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.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
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!
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!
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
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!
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!
Monday, September 7, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
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!
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!
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
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.
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