how do you spell Misungwi?

Pictures!

2007-03-18T22:59:00.000+03:00

Here is a link to an album of my photos from Tanzania:

www.picasaweb.google.com/bchelcun/Tanzania

Thanks to all who shared this incredible journey with me!

Peace,

Brian
Peace Corps Volunteer - Tanzania
Health Education Project
2004-2006

How DO you spell Misungwi?

2007-01-09T07:19:00.000+03:00

I have been back in the US now for about 2 weeks, and I think it is starting to feel normal again.

Tanzania had become home for me, I felt comfortable in my house and with my friends and at my job, and honestly coming back has left me feeling a bit lost. There’s no turning back – I could have extended my time in Tanzania had I wanted to, but I chose not to, and really am ready to move on with my life here. But I feel like I’m stuck somewhere in between, not fitting in there nor here.

After a few days back with my extended family, who were very supportive and a joy to see again, I went to pick up my new cell phone at the store. My first bizarro moment was, well, that it was a store and not a kiosk on the side of the street. The second was seeing about 100 phones that I would be expected to choose from, and each phone with 2 models and 5 colors. But what really messed me up was speaking to the salesperson – a nice, busy young man who clearly had quite a bit of experience at his job, and who was thus able to rapidly fire off about 10 questions and give the standard spiel about what they had to offer, all in about 30 seconds. I was left stunned, overwhelmed, and felt like what I imagine a speed junky would feel like after coming down from a high [I can imagine this thanks to Requiem for a Dream].

I miss fruit, I miss fresh food. I miss children. I miss cell-phone and soda and soap commercials, since that’s really mostly what’s advertised in Tanzania [certainly no car, erectile dysfunction, or pizza commercials – but oh wait, there IS beer]. I miss talking to people, my friends, riding buses with people [but not with the slobs who smack on sugarcane the whole ride], eating with strangers, going to the market. I don’t miss goats, but somehow miss chickens and cows walking in front of my yard or down main street. I miss most of the things I liked about Tanzania, and many of the things I didn’t.

I realized just yesterday that my hair has grown quite a bit. This came as a shock to me. Why, you ask, would this be surprising? Especially since there are mirrors EVERYWHERE here, whereas there were very few in Tanzania, and none were big enough to see more than an eye or your teeth so you can floss, so noticing these small details about oneself should be even easier? The main method in which I have judged the length of my hair and need for a haircut over the past two years has been as follows: after soaping up my head, how many small pitchers of water do I have to pour over myself to get all of the soap out? If it’s very short, 1 will do. If medium length, it takes two. And I know I need a trim when it takes 3 or more pitchers. Well guess what, I don’t need any pitchers here, I sit under the hot shower for about 5 minutes when I feel like it, 2 minutes when I’m in a rush, without any hesitation of ‘oh shit it’s going to be freezing cold’ and without psyching myself up to actually dump the cold water on top of my head. The water just flows, it is warm, and it is wonderful. And while I don’t need a haircut anymore, to conserve water or prevent dust build-up or cool things off, I still want one. I’m not sure why.

The other day I went to the dentist. I went to the dentist AND got a sandwich in town AND fixed up my resume at home. That is, count ‘em folks, 3 things done in one day. I felt like a superman speed demon task master champion. Then I told someone that, and they said, ‘that’s it?’ One thing a day doesn’t cut it here, I now remember.

So what is next? My immediate plans called for a couch and netflix subscription, but I am tired of sitting at home watching TV, and constantly catching myself looking for a place in town where they might sell roasted corn or porridge on the street. I enjoy the hot showers, but not fetching water from outside, which only took about 5 minutes, seems to provide me with more free-time here than I know what to do with. I need to get a job, get a life, move to someplace with enough noise and traffic and if I’m lucky live chickens as well, to flood my senses and get me back in the swing of things.

This will be the final entry of my blog, How do you spell Misungwi? I am done with my Peace Corps service, and starting a new chapter in my life. I could write some sort of paragraph here, about what I have learned and what I will take with me, the way forward, deep and profound life changing moments, yada yada blah blah and all that crap. Actually, I wish I could do that, but it’s not my style. Mostly because my brain hurts from all the TV I’ve been watching. But also because I don’t believe I could ever be able to adequately summarize what I know were and imagine will be two of the most amazing years of my life, in a nice neat concise anecdote. The life lessons, the memories, the profound [and more frequently not so profound] moments are the entries in this web diary, and I look forward to rereading it in the years to come.

I choose to end the same way I started – with a question. How do you spell Misungwi? Missungwi? Is there one S or two?

From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misungwi

"Misungwi is often spelled with an extra 's' to make it Missungwi"

And from the Mwanza-Shinyanga highway, about 50 meters from my house:

Only one s....

Whoops, maybe 2? And this is the Coke sign, which means I hold it to high standards, since Cocacola is responsible for half the signage in the country - literally, without Coke, Pepsi and the cell phone companies, you'd never know where you were. Don't understand the punctuation though, a period before the word??

The verdict - a single S confirmation?

PEACE

-brian

kwa heri tanzania

2006-12-25T11:04:00.000+03:00

I am sitting in the Peace Corps office for the last time [hooray free fast internet], as it is pretty rainy out today and I am, well, just incredibly anxious to get out of here already.

I'm glad I decided to hang out in Dar es Salaam for a few weeks after leaving site and before going home - it's given me a chance to do a bunch of stuff I've wanted to for awhile, but also has given me some time to gather my thoughts about leaving my village and made me more excited to go home. Dar is great but it is not Misungwi, and I've done what I've wanted to do here, so I'm ready to move on.

On Friday I walked around downtown Dar to breathe in the sights sounds smells one last time before going. I walked down Uhuru street and saw hundreds of women [well, tens] selling thousands [literally] of brightly colored fabrics and khangas. Then I walked down India street and saw women wearing these khangas, which is ordinary in the village [traditional funeral wear] but uncommon in Dar - I think they were poorer women from the village, who came on a given day at a given time to a given place to be given assistance.

I walked down Kisutu street with it's Indian places of worship [not sure WHAT they're called], Indian places of dining [they're called restaurants and they're terrific], and finally reached the Kisutu market which is a bit sadder now that the street fruit vendors are gone, but you can still get some fantastic bananas and mangoes, which I did, and can now proudly declare I've met my goal of eating one mango a day until I leave. Mangoes, I will miss them so much.

While downtown is nice [another example - the AZAM ice cream shop. SOOO good frozen cone globe thingees only if they had peanuts could it be better] I wanted to explore Kariakoo market one more time before I left as well. Kariakoo is the CRAZY market/street area where residents of Dar go to do their shopping, and the thieves of dar go to do their thieving. Seriously, I got tons of warnings before I went not to take anything, to hold my bag to my chest like a baby, etc etc. I personally think it's a lot safer now that the street vendors are gone and it's just shops and roadside huts. So yeah, I walked around there up and down streets [including Sukuma street] for an hour or so to get my final African-market fix. I think I'm ready for department stores and supermarkets again, though I might miss the feel and hustle and bustle and noise and rotting fruit on the ground of markets here, after a few months maybe.

Lots of great Christmas bargains too. I.e., sellers are desperate for money to buy Christmas presents and meals, and are willing to drop the price as low as it goes, instead of trying to rip me off royally. Nice change of pace. Gotta admit I somehow miss the pre-christmas environment too, though I got a good fix of fake trees and music yesterday - my favorite was what apparently is a Chinese rip-off of xmas classics, my favorite being Jinger bells.

And speaking of the holiday spirit, I spent 4 hours of my Christmas eve at the New Africa casino in Dar. I drank beer, I had a great free buffet of mashed potatoes and turkey and christmas cookies, I talked to a lot of nice lady dealers who were very impressed by my Kiswahili [I imagine the last time I will be able to easily impress women for QUITE awhile, though I don't know how the 'oh yeah, I just got back from two years in Africa with the Peace Corps' line will work], and though I stunk at roulette I managed to end up ahead thanks to blackjack. Oh, and I was surrounded by Chinese men and Phillipinos. Non-traditional, but not a bad day.

But Christmas even wasn't all gambling and cheesy music. I was very fortunate to be able to visit a friend of mine from Misungwi, Alex. He was in town on business - both of his parents have passed away, and as his dad was in the military, the 7 surviving children have a right to claim his pension. Well, he was in Dar going through the processes of getting the money, and unfortunately but not unexpectedly, the government is dragging its heels. Basically, the trip was a long and expensive journey to facilitate a 10-minute 'drop-in' at the appropriate offices to say 'hey, i've got 6 younger brothers and sisters who need food and tuition, so what do you say' and then they responded 'oh, ok, thanks for the reminder, we'll try to get that to you in the next few months.' Alas, government red tape can be extra thick, especially when there's money on the line.

So I got on a few daladalas that I had never even heard of before [mbagala mtokijichi?!] to get out to his aunts house, which is in the outskirts, dare I say 'suburbs,' of dar. I also had to take a 15 minute walk on footpaths through streams and backyards to get there. But it felt comforting to get out of the downtown area for an afternoon, and to see where I imagine many of the newcomers to Dar relocate themselves, where land is still somehow available, and where one might honestly feel they are in the village and not 1/2 hour out of the biggest city in the country [wealthy newcomers, I should say. I imagine quite a few others end up in the more crowded areas like mwananyamala, close to downtown, which I went through on a sketchy daladala ride at night on my way to the University to visit a good friend of mine. That was a whole different experience, the highlight of which was definitely a 10 minute standstill at an intersection due to 3 stubborn drivers, ours included, who were all bumper to bumper and refusing to reverse - real mature. When I finally got to the final stop, it was dark and the lights at the stand went out. I was a tad afraid of being robbed, but on the bright side the black market guys instantly came out so I was able to buy a handkerchief that I needed, but really I digress].

After visiting his aunt, Alex and I came back to civilization and went to the Dar handicraft market to buy what a friend of mine refers to as 'Afri-crap.' Paintings, sculptures, masks, carvings, trinkets, and the like. I picked up a few gifts, had fun bargaining [and was definitely aided by having a Tanzanian friend around], and saw more ebony wood carvings then I will ever see again. It was very interesting to see the carvers working in the background, though many of it still seemed generically produced. To date, my favorite ebony carving is the model penis that Michelle had made for me, which aided in many a condom demonstration [I left it behind in the name of further condom mobilization, but I did take a picture for memory - inappropriate to post here however].

That was Christmas eve - I said goodbye to Alex and then the cards began. Today I tried to go to a casino to change my money, misinterpreted the cashier that I had to play to exchange, and after some lucky 4's at the roulette table 5 minutes later I got denied, though I left 50 bucks richer.

TONIGHT I FLY HOME - next, and perhaps final, entry will be from the states. Peace and happy holidays to all.

making the rounds

2006-12-23T19:41:00.000+03:00

Several of my most recent entries have been incredibly verbose. So here is a brief description of my trip over the past week to the Southern Highlands to participate in a training for a newer group of volunteers, and a stop in Morogoro to visit my homestay family from 2004.

Dar. Infection on my ankle hurts like hell, luckily I had a physical with Jean-Luc the doctor. Very in-depth physical. Now know my urine acidity and blood sugar-level.

Iringa. Rain. Bus ride. 10 minute dash to scarf down nasty fried food before the bus leaves you, which it will without hesitation. 2 minute dash for it to then leave your system, about an hour after the food stop. More rain. Nuns = bread meat cheese jam yum. Passed on a small bit of my experience and knowledge to the new group, very rewarding. Cold! Car ride back = every stop my bosses buy something else. First potatoes, then tomatoes, then onions, then bananas….

Morogoro. Mountains! See picture. See short homestay parents. They are healthy and doing well. More rain. Two turkeys, 3 cows, goat died, but otherwise livestock well and roaming the neighborhood. Host brother John not there, Herman there, little Japhet has grown up, and still remembers me! Hike with Herman through jungle to waterfalls. Mama Derrick – John tried to hook me up with her during first stay, she remembers but now has cute kid and big husband. Went up mountain, hidden beautiful neighborhoods, listened to 10 hail marys on the radio before going to the bar to have ‘a few for the road.’ All major flashbacks to my first week in TZ.

japhet in 2004

japhet in 2006

He's grown up quite a bit, but if you needed another indicator, check out the shirt. Ironically, it's the same one, just very very worn.

And a few pictures of the dense vegetation up in the mountain, on a hike with Herman.

Dar. Annoying salesman selling Chinese shit on the bus. Annoying passenger dropped bag of bricks on my head while disembarking the bus. Tanzanians in a rush to get on/off any form of public transport but then just stand around and get in my way on the street. Back to YMCA for final few days - but i'm not the only one looking for a place to stay.

PICTURES!!!

2006-12-22T08:28:00.000+03:00

CHAIRS!!! Look at them all, 4 of them and a coffee table on the back of a bike! This is my clearing out my house, selling my belongings to a nearby primary school teacher starting up his life. While he took the large majority of my stuff, I also gave some flowers and big water tanks to my neighbors, and pots to Mama Leo and Sato my housegirl. Those weren't carried on a bicycle though. Actually, one of the flowerpots was carried on my neighbor girl's head, which made quite a sight [see her a few pictures down with water on her head].

FRIENDS!!! One last picture of the gang, me with Dominic and Deus, two of my best friends in Misungwi. Backdrop = my passion plant, pretty much ALL of my pictures over the last few weeks were with a beautiful green background, which is NOT typical [that would be bare empty farms/fields], but anytime you want to take a picture here they find the greenest area around and that's the spot.

BANANAS!!! Although it took the entire length of my stay, I did manage to successfully grow and harvest a big bunch of small, but oh so sweet bananas. And then ate them all in one day, with the help of my neighbors and guard. Baba Leo joked that I must have been planning it from the beginning, since we harvested only a week before I am scheduled to leave. FYI - 88 bananas in total, give or take a few.

FLOODS!!! The rains have come, but perhaps too much? Many farms are flooded, and this was before I left - apparently the rains, and flooding, has gotten worse since then.

MEAT!!! This is at the big weekly market in Misasi [will write more about this in future entry, well, future entry about my last week at site]. The woman in the picture is the head of the ward, and she is in charge of a big stand with MEAT. Lots of goat meat, goats, goat heads, goat stomachs, etc...

MAPOSI!!! That means poses. And I had some nice ones during my last week at site, took a ton of pictures - here I am with my friend Anton who runs a guesthouse, and his wife and children and younger brother. His eldest daughter [in yellow dress to the left] is a top student in 1st grade - I know, I looked at her homeworks and exams for about 10 minutes. Nice picture, though the shocking whiteness of my upper arm is disturbing.

MORE MAPOSI!!! This time with some of my favorite people at the Misungwi market. Same day, same shirt, same white inner-elbow showing up clearly...

TIRES!!! This guy makes sandals out of old car tires. I bought a pair, though I expect they will be somehow uncomfortable to wear. Creativity and resourcefulness, however, that I expect I may miss once I get back to the land of plenty...

WATER ON HEAD!!! This is my neighbor Kabula carrying water on her head, a big bucket of it. This, actually, is not a big deal, but is something that I will miss seeing when I go back to the States [though I do NOT like the idea that Tanzanian women expend considerable time and energy just to fetch water, a service that should be more accessible to all].

HUSTLE!!! This is my favorite daladala from Misungwi to Mwanza, in part because the conductor guy is really funny [picture of him later, maybe], and in part because the wording is priceless. Indeed, hustle never DOES sleep. There are about 8 of these in total, others reading 'On my way to Church' or 'Machavelli.' They all park in the yard across from my house, and it's fun to watch the parade of them drive off on the mornings I manage to get up before 6am.

FEET!!! I was taking pictures of some of my Masaai friends, who guard the resthouse that I stayed in for the first 3 months in Misungwi. After taking the pictures, I showed them on my digital camera how they turned out. At that point, I really wished that someone could take a picture of THAT site, me surrounded by 10 Masaai in traditional garments, laughing and being amazed about their pictures. Well, noone to do that, but I snapped a few pictures of our feet to give some sense of what was going on. I count feet belonging to at least 7 people in this one, including my self [guess which feet belong to me?!]

More pictures coming soon, when I get back to the states, that is if I can find someplace with connection better that at my parents house, which is still a dialup, a SLOW dialup connection...

whirlwind

2006-12-13T12:59:00.000+03:00

It has been about 2 weeks since my last entry. Since then, I have cleaned out everything I owned, said goodbye to pretty much everyone I know, and left my house in Misungwi.

I spent a night in Mwanza with a great goodbye party from my coworkers at AMREF. There was good food, good company, presents for me!!, and lots of laughing when I told them all I don't do goodbyes, so we'll just say 'see you later.' I especially like hanging out with one of the younger guys there, JC, who most resembles where I am in life, well, except that he just had a baby boy named Elvis but other than that we see eye to eye a lot. The next day was the flight to Dar, where we got a ride from a Peace Corps car from the airport, which is good, because cabs are expensive and Dar is RIDICULOUSLY HOT these days [summer here]. Well, Dar is ridiculously hot all the time, but especially so now. So we dropped our bags off at the office, bought tickets for the Zanzibar ferry the next day, and got some rest. And some chicken. Chicken tikka, at a place called who knows what since all the volunteers just call it 'street chicken', one of the tastiest restaurants in town. I got spicy prawns and a half a chicken baked in the tikka box thing, I don't know what they do or how they spice it but it sure tastes nice.

Last Friday we [myself and my friends Meena and Ness] headed to Zanzibar, the spice islands, for some much needed R&R at the beach. We took the morning ferry, which was a pretty calm ride, though the ferry tickets make sure to point out that the company is not liable for any 'acts of God' which I would imagine being natural disasters. No disasters, we arrived ok. We had MORE good chicken, this time in soup form, with plenty of zanzibar spices mixed in to really give it a nice kick.

If Dar is hot, Zanzibar is a steamroom but outside. It is hot as hell, I would imagine, unless you are right on the beach with a breeze. Luckily there IS a breeze in the daladalas there, which are basically pick-up trucks with benches in the back and a roof on top. So we all piled into the bed of the truck and made our way to Kendwa, the chillest beach I've ever been to.

http://home-1.tiscali.nl/~rvddool/kendwa.html

This is not the hotel we stayed in, but the one next door.
We went next door to try to get a deal, and sure enough they 'punguza'-ed or lowered the price from 80 dollars a night to 50 dollars a night, so for the 3 of us it was not bad. It helped that it wasn't high season yet, not until Christmas and New Years, so the beaches, and most of the hotels, were relatively empty.

Highlights from the beach:

Fish. Every night we got to walk around and decide where to eat, and what fabulous food to eat. I had burgers, and chips, etc etc, but the best was by far the kingfish and snapper in coconut or tamarind sauce. Very tasty.

I had fun walking on the beach for several reasons. One, my feet got very clean thanks to the fine coral sand. Second, I got tan in places that hadn't seen the sun for awhile [I NEVER wear shorts or go shirtless anywhere in Misungwi]. Third, I talked to a bunch of beach vendors that I had met in June, some of whom remembered me!! One guy was thrilled that I knew his name, Mkude, meant he was from Morogoro, and I sat and watched him work for awhile. He got me a great deal on some paintings of a friend of his, so that'll make a nice souvenir. I also helped out by correcting some poor English on one of the paintings. And of course, just like last time, any conversation where I mention the work that I do eventually led to a brief review of HIV prevention and condom usage. These guys spend the week away from their wives in town, if they have wives - if not they sleep with tourists or locals. High risk environment, big surprise.

One rather shocking example of this was a couple we saw on our second day. A 35 year old, 200 pound white Italian woman was getting rather cuddly [kissing, hugging, rubbing on suntan lotion] with a 20ish, 100lb skinny-ass black Tanzanian man. Love comes in many shapes and sizes, true, but this pairing was a little eye-raising. Jack sprat. Whatever, to each his or her own, as long as they are protecting themselves and each other and no-one else gets hurt. Though this sort of thing makes it difficult for other white female tourists to come, or female PCVs, as some Tanzanians get the impression that white women are easy.

I got a massage the last day, on the beach. Half an hour long, about 3 dollars. Perfect.

After two wonderful nights at the beach, Ness and I headed to stonetown. Stonetown is insane. I think i've written about it before, but it is basically a MAZE of small little alleys with tall buildings on either side to complete the disorientation. We decided to play a game - at the first intersection, I made the call - left, right, or straight. At the following intersection [i.e. after about 20 seconds], Ness made the decision. And so on and so forth. The result is that we managed to cover a LOT of ground and get THOROUGHLY lost after about 10 minutes. But we found some neat finds, old trees, a shoe fundi to fix my sandal, some guys painting tingatingas who allowed me to take pictures and ask questions about their work [they bust their asses for little pay, considering they sell a painting for 3 dollars that a tourist will buy for 30]. But we weren't always entirely lost, I actually REMEMBERED a few of the passages from the last time I was here. I'm not great a directions, and stonetown is impossible, so I was impressed with myself.

After wandering around the old part, touristy shopping part, and buying some scarves and spices, we walked past the main market [imagine tons of people and tons of oversized fruits] to look for sarongs that old muslim men wear. We ended up being escorted by a somehow annoying man into the Zanzibar town, the newer part that few tourists ever get to but that is filled with tons of shops, stands, and things being sold on the street. Mwanza the street vendors were kicked out ages ago, even so in Dar, and it was nice to have one last chlaustrophobic African-market crazyness experience before I go back to oversized supermarkets. We got the sarongs at a shop run by a muslim man who liked joking with us, and sold lots of islam caps and full body gowns for men [kanzous].

He actually gave us a decent price too, which was nice. I decided to use the paintings my friend Mkude sold me as a standard to judge how much other store owners were jacking up their prices, and the 3 that I purchased for 10,000 shillings were quoted to me for 45,000 almost everywhere I went. 4x plus!

At night we went to Forodhani gardens to eat a ton of freshly grilled fish and mussles and shark, something called 'zanzibari pizza' which is dough filled with meat veggies mayo and egg and then fried [delicious], and then munched on sugarcane for dessert. There was lots of meat and chips too, which mostly the Tanzanians went for as fish was somehow pricey - kind of a bizarre segregation of dining that turned out to be linked to economics.

One who did not discriminate on prices or types or anything were the cats: they were EVERYWHERE, and they were having a ball.

--------

Now I'm in Dar es Salaam, and of course there's stuff to write about here but I'll wait for another day. I'm going to try to go back and update on the last few days at my house in Misungwi, as they were packed with excitement and emotions, and things that I don't want to forget. So from here on out, I'm writing more for myself than for you. But I still welcome to you read, view pictures [will try to add soon], and enjoy.

My last week in Misungwi

2006-12-06T18:42:00.000+03:00

Note: the last week has been incredibly boring, but only because it’s early January and most of the time I’ve been spent in a car or on the couch. This post reflects my thoughts, feelings, and describes the flurry of activity that was my last week in Misungwi.

Addendum to note: It is fantastic writing this at home, where electricity is NOT an inhibiting factor. I spoke with a few friends from Misungwi on new years day, and got a report that the electricity rationing has somehow lessened in severity. My last week in Misungwi was plagued both by the ongoing electricity issue, in combination with the fact that several transformers were dead as a result of people stealing the oil. As a result, I fell asleep at about 9pm on several occasions. Power out = me passed out on couch. Though I did usually manage to wake up around 1am, when the lights came back on.

Wednesday at the Market with Sam
A week before my departure date, I went to the nearby town of Misasi with my friend Sam to go to the largest weekly market in my district. I had meant to go over the past two years, but had still not gotten around to it.

STOP.

That was a recurring theme of my last week. ‘Well I meant to …. but time just ran out.’ I can’t count how many times I said that. And I knew that my last week would be insanely busy, with lots of things to do, and were I not organized I would not finish. Thus, I wrote a list of everyone that I wanted to say goodbye to and trade contact information with. And though I have doubts that I will be in touch with many of them, I did manage to say so long, farewell, and thanks to the people that mattered to me the most in Misungwi.

