from Emerson College in Boston and the only boy on the trip. He worked for Obama hardcore before coming to Tanz...but even he hasn't bought the Obama fabric because it's too ugly.
He got to kill a chicken in Njombe and one of the other volunteers videotaped it. We're all pretty jealous.



Laura, 24, from Adelaide, Australia: Very sweet primary school teacher from down undah. She's also really funny and both of us get into trouble in school because we chat too much and laugh at all the Swahili words that sound like dirty English words.



Annabelle, (Bella) 17, from Australia: Very mature and smart for her age. Much more mature than me. Probably smarter, too. She lives on a farm in Australia and has her own horse! She also showed us pictures of this activity where they castrate bulls and throw the amputated apendages at each other. Fun!



Jolene, 27, New Zealand: A bike courier who is originally from South Africa, so she has a silly accent. She is also the first of us to get malaria. She says funny things like, "I must go have a sleep."



Claire, 21, from Birmingham, (England, not Alabama!): Also very funny. Neither of her host families owned mirrors, so she hasn't seen herself in four weeks.



Keisha, 21, from London: Also hilarious, (it's a good group!) she has the thickest british accent I've ever heard and I couldn't understand her for the first two weeks.



Ali, 23, from London: Ali is a pro at Africa. She's been in Ghana for the past four months so she's a lot more chilled out than the rest of us. Last week she got a marraige proposal from one of her Tanzanian neighbors.



Doratea, 27, Birmingham: An art teacher who is originally from Sudan, so she brings some african flava to our mzungu group.



Gwen, 25, Belgium: Gwen already speaks like 45 languages and is much better than the rest of us at Swahili. Oh, Europeans...

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On a more sobering note...HIV/AIDS in Tanzania:



While in Njombe we visited an HIV testing site to get information about the HIV/AIDS rate in our specific region. We have been placed in the Iringa region because of its alarmingly high HIV infection rate, (up to 20% in some places). This is due to a number of reasons:



Iringa is located on a main bus and truck route. People pass through the region to go to Dar es Salaam, Lake Victoria, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi in the North and Malawi and Mozambique in the South. Iringa is also a large university town so there are many young people milling around. And you know what young people do...



It has been proven that it is much easier for uncircumcised men to catch and spread HIV. Southern Tanzania is much more Christian than the heavily Muslim North, and most Muslim men are circumcised.

Gender roles and cultural beliefs add an extra element. The HIV infection rate is highest among people aged 24-50, (In the US the highest infection rate is 13-24). This is interesting because most women start to get married around age 24, so many of the people getting infected are married. Typically, women become pregnant within two years and many Tanzanians believe that it is uncouth to have sex when a woman is pregnant or breastfeeding. Since Tanzanian families have an average of five kids, it could be a decade before the husband and wife can be intimate on a regular basis. This leads, predictably, to infidelity. Men are almost expected to have affairs and some even take multiple wives! A don't ask, don't tell policy leads to infection within the marriage.

55% of Tanzanian infections are in women. It is much easier for a woman to get HIV than a man because the virus can very easily penetrate the vaginal wall. On top of all this, divorce is frowned upon and men often abuse their wives.

In other interesting cultural news, a few friends directed me to this article about the albino killings:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/health/17albi.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

**A note on packages**

It's pretty expensive to send bulky packages to this far away part of the world, so I don't want anyone spending too much money! That said, you should send me things anyway.

Still have not managed to escape from Njombe. It rains here all day, every day. Even the girls from London are depressed.

Ok, so we have this houseboy named Faki. Fak, for short.

Faki is 16 years old and does all the cooking and cleaning. I'm not sure why anyone in their right mind would hire a teenage boy to do anything. Case in point: yesterday my host mama bought a chicken for dinner and Faki lost it. He left the gate open and it ran out. When I came home from school he was running around the neighborhood looking for it, but alas, it escaped and we had rice and beans. On the bright side, chickens are only $7 here so... guess what everybody's getting for christmas next year!

I also made the mistake of showing Faki my ipod shuffle. He didn't take it off for the next three days. Apparently he's a huge Beyonce fan because he kept listening to "Irreplaceable" on repeat. There seems to be a pattern here because another volunteer's host-sister keeps taking her shoes.

