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...