GO again.

The Misasi market. Here’s a written walk through. You enter gates off the main road, passing hoe sticks [pieces of wood on which the hoe blade goes]. Then you encounter hundreds of cows and goats. And stands selling cow and goat meat, soup, bbq. Beyond the meat stands is the stand where the cars pull up to, piles of various grains continually covered and uncovered depending on the rain. Knife sharpeners are upside-down bicycles with a blade hooked up by cable to the pedals in order to turn the sharpening wheel. Despite this, most knives used in Tanzania are dull, including, by all indicators, the ones I saw used to kill the goat we ate. Beyond knives are piles and piles of used clothing, several tailors ready to alter purchased clothes or create new ones out of plentiful fabric, piles and piles of cheap Chinese plastic shit, and my friend Sam’s fellow traditional medicine healers. And a small little table for really sketchy gambling, gambling that allows OTHER people to take the money that I bet and play it on a different number [1-6 is written on the table, you bet on a number and die are rolled]. When I called them out on how this was wrong, they clearly realized that I had figured out their scheme and quickly gave me my money back and told me to go away.

When the day was done, Sam and I bought a goat and named him Brian.

I am a fantastic person
My last week was filled with lots of ego-boosting compliments, though I accepted them with modesty and credit due to all those who helped me. I got lots of praise for my Swahili and Sukuma language skills – thanks to Dominic, my neighbors, and all the other stubborn Sukuma people for basically refusing to speak to me in any other language. I got praise from my carpenter friend in regards to my new pants – ‘you used to dress like shit, but now you’re looking a little better. I didn’t want to say anything before but really…’ He’s a good guy though, and his openness wasn’t mean-spirited [read observations regarding physical appearance below]. After two years of practice, I was deemed an expert at peeling mangoes by my old Arab Bibi [grandma]. The first time she saw me peel a mango, she laughed and ridiculed me, but now I’m an expert. I’ve grown up. I was congratulated, somehow, for being late all the time – I’m a ‘real Tanzanian’ in regards to my tardiness. I continued to bring joy with my camera, though I can claim little credit for it. It will be nice to have so many pictures of my friends. I made people’s days in ways that I can never repeat again: 1) I called a woman FAT [she has HIV, started using ARV drugs but was worried that she hadn’t gained much weight like others she knew, and I comforted her by telling her not everyone has to gain weight and that she looked pretty chunky to me] and 2) I received God’s blessings from a woman because I included my sheets and pillowcases when I sold her my bed and 3) I gave my two favorite mamas at the market a bowl, a plate, and a spoon apiece. Small gestures, but it meant a lot to them, and to me.
Finally, I cannot count how many times people complimented me by saying ‘hey, you can’t go, we’re USED to you!’ I don’t care about being a good person, about doing good work, about giving people gifts, being a language whiz, being the ‘mzungu from misungwi’, etc etc. The biggest compliment I could ever get is that I am just a normal part of life in Misungwi, that they are used to me and I’m used to them, and that my leaving will disrupt the status quo. That was one of my few main goals when I arrived, to just live and fit in and be a part of the community, and I succeeded. It felt fantastic to hear.

Two years is a long time
I saw a young man recently, as shown in picture, that works as a bike taxi driver. I distinctly remember hiring him shortly after arriving in Misungwi, to take me to my office. Well, my office is uphill, and he couldn’t make it way back when – I had to get off the bike and we both walked up to the top of the hill. Instead of getting mad, I gave him twice the going rate [about 50 cents] and told him to go eat a big meal to gain weight and strength. Fast forward almost 2 years, I had rarely seen him in the meantime and had never gotten on his bicycle, but after all this time I hired him to take me once again to the office – and we made it. I gave him a compliment, he gave me a smile, and I realized how time flies.

I also saw a young child that, 2 years ago, I dragged home to his mother for a beating. He had been bugging me relentlessly at my house, climbing on my gate and demanding money – so I chased him and when he fell down, scooped him up and took him home. My last day in Misungwi, I ran into him at his new house – he is two years older, and was the most respectful and courteous little boy I’ve ever met in Tanzania! If only he had been that way when I first got there – guess he’s started growing up.

More final observations
Most, 90%, of Tanzanian men have really skinny chicken legs. No judgment behind that, just fact. Though maybe it explains why they almost all like women with big booty.

Men sleep everywhere. In cards, under cars, in stores, outside of stores, in parks, everywhere. Men also PEE everywhere too. So, one can thus conclude that men potentially sleep in their own piss. Or pee in their beds.

Often storeowners are sleeping in their stores when I arrive. Or they went out for an errand and left the store unguarded. But that’s not a big deal, because everyone knows each other and no one even thinks that there is a potential for theft. I will confess that I only stole once, a 1-cent piece of candy from a guy who sold me expired powdered milk. Jerk deserved it.

I am getting older – young people, TOO young, are talking about sex when I pass them on the street. Hell, the boys’ voices are cracking while telling dirty jokes!! I was shocked to hear stories, as I was just hanging out with a few of my friends, about a young boy that walked by us. They told me ‘hey, you see that guy, he is famous for sleeping with lots of girls.’ I asked, ‘who, that guys father?’ Nope, it was the young man. He comes from a rich family, and $ = power = women. All that = recipe for HIV pandemic.

I went to a soccer game. The Misungwi team lost, and the game wasn’t incredibly interesting. That is, until a goat got stuck in the goal net, and bleated pathetically for about 5 minutes until being pried out by a group of no less than 5 men. I appreciated that the visiting team had jerseys which stated ‘mikasi noma’, street language for ‘unsafe sex isn’t cool yo.’

Tanzanians are far less sensitive about physical appearance than people in the states, and also more INsensitive, well at least uninhibited, in pointing out flaws in others. I recently took a trip to the shores of Lake Victoria to ride in a tiny boat. Well, a few outcomes of that ‘visit’ were a sunburnt nose and an infection on my ankle. Another sign that many people in Misungwi know me, and are used to me – upon seeing my nose, I got a lot of ‘what the hell happened to you, why is your nose so freakin red?!’ Way to be subtle, guys. At the same time, there is no shame or sense of insecurity about that! When I was talking to my tailor friend, a larger woman came in to be measured for a dress. And, in front of a store full of people waiting and working and chatting, another tailor announced with little hesitation the full measurements of this woman – and I heard a couple of 40s in there. But that was no big deal. I imagine this is what facilitates the bizarre sight of people selling, and buying, underwear and bras [and mens underwear too] at the bus station.

Healthcare is ‘free’ in Tanzania [except for bribes to get services, which hopefully are in decline] but it is a different world. Relatives are responsible for providing food for patients, who are often 20-30 in small beds in one common room, and occasionally more than 1 to a bed.

And final goodbyes
I said goodbye to my friend Jumanne [Tuesday], who always wears a manskirt similar to the one I own, by having my last cup of rice porridge with him. At first I couldn’t figure out where the mama who sold the porridge was – turns out she was wearing pants, and I mistook her for one of the men who was a regular [only men spend their evenings out for roasted maize or porridge – the women are home cooking].

I said goodbye to my neighbor Mzee [left in picture], which means ‘old guy’ but he’s actually about 20. He works as a conductor on the daladala buses, and so I sat down with him recently to teach him about condoms, as I am well aware of the risky behavior his peer group engages in. I bought him a wife-beater, and one for myself.

I said goodbye to the other daladala conductors by, well, giving them condoms and joking around as always. Given their demographic and high-risk environments, I became rather close to these guys and invested in seeing them protect themselves. One spent a few years in Yemen, and thus understood my outsiders experience like few others could. Another a card shark to trade strategies with. One a 6’5" bouncer-built young man nicknamed ‘bad bug’ who was the most soft-spoken and gentle of them all. Of everyone I know, this was the most final ‘goodbye’ I exchanged – they are all young men, in a difficult and dangerous job, with risky behavior and high mobility. I will probably never see or correspond with any of them again, and that is life.

I said goodbye to my coworkers at the district government in the canteen, over a huge breakfast of beef soup, chapatti, and fruit salad. We also, as is typical, had one last discussion about differences between Tanzania and the USA, and why I was looking forward and NOT looking forward to returning.

I said goodbye to one of my neighbors who has lots of chickens by, well, saying goodbye, and then graciously accepting 2 eggs.

I said goodbye to two of my best friends, the electrician Alex and his brother Godi, by doing what we always do – hanging out and cracking jokes. When I visited them at their store to say farewell, they were talking about the ‘stuff’ and ‘goods’ and ‘cash.’ So I asked if they had started selling cocaine – turns out they were referring to donuts. I also had a good chuckle watching them get excited about the combination lock that I had given them. We must have opened it and relocked like 10 times.

I said goodbye to Babuu, Juma, Hamisi [first picture], Mayunga, Dullah, Adolph, Sato [second picture], Selestini, Singsbert literally – ‘goodbye zachayo’ or ‘goodbye ndebile’ – just because I know it’s the last time I’ll get to say most of these names ever again.

Without fail, goodbyes were said both verbally and physically. Physically often involved hugging, and ALWAYS involved a final, 5-minute handshake. It is difficult to describe a Tanzanian handshake. It starts off like a typical handshake, then moves to more of a hands clasping, then back to handshake, then back into hand clasping, and so on and so forth, until after a few minutes you move into thumb-war position and start thumb-snapping each other for a good minute or so until final disengagement.

I said goodbye to Misungwi – the women fetching water from the wells, the old men and women walking to the farm with a hoe over one shoulder and a radio over the other, young children with bike-loads of sweet potato plantings, young girls setting wet laundry out to dry, young men sweeping dirt in the yard and gambling in the corner of an abandoned building, the young children playing and pelting each other with balls made of plastic bags and stealing fruit from the trees – from the front seat of my favorite daladala, escorted by my best friends.

one week left - observations

2006-11-28T13:18:00.000+03:00

I'm going to miss random stuff just sold everywhere, and carried on people's heads to and fro after being purchased. Examples include 20 liter buckets of cooking oil, huge and very colorful mattresses, couch cushions, fish, etc. Spontaneous markets are nice, and they're not in America.

When they don't carry it on their heads walking, they tie it to the back of a bicycle. Everything on bicycles, beds, doors, 20 foot antennae poles, 100 kilos of flour or tomatoes, or 100-kilo fat African lady wearing brightly colored clothing. See pictures - daladala bike taxis, and a local expert who actually carries the stuff on her head WHILE biking...

Speaking of daladalas, I gave a couple of my favorite guys some of my old worn out jeans and shirts. They really appreciated it. Nothing fancy, but given the hard sweaty work they do, it was exactly what they would need and appreciate. Really, these guys sweat a lot, and some do a not-so-hot job of bathing. But these 2 are pros, so I was glad to pass along my worn-outs. Red shirt guy in the middle is wearing jeans, he made them cut-offs.

Africa is about 100 times more sensory stimulating than the states. Well, maybe not New York or Chicago, but what I mean is that the LITTLEST things here can still cause sensory overload. Colors, smells, noises - I've written about them before, but now that I'm close to leaving my brain is having a harder time tuning out. I'm trying to take everything in, remember every smell, cry, crazy outfit scheme [plaid red/black shirt, green striped pants, just walked by in the internet cafe]. In otherwords, I'm drowning.

Speaking of drowning, it has been POURING lately, even more so than the last time I wrote. All the rice paddies are filled TO THE BRIM with water now, rivers are flowing [they dry up the rest of the time], people are farming like crazy. And things slow down, as hour-long waits for downpours to end become the norm again. I sat in a house yesterday for about 45 minutes in silence, because it was raining so hard we couldn't hear anything anyone was saying [metal roofing]. There is a big swamp near Misungwi that I've never seen, well, swamped, but now it looks like the Lake itself has crept a bit closer...

Farmers must be glad for the rain, but others aren't. I visited my friend Jonathan who draws cards that my mom is selling back home [this guy has moderate talent but INTENSE devotion and perserverance]. He lives in the mountainy rocky outcroppings that surround Mwanza downtown. He lives in a small room that floods because the roof is leaky. It is the dankiest place I've been here yet, but he seems to keep his spirits up, and is hoping to use some of the money I gave him for the cards to seal the leaks.

The rain smells nice, but not when mixed with the trash. Here trash is strewn about EVERYWHERE. That's a sensory experience I'm not sad to leave behind.

The rain has also brought grasshoppers, who are noisy, and yet another unpleasant stimulant. Luckily, my cat seems to think they are tasty.

The rain has also somehow made things 'cold' here, or at least chilly. I own no jacket, but it doesn't bother me. Tanzanians are bundled up like January in northern Wisconsin, and then when the sun comes out and I start sweating they sort of, well, don't seem to notice and just keep walking around wearing these Starter-jacket poofy things that must make it feel 200 degrees out.

I had some African shirts made. They blend in very nicely hear with all the other colorful figures, and will surely look ridiculous when I return home. But a nice reminder, and I like the fundi [tailor] who made them for me - he has HIV but is living a positive life.

I went to the Lake with my friend Babuu the other day. It's about 7km from Misungwi, but 2 years and I still hadn't made it. We went, shocked some villagers with my whiteness and his vulgarity, took some pictures of me in a SHAKY, TIPPY boat [I would never be able to use it as an actual form of transportation, which they do], saw the devastation of the water hyacinth on the lake environment, and enjoyed a nice non-rainy day. I had fun greeting some teachers at a really bush school near the lake, whom I attended a seminar with, and felt proud that I'm able to distinguish tribes of Tanzania when I noted that one of their fellow teachers looked like a Mmeru [he was, the teeth gave him away]. Not as big a fan of the custom when, after asking for a glass of drinking water, a young girl brought it to me, knelt down to the ground to give it to me, and stayed their until I finished, before she got up and went away. A little too subservient for my taste, though if it were done out of AGE respect and not GENDER respect, I'd be all for it [I love how the kids here fetch stuff for me, or for their parents. American spoiled brats, that'll be a shock...]

After the Lake, we went to my friend Ray's house. Visiting people here means one thing - FOOD. We were welcomed with a big bowl of HUGE, RIPE, DELICIOUS mangoes [that's right, the season just started. Not a bad way to leave the country, plentiful rains and buckets full of mangoes]. We also had chipsi mayai, which is french fries fried in egg. Delicious. Other highlights, or things of note: We brought a mkeka, a woven mat, outside and sat around. That is what people do here, and I love it. Actually, when we came, my friend Ray had been outside SLEEPING on this thing [I'll give him credit, it WAS a Sunday so there was no work]. His brother is sort of a jack of all trades, a trained driver who was selling charcoal the first time I met him, then went to sell potatoes in Dar es Salaam, and is now burning bricks while contemplating a return to the driving world. Oh, he also recently just became Pentecostal.

And finally, we posed for a picture on the village 'mountain':

Talk about a pose, huh?

I wrote recently that I went to the Folk development College to teach some lessons on STDs and HIV/AIDS, along with Condoms, to about 100 of the 200 total students. Their behavior is a tad notorious, and notorious is never a good word, is it? They apparently sleep around a lot. Well they seemed to enjoy our presentation, especially THAT video [its so good i'm dubbing copies as we speak]. Apparently yesterday one of the young women who attended went to the hospital and spoke with a nurse and got some services regarding her reproductive health. I suspect treatment for an STD. ONE PERSON, that's all I needed. I was feeling a bit angry about the whole thing because a few of the students showed up late to one period incredibly drunk. But I guess I can't expect to rid the world of assholes and idiots.

The question box that I had put up on the health bulletin board at Misungwi secondary school is infested with bees. That's unfortunate, and sort of a sad ominous sign of what might happen to many of my projects after I'm gone. But at least this is temporary - the headmaster says they've arranged to have it fumigated.

continued below....

observations - part 2

2006-11-28T12:56:00.000+03:00

.......

I've been talking to a lot of my former students lately. They are all scrounging around for jobs/money, or some are just hanging out. One, whose name means 'premature' but he's a big guy now, he is one of the best and most dedicated in his class. And about a week after graduation, his father passed away. He just came back a few days ago, and I had a good chat with him. He seems to have taken everything in stride, and is now working on making some money so he can continue with his studies [I am sure he passed his exams, he's a sharp kid].

A few other students, again a nice pose.

Another student asked for a condom demonstration at the store he works at, so I agreed. People don't like thinking that students have sex, but they're all almost 20 years old already.

Another came and visited me at my house for some advice. We talked a lot, mostly about sex. He is 20 and has not has sex, and is the second student in his class. Apparently some of the girls at the school don't like this, so they pooled their money to try to get someone to finally tempt him into agreeing. He stuck to his guns and they started giving him a hard time. But he's the son of a pastor at one of the, um, further-out denominations. He asked his dad for advice on how to 'avoid impulses and urges,' and his dad yelled at him that 'you're going to get AIDS' and didn't have much more to say. So I filled in the gaps, taught him condom usage for when he's ready, reassured that abstaining or masturbation is perfectly healthy and won't cause impotency, etc etc. He's a good kid, his wife will be a lucky woman.

He also told me all kinds of stories about the school - teachers sleeping with students, teachers giving male students hard time because they are both [the teacher and the student] pursuing the same girl, a group of boy students essentially gang-raping a girl student because she wouldn't agree to sleep with any of them, so when she finally agrees to one he calls all the rest of them and they take turns in the dark so she apparently won't notice, stuff like that. Stuff that, yeah, I'm just sort of numb to at the moment, because I want to leave on a high note and I want to believe that stuff like this couldn't actually be happening.

The picture fests continue. I recently took 100+ pictures just walking around Misungwi, with the great assistance of my friend Alex who is an electrician [have written about him before, right in the picture below, with his brother Godi].

These guys are some of the funnest guys I've ever hung out with, and remind me a lot of some of the crazy antics from high school that we used to pull. Godi, for example, likes to dress up in bizarre clothing and walk around like everything is as usual to get reactions out of people. And we consistently have a good time hanging out at their house, though it is just a TINY two room affair that is jammed with all of their crap, mostly electronics stuff for their work. It's just too bad that they're classic Tanzanians when it comes to picture taking - funny all the time, but dead serious in front of the cameras.

The main result of this picture extravaganza is that now EVERYBODY knows my name [Masanja] and is greeting me, and wants to chat. And that means a LOT of people, everywhere I go there seems to be a crowd.

More evidence of picture fest - me with a fellow teacher at Misungwi, his wife, and the brightest little kid I've met here in TZ named Katisa.

I taught my neighbors how to gamble with dice. Exciting! I actually played cards with my 13 year old neighbor boy while talking with his mom, and decided to play for money. He got up to 3,000 shillings [2.50 dollars] before walking away, though I wanted to go double or nothing. HE stuck to his guns too, and I made sure to give him a little lesson on gambling, the dangers, etc etc. He's since bought a pair of shoes, and refuses to put up his own money to try his luck again...

I had an interesting conversation today at a bank here in Mwanza with a friend of mine who was in Misungwi and is now working here. We were sitting in the banks lobby catching up, and we started talking about his tribe, which is from the Eastern part of the Lake region and is in the same family as the Masaai tribe. Suddenly the topic turned frankly to circumcision. He was circumcised when he was about 8, along with 400 other boys in a large, traditional ceremony [which he says is better, it 'looks nicer' than how they do it at the hospital, he claims]. I knew he was proud of his heritage, but not ready to discuss genitalia in a bank lobby. Good guy though.

And on that rather bizarre note... those are just a sample of my thoughts, things are really quite intense these days. More observations will follow, but they will most likely be written next week after I have left my house and am relaxing in Zanzibar. Until then.

no stress

2006-11-22T10:18:00.001+03:00

Well, actually, a lot of it. things are getting crazy, cleaning up and selling off stuff in my house, having big picture-taking extravaganzas and saying goodbye to institutions and friends, and all the while the rain continues to POUR.

As I left off in my last post, I was about to go to try and purchase some pants to wear. By the way, Jo, I resent your most recent comment because I think I speak English very good. So I met my friend Alex and, of course, it started to rain. And when I say 'shopping', I certainly don't mean at a mall or in a department store, but rather about 20 different small little shops, most of which carry EXACTLY the same thing [that is a universal phenomenon here, all shops carry goods identical to those in their corresponding, eg clothing shops or foodstuff shops]. And each little shop has about enough room for 3 or 4 people to stand inside and try things on in the middle of the store, and I only say 3 or 4 people because I am use to personal space bubbles of Africa, but in the states it really wouldn't even be enough room for one person alone.

So after 2 hours or so, and lots of stripping, and the disheartening but as far as i'm concerned unconfirmed-until-I-reach-the-states news that I now wear a size 34, I managed to find a nice pair of jeans and another pair of khaki-ish pants. Mission accomplished, at least a month until I have to go clothes shopping again, thank goodness. It did really help to have my friend though, the prices automatically dropped a few dollars and he, like most Tanzanians, seemed to know about all the little shops that NOONE just passing by would ever see, or be aware of, let alone enter. 'Kumbe' [what do you know?!], they're tucked in little alleys and corners all over the city.

With the new purchase underhand, I went home and continued the slow but steady process of purging myself of all my crap. The posters/maps came off the walls, documents and teaching materials that were way over-used were burned [one hell of a bonfire, that was fun]. My bed and mattress have been paid for and my couches are going later this week, so I will be chilling on the floor on my mkeka floor mat for the remainder of my time here. It is somehow thereaupeautic [YIKES, ok jo, maybe you have a point. the word beuaraucractic gets me all the time too...]. And i'm hoping it will cut down the stress of the last few days here.

What else is new.

With the rains, all the rice paddies are filled with water. It is a really beautiful sight, and one that I haven't seen since I first got here. The people of Tanzania can be incredibly hard working if there is work to do, so I'm hoping the weather stays in their favor and the rains continue. In the car coming from town last week, I busted out a HUGE grin when, just outside of Misungwi, I saw a TRACTOR farming a big plot!!! A TRACTOR!! Machines! Not hand hoeing!!

Another plus to the rains is that they seem to have provided the final kick needed for my bananas to finish growing. I'm not sure what the English word is [point 2 to jo], but the bananas must first reach final size, then you cut the bunch from the tree and take them inside to ripen, or they take FOREVER on the tree. So they are sitting in a bag in my kitchen, and i'm hoping to eat at least one before I leave. Picture will be forthcoming.

Yesterday I had a terrific afternoon of 'maongezi', which means also 'piga story' which means shooting the shit, chatting with my friends. It seemed everytime I said goodbye to someone, I ran into another good friend 2 minutes later and we talked for another half an hour. I went to a folk development college near the hospital [like a technical school, somehow] and met my friend Deus, and also planned to teach a few periods on Friday on STDs [not a bad way to wind up my work here, showing that graphic video again]. It was nice to see how he lives there, way better conditions than at the TTC in Mwanza, though still too reminiscent of dorm life for me to be in any way jealous of all the young people to hang out with. After that, hung out in the market for an hour, ran into a young woman who translates for Belgian girls when they come for studies, talked to a few of the daladala conductors about topics varying from clothing to religion to, well, just 'the shit'. At one point we talked about my facial hair which was a little bizarre, but turns out some of the conductors had a bet as to my age, and my 'beard' was cited as a reason for assuming I am older than all of them. Nope, same age as a few, older than a few, younger than many. The ones I talked to all older, 25, 27, 28. Good guys, but in Kiswahili we'd say 'hawajatulia', which translates to 'they haven't chilled out yet' which means they are somehow rascal, punk, no-good youth [well, that's what the old folks would say]. After that, had a GREAT cup of uji, porridge, made of rice and milk and cardamom. I'm going to miss Uji, and more importantly, i'm going to miss being able to buy roasted corn or porridge or food ANYWHERE you go. Seriously, every corner there's a mama selling something, or a fried fish, or a little restaurant to get a snack, or the best yet, french fries and grilled beef.

