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!