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.