Evidence of the maongezi, and the photo-fests:

Picture 1 = me and my friend sam at his shop, he sells traditional medicines [in the bottles at the back]. Also a big fan of the blue box of CONDOMS hanging in his shop!!

Picture 2 = my fundi friend Selestini and his wife and four children - and some white guy

Picture 3 = my masaai friends who guard at the office of an NGO where I hang out and where I used to get my internet access [props to belgian Debbie for the picture]

Oooh, one final bit. Yesterday there was a 'situation' in Misungwi that sounds direct from a overly dramatic Nigerian movie, or a dramatic Indian movie [but the bollywood movie would be less scandalous since this is about sex], or maybe even the Jerry Springer show. There is a businessman in Misungwi who has a wife and a few kids. Well, for many men here, having a wife doesn't really imply or imbue any sense of monogamy or fidelity. So this guy decided he wanted his mistress to visit him. Well, apparently he's not the brightest guy, since he decided to rent a room in a guesthouse IN misungwi town, and called his mistres over. He told his wife he was going to Mwanza, then shacked up for the night.

The next day, they continued to hang out at the guestie and apparently decided they were having too much fun and thus added a second night. He called his wife to inform her of this. In the meantime, SHE decided that SHE had HER friend, i.e. another guy whom she apparently regularly hooked up with, and who is somehow a coworker/acquaintance with the husband. So she decided, 'hey, my husband is in Mwanza, let me call my lover and we can have a nice evening together.' He agreed, sounded like a good idea, so they met up and headed to.... a guesthouse. THE SAME guesthouse that her husband was at.

Well, by now of course, the story's ending is self evident. Each of the two heard scandalous sounds coming from the next door room [that's right, next door] but neither thought anything of it. Until the husband left his room, wearing a towel, and ran into his acquaintance, also wearing a towel. That got him thinking. Then he saw his wife. Apparently there was almost a fight but people prevented it. Wonder what will happen to that marriage, sad thing, probably not much will change except they'll be bitter to each other more openly. Perhaps more disturbing is the reaction many men of Misungwi had to this whole shenanigan. They all seemed disgusted by the actions of the woman, but the husband? Well, that's his right, isn't it? They used the argument a lot that the husband was probably using a condom but the wife probably not, though I don't see where they would get that idea. I doubt either was using protection.

Whew, that was the big drama of the week. Hoping things chill out for my last week there, though it seems things have already died down [except for the rumors and gossiping].

Gotta run and take care of errands, might be my last time in Mwanza - PEACE.

smooooth

2006-11-17T10:47:00.000+03:00

Yesterday, with my friend Michelle visiting me, we went to visit my old Arab grandmother in Misungwi town. She has been away with health problems for several months but has returned with lots of energy, though not as many stories ABOUT her health problems as I expected to hear. While we were there, we got some really, REALLY nice juice - mango!! Tis the season, back in the states the season of cold blistery snowy wind-chill conditions, here it's still raining and the mangoes are increasingly abundant and increasingly cheap. Not a bad way to leave.

So Michelle [check out her blog, link at the right, and congrats to her since she is officially done with her PC service!] was here for about a week and it was nice to share some of my experiences in my town with another volunteer. I don't get a whole lot of guests. And boy did we hit the ground running, the first day she got here we went to a wedding in a nearby town. It was scheduled to start [the party] at 6pm, and wedding parties here follow a VERY strictly organized schedule, with time allotted for greetings, gifts, cake cutting, etc. That is, everything is planned down to the minute when it is supposed to take place.

Of course, the kicker is that this is Tanzania. So most of the guests arrived around 8pm, a good 2 hours late, and the party didn't actually get started until 10pm. UGH. We were both very tired, her moreso due to the travels, but once it started it was pretty nice. The happy couple, of course, looked miserable, since that's what brides and grooms are supposed to look like here. But the GUESTS, we had fun, drinking soda and beer, clinking glasses and giving gifts [everytime you go up to the head table to give a gift or something, you have to sort of 'dance' your way up to local TZ music]. The food was nice, although it was at about 1:30 am, and there was a bit of dancing. I didn't know a whole lot of people there, but the groom is a good friend of mine and I have worked closely with him on several projects, so he was happy to see me there and I was happy to see him. Granted he's lived with his wife for 15 years and they have 3 kids, but they'd never actually had a wedding. One of the guests described this as 'fixing things up', as in, he had sort of stolen his wife and now he was setting things right. Oh yeah, they got 3 cows and some goats and chickens in addition to dishes and cloth as wedding gifts.

The next few days we hung out in Misungwi, greeting my friends and checking out all a small TZ town has to offer. Not a lot, but we had fun. She helped me teach my last period at the Secondary school [we reviewed STDs and then watched a powerful, GRAPHIC, but I think very educational video on STDs which shows up-close shots of syphillis, chancroid, gonorrhea, etc]. We also went to the TTC for my last period there, where I taught the most whirlwind lesson on condoms ever, but despite the rush it went well and I think they got something out of it, or at least I hope ONE person at least got ONE little thing out of it, I think that would be enough for me to be content.

The week before Michelle came I finished up my MEMA kwa Vijana seminars with AMREF. I wrote a bit about this last week, but feel the need to elaborate a bit. I stayed mostly with the teachers who teach in the primary schools right in Misungwi town, so it is nice now seeing them around on the street and exchanging greetings and ideas. I was a bit of a firecracker during our lessons, and I must say that 2 years of experience here that will be shortly winding down has led to me boiling up pretty quickly and being pretty open about a lot of topics I would previously have danced lightly around. But it's good, I think, for an outsider to give his or her thoughts every once in a while, because otherwise we just take for granted the environment we live in, and don't ask questions like 'why is it this way' or 'why don't we change this?'. For example, many of the teachers were complaining that American/Western culture, namely clothing and music and videos. Yes, I agreed, the culture is not as conservative as it is here. People get divorced all the time, women where short skirts, many of us watch porno. But, for example, grown American men RARELY have sexual relationships with 14 year old girls. Here, that is still considered deviant and gross and inappropriate, but is certainly not unheard of.

So yeah, I've been running into them now and some of the teachers, especially the younger ones who just finished their trainings, are really fun to talk to. We talk about the difficulties facing them in their schools and classrooms, many of which I've written about before [student numbers, lack of facilities, lack of resources, lack of books, um, even RAIN messes things up since they have steel roofing with no ceiling boards]. Many would like to come visit me in the states, and requests for sponsorships and addresses and contacts have grown exponentially as people [not just teachers] are aware that I am close to leaving.

GOTTA GO. I need to buy new pants, all my pants are SHOT and I want to look presentable for my last few weeks here. I am getting some kick-ass African shirts hand-tailored for me, so that will complete the ensemble. The only problem is that pants here are hard to find as there are not exactly any department stores, and certainly no price tags, so everyone tries to rip me off. Thus a friend of mine [who just called me] is meeting me in town to take me shopping. Plus, those of you who know me know that I hate clothes shopping, but 'inanibidi' that is 'it is making me', it being some condition like, for example, the disgustingness of my current wardrobe.

PEACE

ps. my cat is apparently NOT a beneficiary of my lessons on lifeskills, hiv/aids, and family planning. for the second time in i swear 4 months, she has had kittens. only two this time. so now i have 3 cats to try to get rid of before i leave. nice.

pps. i don't brag a lot, certainly not as often as I could because, let's be honest, i'm good at a lot of things and especially here in Tanzania i'm pretty freaking special. But i have to today - there was a really really drunk guy in the market a few days ago, in Misungwi, when michelle and I went to buy meat at the butcher. though i'm not sure of the connection between language and masculinity, this guy kept repeating over and over, "that guy - listen to him. he knows swahili. that guy, he's a MAN. he's a MAN, a real MAN. listen to him."

so among the names i've been called here: sir, doctor, 'real man', father. lots of respect. which i ain't gonna get when i get back home....

whoosh

2006-11-07T15:42:00.000+03:00

Time is flying. Whoosh.

And the rainy season has actually come this year. Double Whoosh. For every day the past week or so, there has been at the least a slight drizzle in the early afternoon, at the most torrential downpours accompanied by huge gusts of wind that basically prevent anyone, or anything, from staying completely dry.

But we are all very pleased, as it was getting dusty, and more importantly as last year it just didn't rain at all and food is thus becoming problematic and expensive.

Speaking of food, I conducted my final of 3 seminars on nutrition and balanced meals for PLWHA groups. It was a nice day, sort of routine as I've already facilitated this seminar 4 other times so I had it down pat, but the food was as usual plentiful and tasty and, fitting with the theme of the day, well balanced. And the people were EXCITED, and interested, and active and involved, and appreciative, and receptive, and it was a pleasure to be with them though only for one day.

Today I am in Mwanza town after a visit from my boss, which went well. I don't get a whole lot of visitors at my house, i.e. NONE other than my regular friends whom I don't view as 'visitors', so it was a pseudo big deal [i.e. involved some cooking, the first instance of such in several months].

But the big news is that, after this week, I will essentially have wrapped up my work in country. We are winding down a 12 day seminar for primary school teachers on using participatory methodology to teach about HIV/AIDS, and all in all it has been a fantastic experience, with me contributing a lot of input and ideas from a foreigner's perspective that has been well recieved by these local teachers. This is the longest in a line of seminars, for health workers and head teachers and subject teachers, which has featured a LOT of interesting and passionate conversations and what appears to me as some genuine progress toward development and improvement at these schools and health facilities. So it is definitely a positive note.

My plans for the remaining month at home [that's right, one month left] are to just hang out with my friends, enjoy and soak up life here, and begin to say goodbyes. I anticipate writing on the blog a few times over the course of this coming month, and then a few good final entries from Dar before I head back to the states. I am both excited and sad to be winding down my time here, but mostly looking forward to seeing my friends and relatives, i.e. you guys who are reading this. It's really starting to sink in that I will soon be home, and it feels good.

Peace, sorry for the rather unwitty entry, but we all have our days, huh?

pat on the back

2006-11-01T12:23:00.000+03:00

As my time here winds down, i've been in a very congratulatory and congratulated-atory [??] mood. That is to say, lots of back patting going on between me and people around me.

A few days ago, I got a visit from whom I would say are two of the most promising students who just finished form 4, Solo and Sengerema. We had a great discussion for about an hour [I was very late to work but couldn't care less], talked about their future plans and what they want in life, etc. I of course stressed the importance of them having goals and plans to help guide their further studies and career searches, while in the meantime when I return home in a little over a month I plan on doing....what? We had a good laugh as well when I reminded them that the guest speaker at graduation had welcomed them to 'citizenship,' which I translated by taking them out to a REAL breakfast of chicken soup and chapattis instead of the nasty crap uji [porridge] they drank every day at school. Now I just hope that they manage to get themselves together and find some odd jobs so that they are able to pay school fees. Both of these two I am 100% sure will pass and be given an opportunity to continue studies, but sadly the 60-70 dollars a year school fees are a potential barrier.

On Saturday I got the opportunity to have a final meeting with the teachers I work with at Butimba TTC. We agreed to have a final emergency meeting since their schedule had changed and this week they will be going into the field to do a teaching practical. So we met at 8pm and, well, it was just a great time. I have been with these folks, about 40 in all, for the entire year, and we just have a blast during our sessions. We have interesting and thought-provoking debates, teach each other funny games and songs ['icebreakers'] to prepare the students before beginning a lesson, and then learn some really interesting topics. As I final lesson I decided to talk about the importance of self-esteem, and we literally did a 'pat-on-the-back' exercise where each person taped a piece of paper on his/her back, and then we all walk around the classroom and write positive things about each other on our backs. They got a HUGE kick out of it, and who doesn't like being told how great you are, you look, you teach, etc? It was very confidence building, and a nice way to end our time together and get a little reminder of the group. I joked to them that 10 years from now, if they are having a shitty day or their boss is an asshole or something, they can take out these pieces of paper and say to themselves, "oh yeah? well for your information, i'm attractive and creative and ask good questions in the classroom and play soccer well too, so shove it."

At the end of the period we all had sodas and distributed teaching materials, which they were INCREDIBLY grateful for. We finished at 11:30pm, and I slept in a room at the college. I will try to post a picture of all this in the coming days. All in all it was a very rewarding experience, and I'm hoping as I wind up other projects in the coming weeks that everything is as positive as this was. I know a lot of these folks will go on to do great things, and to help thousands of students, and I really couldn't help being very proud of that. I could tell they were excited to get out and get some real teaching experience, too. The environment of the teachers college is beautiful, right on the lake, nice weather, lots of rocks and trees, but the living conditions are - well - think about colleges in the states, and then imagine a developing country. My best friend Domi, who is now studying there, lives in a 'room' that has 15 bunk beds basically just lined up along the two walls, with a few tables and desks scattered around the room. So basically he has 29 roommates. Not much privacy. And his is the better situation, another of our friends was late registering and so he is in a room that, for all practical purposes, is simply a barracks. Total of 40 bunk beds, 80 people, no tables or chairs or desks or dressers. The food at the college is, well, it's food that is prepared for 1,000 people so I think that says it all. And the rules are pretty strict, monday-friday the entire day is scheduled, and friday/saturday night they have to be back at the college by 5pm. But all in all, these people seem motivated and excited for an opportunity at further education, and it's really fun for me to be surrounded by urban, intelligent, young people [no offense to all you old, stupid hicks].

To end on a random note - I have become accustomed to seeing men, old young and middle-aged, bathing in the lake. In the afternoon, in the middle of Mwanza city. Just bathing. Completely naked, surrounded by people, cars zipping by [although they are somehow far from the road], LOADS of mamas nearby doing their laundry... This, for me, is NORMAL. Oh boy, am I nervous to go back home...

During this past week, I...

2006-10-27T12:55:00.000+03:00

... ate yet ANOTHER one of my papayas. oh so good. only 2 left now, then I move on to passion and bananas.

... crashed 2 big church revivals in town. it happens a lot, you hear loud music and see lots of people gathered around a rather spartan looking building, but the unmistakable signs [hands in the air, man on platform sweating profusely, most people just walking by] tell you that it's a churchy thing. well, these churchy things, i didn't 'crash' them, but mainly was there to make sure nothing incorrect was being said about AIDS, condoms, etc. I almost had to step in during one of them, which would've created quite a scene, but the preacher-guy [who was very angry, loud, and hoarse] changed the topic.

... i had a 15 minute conversation, at 10pm, with 2 masaai dudes who guard a resthouse near me. one of them, willy, has really good kiswahili, so we had a nice conversation about a variety of interesting, though not too complex or wordly, topics. the thing is, this entire conversation felt NORMAL, even though he has the big saggy earlobes, and wears traditional clothes, and carries a big stick and knife, and is what one sees in national geographic pictures. it was completely, totally mundane.

... celebrated Eid-al-Fitr with my muslim friends, many of whom [example a conductor of one of the daladalas], have noticeably lost weight after a month of fasting. I may not have been successfull in actually fasting along with them, but that doesn't mean I can't help eat the feasts they prepare to celebrate the end of Ramadhan. pilau, goat meat, salads, fruits, sodas, good times.

... also celebrated Eid by going to a disco and spending about 3 hours having drunken conversations [well, I was sober], with my neighbor the driver and my neighbor the electrician. Does this sound like something a 24 year old does or a 45 year old whose name is Jim? But to my credit my friends are my age, and we talk about fun youthful things [take a guess], and laughed quite a bit.

... ALSO celebrated Eid by making the tisk-tisk noise of shame and disgust at little children. you see, in the afternoon, before the 'grown-ups' disco, there was a kiddie disco. well some of these kiddies are pubescent and pre-pubescent young boys, and they have dirty mouths. really dirty mouths. i can only hope they don't do even a quarter of the stuff they say [i doubt they do, i seem to remember having a big mouth at some point too...]

... started exercising by bicycle since my foot hurts. not bad, only it's pretty hilly here. one day i got into a fun race with some of the bicycle taxi guys, i was coming up a hill and passed one of them, and he clearly decided 'oh no, this white guy is NOT going to just pass me up a hill like this' so he started hauling, and then we passed about 5 more guys and they all thought the same thing, so we ended up looking like some sort of rabid pack of wolves on bicycles [odd image] busting our asses up this hill, and then down, and then up again, all the way back to my house. in the end I won, though can't gloat too much because if you compare my Trek to their, um, "bicycles", i clearly had the advantage. oh, and i think i've said this before, but their legs really really do look like horse legs. all muscle, no fat. scary.

... reunited with an old friend, 'icy-hot' [due to foot pain]. oh, how I love thy aroma, and the shock it brings to other people's faces since any room I enter the strong, STRONG smell comes with me.

... had a good chuckle at the kiswahili/english mixtures i've heard, including: magrupu [groups], kutiki [to 'tick'], majonsi ['jones' aka to be sad], etc.

... attended the graduation at Missungwi Secondary school. It was a very nice celebration for the 72 students who had just recently finished their national exams [which, I must say, featured several questions on topics which i had taught them, most prominently - no pun intended- the male reproductive system]. When i arrived at the school, I was ushered into the principal's office with the 'special guests', the district commissioner and other big potatoes, even though I don't consider myself special at all since I go to the school on a regular basis. joys of being the lone foreigner. There, at about 10am, we were treated to sodas and liver. No, it was actually really really tasty! so I did my best to schmooze with these people for half an hour before we entered the large [unfinished] hall for the ceremony. In brief, the graduation featured lots of very nice songs performed by students, though many were excessively long, and all featured a separate song to usher the students up to the front, then the actual song, and then a 'leaving' song to be sung as, well, as they were leaving. A tad excessive. The graduating students presented a muslim chant-thing to thank their teachers and fellow students, and I was humbled and shocked and really happy [almost teary] when they referred to their 'American' teacher and all the students started hooting and clapping. A feel-good moment. Then there was a clever drama about the importance of education, the choir sung out the names of students to receive their certificates, thousands of pictures were taken, kilos upon kilos of bananas and rice and meat were consumed, and all-in-all a good time was had. I couldn't help thinking though, and i shared this with another volunteer who agreed, that I feel much more scared for these kids than I did even when I was graduating. It is a tough life here, and they are in for some hard times. But I do my best to encourage, and am thrilled to see several of them talking positively about their next steps.

... continued to enjoy myself, as my time here winds down. the next week has lots more in store, including a final lesson and party at the Teachers Training college on saturday night. parrrty!

dar

2006-10-19T08:45:00.000+03:00

Oooh, pictures! More of them!

This is clearly a sign that I am in Dar es Salaam, at the Peace Corps office, with fast computers. Because it only took 10 minutes and not 10 hours to upload these shots.

Descriptions:

Top: Nutrition seminar for a PLWHA group. That is the group, and the other picture is of the FANTASTIC food we ate that day. We had tea, chapatti, eggs, and sweet potatoes for breakfast; yogurt mid-morning; lunch consisted of rice, pilau, potatoes, fish, meat, beans, spinach, tomato salad, a nice dish made of cassava leaves and peanuts called 'kisamvu', and fresh fruit; and then for an evening snack we had juice and peanuts. We were stuffed by the end of the day, but it was all for the sake of learning about balanced diets and food groups...

Bottom: A picture of Dominic and Deus, my two best friends, at the home of their parents. I wrote about it in a post called 'Ng'ombe' or 'COW.' In the photo, we were mocking the door to their shed where they store drying tobacco - a grass shed with a padlock on it. Right.

The last one is the back of the head of the daladala bike driver who took me on a one-hour+ ride to a nearby [well, relatively nearby] secondary school. It's a pretty wild ride, but this guy really did a good job of getting me there, quickly, and comfortably.

-----------------

Ok, so as I said, I'm currently in Dar-es-Salaam. We call it Dar, which in English kind of sounds like a noise meaning 'duhhhh' but here it's a normal part of our vocabulary. Peace Corps flew me down here from Mwanza so that I could attend, as an official PCV 'delegate', a party that celebrates the 45th anniversary of Peace Corps. This was a fairly special event, since Tanzania [then Tanganyika as it had not yet united with Zanzibar] was one of the first countries to become involved with the Peace Corps.

It's nice to be in Dar, one last time before I come to, and leave from for good, the biggest city in the country. The party last night featured lots of special guests, including some of the volunteers from 40+ years ago, who were really fascinating to talk to and hear their thoughts on how the country has, and has not, changed. The party also featured a pretty fabulous buffet of delicious foods, salads, and desserts. And an open bar. Woo-hoo!

The trip has also given me a chance to take care of a bunch of admin stuff, forms to fill out etc etc, before coming back in December. I'm still in the process of looking for work as I apply for and then wait for graduate school [if you know of any good jobs, preferably not behind a desk, let me know please please i will thank you so much please please].

Dar is a bustling city, as evidenced by what can be described as a semi-brawl trying to fight for a spot on the daladala bus to get to the office this morning. And the nightlife is nice too, last night I went to a casino with one of my friends, where we managed to play blackjack for a good hour or so. In the last 10 minutes of that hour I had amazing luck and managed to walk away with about 50 bucks!

It's also a small world - yesterday I ran into, I mean just randomly bumped into, a really good friend from Missungwi. It was surreal, think random Stevens Point bumping-into in NYC.

I had some other stuff to write about in an entry, but it was about Missungwi, and despite seeing this guy I am still in big-city mode, so will wait to write about the nuances of village life until I actually return to it, which will be this evening when I get back on the plane and head home....

witchy

2006-10-16T16:52:00.000+03:00

I forgot an interesting cultural observation in my last entry. Last week I kept feeling really tired in the early morning. I told this to one of my friends, Sam, at the Misungwi market, and he gave me the clearest, most logical, occam’s razoresque answer anyone could have given – obviously, he said, there are witches who are waking me up at night and taking me to farm in the fields without my being aware of it. That accounts for me being so tired when I wake up – I’ve been digging with a hoe all night! Of course I dismissed this as silly, but a LARGE portion of Tanzanians here believe in ‘uchawi’, which means something along the lines of witchcraft. Mostly doing bad things to other people, no ‘good’ witches. So I told him the following day about my sweating in the middle of the night. “See!! See!! I told you. You are getting your ass worked out in the fields, but you still don’t believe it!”

------------

Speaking of scary people, fictional or otherwise. Well, the otherwise. There are always young men in Mwanza who do daily labor work – lifting heavy objects, carrying bags, selling bus tickets. Lots of manual labor. But there are a handful of guys who, it seems, specialize in loading and unloading corn and wheat flour from trucks into a few big wholesale stores that then sell these huge [100 kg? 80kg?] bags to smaller store owners. Well, these guys by the end of the day look pretty terrifying; if I were a kid who had never seen them before I would cry. They are, of course, really big and burly given the heavy, labor intensive work they do. But they are also covered, head to toe, in white flour. They don’t look Caucasian white, nor albino white. They look SCARY white, like they have been possessed by the Pillsbury doughboy or the Michelin man or something.

--------------

Mwanza is an interesting contrast in terms of activity and relaxation. Even with the street vendors gone, it is still very lively in the downtown and there are people everywhere. They seem to be pretty evenly mixed, however, in what they are doing. Half are REALLY working their assess off to make a little money. Like the flour guys, like the store employees, like the people inside the main market selling foods and fruits and the like, and like the bus stand guys trying to find potential travelers. Well, sometimes the bus stand guys. Because the other half of the people in the city seem to be asleep, literally. In between carloads, or bus departures, or when there just isn’t any work to do, or maybe just when they are TIRED, lots of people here sleep. Under a tree, on a bench, under a parked semi truck [seriously], anywhere where there is shade and a little breeze and no one who’s taken the spot yet. It’s sort of depressing sometimes, both in respect to the lack of employment opportunities, and the fact that it looks so tempting and nice and comfortable that I have a hard time preventing myself from going and sleeping too.