I actually really like Faki though. He doesn't speak any English except for "Good morning," so I'm forced to practice my kiswahili with him. My host mother thinks it's a good idea for me to help him cook dinner which basically consists of me watching Faki cook ugali while I eat peanuts and say the words "You are cooking ugali" in swahili over and over.

The families in Njombe feed us much more than in Iringa. My host mother told me I eat like a baby and asked if I was scared to get fat like her. I wasn't really sure what to say because of COURSE I'm scared to get fat like her. duh.

The families get very offended if you don't eat their food so I've taken to trying some anoroexic schemes to get rid of all the meat they give me: hiding it under the rice, wrapping it in a napkin and taking it to school the next day to throw out. Another volunteer actually hides half the food her family gives her in her bra so she can dump it in the trash at school.

I think I wrote earlier that I was picking up Kiswahili quickly. That was a lie, I'm sorry. Turns out that even though they don't really have a lot of verb tenses, they have 9 ways to say the word "there."

I also found this weird bug in my bed which I found out is called a Nairobi Fly. Apparently if they bite you your skin starts burning and falls off.

Njombe

On Sunday we took a bus to a city called Njombe, which is much higher and colder than Iringa. I'm not sure why we're here, but I guess that's the way things go in Africa.

The bus trip itself was an experience. It was basically a five-hour daladala ride. Honestly, this must be the way they transport people to Hell. People were stuffed five or six to a four-seat row, and since there were no aisles you'd get stepped on when someone wanted to get out. Everybody also had a baby in their lap at one point or another and no less than seven armpits in the face. One of my many seat companions rested his chin on my shoulder when I was reading Why Men Love Bitches (not my book, ok?) and kept telling me how interesting it was. He actually asked if he could have it. I said no. At one point the bus slowed down and a woman on the side of the road ran up to the driver's side window and handed him a CHICKEN. The driver just passed the chicken back to another passenger who passed it back to another passenger and so on until someone stuffed it under a seat somewhere. I guess since they are 70% feathers, chickens are pretty compactible.

Njombe is ok...not quite as picturesque as Iringa. The new host family is nice, but they keep trying to feed me large quantities of really sketchy meat. Also my host mother keeps asking why I'm not married and/or having children right now.

The night before I left for Njombe I actually went to a wedding in Iringa, which was a long, drawn out affair. Everyone dances all the time at Tanzanian weddings. If you want to go somewhere, you have to dance there. We danced up to toast the bride and groom. Then they danced around with the wedding cake for a while. Then the bride's family danced over to the groom's family, then the groom's family danced over to the bride's family, then everyone danced in a conga line up to the bride to give her presents. Then the bride and groom danced to each table to thank everyone. Then we all danced to the buffet, and finally, 17 hours later, we danced to a taxi and went home.

Alright, goodbye for now! I have to PAY for my internet here so I can't write every day!

Chickens, parte deux

So yesterday I realized that the 20 chickens have their own room in the house...and it is RIGHT NEXT TO MINE. This explains why they are always in the hallway. I've also discovered that they don't naturally wake up at 4:30am, one of my host sisters actually bangs on their door and wakes them so they can start crowing and ruining my life. I'm not sure why she encourages this behavior from them. However, they didn't crow as early this morning, (Saturday). I guess she lets them sleep in on the weekends?

Another note: Tanzanians have wonderful greeting etiquette. Whenever they see somebody they have to ask: How is your...morning? afternoon? evening? family? house? farm? goat?chickens? etc. and the response is always some variation of the word "great." In fact, they have four different ways to say how great they're doing: really great, great, peaceful, and a little great, (literally, "nzuri kidogo" means "a little great"). There is only one word to say that you're not doing well and you only ever say that if someone has died. So, Tanzanians are always great.

You've probably heard of the persistance of witchcraft throughout Africa. Tanzania is no exception. There has been a troubling trend of killing albinos because people believe it will make them rich. I kid you not, there are public service announcements on TV that urge people not to kill albinos. This makes us white people a little nervous. But I have dark hair so I think I'm in the clear.