---------------

My good friend the carpenter, Sele, has about 10 young men who work with him at his workshop, sanding wood, building tables and chairs and stuff, and cutting hair in a small salon/hut next door to the carpentry stuff. I trained about 5 of these guys on condom usage so that they could sell condoms in the haircutting booth, since I noticed that these booths [and there are many of them] are a popular place for young men to 1) get their hair cut, which is frequently, and 2) hang out and, well, just hang out. So what better place to put condoms, somewhere they will feel free and comfortable to purchase them. Plus, they usually sit around the barbershop at around 4-7pm, which I presume is right before the time they all split up to go look for girls. So the main guy I trained on condom use – well, he ran away. Why run away? To avoid 30 years in jail. 30 years for what? For getting a primary school [grade 4] girl pregnant. Whoops. I’m 90% sure he knocked her up before our little lesson on condoms, and granted she started school late so she’s older [about 16-18] than everyone else in the school. But still. I try to advise these guys as often as I can, ok, if you must have sex, use a condom, and come on use some common sense, DON’T sleep with students! We’ll see if he is able to come back….

--------------------

I am in Mwanza, and tomorrow am going to Dar for a celebration of the 45^th anniversary of Peace Corps – no silver 50, but still not bad. It’ll be a nice few days away from Missungwi, a change of scenery, and then when I get back on Friday I’ll be ready to settle in for the last 6-7 weeks of my service here before I leave for good. Time is flying, emotions are increasingly mixed, but it’s feeling good to know that I’ll be moving on. Friday will be graduation for the form 4 students I work closely with at the secondary school, so that will help, I think, as some closure for myself too. It’ll be nice to see some other people moving on to bigger and better things too, not just me.

No warning required

2006-10-11T14:19:00.000+03:00

YIKES, who is that guy, and what is he doing?! Oh, it's me, i'm sweaty, but that can't stop me from being happy because i'm holding a papaya from a tree that I planted myself, with a seed from a nice fruit that I ate. And since taking this picture, I have eaten, along with my neighbors, the papaya in question. It was delicious, red, sweet, smooth, perfect. I wanted to show how big they can get, this one would probably sell for maybe 40-50 cents at the market [vs way expensive in the states, from what my mom tells me]

ANYWAYS,

I’m in a better mood than I was when I wrote my last post. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t still believe most of what I wrote, or that it wasn’t accurate, but that I’ve consciously made an effort to put it aside and look for the positive, even when I’m faced with constant reminders of the not-so-nice sort.

Today I had a good chuckle, which I needed. Last night I felt hot and tired, and woke up in the middle of the night DRENCHED in sweat. It was really, really disgusting, it felt like I had just got out of a bath and hadn’t dried off. Except sweat, not water. I was too tired to take a bathe [not as easy here as just jumping in the shower, i.e. no running water] so I took off the sheet and put a towel down and was just about to fall asleep again when I heard a loud drumming. We are in the middle of the Muslim holy month of Ramadhan, and the commotion I was hearing was a group of people who walk around at midnight and wake people up to remind them to eat again, since as soon as it hits 5am they have to fast until about 7pm. Important for them, but kind of annoying for me. But I was so tired it didn’t really matter anyways, I passed out after a few minutes.

This morning I woke up early and went running again. It was nice, my friend Alex whom I run with was sick yesterday and so I ran by myself, which is NOT nice. I was trying to explain this to someone, and they asked ‘oh, so you talk a lot and stuff while you run?’ and the answer, honestly, is no. After about the first 3 minutes, I’m huffing and puffing too much to talk. But just running with another person, especially someone who is a bit better than you, is very encouraging and pushes you to go faster, farther. And let me be honest, if I’m stuck doing something that’s exhausting [exercise] or boring [some classes, for example] or tedious [some work meetings, for example], I like knowing that I’m not the only poor soul being tortured, but that I have company.

So the laughing part – we had just gotten back from our run, about 40 minutes, and were stretching in the soccer field while greeting students passing by on their way to school [kind of embarrassing for me as their teacher, but oh well, I just greet them in English and they get nervous and embarrassed too and we’re all in the same boat]. We were stretching and we saw, for about the 5^th day in a row, two young men working together to push a trolley loaded with pretty large bricks. We had spoken to them a few days ago, and discovered that they were hauling 3,000 bricks from our neighborhood up to a plot near the school [‘up’ being a key word here]. Each load they can carry 60 bricks, so do the math – 50 loads. They start at 4am and go until maybe 10am. One of the guys said they’ll probably finish tomorrow or the next day.

But today, I had a question for them. You see, they had challenged us after our run a few days back that what we were doing wasn’t really exercise, but that their work was real exercise. I agreed that they had very hard work, and just watching them you can see their muscles straining while pushing the trolley. However, yesterday I saw something which puzzled me – a young man pushing a trolley DOWN, from an area up near the school, to a plot in our neighborhood. He was having quite a difficult time, but mainly in trying to slow the card down so it wouldn’t get away from him. In other words, the young men we had been speaking to are busting their asses to take bricks up, and someone else is hauling bricks down. This struck me as very comical, stupid, and kind of sad. This morning I asked them why they don’t just trade bricks with the other guy, so that the bricks ‘up there’ get moved to the plot ‘up there’ and the ones in our neighborhood get moved to the plot nearby. They looked baffled at the logic of this, and finally answered that ‘well, some of the bricks differ in size’ which I guess was true, but still. At least, I guess, some people are getting a little bit of income and keeping themselves busy in the meantime – better having them do SOMETHING than just sitting around all day, right? Even if it means hauling bricks/crossing paths…

Yeah, the run was good this morning. Alex joked to me that my leg muscles are starting to develop, I joked back that they’ve always been there I just hadn’t been using them so much. Which I think is actually true. Yesterday I was too tired to ride my bike around after the run, so I spent the day hiring bike taxis. These bike taxi guys, whom I’ve written a little about before, have SUPER muscle legs. Yesterday one of these young men reminded me of the movie The Triplets of Belleville, which by the way is very good and you should see it, which parodies the Tour de France and shows the crazy bicycle guys and their skinny but very toned legs. Kind of freaks me out, looks to much like a horse or something, skinny ankles but huge thighs…

Other news/highlights:

Fresh juice is now available in Misungwi! Despite a plethora of great fruits, people here don’t seem to want to pay to drink fruit juice. Soda, they drink by the crates, but juice? No. But finally some people are starting to catch on, and one store now sells various fruit juices. Yesterday was pineapple/passion/banana mix. It was delicious. Apparently the guy who makes it has been doing pretty good business, so I expect I’ll be able to enjoy it for the rest of my time here.

My neighbor bought a new daladala car, so now he has two. I swear, every day there is another car that starts doing the Missungwi/Mwanza route. I wonder sometimes how they still do business, and whether the profit isn’t shrinking rather drastically. Actually, I suspect that may be part of the reason my neighbor DID buy a second car, because the profits off the first were lagging, so he figured he up his stake in the general all-car daily take. I offered to be the driver or conductor, but they laughed at me. I said I’d bring a TON of business, since everyone would want to ride in the white guy’s car, there would be a high level of amusement. Seriously, one of my good friends [Dominic’s brother] wanted to be the conductor, but I advised him against it – most drivers and conductors have not-so-great behavior, i.e. drink and especially women [every night, often someone different from yesterday]. But yeah, a new car on our street is certainly exciting news in a small town like this.

Form IV students are taking their exams. Already they’ve been asked a question on birth control, a topic I taught them, and today they take the biology test where I’m SURE there will be questions about HIV, STDs, reproductive system, or something along those lines. We’ll see if they were actually paying attention to anything I was saying…

I've been watching '24' with some Belgian girls who are in town doing research. It's a pretty good show, we're halfway into the 3rd season. I am greatly looking forward to January, a month I plan on devoting to three things: the couch, the fridge, and a Netflix subscription [hint hint welcome home present]

Are you bothered by a persistent good mood, positive demeanor, cheery outlook on life? Maybe I can help!

2006-10-07T14:34:00.000+03:00

As I stated in a previous blog entry, my emotions are pretty erratic these days, varying from fond sentimentality about my time here to harsh cynicism. For example, this past week my period at the Teachers Training college went very well, and all I could think was how great it was to work with such energentic, enthusiastic people - and all the better that their energy will hopefully go to helping thousands of young kids! Then the next day I heard a new rumor about one of the teachers I know sleeping with his students, and while visiting a guesthouse I saw a primary school teacher walking OUT of his room, in the middle of the day, followed closely by a secondary school girl [and once they left I went in to snoop, found no sign of condom usage - this girl clearly thinks she will not pass her exams and thus is free to get knocked up since she will be done in 3 weeks], and the more I asked people the more I gathered that many/most teachers sleep with many many students. And people know about it, and it's normal, though it's still considered unethical, it happens all the time. Hell, I heard [and of course this is all rumors and speculation which is a dangerous dangerous game] that there was a secondary school teacher who purposedly tried to get a student pregnant because he really like her - what can I say, it's sort of a complement here. It was all very disturbing.

I saw one of my coworkers again the other night at a bar, with his wife. I've seen them out together before, and have always been THRILLED when we bump into each other, because why the hell should a man NOT take out the woman he loves and is married to, to enjoy some drinks and music and relax together?!!?! It seems to happen so rarely here. But then within the past week I've seen back-alley [well there are no alleys here but you get the picture] conversations and heard a lot more stories, and have come to the conclusion that about 20% of married people here are actually faithful to their spouse. And it may be much lower. And if the husband has a job which is far away from his wife, it's almost a 100% guarantee that he's cheating. I used to try to trick myself by saying, well, ok, but not so-and-so, they don't do it. But no, almost everybody cheats and sleeps around. Well, this is cynical me talking, but this side of me can be pretty convincing.

Then there are the daladala conductors. I always knew they were a pretty rowdy bunch, but several of them have gotten used to me and we talk when we get free time, I give them advice, teach them about condoms, and give their heads the quarter-turn screw they need to get them on straight and live a decent life. But they become unscrewed again. Yesterday, I was coming back from a nearby village and one of the conductors was drunk as I've ever seen anyone be here. And he of course picked a fight with another one, traded some doosy insults, and started a fistfight that ended in blood all over the place, a car full of screaming children and mothers, a crowd of no-good young men [it was friday market day], and just an all-around not pleasant situation. Oh by the way, blood-inducing fist-fights may not seem a big deal in the states, but if you knew how many women these conductors sleep with, the last thing you would want is their blood on YOU. I'm sure several have HIV, statistically there are a total of around 20 so I would say 2-3 are positive. So there's that, plus they sleep with students too, and smoke a lot of pot, and just kind of seem to have given up on 'life' and are prepared to party until their death. Depressing.

And finally, everyone's favorite topic, AIDS. People die of AIDS here all the time, that's not new. And i've been working with several groups of PLWHA doing nutrition seminars to talk about balance diets, in order to prolong lives and improve the health of these people so they can take ARVs effectively and go about their daily work and lives. Again, not new. But this week for the first time I saw someone whom I've known since I arrived here, and who was a perfectly normal looking person, seemingly deteriorate into late-stage AIDS. He works in Misungwi town, and while he hasn't said anything, people suspect he has HIV since his first wife, second wife, and 2 children he has born by his third wife have all passed away. He's about 50 years old I'd say, short, and was a healthy body weight. Apparently he used to call himself 'mtombaji wa taifa', which is crude langauge for 'the national fucker' i.e. someone who has sex with a nation full of young women. Pleasant, no? I saw him yesterday, and he looks about 1/2 the man he used to be. If he was once 160 pounds, I would literally say he is now about 80. And all this weight loss has happened in the past 2 months, when he stopped coming to work because he was feeling ill. I almost cried when I saw him, but didn't. I cried a bit at home when I thought about his wives, his children, and all the other young women he's seduced.

One of my papayas, the biggest one on the tree, was stolen. Heads will roll if/when I catch the culprits, even if they are little kiddie heads, which I suspect they might be.

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WOW, what a sad, sad entry today!! But i'm really not feeling that bad! I went running again this morning with Alex, and it was terrific - the past few days I've gotten an increasing number of the 'damn, you are sweaty!' comments, but today I barely even broke a sweat until after we returned!! And I just had a great lunch in Mwanza town. AND I ran into Jonathan, a young man who makes and sells greeting cards here in town. He was very sick for a while, and himself looks to have gotten skinny, but is still full of energy and was SO happy to hear the news that I found a store to sell his cards for him back home [and that we're giving him 4 times more than what he asks for on the street here!]. I will try to get some pictures of the cards he makes up on the blog, but in the meantime they will be sold somewhere in Stevens Point, my mom has more info on this. This kid [he is older than me but very small, poor diet, he was a street boy here in Mwanza] has got moderate talent but monumental determination and perserverance, and it's so rewarding to help him out.

Ok, so that's a little cheerier. I'll wrap it up on that, time to go back to Misungwi, but first search around for fruit, since there isn't any at the busstand anymore...

the doctor is out

2006-10-05T13:47:00.000+03:00

So one result of the move of all the street vendors in mwanza town is that the doctor is gone too - the guys who sold me apples and carrots are mostly moved from their former station, though yesterday I bumped into one of them who sold me some delicious apples [i've already eaten 4 of them]. He didn't call me doctor though, I think they only do it when I'm leaving the office and it looks more doctorly of me, not when i'm just walking around Mwanza like any old schlep.

Speaking of Mwanza, I recently got a chance to visit a part of town where a lot of people live but I'd never been, mostly because it is a collection of sort of scattered homes that go STEEPLY up into the rocky hills of the city. The area is called 'mabatini', which means 'at the corrogated steel roofing' I have no clue why. It was pretty interesting, parts of it reminded me of Russia [though not the Soviet housing blocks], but in the sense where a home can look like shit on the outside but be really nice inside.

I was lucky to have some young guys in town for the past month on vacation from their advanced high school studies. Tuesday i hung out with them until around 10pm, way late for me, just shooting the shit and hanging out. And talking about things that, while not rocket-science, were at least somehow thought provoking. It was nice, I miss that sort of stimulation sometimes, an earnest exchange of ideas about interesting and important topics. But now they're gone, so back to same old same old.

I'm still running. I go with Alex and his younger brother. Alex is an electrician who is still pretty young, and both of his parents have passed away, so he is the breadwinner for like 5 younger children. He works with his younger brother together to make some money. He has a stuttering problem, which I think may be psychological, and he likes kung-fu. Him and his brother are exercise fiends and they've been routinely kicking my ass, but I'm doing a decent job now at least trying to somehow keep up with them, and they're really fun to hang out with. He's also dating one of my students at the secondary school - i'm not thrilled about that, but at least I'm in a position to advise him about condom use and marriage and planning his goals/budgeting etc. Oh, and he's a good dresser so we're going shopping in Mwanza next week. Now any of you who know me know how much I hate shopping, but I haven't bought any new clothes for 2 years - yikes! and handwashing is damaging on the fabrics. So the time has come.... i might actually be loathing that more than our 6am runs.

changes

2006-10-03T15:37:00.000+03:00

lots of things are changing lately.

Yesterday i was told 3 separate times that i'm getting fat, which is somehow true. That, combined with poor sleep and just general lethargy in the evenings [a few weeks ago I turned into my once-fat-now-fit father by sleeping on the couch for 2 hours before dinner] has produced another recent change - I'm running again. Albeit a bit late in the game since i only have 2 months left here, but I've started running with my friend Alex every morning at the butt-crack of dawn. It's going well, this fat man still remembers a thing or two and I get the job done, though people are never ashamed to point out WOW you were breathing hard GEEZ you were sweating a lot...

But in order to cut the fat a bit, I've also decided a change in diet is appropriate. I was eating, shall we say, a LOT. Breakfast alone was big bowl of chicken soup [entire chicken breast] 2 chappatis a glass of yogurt and a plate of fruit and sometimes a hard boiled egg. So now I want to try to eat NOT a lot. There are a few of my good muslim friends here in town who really want me to fast with them for a day, so I think next weekend I will give it a shot [I also plan on wearing my man-skirt, a 'kikoi' that muslim men all wear in zanzibar, so that I really go all out on this day. I asked if that would be offensive to the muslims in the community, people said hell no they'll be thrilled! sometimes political correctness in the states can go too far...]. Though I'm not sure how much fasting really helps in terms of weight loss. I went to my arab friends house, the one I wrote about a few weeks ago, for his last supper before returning to Oman for a few weeks. We broke the fast with tons of fruit, sodas, potatoes, and meat. I stuffed myself silly and then had to hire a bicycle to take me home, even though he lives maybe 5 minutes walk away...

I think my big problem is snacking. I snack a lot, fruits, sweets, pastries. That will probably be changing now too, especially when I go to Mwanza town. The place where I was accustomed to purchasing all my fruits and popcorn and etc is no more. You see, all over Mwanza town there were people who had set up informal huts to sell their wares, or they just brought a bucket and a stool and plopped themselves down everyday to do business, like at the main busstand [they call them machinga in Kiswahili]. They sold fruit, phone accessories, shirts, shorts, underwear [always fun to see people buy their underwear in a crowded bus stand or street] electronics, razors, cards, fancy gift bags - EVERYTHING. And now all these people have been kicked out of the downtown and moved to areas a bit outside of the city. So i'm a bit lost now, not sure where to buy some of my daily needs. Not to mention the city seems to have lost a bit of the oomph and life that it once had [though, i must admit, these street vendors did block sidewalks, make annoying calls and comments, and many were not honest businessmen and some downright pickpockets]. Not only is that not allowed, but the sale of charcoal for cooking has been banned. Which kinda sucks, since most people in the city use charcoal stoves. What this means is that any given night in Misungwi, which is on the main road from villages into Mwanza, if you pass around 9pm-4am you see guys pushing bicycles with HUGE loads of charcoal, walking over 50 kilometers into the city in the middle of the night [and making a FORTUNE when they sell it...]

other changes in brief:

one of my good friends was thrown in jail for getting piss drunk, threatening to kill his sister, and then trashing her restaurant. that sucks. i think he has a mental illness.

another of my good friends just had a baby. he is about 26 years old [my friend, not the baby] and his fiance returned from her studies at university in january to live with him. yes, that's right, if you do the math he got her pregnant within days after her return. dude, why not chill out and enjoy life without noisysmellyNEEDY kids around? oh well, not the culture here. baby's name = elvis

the second of my two close teacher friends has left Misungwi to go study in Mwanza at a Teachers college. So basically, the two teachers I was close to are gone. Which kind of sucks for me, but I'm very glad for them to get the opportunity to further their education, so i can't be that upset. Plus i see them every wednesday when I go there to do work. friends name = cash

there's a cute little boy at the Misungwi market named Dominic, but everyone calls him Domi. he's a rascal, and unlike most kids is completely unintimidated by me. he also got into a bad habit of asking me for money or candy before even greeting me. yesterday for the first time we had a nice 2 minute conversation [kiddie talk of course] without a single request. that's a change I can handle.

electricity on tuesday, how nice! tomorrow i will be in Mwanza and will write more...

papaya!!

2006-09-26T15:20:00.000+03:00

On Monday I finally got to taste what I had been waiting for since I first arrived... a piece of fruit from my own tree!!!

I am amazed at tropical fruit, obsessed with it, and a little upset at how Tanzanians take it for granted. Even in relatively dry Misungwi, fruit grows SO easily here, mangoes in season are a dime a hundred, and papaya trees bear fruit in - well, not that long as you can tell. I planted a SEED of a tasty piece of fruit that I had eaten sometime around last October, and less than a year later, I got the opportunity to eat an ENORMOUS piece of fruit, red and delicious. I of course shared it with my neighbors, as there is no way I could finish it, and all were impressed at the size and quality - it was nice. Papaya in the states sucks, so I'm getting as much of it here as I can. I swear, it seems like almost everyone from home who comes here says they don't like papaya, but then if you try it here it's like a whole different fruit- it's actually good.

Speaking of food, and eating, two topics which I devote quite a substantial amount of time to on this blog [but in which I feel completely justified doing], the Muslim holy month of Ramadhan started on Sunday. So no eating for Muslims until sun-down. OUCH. I couldn't do it, I like eating too much, not to mention drinking water when the sun is scorching because you're on the freaking equator.

I was actually having an interesting and sort of cynical conversation today with some coworkers. One is Muslim, but I ran into him at the canteen where we both got lunch. He said, and I quote [but in English], "I'm fasting from sin, not from food." I thought it was an interesting point, since I know plenty of Muslims who are fasting but are sure as hell sinning in a myriad of other ways [Christians for that matter too, I love seeing who is Catholic on Ash Wednesday, and thinking to myself "pious, huh, coulda fooled me"]. Oh well. I'm just waiting for the month to end on Idd, when there will be lots of celebrating and drinking.... whoops, I think God is shaking his head on that last point

The start of the holy month probably explained why there were few people at the disco on sunday night, even though there was a famous musician who came to sing [poorly, since he was drunk and stoned. at one point he just squatted on the floor and sang into his hands for a minute, i asked my neighbor if he was singing or taking a dump]. It was pretty tame, which means I should've gone home, but not, I stayed until 4am. This weekend in general was ROUGH. On friday night there was a party to say goodbye to the old [and I mean old, the guy is retiring] head of the District. So I partied and drank with all my coworkers [boy was THAT interesting, though I have to admit they did a good job playing not just old people music] until about 2am. Food was at midnight and after that it was listening to speeches, i.e. falling asleep. So I grabbed my last free beer and then skipped out and went to the disco to meet up with some friends, and got home around 4am.

On Saturday I went to yet another function attended by most of my coworkers, the wedding of the younger sister of the District Executive Director. Somehow I had been in Tanzania for 2 years without going to a wedding, this was my first. Weddings are an interesting cultural phenomenon, but let me be brief in my observations: very structured here, everything went by a down-to-the-minute schedule [though, of course, since it's Tanzania, we were about 2.5 hours behind schedule the entire time]. We drank, we gave gifts, we listened to speeches [and a pseudo-sermon given by a relative of some sort, the groom is a born-again]. We ate fried food, we danced, I danced with my bosses, I danced with THE boss which was kind of fun but kind of bizzarre because I had actually headed in her direction in order to try to dance with her youngest sister who was a bridesmaid and is fairly attractive. The only people who didn't dance were the bride and groom. Nor did they stand up, nor did they say anything, nor did they do much. This is apparently typical. They just sit up in front and look sad like they are going to prison or something, or are on trial, and the bestman/bridesmaid wipe the sweat off of them because they are eating fried foods and under glaring videocamera lights and aren't allowed to leave the room [I half expected to see catheter bags if I lifted up the tablecloth on the head table]. All in all it looked like the night was meant for us, the guests, at the expense of the people who were actually doing the work, i.e. getting married. But hey I'm not complaining, I had fun!

So 3 late nights in a row was a bit too much, now the town is chilled out because of Ramadhan, so it's time for me to chill out too. It is 3pm right now, I'm going home to sleep, then go to the market to sit around for awhile, then to my friends house to sit around some more, then to my neighbors house to eat, then home to sleep again. Now THAT's what I call entertainment.

ghetto fab

2006-09-23T15:00:00.000+03:00

PICTURES!!!
Top = children with weapons [see recent blog post]
Middle = me deep frying a vat of around 50 fish for transport into the interior of the country
Bottom = me, a young woman in a nearby town, and her son BRIAN. poor kid will have his name butchered his whole life, unless he shortens 'buhlayani' into 'bula' which is actually a common nickname...

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It rained this past week. Monday. For about 2 hours. That was glorious, first rain in I believe about 3 months. Provided much needed water, people were buying it for almost 500 shillings a bucket [20 liters or 5 gallons for 50 cents! expensive!] because one of the main pipes in town was broken. Anyways. It's hot again now.

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An interesting site, an interesting man, an interesting idea:
http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/mvp/

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What is new. On thursday I did a fantastic seminar on nutrition for a group of about 30 PLWHA. They are more amazing everytime I meet them and talk to them. They chat, they laugh, they joke about their AIDS [the way you look so good today, no way you have AIDS, i dont believe it!]. And they EAT, alot. We spent the day talking about the food groups, balanced meals, using spices, and how to adjust diet when you are sick. And we ATE. Tea, egg, bread in the AM, then some yogurt. Lunch included: potatoes, rice, pilau, beef, one whole fish per person, beans, cabbage, spinach, salsa, 'kisamvu' which is very nice leaves cooked with peanut sauce, and a big slice of pineapple.

Boy did we eat. It didn't help either that we had planned for 40 people but only 30 were able to come, so we had leftovers [well, we SHOULD have had leftovers, but needless to say we didn't, we ATE].

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I have been talking a lot to students of mine. The other day I sat with a big group of them in a small barbershop hut and did a condom demonstration [using a cucumber, lots of jokes on how much the condom stretched, it was a BIG cucumber...]. Then I did another condom demonstration at my house for like 5 more guys. And I've been visiting a lot of them at their homes, helping especially the ones who are about to take their exams and graduate and most of whom probably will not continue on with schooling.

It's been a bit of an eye-opener to see how most of them live - they call it 'ghetto life'. Ghetto means that they rent rooms, each student has a VERY small room in a VERY not nice house, often without electricity or safe doors/windows. There are frequently 4-5 students all renting rooms in the same house. They clean, cook together, study together, and it is a pretty intensely routine life. Of course this life also puts them at risk [have I written about this before on my blog? it seems like EVERY aspect of life here puts people at risk for HIV infection]. They are newly self-dependent, newly free of parental controls, and hormoes are RAGING. I'm convinced there is quite a bit of unsafe sex going on, and am trying to convince them to knock it off, or at least put a box of condoms in the 'ghetto' for everyone to take from if need be.

I do like talking to them though, they frequently ask interesting questions, and every once in a while i have a geniunely interesting conversation with a student or two. I seem to run into them wherever I go, though a favorite hangout is the 'mangotree' bus stop on the road which is just a few hundred meters from my house, and where we often gather for some porrige [think like a smooth breakfast oatmeal that you drink] and to just hang out. I will be sad to see them go when they finish in October, though the ones that I really like, i.e. the ones that don't sleep in class and actually seem to give a damn, will probably [if they don't get HIV] go on to do some amazing things in their lives...

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Oh, speaking of 'just hanging out', I never understood why so many people just sit in the road until 8 or 9 pm not doing anything. Why not go home and rest? Oh yeah. Because at home there are 5+ kids who are all screaming their lungs out. I am still baffled why people here are shocked if I say that I might not have children. 'Why on earth not?!?!' they say. 'Dirty, noisy, smelly....' is typically how I begin the answer to that question.

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My aunt just recently emailed me a good question about HIV infection. I get asked the most random questions from all directions all the time, and have begun to expect it - i'm afraid i'll be a bit lost when I return home and am no longer the 'expert' anymore, the 'go-to guy', the 'guru'. Oh, and the 'doctor'. I got called that again today, and as I sit here writing in the internet cafe I have a bag full of 4 dollars of produce.

But one of my favorite yet most annoying questions is about HIV infection and tongue kissing, i.e. making out. I was at a school assembly at a nearby secondary school and they asked this, and it was probably the 30th time I've been asked, and I kind of lost it and got really sarcastic. I said something to the effect of this. HEY LOOK. Noone gets HIV by tongue kissing. OK it's true that if you have cuts in your mouth and your girlfriend has cuts in her mouth and blood is coming out and you decide to kiss each other you might get infected, but WHO THE FUCK KISSES PEOPLE when there is blood spilling out of their mouth?!?! Common sense here folks!! The real kicker, and I told them all this, is that people are so paranoid to ask me questions about using razors at the hairdressors or tongue kissing, but they seem PERFECTLY ok having unprotected sex at a rate that would shame even the noblest of rabbits.

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A new cell phone company officially opened up service in my area last week. They did it as any company looking to promote their merchandise around here does - they come with their big open bed semi truck, blast some local music, and have attractive men and women doing amazing and, to me, incomprehensible things with their bodies [mostly their waists and hips]. I have never seen a bigger crowd in Misungwi, and probably wont see the likes of it again. Of course very few who came to watch probably bought a cell phone card, but at least they got some good laughs...

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Time is up - hope to post some more pictures the next time I get a chance, and tell a story about one of my good friends who is, drumroll, an ORPHAN!!! Isn't that exciting and positive? Seriously though, while no OPRAH material he is somehow inspirational and somehow tragic. Will gather my thoughts on this topic before I write, as it is a serious issue here [I would say half of my friends my age, i.e. 25-30, have at least lost 1 if not both parents].

PEACE

too crazy

2006-09-18T11:36:00.000+03:00

no electricity during the daytime except for sporadic generator-induced email access - this was announced last friday, and is reportedly effective for between 2 weeks and 2 months while they fix a machine or something in Dar es Salaam...

super busy week this week - 2 discos, 2 seminars for PLWHA on nutrition, 2 funerals this past weekend and probably at least 2 more this week, a meeting/intervention with one of my young friends [aged 22] who has 2 wives and 2 kids and 2 much time on his hands anyways [and who likes meeting young college girls, who are 2 weeks away from arriving to start the term, thus the 'intervention'...], and 2 weeks left before the form 4 [seniors] at the secondary school take their examinations

it's all a bit too crazy, but seeing as I only have about 2 months left here, I'm too excited nonetheless...

I got billy dee! I got billy dee!!

2006-09-12T15:14:00.000+03:00

The title of this post is a quote from the movie Big Momma, starring Martin Lawrence.

I saw it on Sunday at my friends house. That's right: I'm white, I'm in rural poverty-stricken East Africa, and I watched a popular African-American movie with my good friends who are... wait for it... ARAB. Omani, to be precise.

I really like them. First, moreso even than Tanzanians, they force feed me a lot of food. GOOD food, food with spices, and really soft nice pieces of meat. And the 'man of the house', Hamadi, is also a recent arrival. He is Omani, though he has visited Tanzania before he hasn't stayed much. He came to marry one of the women who was in the house. He knows Swahili [apparently a LOT of people in Oman and Yemen and UAE etc know Swahili - I'm not sure. A few of my friends in Misungwi told me that a lot of Arabs who were living in Tanzania and Zanzibar left after independence and when the Arab countries started better exploiting the oil riches back home...] but he does NOT know prices, so people try to screw him over almost worse than me!

Second, they are nice to talk to. They have lots of opinions about Tanzania and the Arab world and life in general that seem, at least from my perspective, to be refreshingly free of the bias or preference for one group/place over another. They shoot straight and tell it like it is, and in a really comedic way, too.

Third, they have a lot of movies. Of which I've only just started watching, though I caught bits of Lord of the Rings last week and plan on watching Big Momma 2 sometime in the next few days..

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On Friday I went, for the first time, to the Disco in Misungwi town. It was actually a pretty fun experience! I hadn't gone yet because I had heard stories of brawls and commotion and just general unpleasantries, but people say it has 'chilled out' since I first got here, and a few famous artists were coming so I figured I'd check it out.

It was a little bizarre going to a Disco where EVERYONE knows you and you know most of them. In a way it made it awkward - I saw some of my students who DEFINITELY should not have been there, and were behaving in a typical rebellious teenage way that portrays utter confidence in their actions but for us 'old folk' we cringe and shake our heads and think "in a few years, they'll regret THAT... and THAT...". I also saw some teachers and coworkers, most of whom asked me to buy them beers [um, no]. And I ran into a friend of mine who has a family - a wife and 3 month old baby - and who brought the whole crew along with him. Friday night, 11:30pm, I'm dancing to 'Candy Shop' or some other raunchy song [is Mystikal out of jail?!], and I turn around to see someone passing me a wide-eyed 3month old kid. HUH?!?! I danced/bounced him around for about 20 seconds before I got freaked out and just passed the kid along to the next person who was willing to take him [no worries since everyone knows each other, well worries about kidnapping. I think the act of taking a small child to the disco in the first place is a tad disconcerting....]

But knowing everyone also made it kind of fun. Since the disco is in the village, it is much more difficult for young women to come - they must stay at home with their parents and do housework, and it would be MOST inappropriate for them to be seen at the disco. So it was mostly men. But even the women who were there, since we all knew each other, it had a very relaxing and friendly atmosphere. People were drinking, talking to each other, enjoying life, dancing for the sake and enjoyment of dancing. Not like Mwanza or Dar, where the men seem to enjoy going from introduction [which is optional] to nasty hip grind dip hump etc etc in less than 5 seconds, despite the protest [or with occasional encouragement] of the women [prostitutes would be the exception].

So I had a good time, and people were really happy to see me there. In general, actually, people seem really happy to see me these days. On Sunday I greeted more people than I think I ever have in my life, i.e. a one-day record. Even last night I had gone out and was walking home late, and had everyone who passed call out greetings to me [not very helpful, though, since I have no clue who they are - I don't think it's racist to say that it's harder to tell black people apart at night than it is to distinguish that someone is white, no?]. Well, greetings or asking me to 'sell' them the young white Belgian women I was with who are doing their studies here for the next month [I told them they're not for sale, and if they were these guys couldn't afford it - pretty inappropriate huh?]

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I saw some men destroying an old, traditional mud-brick home. When I came upon them there was one wall left standing, and the preferred method of demolition was for 5 guys to stand next to the wall and start pushing. It was practical but also incredibly amusing to watch - I wanted to take a picture but they actually had the wall down by the time I got my camera out...

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Young men like hanging out at the small wooden huts that act as hair-dressers. Well, barbers, since all they do is usually shave their heads [most of them are too young to have facial hair, which Tanzanian men start growing later than American men, and if they DO have it they are too proud of it to want to shave it off]. It's fun to stop by sometimes and greet them, and yesterday I decided to do an experiment and took my good fundi friend, who has a barbershop next door, and taught the young guys who work there all about CONDOMS. Very informal classroom, just giving them the basics and answering their questions, but it was highly enjoyable and is one of the more rewarding aspects of my work [though often unreported in my work summaries].

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My time here is winding down, now less than 3 months, and I'm liking it here more every day.
It's gonna be hard to leave, but I think in the end I will be ready for it. I need to come home, work a little, go back to school, and start thinking about the next job I can get that will bring me back here...

hustle never sleeps

2006-09-08T12:37:00.000+03:00

Electricity - it's back!! Well, back to the glorious 4 days a week scenario, instead of the completely confusing, unpredictable, sporadic, and ill-timed 2 days a week [including Sunday] that had been the schedule for the past few weeks.

Rumor is that Mwanza is getting a break on electricity because the city needs it for the fish packing factories. Lord knows there are lots of small-scale Tanzanian businessmen and women who are trying to earn a days living, but no need to worry about them, what is clearly important is that rich white people in Europe get their much needed fresh-water fish. No but seriously, it's so important for these little guys, so at least they've cut us ALL some slack and provided us out of the city with the same rationing schedule as the big guys...

What is new. I just came from the office, where I managed to get all the work done I needed to but did NOT buy the eggs I had wanted to buy. Friday is always an interesting day, as it's the main weekly market, and so walking around in the middle of our office building are nice but slightly slow and definitely not 'city' ladies carrying big buckets of tomatoes or green peppers or spinach on their heads. Or eggs. I wanted the eggs, since the villagers sell them for 70 shillings but here in town I buy them for 150. But I swear, and I think i've written about this before, the women who work in the offices must be able to smell these people coming or have some 6th sense that I don't have, because all the good stuff, including the eggs, never makes it to my door....

This week has been full of a lot of, um, 'down-time.' I'm sure I've written about this too, but in Tanzania there is a LOT of time spent 'waiting' for something, anything. Yesterday I went to visit some secondary school teachers whom I had trained in a seminar, and spent a total of 3.5 hours waiting for various forms of dilapidated transportation [plus another hour walking when there were no other options but my legs]. The day before I spent an hour waiting for the generator to start working so I could send an important email, although that hour was MUCH more exciting than the ones waiting for cars because I spent the whole time talking to a guard at the internet cafe and office building, a friend of mine who took a long vacation and just came back, and who happens to be a Mmaasai. So I got updates on his family [he has like 50 brothers and sisters, since his father has 6 wives], his business [he walked god knows how many kilometers recently to sell some cows in Kenya, which itself is shocking not for the distance but that a Maasai would want to sell his cows...], and got a chance to ask some questions I'd been wanting to ask for awhile. His Kiswahili is much better now, as is mine, so we actually understood each other! I don't have the time or energy to explain much here, but here's a website that I haven't looked at but may be informative.... http://www.maasai-association.org/

The day BEFORE that, I was once again sitting around waiting for a car to go to Mwanza, though this only took about 45 minutes. And I was sitting with some people I know, and eating boiled maize, so that helps pass the time. And I saw one of the wildest [well, not wild, but crazy, or not crazy, but difficult] things I've seen here - a mama who was riding a bicycle while, without hands, carrying a huge bucket of fish on her head. I asked around, turns out they have competitions for this, and this mama placed 2nd last year in the whole of Mwanza region. She can apparently ride her bicycle even while carrying buckets of water. That's heavy, yo, in case you hadn't figured it out. And she doesn't even use her hands to hold it up there. Very impressive, and picture worthy...

Sometimes I feel like Tanzanians do a lot of things that, were Americans to try, we would severly injure ourselves. Such as buckets of water on the head. And opening soda bottles with teeth. And eating sugarcane as a dangerous activity in and of itself.

Another example - Tanzanian children are trusted highly, more than I think they deserve to be, with large machetes and knives. They use them to cut... wait for it... sugarcane, as well as to peel potatoes, other foods and vegetables, and to just play with. Oh, and razors for cutting their fingernails. I have countless pictures of children smiling, holding sugarcane in one hand and a big machete in the other, both pressed up to their faces, always wearing big smiles. Of course it helps that most machetes and knives here [do we even USE machetes in the states?!] are dull as crap, I couldn't even cut myself if I, well, if I tried really hard to cut myself. Although I did see some rather clever guys at the weekly market LAST week who had turned their bicycles into grinding stones and, while pedaling, sharpened the knives of market customers [who, of course, came to the market WITH THEIR KNIVES so that they could eat sugarcane, or just in case they might need a big enormous blade for something...]

But fortunatley for the children, I never hear about them cutting themselves. Usually they die of malaria, or AIDS, or lack of basic drugs, or scalding themselves on the open-flame fires that dominate everyone's yard [read: kitchen] in the evenings, but rarely knife fights or accidently self-impalements. Which is kind of surprising, because if there's one thing that children are better at then wielding knives that are half the size of their torsos, it's dancing. The children here can dance like Shakira at the age of 5, gyrating their hips and stomachs and stamping their feet and having a grand old time. And sometimes I see these children dancing while they are holding onto these sharp instruments of torture/food preparation.

Back to waiting - the car that I eventually got in was a 'daladala' also called Hiace, which has written on the side 'HUSTLE NEVER SLEEPS'. True dat. Inside, it had a plush blue velvet interior with a stuffed tomato hanging from the rearview mirror that reminded me of my mothers sewing pincushion. And we listened to hardcore Tanzanian rap and Celine Dion, alternating one after the other.

FOR EATING

2006-09-03T14:35:00.000+03:00

I've written about the topic of food [chakula in kiswahili, meaning 'for eating'] before - beans and farting, ugali, killing animals, etc.

Oooh, speaking of which, there is a great new butcher in town. Good meat, good selection. But if you want 'steki' [nice, boneless meat] you have to get up early to get any.

But I think I have yet to write about the PASSION of eating that is so frequently on display here. I've thought about it several times in the past week, for the following reasons:

EATING WITH HANDS: most of the food I eat is with my hands. Ugali certainly is, as is meat. When i go to eat at my arab friend's house [the family is Tanzanian but of Omani descent - thus they are called 'the arabs'], they eat EVERYTHING with their hands, usually rice.

I was eating over the other day and we had rice and chicken, with our hands. I find food far more enjoyable when it is eaten with your hands [refer back to the entry I wrote about the snobs eating fried chicken with a knife and fork]. It tastes better, you eat slower [with rice at least], and the actual art of shoving a handful of food into your mouth with your hand just seems much more dramatic, and thus interesting [vs the subdued melodrama of the knife and fork elitists].

Maybe part of the reason it seemed much more emotionally charged is that we were also discussing topics like Hezboullah, Hamas, Osama, and general Arab-American relations, while shoving the food rather forcefully into our mouths so that we could resume the discussion. These arabs are not big fans of the 3 groups/peoples i just listed, and are rather fond of Americans [though NOT the ones in charge]. They even gave some visiting relatives from Oman a picture of me, after I managed to speak in Swanglish with them for 20 minutes.

BONES
Everything we eat here that has bones [cow goat sheep chicken duck fish] we eat with the bones still inside/attached. I've gotten used to this, and don't mind it as much as I did at first, when I was still used to the American-style of pre-prepared, de-boned, eat-it-in-5-minutes-and-get-back-to-work type cuisine.

Fish bones kind of suck though. NOT very passionate, as you are constantly spit-spit-spitting to try to get them off the tip of your tongue and onto the table.

But cow or chicken bones - MAN, do people here love them. They say that to cook the meat without the bones deprives you of the flavor, and wouldn't have it any other way. The other day I was next door and we had chicken [rare, it's expensive these days, as people have harvested their food and are not hungry, so they have less incentive to sell chickens for low prices to buy corn for dinner]. I'm used to the art of gnawing at chicken bones and sucking out the marrow, but the youngest neighbor boy literally sat and gnawed at a bone for a good half an hour after dinner was over. This is a little guy who REALLY enjoyed and appreciated that meal.

SUGARCANE
Anytime something special happens, there's gotta be sugarcane. Wedding, celebration, holidays, the weekly markets. Invariably there are piles of sugarcane, people walking home with canes taller than they are, and the ground is littered with the spat-out, dried-up remnants.

For anyone who has never seen someone eat sugarcane, it is really a spectacle that needs to be seen to understand. It is hilarious.

I was given some the other day when I went with those Arabs to the weekly market. I brought it home and gave it to the neighbor kids. They immediately went to town, using their teeth to first RIP off the outer shell, then BITE off a big chunk of the flesh, suck on it, and spit it out. The room got quite, and the only sounds that could be heard were slobbering, gasping for air, and the RIPGNAWBITE onomatopoeia that are inadequate to fully describe the pure rapture of sugarcane consumption.

------
I'm hungry. All I had for breakfast were more sweet potatoes and chunky milk. As per routine, will now head to town restaurant, probably for roast liver, cooked spinach, beans, and rice, spiced with some hot pepper....

BONANZA!!!

2006-08-31T16:07:00.000+03:00

Brace yourselves, for there are about 5 posts that follow, dated differently but all posted today. An explanation:

· Electricity rationing continues, though not following the normal schedule.

· Internet continues to be a problem in Misungwi town.

· I had to spend Monday at the office all day, waiting for people to turn in reports for me to type and bring to Mwanza.

What does all this together mean? That I had an unexpected day at the office WITH electricity, and not much to do. I did, however, have a ton of stories from trips and encounters over the last few weeks that I had yet to document, as well as a bunch of pictures.

The result is a slew of posts that do a decent job of getting me caught up on a busy few weeks.

BUT oh no, it's not over yet!! This week has been full of dramas, medicine men, drum dancing, and other general craziness. More to come next week.

MINE

2006-08-30T16:00:00.000+03:00

I’m listening to Tanzanian music, called Bongo Flava, which is like rap/hiphop/pop with an occasionally rasta/reggae feel. I’ve written a bit about it before, some of the songs are good, a lot are bad. I feel that FAR more have a better message, though, than in the States, and often the most popular songs tackle issues like AIDS, poverty, etc. The song I’m listening to know features two popular artists who are arguing over a woman. Each one claims that she is actually his lover, and not the lover of his fellow rapper. The funny thing is that the chorus, translated, goes something like this

‘I say, this dame is mine, and she is currently carrying my child…..
No, I disagree, she is my girlfriend, and the one who got her pregnant is ME and not YOU.’

Can you imagine American rappers fighting over paternity?!! As in, fighting over claiming and not denying paternity?!! Not exactly a typical argument you’d hear in the states.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, men here in Tanzania also have a very different way of showing affection for one another. For two men who are friends, it is very common to hold hands and walk down the street. Men often joke around when hanging out and wrap arms around each other. Sit on each others laps. And, a few times, I’ve seen grown men straight up hugging each other on the street. Young, old, they all do it. And why not? Why shouldn’t friends hold hands and joke around?

Clarification: It is only a gesture of friendship, as homosexuality is illegal, culturally not accepted, and in general not practiced here from what I gather.

At the same time, signs of affection between a man and a woman are incredibly rare and taboo. Which in part may be because it is just much less likely to actually see men and women walking around together – most women are at home with children, chores, and cooking, something the men are not excited to help out with. On any given evening here in Misungwi, if you were to walk down the main street, I would say 80% of the people hanging around are men. The ones holding hands with each other.

If there are unmarried women holding hands with men, they are often assumed to be promiscuous/prostitues. Part of me is VERY grateful for a lack of PDAs that plague the streets back home - holding hands is fine, but make out at home please. But at the same time, part of me recognizes that if men and women could be as free to express love and friendship as men are allowed to with each other, there would be a lot less hiding, ducking behind bushes, and other dangerous behaviors that can lead to multiple random partners and increase the risk of pregnancies, HIV, STDs, and general gender inequality. I sometimes cringe even when I see a man and woman holding hands [especially within a 100 meter radius of a bar] as I see a high likelihood of the man pressuring the woman to have sex, possibly for money, and probably unprotected.

And unfortunately, while rappers may rap one thing, not all Tanzanian men will fight over illegitimate children, especially if they are married to someone else. And even if they do claim pregnancy, there's no assurance that they'll do jack shit to help the mother raise the kid in the first place. Hey, I guess the cultures have similarities too....

YO! YEH!

2006-08-29T15:49:00.000+03:00

Last Friday, I went to the village. AGAIN. Another village. Not cow village, but a small town called Sumve which was highly developed by Roman Catholics – there is a huge hospital, two large schools, and a church – but not too many houses or stores, much smaller than Misungwi. The main problem, or you could say adventure, is that the easiest way to get from Misungwi to Sumve is by getting on a bike taxi and riding for about an hour and 15 minutes. So that’s exactly what I did.

It was a great trip. I will start out first and foremost by saying that, as per Peace Corps rules and regulations, I most certainly wore my bicycle helmet for the entire duration of the trip. Absolutely.

A bike taxi is just a young man with his bike, on the back of which he has installed a carrier and put a nice pad on it to carry a passenger. They are all over Misungwi, I’d say about 200 in total. It is the only realistic way to get around the town and to nearby villages, since noone has cars and you’d need a all-terrain vehicle anyway to get most anywhere ‘in the bush’ that you’d want to go. Typical fare around town is 200 shillings [20 cents]. I take them occasionally, but mostly just try to encourage these guys to keep at it, as they do incredibly difficult but important work, and are not very well respected despite what I consider a very noble effort at self-employment and self-dependence.

The young man who carried me is a good guy, and was one of the bike riders I was with a few weeks ago in an AIDS seminar, so he likes me, respects me, and was happy to haul my fat ass over mountains and rivers and all kinds of crazy little paths. I would have gotten completely lost on my own, but he has been driving his bike taxi for 4 years so he knows the way [he’s 22 now, has been doing this since 18].