The hardest part of this experience so far is the food. I miss American food so badly. It is an almost physically painful experience. Every conversation among the volunteers revolves around the food we miss. All I really want is a turkey bacon club on wheat toast with two pickles and french fries. And pizza. And General Tso's Chicken. And that beef stir-fry dish from that Thai restaurant in Dupont Circle.

Obama!

I forgot to mention last time that everyone here LOVES Obama. When anybody finds out that I'm from America they immediatly say "Obama!" In the market they have Obama fabric that has a picture of his face next to a map of Africa. I was going to buy it but then I didn't because it's actually really ugly.

First Impressions...

Hello!

So I've been here in Tanzania for almost two weeks, but it feels like I've been here for about four years! Just a little background: I flew into Dar Es Salaam but left the next day on an eight hour bus ride to a city in the southern highlands called Iringa. I'll be in Iringa for the next month or so, learning Kiswahili and training. I'm living with a wonderful host family, the Ngenzis, who have two little boys, three older daughters, and 20 chickens/roosters, (kukus, in Kiswahili). All reside here in the house. One of the kukus starts crowing at 4:30am. I have made it my mission to find out who it is and eat him ASAP.

My four-year old little host brother, Herry, is the cutest person in the whole world, despite a troubling obessession with firearms. We are learning our numbers together.

Tanzanian children are generally curious about white people. When my friend and I walk home from school they always scream, "mzungu!" which translates to "whitey." It gets old pretty fast. They also always say "good morning," no matter what time of day it is.

People here are also extremely laid back. Everyone is always late/missing.

Iringa itself is beautiful. The only way I can accurately describe it is that it looks like dinosaurs should be roaming around: green and hilly with rocks and palm trees. The city and marketplace are very open and crowded. Because most of us are white, the shopowners think we are rich and try to rip us off on everything, so we've had to learn to barter pretty quickly.

Personal hygeine is a little sketchy. Most toilets are holes in the ground. My host family has a tv and computer with internet but no toilet...priorities? A shower consists of a basin, a bucket and an empty water bottle. I was scared to do it at first, but it's really not as horribly terrible as it sounds. If you come here, you have to deal with looking pretty bad most of the time. I miss my hairdryer.

The bugs here are pretty crazy. It's kind of like they all took some accelerated growth hormone. I saw a snail the size of my fist and found a dead cockroach in my room that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. When I asked my little brother about the bugs and snakes he told me that they are dangerous and would kill me. Apparently everyone here gets malaria and it's no big deal. I take a weekly pill called chloroquinine, but one of the British girls told me that it had been discontinued in England 20 years ago because it doesn't work. I sleep under a mosquito net but it's full of holes. So, uh, we'll see what happens.

The roads are unpaved and totally insane. They have ravines and rivers going through them and people drive their toyotas like 60 mph through these ditches that are the size of the grand canyon. There are also little buses called "DalaDalas" that are minivans which have been gutted and carry no less than 75 people at a time. If you ride in one you'll find yourself sitting on someone's lap with someone else sitting on your lap, getting lightheaded from the dangerous ratio of oxygen to body odor. They barrell down the dirt roads with the conductor hanging out of the sliding door, screaming at all the pedestrians. It only costs 30 cents to ride a daladala but you have to be willing to go along on all the daladala driver's errands.

The food is pretty uninspired. Nobody really strays from the rice/beans/chicken formula. They also have this stuff called ugali, which is just maize flour and water but it's denser than lead. We're supposed to stay away from fruits and vegetables because I guess we'll die if we eat them.

I'm picking up Kiswahili (which is the swahili word for swahili) pretty quickly. I think it's karma for all those years I was terrible at French. It's also pretty necessary since once we get into our villages almost nobody will be able to speak English, so this time around I'm actually doing my homework!

I apologize for the jumpy nature of this post, but I thought Tanzania would be best explained in soundbites. My address here is P.O. Box 1270, Iringa, Tanzania, so feel free to send letters, postcards, chocolate chip cookies, packages from J. Crew, etc.

Also, I will someday learn how to post pictures. But not today.