It was a great trip. The scenery is breathtaking, though pretty dry and desert-like at the moment [it's a bit hard to get a panoramic view because of the bike guy's back, but it was still nice. I’m trying to figure out how to post a MOVIE clip, which is hilarious and gives an impression of how these bike rides go]. I got lots of great reactions from villagers biking to and from the main market in Misungwi, lots of YOOOOs and YEEEEHs which are the loud screams of surprise that Sukuma men use and absolutely crack me up.

I arrived, met one of my friends whom I had been working with at the Teachers Training College, and got a tour of his school [the school is an all-girls school, and when I left they were doing their laundry. probably the most colorful scene i've seen in Tanzania, second only to a Masaai market - both dominated by reds] We headed back in the early evening, another great ride and even better so since much more of it was downhill than on the way there, so I didn’t quite feel as bad for my driver. For his effort, 2 and a half hours hauling me around, I gave him twice the going rate, a whopping 5 dollars. Far more than most make, and the equivalent of my daily salary.

COW

2006-08-28T15:45:00.000+03:00

Last weekend I went to yet another village – cow village. The name of the village in Kiswahili, Ng’ombe, means cow. There actually weren’t many cows that I could see, though there was a soccer field full of shit, a telltale sign that a rather large herd had slept over the night before on their way to Mwanza, eventually Dar es Salaam, and finally someones dinner table.

The reason for the visit was to finally see the house where my best friends Dominic and Deus grew up. Dominic, Deus, and their 10 other brothers and sisters [one of whom, Mama Leo, is my neighbor and I eat dinner at her house almost every night].

No, I didn’t accidentally hit the 0 key. That’s right, a total of 12 kids [11 still surviving]. Kind of mind boggling. The first one was born in 1960, the last in 1992. That’s 32 years of childbearing for Mama Ndembeje, but she looks surprisingly resilient and active.

Just for fun, we did a bit of calculating. I added up all the people in my ‘clan’ on both sides of my family. In other words, both of my grandfathers, their wives, their children and their children’s spouses, and their grandchildren [myself included]. Total was 35 give or take a few.

Then we looked at my friend Dom’s family. Dominic is a few years older than me, his brother Deus is my age. If you take JUST his parents, and then count the number of grandchildren they have [i.e. children of Dom and Deus’ brothers and sisters], they alone number more than 40. Yikes!

Most of the family has already dispersed. Mama Leo lives in Misungwi [my neighbor], as does her younger sister who studies at the high school. Another younger sister still lives at home with her husband, as does the youngest brother who still studies in primary school. The father was away on business, but many of Dominics other brothers and sisters still live nearby, creating an atmosphere that the entire village was basically one big extended family. It certainly made it complicated to walk around and get a sense of the place, as we had to greet everyone and eat 3 or 4 times [sweet potatoes and tea mostly], and I was constantly being introduced to relatives of some sort or another that I couldn’t keep straight.

The house where they grew up is very small. They like to tell me stories about how the young kids and parents sleep in beds, but then when the boys got big enough they got kicked out of the beds and slept on animal skins on the ground. They also used to herd the cattle around to look for food. We got to see the house and outdoor kitchen etc. I also got to see some of their means of income, namely cattle pen [not many cows though, around 6], and a tobacco shed [will try to get a picture of this up soon - they all started laughing hysterically when I pointed out that they had placed a padlock on a building made of straw which could easily just be broken apart in order to enter…]

We sat around mostly, because that’s what you do here, especially in the villages. Of course it would be nice to chat with the people you are visiting, but they are usually busy preparing food and the likes for the guests. Dominic’s mother spent basically all her time in the kitchen, so I just hung out with Dom and Deus. They killed us a chicken, which tasted really, really good.

We then spent the afternoon on a tour of the village – churches, health center, primary school, various rock formations that offer great views of surrounding environments, etc. It was all rather ordinary, but ordinary in a very peaceful and relaxing way.

By far the most entertaining part of the day was when we were all sitting around back at the house. There were about 8 of us sitting around chatting when a group of 4 women came by the house to visit. As they approached, the greetings started.

And kept going.

And turned into one of the funniest moments I think I’ve ever witnessed.

Imagine each one of these four guests exchanging elaborate greetings with each of the 8 seated residents. Not a simple ‘hi’, but a ‘Hello how are you? I am fine how are you? I’m great, how are things at home? Things at home are good, are your children well? Yes they are well, and how is everything here?...’

MATHEMETICIANS: project. Someone do the calculations as to how many greetings were exchanged, as I don’t have enough time or brainpower to do it here. Lets say there were 4 of them and 8 of us, each of them exchanged greetings with each of us, and lets say a ‘greeting’ is a question/response, and that EVERY person offered 2 greetings as part of each exchange.

I had a difficult time holding up my end of the greetings exchange, as I was holding back hysterical laughter, but I managed to calm down enough to be the last to greet the visitors [in Sukuma, of course].

MEETING

2006-08-27T15:41:00.000+03:00

After the camp, I had 3 days of AMREF meetings. A pretty drastic change in energy levels and activities, but interesting nonetheless. One was a community mobilization meeting designed to inform communities of the importance of Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health programs and education. For perhaps the first time here, I actually felt like everyone in the meaning was on the same page, was committed to the small job the committee had at hand, and competently represented the department from which they came. It was exciting, in a dull-meeting sort of way.

The second meeting was with the Council Health Management Team. Doctors, nurses, in charge of STDs and VCT and PMTCT [prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV], and antenatal clinics – all the bigwigs were there. Even the head doctors of the District and Region were there. Big potatoes.

The meeting was again mostly uneventful. We were discussing Youth Friendly Services in health care facilities here. Man do we take things for granted in the states. AMREF is collaborating with the TZ government to try to teach health workers things that I would take for granted: not demanding bribes for services, not being judgmental towards youth [YOU want birth control? You’re too young to have sex!!], keeping confidentiality and privacy [BIG issues here], etc.

There were some interesting English/Swahili language issues in the meeting, a few mistranslations, and somehow the African nation of Mauritius was assigned the characteristics of being #1 in the world for tourism and for condom usage [huh?! Someone will have to do research on that, but I highly doubt both attributes. Mauritius does, however, have a much lower HIV infection rate than Tanzania, which is what brought this discussion about].

By far the most interesting part of the meeting was when one of the research presented findings on a ‘Simulated Patient’ exercise. Basically, the took 4 young people from Mwanza town and taught them how to act out 3 basic situations: 1) a young man wants condoms 2) a young schoolgirl wants birth control and 3) a young schoolboy is afraid he has an STD and wants advice. They were then sent to various health facilities with hidden microphones to see how they would be received and what services would be provided. INTERESTING!! Oh man, I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so fascinated by something I’ve read here! These young people had all kinds of experiences – some places they received great treatment, confidentially, privately, by health workers who knew their stuff. Other places – oh man. They were charged excessively for services that are supposed to be free, they were asked in front of 10 village elders what their problems were, were denied condoms because they were uncircumcised [but first they had to STRIP in front of a nurse to ‘prove’ if they had been circumcised or not!], etc.

I spend all my time teaching young people to go to the health center to get advice, get condoms, get treatment [so many young people here with STDs! as high as 1 in 3!]. They roll their eyes sometimes, but typically agree. I can see why it’s easier said than done. However, there really are some FANTASTIC people here who are doing TERRIFIC work and making a difference in a system that, all things considered, has come a long way in recent history from what I can tell. It’s just the few bad seeds that really spook these young men and women from getting services that could be life-important.

On a similar note, after leaving my meetings I met up with some of my fellow AMREF co-workers, who work in a mobile VCT [voluntary counseling and testing unit]. They basically drive around all over the region to set up and do HIV testing. It is incredibly popular, especially since people do believe that confidentiality is low and are afraid to test for HIV and the health center close to them.

They were in town, and decided to go to the high school. The students went nuts!! So many of them listened attentively to advice [much more so than when they listen to me in the classroom, received counseling, read materials on nutrition and protection and the like. And around 50 or so students actually got tested. I stressed to them that this isn’t a game, it’s serious, and they should only get tested if they are ready to accept the possible outcomes. Statistically, of the 500 students at the school [300 boys 200 girls], probably a handful of boys [3-8] have already been infected with HIV, and even more girls [maybe even 10-15]. It’s terrifying. A study done in Misungwi in 1998 found that 5% of 15-19 year old girls had HIV. And the numbers go way up when you look at both men and women between 20-34.

So some of the students tested, which is great. Even more importantly, I think, is that they ALL saw the testing unit come, saw some of their friends testing, and confronted it as something that is important in their lives and is reflective of some of the major issues they will face as they begin exploring and entering adult life.

I’ve kind of become hopelessly dependent on the youth here, emotionally, in terms of having a prayer of changing directions and reducing HIV infections in Tanzania. There are lots of middle-aged men and women with shit behavior – they sleep around, they don’t use condoms, and especially older men: they really like to have sex with young girls still in school. It’s disgusting. But even though these youth are growing up in this environment, I have hope that things are different, that this generation is different, they’ve grown up in the era of AIDS and have seen it’s effects, and they can and will rise to the challenge and start turning things around. I really, really need to believe this.

CAMP

2006-08-26T15:17:00.000+03:00

Ouch, I’m disappointed with the lack of response to my SCREMBO challenge. I’m not sure why I found that word so amusing, as there are phonetically written misspelled English words all the time here. I guess it’s just that I’ve never even heard anyone use the word when referring to eggs [scrambled], so I was shocked that anyone would even understand what scrembo means in the first place…

After nearly a month, I’ve given up on growing out my pinky nail. It’s something quite a few Tanzanian men here do. I’ve tried to explore the cultural significance, at the same time sharing with very interested Tanzanians the meanings I’m familiar with from other cultures [i.e. East Asians who grew fingernails, all of them if I recall, as a status symbol to signify wealth, since obviously farmers would never be able to maintain them. The other meaning I’m aware of is pinky nail as a convenient method for snorting cocaine]. There seemed to be one hypothesis floating revolving around the very secretive tradition of some Tanzanian women wearing beads around their waist as a very sexual body decoration. Someone told me that the pinky nail was thus rubbed against these beads to create a sort of rattlesnake sound and provide stimulation. I’m unconvinced, and at this point leaning towards the theory of blind, ignorant imitation of other cultures. Plus it’s handy, because the meat here is really tough and there aren’t always toothpicks.

Catching up on news from the past few weeks, I spent the weekend before last helping out at a youth camp in nearby Usagara town. There were 60 some young people who spent the night learning about HIV/AIDS, watching educational videos, and trying nobly but not rather successfully to play Frisbee [I had a good time watching them, though]. It was a great opportunity for me to talk with some of these young boys and girls about various issues and answer questions that they had probably been holding onto for quite a while but were afraid to ask any of their teachers or any of the people who might actually have correct answers. And it was fun for me to just see young people having FUN.

But at the same time, I felt guilty. The camp members spent the night at the primary school talking, watching movies, and hanging out. I went home early, at 7pm, because I felt tired and not up for an all-nighter. Which led to the guilt. I can’t stand it here sometimes, the pressure can be excruciatingly intense. I feel like I’m always at work, 24/7, that just LIVING here is work. There are so many students teachers parents youth adults with so many projects questions activities lessons stories that I get overwhelmed by it all. Maybe there was a young boy at that camp who had important questions about using condoms, for example, and wanted to ask me when there were fewer people around. But I went home, so he didn’t ask, so now maybe he’s going to go have sex without condoms and could potential get a girl pregnant or get HIV. I think it’s a combination of how much work there is to do here, and how much importance the work has in terms the lives and futures of these people, that makes life here so heavy at times. It’s just one end of the spectrum of my feelings here, and it makes things rough.

The next morning I went back. On the way in, we passed by a small village that was having their weekly ‘big market,’ and I thought about how young kids at home in the States would be watching cartoons this Sunday morning, while young boys in this village were busy rushing up to our car with their wheelbarrows, eagerly greeting the businesspeople who had brought big bundles of goods to the market. These boys would gladly haul these bundles the 10-15 minutes to the site of the bazaar, for maybe a dime a trip.

The morning got heavier.

But I arrived at the camp and almost immediately felt much better. We played camp games [telephone, chain-tag, human knot type stuff] and continued with more lessons on STDs. There was time for Question and Answer, and informal discussions. One young man, a student at a nearby secondary school, had about 50 questions to ask me that clearly suggested he was sexually active and was NOT using condoms, or using them incorrectly. But he expressed interest in hearing what I had to say and getting some advice, which is all I can ask for when trying to do my job.

We also took pictures, a few of which are included here, which of course got them all VERY excited. I also found out that one of the young woman with babies [there were about 5 in all who brought children with them] had named her young son ‘Brian.’ Between that and the Dr. stuff, I’m not sure when I’ve been so flattered! It was a much lighter day, which I needed.

Some young people at the camp

Me being swarmed

Will try to get a picture up later of me and my namesake Brian, and his mother
[Just for extra clarification I am NOT his father...]

SCREMBO

2006-08-24T15:06:00.000+03:00

OK, contest: who can figure out the meaning of the title of this post? I'll give a hint next time if needed, but use your imagination and I think you can get it...

The electricity ration continues, and has started becoming irregular. Fantastic. Every night from 7pm to 7am we have electricity. On Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday it gets cut at 7am. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday are thus electricity days. Well, this past Saturday it was unexpectedly on, and now on Tuesday it was off.... so things seem to be all messed up again. Just another month or so til RAIN = RIVER = HYDRO = POWER.

Quick updates:
I have been running around like a headless chicken, my work schedule is INSANE.

Last Friday and Saturday I went to some villages with a local community group to teach about HIV/AIDS, I was brought along as the 'expert' but I think I did them damage because I'm not sure how many people believed the super random white guy who just showed up in their village...

Highlights:
Villages. Here that means rocks, a 'center' that might have a few stores and a few bicycle taxis, a few houses visible from the 'road'..... and that's it. It is BORING. But the crazy thing is that like 90% of the people in my area live in villages. They just live on farms and in houses in the bush, so it's hard to see them.
But if you want them to get together, you blare loud music in the village center. They come RUNNING.

I think two of the People living with HIV/AIDS that I brought together for one of my projects have fallen in love!! They came with us to tell people about their experiences [incredibly, incredibly brave] and were holding hands and virtually inseperable the whole time.

American aid, in the form of corn, has started arriving after a bad rainy season this year. I was shocked upon the first request for corn [why the hell would I have corn?!] but then it became clear. Though I'm not sure these people would ask me for it, since when does food aid come with an actual mzungu to distribute it?! It's definitely the least personal of all forms of help that I usually see, kind of like "here take this food now go eat and stop your crying, see, we're good politicians, we are helping you"

Everyone here knows EVERYONE. It is insane, it is scary. Because a lot of them are also starting to know ME.

I don't know why, but every time I do any sort of official activity or seminar or something, people really like taking pictures while we eat. Sometimes, if we take a group picture, people bring their food WITH them so that they can appear to be eating in the picture. Huh?!

I saw an old man when we were heading out to one of the villages who was wearing a Wal-Mart greeter's vest. He looked like he was about 80 years old. I see a lot of used clothes from the States that make it over here, and always get a good chuckle at how language misunderstandings can result in young men wearing 'worlds best grandma' shirts or old grandmas wearing one of those obnoxious teenage-girl shirts with 'princess' or 'total bitch' or something written on it.
When I saw the old guy, my gut reaction was HA, how funny, how absurd. But then I quickly realized, oh wait, he's probably about the age of the real greeters. Probably the most appropriate use of American attire I've seen yet...

Whew, not done, still lots more stories, but will have to wait for next week..

Dr. Highpants and the preachers

2006-08-17T13:52:00.000+03:00

It sounds like a band, it's not, just the only way I could title such a mishmash of subjects.

I was at the district office the other day, and heard for the first time a NOT behind-the-back joke made to someone wearing high pants.

Clarification: high pants is a style that some Tanzanian men seem to find rather fashionable. It involves someone, preferably with a large belly, hiking up their pants to about belly-button level or a little above, and then belting them so they stay up there. The large belly helps keep them up, and I actually suspect this style might have something to do with showing off already prominent midsections, as fat = symbol of wealth.

The joke was something to the effect of: a young man who has been increasingly hiking his pants for the last few months [he does not have a belly, and originally his pants were at normal level] recieving a warning that he might choke himself to death with his belt if his pants-raising rate keeps up.

----

When I go into Mwanza to my AMREF office, it is right across the street from the super-safi supermaket [safi means nice]. This is where all the expats and rich people shop. I rarely go in, since I can find most of the stuff for cheaper elsewhere, but there is also a group of young men who stand outside the shop and sell exotic fruits and veggies like broccoli, cauliflower, zuchinni, apples, pears, carrots, etc [exotic for Mwanza at least].

For my first year here, I rarely bought anything from them. But lately i've been buying a lot, especially apples, which I had sorely missed. But I dare say, I think one reason I've been more inclined to purchase from them recently is that they've started calling me 'Dr.' [in Kiswahili, 'Dakta'] Now, I can appreciate a good ego massage as well as the next guy, but I never thought it would sucker me into buying a whole days salary worth of apples.

Last week in town, they called me over [Dr! Dr! come buy fruit!], and I went. One of the young guys muttered under his breath "him? a doctor?! what kind of doctor could he be, he's only our age." His friend kicked him in the shins and called out to me, "Dr, Dr, come buy apples." I bought 10, at an expensive 500 a pop. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but THIS doctor plans on buying a lot more from these guys, as long as they keep our little charade up.

[Just to point out - as much as I liked being called Doctor, I have absolutely no intentions of putting in the minimum 5-10 years or howlong of hellish schooling to actually BECOME a doctor. I might, however, start walking around in a Doctors lab coat...]

----

My neighborhood church choir has been replaced by a neighbor who must own at least 6 of the minivans that act as bus transport to Mwanza. They are very quiet except when they pull into the 'garage' [yard] at night. In the meantime, the choir continued to haunt me - yesterday I turned on my favorite radio station to listen to some local music, and BAM their song was being played....

----

Coming back from Mwanza, I was feeling pretty good, and pretty full of myself [I had, afterall, just become a Doctor]. I went to the bus station to buy some small bananas and ran into a man with a bullhorn. Can you already tell this is bad news, people with bullhorns in bus stations? It is certainly bad news in the states, and sure enough, was bad news here. I managed to catch, just as I was paying for my bananas,.... "God sent AIDS as a punishment for our sins, and God can cure AIDS for those already suffering." He went on, trying to encourage people to listen and come to his church and get cured of ALL their ailments, including diabetes and liver failure and skin cancer and albinism [ok, so diabetes might be sin of gluttony, and liver failure alcoholism though I don't think thats a deadly sin, but skin cancer and albinism?! what is that, sin of sun-worship and sin of....being born?!].

I decided, against my better judgement on most days but WELL within my judgement as a Doctor, to confront him. I asked him just how exactly God cures AIDS, and just why exactly He sees fit to punish little innocent children who are born with HIV. I got a nice response, which was the bullhorn in my face and repitition of what he had already said. I tried to push the bullhorn out of my face and he looked like he thought I was going to hit him - he asked me to 'respect him', and continued. In the span of about 10 seconds, I had a crowd of at LEAST 50 people around me waiting to see what would happen next, many of whom were no doubt rooting for a brawl - who wouldn't like seeing the only white guy in a mile radius getting into a fistfight with a preacher?!

I asked the preacher dude for 10 seconds of my OWN on his bullhorn, which he refused. But he started moving away, and I decided to make do with what I had, and started shouting at the top of my lungs the truth about HIV/AIDS, and the most important messages: that we should all seek professional medical advice, test early, get treatment, and protect ourselves by abstaining or having safe sex. I fielded a few questions, including one from the Mama who sold me bananas, and then headed for my bus. It seemed like none of these people listened or believed what the man was saying, and looked to him for a source of entertainment and a way in which they can test their own level of sanity. Which was very reassuring for me, since they understood very easily what I was saying, and seemed to very much appreciate what I did, even if it didn't involve throwing punches....

-----

16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto

2006-08-16T15:32:00.000+03:00

http://www.aids2006.org/

wreck

2006-08-15T16:04:00.000+03:00

It seems the closer I get to being done here, the more wildly extreme my emotions are.

I see some of my students that I think have a future, or some of my friends that I haven't seen for awhile, or just a cute little kid, or I hear a little bit of news like some of my friends competing in a rap competition in Mwanza, and I get the hugest, dumbest grin on my face and can't help but to show how happy I am to have seen them/heard the good news.

And of course, the other extreme too. I was talking to one of my good friends who is an electrician, and I would say is about 25 years old. I recently bought him a soccer ball so that his team's resources can at least somehow match their level of play in upcoming matches [they are good, but just look at little raggedy]. I walked home with him after he had bought two huge sacks of beans, and he informed me that half were for selling and half were for use at home. You see, his parents are both dead, and he has 5 younger brothers and sisters to care for. He is the head of household. Only one of these younger siblings is old enough to work, he helps my friend out with the electrician business. The others are all in school.

I literally teared up talking to him, and felt pretty stupid considering he manages to keep his cool and stay collected most of the time. Although it seemed like he might have been starting to choke up too, when he said he'd better get going and kind of ran ahead a bit - I think if I had seen him even swallow heavily like he was upset or hodling back teaers, I probably would've lost it.

On Sunday I cooked tacos and ate them with Dominic, which was fun. Not as fun as telling everyone I could what I was doing though, since 'tako' in Swahili means buttock [just one though]. They were GREAT tacos. So great that, yes, I became somehow emotional about them and started thinking about everything i've cooked or eaten here, yada yada yada. I'm losing it, right?

It had been awhile since I had used the meat grinder, but I definitely plan on utilizing it more frequently in the near future. Meat is DELICIOUS, there is a new butcher in town who has greatly improved the hygiene standards in town and thus increased my comfort level when purchasing beef [not to mention I hear they actually kill healthy cows, instead of just the sick or old looking ones].

Yesterday was NOT a good day. It had it's ups, namely a lesson at the Secondary School where the kids gave compliments to each other [building self-esteem], and a few came up after class to get advice on rather personal issues which proved to me that, while these are regular teenagers with regular teenage problems in an unfortunately irregularly dangerous environment for teenagesr, they also have heads on their shoulders and were handling things in a surprisingly adult fashion. And talking about it, and that is a HUGE step here, as a lot of these issues [ok, you guessed it, it's almost always about relationships and sex] are not openly discussed.

But then for some reason the day went downhill. I just kept looking around me, at all the youth on the street, joking around, smoking, drinking [there was a promotional van that had driven into town to sell us vodka and gin], drunk old people asking me for money, coworkers of mine in rather unrespectable places, people not listening to each other, crumbling old buildings, the list goes on and on... pretty much everything I looked at looked like shit, pretty much everyone I looked at was doing something shitty or being a shithead.
The day, quite frankly, turned to shit. And I felt like shit, and felt shitty for feeling like shit.

My use of profanity here makes me seem angry, but it was really much more resignation that I felt yesterday. Anger yes, a little. But mostly sadness. I'm not sure if it's legitimately stemming from my surroundings, or more likely that i'm sad that i'll be leaving these surroundings in just a little over 3 months.

Yikes, could I really be this fragile?! I'm hoping this was just an isolated incedent, and that the next few months will be on the up and up full of soda drinking, picture taking, and all those others things that have made most things the past few yaers enjoyable.

Wow, I'm really glad I've finished writing this entry, I'm feeling MUCH less emotional already... just the way I like it.

ooooh, ahhhh....

2006-08-11T12:14:00.000+03:00

First, be amazed at the superspeed pace which I have set by posting again after only 2 days!

Yeah, I won't keep it up.

Second, ooh and aah over my new blog layout. What do you think? I needed a change, I was bored with the old one.

Third, here are a few pictures - albeit from a bit back - to admire. I have a flash disk now so I hope to get the chance to upload at least a couple with every post. The first one is me with my counterpart, Dominic, and his niece and nephew [Sato and Godi]. The second is me with a few Secondary School teachers that I had trained with my fantastic counterpart in early June. The third is me with some of my club members at the Teachers Training College in Mwanza at their graduation.

Back with a bang, huh?!

I am in Mwanza again today to meet up with another volunteer and discuss grant writing - and have some pizza. And maybe go to the casino, since it turns out none of the banks or travel agents will take 'old' american money [bills before 2000] but I'm thinking the casino might - when do casinos turn down money?!

I have amazed at how much Mwanza has developed in the last several months. Nearly all the roads that I use on a regular basis - to the bus stand, to my office, to the post office, and to the pizza place, were in TERRIBLE condition. Currently, 2 of them have already been improved and the other 2 are under construction! And there seem to be a constant stream of new 4-5 story buildings going up, additions being, well, added, and other general improvements made to make the city nicer and busier. It is quite impressive, and kind of makes me feel like I'm going to miss it when I leave. Even if I get to come back after a few years, I think it will look and feel like a VERY different place - something that, despite nostalgia, I think is a great thing for the development of the region and the people living here.

OK, it's pizza time. I'm stuck between pineapple or avocado....

[Jo, Luke, Mom - sorry I deleted your comments! But thanks a TON!!]

playing catch-up

2006-08-09T11:41:00.000+03:00

Habari za masiku jamani.
It's been a long freakin time, huh?!

I am finally back in Misungwi, and this time for good - I have about 4 months left of work before I head home, and I don't plan on doing any travelling between now and then. Time to hunker down and finish up projects, hang out with friends, and contemplate how I'm going to leave this wonderful place and return home where things have been going on without me - and quite a bit faster than they've gone on here - for the last 2 years.

I'll play some quick catch-up with my last bout of travels, again nothing too detailed but the general specs and my impressions, and from here on out I hope to get back to writing about the little things that make my life both exciting and boring and a bit more understandable. By the way, thanks for the encouragement from my Uncle for confirming that the blog fairly well conveyed what he saw on the video my dad took of Misungwi, and from my Aunt for confirming that my blog entries about poop are pretty darn entertaining. Unfortunately I don't have anything new on the poop front to discuss, but I doubt little that something will come up at least once before I leave :-)

So after my fantastic extended vacation to the Serengetti, Ngorongoro Crater, Zanzibar, Morogoro [all that with my parents] then Dar es Salaam, Morogoro, Udzungwa Mountains, Ifakara, Bagamoyo [by myself and with fellow vols], I started an even MORE fantastic journey, which was one by plane, with my great friend Meena, to return back to Mwanza. Hard to compare a 30+ hour busride that involves midnight dinner break and 3am border stop to a 1 hour flight where you are provided a cheese roll, free beer [I had 3 cans], and AC.

I stopped back into Misungwi just to check that everything was in order, and sure enough my house was just as I left it, with the exception that my banana tree has produced fruit! So I will gladly be eating bananas and papayas that I planted. However, my friendly but SNEAKY neighbor girls came over and cleaned out all of the passion fruit that had accumulated on the vine I planted, so will have to wait and see if any more come from that.

Everyone was THRILLED to see me back, and it felt really good to be welcomed and missed so much. Of course I had to tell them that the next day I would be leaving again for a week, but they didn't ask too many questions and we just had fun catching up on what had been going on, what was new [not much, go figure].

On Sunday, I headed into Mwanza to start my long-ish journey to meet up with some friends in Uganda for vacation. I say long-ish because it may seem long to some, but it actually was pretty tolerable for me, since I managed to break it up nicely into legs. The first leg was an overnight boat from Mwanza to Bukoba.

When I was on the boat, I started talking to some young men who work for the ferry company. They seem to be working their asses off, and they say they make pretty good money since they get paid for all hours they are on the boat, which is pretty much all the time, even when they are off-shift. I said this was a good thing - they are making money, and there aren't all the tempations of Mwanza town to spend it all on, so it's a good opportunity to save up money and prevent dangerous habits.

Or so I thought. Turns out these young guys all have their own cabins on the boat where they sleep. Well I also happen to know that there is a whole room full of 3rd class passengers on the boat [I usually go 2nd class, which is a bunk in a sleeping room of 6], and the 3rd class passengers have no bunks and a pretty uncomfortable overnight ride. Also turns out that a lot of them are young women or girls.

I think you all might see where this is going - these girls are uncomfortable, naive, have no future goals or plans, and just want a nice place to sleep for the night. These young guys are young, they're, well, guys, and they're stuck on a boat all the time. The only positive thing that came out of this whole discussion is to learn that the ferry company provides these guys free condoms. Too bad they don't use them too much because they tend to know most of the women they sleep with [frequent passengers] and thus trust that they don't need to use them. Everywhere I turn I run into circumstances like this, life is tough here and just constantly seems to be throwing Tanzanians into dangerous situations.

But I slept well and got into Bukoba safely, and had a great day [though it was drizzling] with a fellow volunteer there. We ate simply, which was great because I had just come off a vacation of all kinds of exotic cuisines and needed a nice simple meal for a change. The next morning, I got on a bus and headed to Kampala, Uganda.

Crossing borders from one East African country to another is kind of an interesting thing. When you get near the border, everyone has to get off the bus and go 'check-out' of the country he/she is in. Then we all WALK across the border, which can be anywhere from a 2 to 10 minute walk, and then 'check-in' to the next country. Luckily, I was sitting next to a nice young man on the bus who was a student in Dar, and he helped reassure me where to go and what to do. Something I'm sure I could've done on my own, but nice to have confirmation. And after the Ugandan border customs guy tried to charge me twice what it should be for a visa, I was glad to have a little support [I did finally get it for the right price, but not without a little sweettalking].

I got into Kampala and made it to the backpacker place we were staying, and met up with my two friends M and J. First of all, I've decided I don't like backpacker places. I guess you meet some nice people [though M and I tried to meet cool people one night and failed miserably - we decided to just sit and 'let the cool people come to us'. there must not have been any cool people there that evening]. But sleeping in dorm beds sucks, and the general atmosphere is a little bizarre, in that it's PACKED with tourists who have varying levels of interest in the local culture, language, etc.

KAMPALA
Is an amazing city!! It is packed with people, restaurants, clubs, malls, stores - and most of it still has a very African flare to it. The city is set up in a series of hills, so it's kind of hard to get your bearings, but we had a fantastic time exploring. There are cars and motorcycle taxis everywhere [which I most certainly did not ride, as PCVs are not allowed to do so]. We were 'culinary' tourists, i.e. most of our time in the city seemed to revolve around eating. We did go to see an ENORMOUS, no wait, GI-NORMOUS mosque, but other than that we mostly just walked around town and got a feeling for life there. The main market street is even more swarmed with people than the one in Dar!

I would have to say that my favorite part of all of this was that, at all the nice restaurants and stores and places we went, we were almost always surrounded by UGANDANS. In Dar it's mostly just expats. Probably has something to do with TAnzania's socialist background, but it felt nice to not feel like such an outsider eating at a nice Chinese restaurant. It was a bit frustrating though that Ugandans don't speak much Kiswahili, and thus we had no way to prove that we were seasoned East African veterans and not chump tourists. Though the few Swahili conversations I did manage to have, as always, got us invited many places and quite a positive response from our fellow conversees.

While in Kampala, we stayed up late one night and got the opportunity to see live one of Ugandas most famous musicians [rapper-ish], Chameleon. He was pretty good though he only sang a few songs. It was just nice to chill out in reasonably cool weather, have a beer [though Ugandan beers aren't so nice], and listen to some live music.

After a few days in Kampala, we headed to a nearby town of Jinja which is on Lake Victoria and is the source of the River NILE! Why would someone go to a place like this? Why, to whitewater raft of course! And we did, for a whole day, and it was a blast. I hope to have a few pictures up later, but it was just a nice relaxing day with good food, good company, WARM water [so much nicer than the Colorado!], and some wicked rapids.

We spent the next day in Jinja, a town that seriously looks like it could be in northern Wisconsin [there is a 'main street' with a boulevard of nicely landscaped flowers and trees down the middle!].

KIGALI
Following Kampala, we got on an early morning bus and headed south to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. See above for interesting border crossing procedures, other than that it was a pretty uneventful ride. Though the scenery was beautiful, because it is really just rolling mountain-ish hills everywhere you look, with amazingly terraced farm fields all the way up the hills.

We got into Kigali in the afternoon and walked around trying to orient ourselves.
Highlights of the next few days included:

Hot chocolate on the gorgeous rooftop restaurant of the Hotel de Mille Collines [the one in Hotel Rwanda]

Great Ethiopian food, and great Rwandan food at a restaurant down the street from our hotel that serves by the 2somes or 4somes enormous plates of rice, peas, and chicken.

I almost got a part in a movie about the book listed in the link to the side of this entry! well, not a part in the movie, but a part as a stand-in for a day. but hey, it would have paid 150 bucks, so I was excited! Turns out the guy they brought along with me to show the director was better suited because I wasn't 'pale enough' - I guess I took that as a compliment, huh?!! I mean, for 2 years I've tried my hardest not to be a white guy, maybe it's finally paying off?!

Chocolate croissants!! And eclairs! and wonderful breads! Colonialism sucks, but that doesn't mean that French/Belgian pastries aren't nice.

Of course, one of the main purposes of our visit to Rwanda was to learn more about the genocide. We spent one morning visiting the very powerful Kigali Genocide Memorial, which had amazingly well-done exhibitions on the history and aftermath of the genocide, including some impressive pieces of artwork and galleries showing photos of victims. It was one of the nicest museums I've ever been in, just really superbly done. I tried to find the website for it, but had difficulties. Here is the webiste of the organization that helped fund the museum: http://www.aegistrust.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=68

and here is a quote that struck me as particularly powerful, by a survivor of the 1994 genocide:

"There will be no humanity without forgiveness
There will be no forgiveness without justice
But justice will be impossible without humanity"
-Yolande Makagasana

Talking about the genocide on this site is too difficult, as it is such a complex issue. One of the hardest issues to grasp for me actually had nothing to do with how human beings could do this to one another, or how the international community could ignore it, but rather how a country MOVES ON after something like this happens?! How do people who were killing each other on a massive scale stop and start living together again?

One day we went to some memorial sites south of Kigali, in a village called Nyamata. In that and in a nearby village, thousands of Tutsi men women and children were murdered in their churches in one day. We visited the churches, saw skulls and bones and clothes and blood on the wall, and I still couldn't quite comperehend.

We were so fortunate to meet some young men on the car ride down to this town, who were from the town, and who agreed to escort us to the sites to translate into Kiswahili [the guide only knew Kinyarwanda and French]. They also gave us small insights into their experiences - one man had a very striking appearance associated with Tutsis [light skinned, long face, skinny, very tall] and the other was half Tutsi half Hutu. Both were lucky to survive, and helped answer some of our questions about how life moves on from something like this. The answer? It just moves on, but very very slowly.

I met up later that evening with one of the young men in Kigali to have a drink and just chat. I think he was excited to try Kiswahili, since he is working in Nairobi. We talked about all kinds of things, from sports to farming to AIDS to life to education, etc. He told me a bit more about his family - his father was Hutu, his mother Tutsi, so him and his brothers were half and half. His father was told that he should kill his wife and children. He refused. This man, of about 30 of his immediate and extended family, is one of 3 to survive. None of his parents or siblings did. He was 10 years old when the genocide occured, and is now around my age.

All this stuff about Rwanda and the genocide isn't coming out the way I had wanted to here, but I guess that's kind of how it was there. Just a flood of emotions and thoughts and questions, and nothing seems to make much sense.

One of my travel companions felt a bit awkward visiting some of these sites, being a 'tourist' in such a way that opens painful wounds not yet healed. I had mixed feelings. I thought it was important to let Rwandans give outsiders their perspective on what happened, since noone really listened while it was all happening. At the same time, we did our best to also appreciate Rwanda as a nation and people to be viewed beyond just the genocide, thus the amazing pastries.

But at one point I asked one of these two young men we met, I asked 'is there ever a day when you don't think, at some point, about the genocide? you just don't remember it at all?'

He said no.

After Kigali, I split with my travel buddies and headed back towards Tanzania. The scenery was even more beautiful than the day before, and the roads were superb. It helped that I had taken QUITE a few crossaints with me for the journey. After two days of various buses and taxis, I got back to my house. It felt great.

HOME
I got back to find that my cat had given birth to 3 little kittens, fantastic.

But things are good, I've already gotten back into the swing of work and was invited to teach about HIV/AIDS to a group of 40 young men who drive bicycle taxis around town, and whom once again life has put in a difficult position. These guys drive people around on their bicycles to make a living, and work damn hard.

Well, sometimes young women hire them to drive them pretty far into the villages to go home. Sometimes these trips can take 2 hours. And sometimes these young women, an hour and a half into the trip, confess to the young bike driver that they don't have any money, but maybe they can work out 'other arrangements.' They stop and have sex in the bush, since there's not much these young men could do to get the money that have earned. Life, it seems, just can't get any easier.

So I had a great seminar with them, and now I'm in Mwanza town, and...

WHEW. I'm caught-up. Now it's back to short, boring blogs about small, boring things, and that's the way I like it.

CRAZY

2006-07-22T11:08:00.000+03:00

That is what the last few weeks have been.
And what the next one will be.
I don't even remember what the last thing I wrote on this blog was.
But anyways, in the past few weeks I have been all over the country, seeing tons of old friends and meeting lots of new people. Some highlights....

Visiting my friend Katie in Ifakara [near Morogoro town]. I haven't been to too many other volunteers sites/houses, so it was fun to see how someone else works and lives in her community. it was DUSTY! But nice. And we went to a women's group where there are 10 large looms on which they weave all kinds of interesting, beautiful fabrics - all in an effort to help empower women and give them a source of independent income. It was somewhat inspiring, thougt the repetitive nature of the weaving was a bit tiring.

We had our Close of Service conference in Dar on a nice beachside resort. It was the first time our entire training group had met since December of 2004 when we finished training, and it will be the last - people start leaving to return to the States in September. I will be coming back in December, only 5 months!!! How quickly time flies!! So we spent 3 days hanging on the beach, relaxing, getting a little preparation for re-entry into the states [schools, jobs, cultural adjustment] and also reflecting back on our time here and preparing ourselves to leave a place that has become home for the past 2 years and rather shockingly re-insert ourselves back into the craziness that is the USA.

I visited one of my good friends [Tanzanian] who studies at the University of Dar es Salaam. He is a great young man, is so passionate about studying and learning and exchanging ideas - it was a BLAST to hang out with him! We stayed at his brothers house, a nice place in Dar that is in one of the neighborhoods I would NEVER had been able to seen without a 'local' to show me around! Then we spent a day at the university listening to a lecture [neo-liberalism and post-independence Tanzania], drinking beers, debating about East African Socialism and Globalization... it felt WONDERFUL!! I think i'm very excited about returning to school when I get back, and this certainly stoked those feelings a bit more. We also went out to a Tanzanian bar/disco - i was the only white person there - and danced until about 3:30 in the morning!! I'm not usually a late-night party animal, but the vibe at this place was great [even when the music wasn't always so hot]. The new shakira song is big here, plus they played lots of local music. I felt more energized than I think i ever have here in this country before. It also helped that, unlike many of the other ex-pat places or bigger discos, there weren't a swarm of prostitutes hanging around [although they were there....]

OK, so those were just a few of the highlights, and they were rather large and lacking in details. I've just been so busy these last few weeks, there are so many little things that slip my mind. Now is the kind of time when I wish I would be able to write in a journal, because all these little details are the really interesting ones. But I can't, I've never been good at it, and I've learned to accept that. So I guess you'll all have to trust me that the past few weeks have been some of the best of my life, and I'll have to trust myself that even though I'll forget many of the details and the people and the little experiences, I had a fantastic time when it was happening.....

Impromptu vacation AGAIN - i am going back to my house for one night and then tomorrow will be leaving to meet some friends in UGANDA - to raft the Nile river!! - and then head to RWanda to eat croissants, visit genocide memorials, and see what I hear is some of the most beautiful countryside in the world.
so this means no more updates yet again for another week or so, but after that I should be able to chill out and get back into the swing of things.

PEACE

a big round of applause

2006-07-05T09:43:00.000+03:00

...goes out to my parents for a great visit and treating me to lots of good food, even when they were full.

After two surreal weeks, especially on safari and in zanzibar, I am now chilling in Dar es Salaam and waiting for a conference in a week and a half.

The visit was great, and my friends in Misungwi town were very excited to meet my folks. Guests are a big deal, so there were numerous dinner invitations and gifts and more-extended-than-usual greetings. And as fun as the safari was [we saw all the animals and lions devouring a wildebeest and baby cheetahs etc etc] and zanzibar is always nice [beaches, enough said, though will try to post more pictures again], I think it was this time in my town that was the most fun for me. I try my best to express some of what I hear and see and feel and say and think and do here, but a lot is lost in this medium, and it was nice to fill in the gaps for them.

Last night about 30 PCVs went to the American Embassy to sing national anthems for an official 4th of July party thrown by the ambassador. There were fireworks, which were nice, but most people were focused on the free drinks and bites. I tried my best to hobknob with some important people, but am not very good at shmoozing. Maybe one success story is that I met the general manager of the Dar es Salaam Holiday Inn who said we should let him know whenever we're in town [please refer to a previous post regarding breakfast buffet to understand the importance of this networking].

Short post now, as I have some grant report writing to do, want to go to the big holiday market in town, and then try to find a place to stay - the tourist season has started, and the hotels are booked.

point.....missed

2006-06-17T09:23:00.000+03:00

Wow, it's been a while since my last post.
Two weeks.

I've been insanely busy, working with primary school inspectors from several districts near me to help train them for the AMREF program I participate in [see info on the side of this blog, and AMREF website]. That was for the first week.

Then my friend and fellow teacher here in Misungwi helped me to facilitate a 4-day seminar for secondary school teachers on how to teach HIV/AIDS and Lifeskills to their students. It was fantastic, though fantastically tiresome. But the teachers were passionate, active, inquisitive, really enjoyed an opportunity to speak with some guests who are members of a PLWHA group [living with HIV]... in general it was just a great time.

Maybe the one disturbing part came up during the final evaluation. I asked everyone to write 'one good thing' and 'one bad thing' - the good things were all great, because they were all compliments for me and Dominic on how great we ran things and the interesting topics. The bad points were typical [food, transportation] but then one bad point ran something like this:

"In general, I found the services of the hotel where we stayed unsatisfactory. In particular, that there seem to be many young girls who hang around and have sex for money, and what seems to be a very small amount at that."

This was obviously a concern, as the whole seminar was about trying to help people change these behaviours. So I went and spoke to the guesthouse owner, and showed him the comment. I also showed some of the young women who work in the bar/guesthouse, and whom I suspsect may be the ones mentioned in the comment.

One of them said, and this is almost a direct translation, "How embarassing!! This guy wrote that we have sex for very little money!"

The emphasis there seemed to be on the little money part, i.e. they were ashamed they weren't getting paid more.

Point missed.

However, overall, it was a great experience. One which I will have NO time to digest, because tomorrow my parents are arriving!! That's right, for the next two weeks I will be showing them around my house and Tanzania at large, living it up as much as I can and squeezing them for as many nice meals as possible. So this is an advanced warning for the long blog-entry hiatus forthcoming. But hey, since most of my readers are in the States I assume, and it's summer, get off your butts and go outside and enjoy the weather!!! I'm doing the same - it's the dry season here, and actually a bit cool - or at least not unpleasantly, excruciatingly hot.

It's all about perspective and crap

2006-06-03T09:49:00.000+03:00

First, I'll apologize for my last post. It's not awful, but not particularly exciting either, and definitely not very well written.

Part of the reason for this is, as I had written, work has been crazy and I have about a million things on my plate. Another reason is that I was starting to feel sick.

I've written a bit about health issues here in Tanzania before, and then swore that it would be the last I had to say on the subject. Well, I feel like talking about it again. So for those of you who are too lame or wimpy to continue, skip down towards the end of this post. For anyone up for a good laugh, or 'ew gross', let us continue...

I wrote my last post from the internet cafe at the Mwanza Post Office, and I hadn't even made it from there to the bus stand when I started to feel 'bloated.' Now, there are many reasons someone might feel bloated, and this is certainly not a first for me here. So I just did my best to ignore it on a particularly nasty ride back to my town, then passed out in my bed and got a good 10 hours of sleep.

The next morning, I woke up feeling great. Hooray! I must've just been really tired. OK, so all's clear, I went about my work for the day. Except that, come about 11am, I started bloating up again, with a fever to boot. Now this sort of thing in the States, while it still sucks, would typically prompt regret over a bad burrito or something and be left at that. In Tanzania, fever/bloating/nausea/diarrhea could be symptoms of any of the following:
malaria
typhoid
cholera
amoebic dystentary
bacilic dystentary
giardia
worms
food poisoning

So we PCVs are taught, ala pavlov's dogs [minus the drooling], to hear alarm bells in our heads as a response to any symptoms that are vague and increasingly discomforting, and we start paying extra attention. By paying attention, I mean really 'getting in tune with the inner workings of our body.' Which may mean regular temperature taking, drinking plenty of water, resting, etc. It may also mean an overly critical analysis of our feces.

CRAP.

So yes, I had diarrhea yesterday. Care to know details about consistency, frequency, color, blood, etc? I thought you might say yes!! Not the diarrhea where you're making a dash to the toilet every 2 minutes, but the kind where you hear rumblings and gurglings for a few hours, and then spend 10 unpleasant minutes, as I wrote in my previous entry, 'unloading a heavy parcel.' At least this type gave me enough time to relieve myself in the comfort of my own bathroom.

Now, every Peace Corps Volunteer is given the greatest book every published, our bible, which is called 'Where there is no Doctor.' It is basically a book about every possible health problem someone could have, common symptoms, and whether or not to scream for help. Then we also have a guide to health problems in East Africa, put out by PC. So i flipped through them a bit to see if I had anything to worry about.

I'm making myself feel sick again just writing this. SPEED version to finish up this unpleasant, but quite riveting yes?, story:
-bloating increased
-fever went away
-closest descriptive match for my poop in the book is 'Cholera: watery diarrhea classically described as looking like rice water [water used to clean dirt and gunk off of uncooked rice]'
-description in my words: 'peeing bailey's irish cream out of my butt'
-next morning confusion: chunky, but with blood?!! Could be giardia now...

Anyways, the moral to this story is that today I'm feeling quite a bit better, but still tiptoeing around with the anticipation that all this unpleasantness could return without warning. And hoping that it can all be traced back to some funky french fries I had a few days ago, and not worms or a disease with which my only previous contact has been burying friends and relatives, and writing obscene epitaphs, on a third grade trip down the Oregon Trail...

OTHER NEWS, FOR THOSE WHO SKIPPED THE POOP TALK

Was woken up this morning by a man walking around our neighborhood with a bullhorn. This happens frequently, I'd say at least twice a week. But they're not talking crazy religious stuff here - he was reading out death announcements.

So the title of this entry is 'perspective and crap.' I talked about the 'and crap' already, so now a bit on perspective. I mentioned in my last post that I really enjoyed the movie 'Constant Gardner.' And it's true, I really did. I especially loved the part [and laughed out loud along with Meena] where the young white woman is bombarded with 'How are YOU?' greetings by the little children, because that's really what happens!! But there was one scene that rather shocked me, and I've been thinking about it for the entire week that has passed since I saw it.

The closing scene shows two young boys, running along the side of the road [probably following the car in which the cameraman was located], smiling and giving 'thumbs up'. Albeit, they were wearing pretty ratty clothing, and this was obviously not the nicest neighborhood in Nairobi, in fact it was probably pretty close to the Kibera slum.

Now, i've been here in Africa for almost two years. And the first reaction I had when seeing this shot was, oh look!, these cute little boys are having fun chasing a car!

Then I heard the soundtrack. It was a sad song, one that is supposed to provoke deep reflection and pity.

Then I realized it. For many moviegoers, these young boys live in an absolute hellhole, have ratty clothes, look slightly malnourished, and will probably die of malaria or AIDS or some other disease or hardship of life before they reach 30. It was a completely different perspective from the one that I had.

I've since been asking myself, if i've just become so accustomed and blind to the problems here, and willing to accept these poor young boys as having a good time with the simple pleasures that are available to them, like chasing a fancy car down the street?! Or were the movie directors condescending enough to claim that only rich people can have a fulfilling, happy life?

I don't know. But it's worth thinking about.

[insert culturally appropriate greeting here]

2006-06-01T15:53:00.000+03:00

so i get to raise an issue on the other end of the greeting spectrum, forget this 'war on Christmas' bullcrap.

One of the reasons I haven't written in a few weeks is that i've been INSANELY busy. I visited my good friend Meena in Musoma, which was fantastic because I got to watch movies [Constant Gardner and Crash, both very good], eat delicious food, and talk to someone that I feel very close to and we understand each other. As much as I love Tanzanians, and even if they could understand my American english, it's just not the same!!

Well, another reason is that i've had a ton of work. Last week I was in a 3 day 'stakeholders meeting' for reform of the district government near me. It was 3 LONG days, though I enjoyed hobnobbing with all the important people in my area [district government folks, teachers, religious leaders]. Seeing as it's on a rather sensitive topic, i.e. how poorly the local government is planning and running the work they do, I will not comment on any of the material itself. Some areas they are really doing well, some not so well. It was fun for me to participate and help them make plans and find ways to improve what is going on, the 'outsider' always has an interesting perspective so I had some fairly bigshots listening attentively to what I say, rather atypical for me.

So every morning, they greeted us as follows:

Salaam alekhoum? [alekhoum es salaam]
Bwana Yesu asifiwe? [amina]

That's a muslim greeting basically saying 'are things peaceful', and a christian greeting saying 'don't let Christ die' or 'Christ hasn't left us' or something like that [response = 'believe it!]

where was the secular greeting, 'good morning'? there was none. I wasn't a huge fan of that.

other highlights of the meeting:

no place to take a crap. this was dealt with using very delicate kiswahili, i.e. 'if you feel anything heavy, you may want to go unload it now before we start our work for the day'

my name was spelled BLIAN at least 5 times

the last day was incredibly long, lasted until 8pm, and I was dead tired. we had spent the day making plans for policy, which included the following headings
Department, Area, Goal, Priority level, Justification, Policy action

so for example....

Department:Office of Water
Area: Well water
Goal: Clean drinking water for every village by 2010
Priority level: TOP
Justification: poor water causing diseases in villages currently
Policy Action: Survey and build 1 deep water well per village

So I got pretty darn tired, both physically and mentally, and so I sketched up my OWN policy plan and shared it with one of my friends. She started laughing so hard she had to leave the room, and then proceeded to show a bunch of respected government people, including the ward executive officer of my area..... I was afraid they would be offended, but they all apparently thought it was the funniest thing they'd seen over the entire 3 days, and couldn't stop talking about it.

Department: BRIAN
Area: Todays work
Goal: Achieve complete rest and relaxation by 6:00pm
Priority level: TOP
Justification: I am freakin tired
Policy Action: Skip out on the rest of this seminar and go home

and let's see, the final highlight of this experience may have been seeing my old landlord. Now, had this meeting been 2 years ago, he would've been involved in the finance committee. but he had 'problems,' and lost his job. so here we all are, listening to the facilitator, and i look out the window and see this man [who's rather chubby] having an incredibly difficult time trying to steer/rope a goat that had apparently escaped. he was kicking, pulling it, pushing it, and even picked it up for awhile. I couldn't help laughing, nor noticing that I wasn't the only one amused....

In other news:
My good friend who fixes my bike was apparently ditched by his wife. He's a fantastic guy, seems very sensitive and pretty quiet even though he's a welder and is rather rough/ragged looking, so when I asked him 'what's up' the other day, he was hesitant to share.
He had asked to borrow my bike the other day because he missed his wife and wanted to visit her. She had told him she went to visit a sick relative about a half an hour away. I couldn't lend him the bike because I needed it, so I said sorry and told him we would meet up later.
So he shelled out his hard earned money to get a minibus ride to his wife's village. Well, to near it, and then walked for abotu 2 hours. And when he got there? She wasn't there. Nor had she been there that week, that month, or in recent memory.
At first he presented this very straightforwardly, and then kind of lost it and teared/choked up a bit. I had a hard time figuring out how to console him, definitely couldn't give him a hug [his shop is right next to the main market, very busy area], but wanted to show some support. So I said something stupid to try to cheer him up, something that would normally provoke eye rolling but at the time seemed appropriate. She still hasn't turned up.

There's a new soap opera, but i'm not watching it. It's not very well done, it's Phillipino and people always say I look like one of the main characters. Umm...

Speaking of which, the soap opera led to an interesting conversation the other day. Why do ALL white women have fake hair? Um, what do you mean, I asked. Well, they all wear weaves, and have really long hair. Why aren't there any who just braid it or leave it natural?
Oh, I exclaimed. Then went on to clarify that, in fact, the long hair they were referring to was real, that white people [and asian people, and other people who aren't black Africans] have naturally sleek and long hair. They were apparently shocked by this revelation, I have rocked some worlds. Namely the worlds of the ladies who spend 3 hours a week at the salon getting a bad wig woven on, or having their hair relaxed against all natural forces.

I was offered a camera in Mwanza a few days ago. 'Only one hundred dollars my friend' I dont have a hundred dollas. 'Because you're my friend [never met this guy before], i'll sell it to you for 50'. I don't have 50 dollars, I have 10 dollars. 'Twenty'. I have ten. 'Fifteen'. I walked away.

bang! bang! bang!

2006-05-19T14:42:00.000+03:00

No, I did not get shot, nor see fireworks.

I'm just a bit surprised at myself, because this is my third post in a week!! I had some errands to do in Mwanza and so decided to make a day of it. And since I was supposed to pick up a parcel at 2pm, and when I showed up they said 'whoops it's late come back at 5,' I figured what the hell, lets go for a triple play this week.

I'm not too proud of that baseball metaphor, especially since I don't like baseball and Tanzanians have no clue what it is.

So for the past week, a mobile VCT [voluntary counseling and testing] unit was in Misungwi to test people for HIV. There were about 200 people who got tested, which is fantastic. On average at the ANGAZA centers [means 'light' or 'illumination' in Swahili], around a quarter of the people who come to get tested are HIV+. So i'm hoping that however many were tested here, they have gotten some counseling and should be aware of the group for people living with HIV/AIDS. Which just recently divided itself into 2 separate groups, as membership had risen to over 40 people. I briefly debated whether or not this is a good or bad thing - but almost instantly decided it was nothing but good. Yes, it means there are more people with HIV, but those people were there already, and now they will be getting services and support that they need.

I had just come from visiting the tents they had set up to do the testing, having spoken briefly with the coordinator, and was feeling very positive about the incredibly difficult work that they do. So I went to search for yogurt [chunky milk], and found that they had run out at my two favorite spots. I went to a new 'kibanda' [wood shack] that was set up recently, and drank some there. Not very smooth, but still tasty. As I'm sitting there, enjoying my beverage and raving about the protein and calcium that I was getting [people all around me were drinking CocaCola], a young man on a bicycle pulled up and began speaking with the woman working at the milkstand. Now, this woman is already married, but has no children. I learned this because she is new to the area, and I hadn't been there for 1 minute before someone else had asked her this question. Well, she was asked again [by another person] after bike-boy had arrived. I call him bike-boy because when i say young man, I really mean boy - maybe 17 or 18 years old, an age at which men here still look fairly young.

I continued to sip my chunkymilk, my carpenter friend arrived and bought me a cake, and all the while we traded greetings and news briefs we observed the milkgirl and bikeboy chatting. It seemed bikeboy wanted milk, but milkgirl didn't believe [nor did I] that he had any money with which to pay. So she shyly, awkwardly, still an outsider, tried to express this to him, while he tried to reassure her that there was no problem, he had money, he would give it to her later.

I left with my carpenter friend, and immediately asked him
'so, what did you think of that bike boy?'
My friend said 'um, I don't really know him. But he seemed ok, for a youth.'
'Oh, yeah, so do you think he really wanted milk?'
'Maybe, yeah.'
'Oh. And anything else?'
'Yeah. He was [kutongoza] the milkgirl'

I can't think of a good English equivalent for that word. It's not flirting. Even 'hitting on' doesn't fit. Maybe 'tapping that' or some other crude slang. So yeah, it's as I had thought and seen. A young man, probably just recently finished primary school, blatantly hitting on and trying to bed a newly married woman. Well that's nice!

Of course, it's much better than what I saw about half an hour later. There is a spot on the main road called 'The Traffic Mango Tree', where lots of people sell roasted corn, porridge, peanuts, cassava, etc. So a young woman wanted to buy an ear of roasted corn. And the young man selling it said 'ok, lets go over there [pointing to an unfinished building nearby] and i'll sell you some corn,' with a really nasty dirty grin.

On a more positive note, electricity recently came to Misungwi Secondary School. So to celebrate, I decided to invite all the seniors to watch a short video on Sexually Transmitted Diseases. Talk about a party!! These students rarely get anything other than lecture in class, so they were thrilled to be able to watch a video. Of course, the lovely electric company decided to cut power about 2 minutes into the film, but the students [and teachers!] were so excited that they went and sought out a generator from the house of the teacher who lent the TV and VCR, and so the show went ahead as planned.

The video is graphic. It shows babies with gonorrhea infection in the eyes. It shows genitalia, male and female, in various stages of infections with blisters, puss, open sores, cuts. I mean, nausea-inducing. A classroom that I never expected would be able to be quite were absolutely silent for a good 10 minutes. Not even the expected snickering or murmuring. I of course gave them questions to answer after the video, which they have not yet answered [figures]. But I am betting the video not only bought me cred as a teacher, but also gave them something interesting to do on an otherwise humdrum afternoon, and hopefully scared them off of sex for at least a few days.

I had a hard time explaining to the wife of a fellow teacher, whom I visited for dinner that night, why I wasn't eating much that day. Without, that is, going into too much detail. They have the cutest kid, who really likes me, and likes to mimic everything I do. So at one point when I got down on the ground and covered my head ala tornado drill simulation [no clue how we got onto that topic], as soon as I had sat down again this little 2 year old boy stood up, went over to where I had demonstrated this task, and proceeded to crouch and cover like a PRO. It was hilarious.

A kiss on the hand may be quite continental, but diamonds are...

2006-05-17T14:44:00.000+03:00

what are they again?

all around my town, there are diamonds and gold.

there are a few big mines [including Williamson Diamond Mine, which if i'm not mistaken is the largest diamond mine in the world], Geita gold mines, and a whole lot of guys running around with shovels digging here and there and anywhere they can.

but it wasn't always this way. you know the game 'mancala'? Well, it's loosely based [i.e. simplified for stupid Americans] on a game prevalant throughout much of Africa. Here in Tanzania it's called 'bao' [wood, original name, huh?].

so it turns out that around my town, back in the day, people used to play this game bao with....you guessed it....diamonds. They had no clue what they were. Someone even told me people took them and plastered them onto fronts of their houses for decoration!

i can't really blame them, i mean who would think that a piece of rock could be so valuable? I can blame the Germans/English/Missionaries who first encountered these folks, because I'm eagerly willing to bet that they ripped them off royally to get as many of the diamonds as quickly as possible. even the current president of Tanzania is looking at renegotiating some of the contracts for the mining companies [all are foreign, most South African] because Tanzania apparently gets the short end of the stick.

research project: there is an insect here, it looks like a large black beetle. they are heavy, and make a sound like an old bus trying to climb up a steep hill. and they do the most peculiar thing - they fly madly around and around the ceiling, and the ceiling light, and then without warning they appear to retract their wings and suicide divebomb any of the pieces of furniture, or people, sitting below. then they rest, before they start all over again. why does this happen?!

you know the expression 'chicken legs' in English? well my best friend here, Dominic, has chicken legs. he's just a really skinny guy. so i went to his house on Sunday night because we had bought a chicken, and we killed it, cut it up, and gave it to his girlfriend to cook. so i told him about the expression 'chicken legs', and that it suited him rather well. He was not offended, laughed heartily, and then told me that in Swahili the teasing words of choice are 'walking on your hands'. So his friends in high school would come up to him, stick out their hands, and then stoop down and try to shake hands with his feet. I guess it made sense after i heard it, and it's kind of funny, but chicken legs just seems so much easier.

I had another good chat with one of my other good friends, the carpenter. we talked at length about the preparations he is making for his wife, who is due to deliver their 4th child any day now. I cannot write too much on this issue, as much of the discussion revolved around corruption in the health system, but he seemed overall positive [hoping for a boy], and it was fun exchanging perspectives on pregnant women [they eat dirt here, a sign of iron deficiency. i tried to explain pickles, with great difficulty].
but then he had to stop talking and start working, because he had to build a coffin for someone from a village who had just came, and was waiting to bury his father. i sat and watched for awhile, it was a peaceful but somewhat haunting experience. a carpenter toiling hard [no machines, so all sawing/sanding/finishing was done by hand] and a grieving son shelling out close to 50 dollars [i.e. 1-2 months salary] so his father could rest in peace.
after he was finished, i told my friend that i wanted to be 'burned' [cremated]. he seemed shocked, but then i explained myself a bit [want to put my ashes around a tree sapling or something cheesy like that] and he got really enthusiastic about it. i doubt he would ever be cremated, he will most certainly be buried, but now i get the impression if i were to die today or tomorrow, he'd be there to defend my body from the diggers, and get his apprentices to light a nice toasty fire...

UPS and DOWNS

2006-05-14T15:16:00.000+03:00

Internet in Misungwi sucks these days, thus the sporadic posts. This also means that my mind is pretty well clogged with a ton of random events from the past few weeks, and once again I find myself lacking any coherent thread with which to string my various scattered thoughts together.

So better to admit that up front and go for bullet-point, no-flow, points-over-prose, [in the spirit of George W. Bush] black-and-white, up vs. down, good vs. bad, basics. Right? Maybe? Bueller?
I just hope that, were I to do a scientific poll of readers of this blog, my approval rating would more than a cool, paltry 30%.

+ I met a man from the Congo! DRC, that is, for the politic-savvy. Not sure why this is a ‘plus,’ he’s just a normal guy, not a pygmy, but it seemed pretty cool at the time when I met him.

- I have been cutting up and drying hot peppers for use in my cooking [on the rare occasion I prepare something other than fruit]. I went outside to rearrange the plate and better expose them to the sun, and stopped to pick out a piece that was too big. I think we can see where this is going. About 5 minutes later, as I was reading, I rubbed my eyes. About 1 minute after that, I was officially crying. Another minute, and I was enjoying my second bath of the day, this one unexpectedly cold.

+ It rained a few days ago, so I have 60 liters of fresh drinking water. This is something I’ve raved about on this blog at least 5 or 6 times, but still warrants mention, as it is truly fantastic every time it happens….

- I got into, shall we say, a ‘heated discussion’ with an accountant from TANESCO, the electric company here. They had overcharged me 900 shillings, and I wanted them to remove that from my bill. The accountant had a stunned look on his face and said something to the effect of ‘come on, white guy, that is such a small amount just pay it and let’s get past this, huh?!’ To which I replied ‘hey, jerk, that 900 shillings buys me a nice cold beer at the end of a long day of work, so f*&$ you, fix it.’ Well, I wasn’t that mad at the beginning, but towards the end of the exchange….. Anyways, I got it taken care of, and immediately went for not one, but two beers to calm my nerves.

+ My alma-matter search is complete. After seeing a shirt from P.J. Jacobs Junior High Choir waaay back when during training in Morogoro, and then seeing several University of Chicago shirts in Mwanza, I finally spotted a bright red ‘SPASH Phy Ed’ tshirt yesterday. It was worn by a driver of one of the many bike taxis, the most common form of transport in a town where the only cars are for the purpose of going into Mwanza, but people [myself included] still don’t feel like having to walk around everywhere.

- I gave students at the secondary school a debate topic during our ‘Lifeskills’ period – should the Tanzanian Government make the production and sales of alcohol illegal? I was very pleased that many good points were raised, including the social costs [domestic violence, rape, unsafe sex] and economic pluses and minuses [lost labor time, jobs created, etc]. Yet at the end of the day, globalization reared its ugly head. A good majority of these kids are proud of Tanzanian beers, and think their production should be continued as a great symbol of the industry of the nation. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that half of the ones they listed as examples were owned by South African companies, though they may be bottled in Mwanza. Kinda goes along with people thinking the cell-phone companies are Tanzanian [Vodafone is English], or that Fanta Orange has real Tanzanian oranges in it….

? Speaking of beverages, but unsure whether to call this a plus or a minus – the yogurt that I’ve been enjoying almost every day, so I hear, is produced with milk from African Buffaloes. Well, not wild buffalos in the Serengetti or anything, but cows that were interbred with buffalos on a farm about 20 km from here. The yogurt is damn good, but those ‘Nyati,’ as they are called in Kiswahili, are some scary looking beasts.

+ Breakthrough at my neighbors house. It is rare here for a house to be occupied by just a nuclear family [or should I say nukular, if I’m writing in the spirit of W?]. So at my next door neighbors, where I often eat dinner, there is at any given time between 7 and 15 people staying, even though the family of the owner consists of just himself, his wife, and their 3 children. Sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews [some are orphans], and other relatives [‘ndugu’] fill up the other spots. So a few weeks ago, a young woman who is a relative of the father came, after being kicked out of the previous house where she had been staying. She came with her two small children, aged 2 and 4, even though she herself doesn’t look much older than 20. The two year old is a small boy named Michael who, like many other Tanzanian children, was terrified of me when he first saw me!! ‘Mom, I’m scared of the white guy!’ ‘Mom, he’s close to me!! He’s close to me!!’ Those are actual direct translations from what this little guy said. So anyways, it took about a week and a half, but Michael and I finally got each other figured out. I don’t make any sudden movements or loud noises, and he tries to steal my phone, hit me, or just sit there and laugh at me. It seems to be working out. Thank goodness, because it’s not very pleasant to know you are responsible for making small children cry so hard that they can’t even eat dinner.

- On the way to TTC the other day, which was a big + as it was the last period before summer break and club members were there in force, eager and excited to learn, I saw a young woman on the side of the road who looked like a large dwarf. As in, she was short but not really short, and her body structure [arms and legs] showed signs of dwarfism. Behind her were some children, who had just gotten out of primary school, who were laughing at her. She was walking slowly away, and had an expression on her face that registered a terrible mix of emotions like sadness and resignation. I almost started crying in the car. I had to tell myself that what I saw was a short glimpse of her life, and it is entirely possible [and perhaps likely] that she has some great friends, a husband, a family at home. Disability is more common here, and more noticeable – there are many people with twig-sized legs, who do without wheelchairs by pulling themselves around with their hands. And there are albinos, and blind people, and people without disabilities but with rather noticeable scars or deformities or untreated medical conditions [goiter, anyone?]. And when I think about it, I almost feel that they are treated better here than at home, because at least here people in any given neighborhood are expected to know each other, help each other out, greet each other, in other words acknowledge each other as fellow human beings. Is that the case in the States, in large urban centers? I dunno, I can't remember.

+ I’m working with a community drama group to prepare skits to present to the public, often with an HIV/AIDS message. But they were looking for help/advice on some short humorous skits to get people laughing [non-stop ‘AIDS kills AIDS kills’ is kind of a downer]. So I thought about it for awhile, and have done my best to try to translate ‘Who’s on First?’ into Kiswahili. Without, of course, the baseball reference, since they don’t know baseball here.

? Um, this is a questionmark-bordering-minus I think, as it raises serious questions regarding my mental stability. I had a bizarre dream last night [once again thanks to anti-malarial medications], that involved a crude, somewhat explicit, let’s say R rated version of the song ‘You are 16 going on 17’ from the Sound of Music. I mean, what’s up with that?!?! I can’t remember the lyrics, but they were pretty scandalous. Since it’s an awful movie, and rabid fans whom I met when traveling near Salzburg further repulsed me, I seem to have blocked out all details of the film. I know it’s a boy serenading a girl, whom he later tries to round up for encampment [way to go man, you know how to please the ladies]. In my dream version, the person playing the part of the girl was a 30-year-old or so refugee from Burundi [this is a character from a Tanzanian movie that I saw at a neighbors house] and the guy playing the soon-to-be-Nazi role was, um, the same guy who does Harry Potter in the movies. yikes!

+ I am not typically one to cheer against people. I dislike many, but hate few. I applaud winners, but always feel bad for the silver medalists, the losers, their friends and their loved ones. I often prefer passive-aggressive scowling, combined with passionately unenthusiastic gestures of disregard and disapproval, over direct confrontation. Last week the neighborhood hooligans, frequent recipients of aforementioned scowls, finally, after a drawn out battle, were forced to leave the house they had been renting. I had written about them before – they have a church choir which plays, loudly, the same songs over and over and over every day. At top volume. At about 5 pm, which is typically when I get home from work. And lately, on top of that, they had added a good 30-45 minutes of just plain goofing off after the rehearsal [while still relying heavily on their amplifiers]. Well, they’re GONE!! The house is DESERTED!! They moved, and I sat in my yard reading and watching while they packed up. And I celebrated, openly, joyously, with an obnoxious grin on my face that even my other neighbors couldn’t help noting. So the next day, when some of the no-good punk youth [probably inebriated] returned to the house and proceeded to scream, bang, slam doors, pound walls, climb the roof, etc etc, I decided enough was enough and stormed out of my house to tell them off. Except that my guard beat me to it. Yes, he’s still there, and I appreciate him more and more daily. He seems tired/slow/stoned but is actually a rather feared man – they say it’s his tribe, a warrior bunch. So he also pounced, and really told these guys off. Words were exchanged, mothers were insulted, and all-in-all it was quite a spectacle. After about 3 minutes these guys shut up, clearly aware that my guard 1) is mkali [fierce] and 2) knows their father. No empathy at all, serves them right.

why yes please, I would very much so like a cup of tea.....

2006-05-06T17:24:00.000+03:00

It is May. May 6. Mayday has come and gone - to celebrate I conciously chose to decline the 6 or so cocacolas I was offered in celebration by government coworkers [who are, in fact, the only people who get the day off on 'workers' day. Them and teachers]. Doing my part to fight globalization, a very small, futile, part...

Yesterday we had 'wageni rasmi', distinguished visitors. A bunch of them. As in, I got to ride in a motorcade!!! Some big shots from the Ministry of Education came to visit two primary schools in my area to assess the program that I work with, MEMA kwa Vijana, which helps teachers teach reproductive health lessons to students from grades 5-7.

So the visit was fantastic. There were about 50 guests piled into 10 cars [thus the motorcade - I was in the front car, though almost wish I was in the last one to see people's faces after the previous 9 sped by...]. We split up and visited two different primary schools. I went to one that I had been to before, and the teachers there were very excited to see me - I helped to train them [especially on condoms], and it had been a while since I last saw them.

So, the special guests went into 3 different classrooms and watched the teachers teach a lesson, then asked the students some questions. 'How many of you are going to pass and go on to secondary school' - ALL raised their hand. I was amazed at the confidence of both the teachers and the students. Self confidence is often lacking, I daresay it is almost a cultural thing here that people often tend to be reserved and hesitant to vocally raise concerns, opinions, etc. But the teachers and students were very candid and clear, and the guests got it loud and clear - we are doing good work here, and the students are benefitting from it.

After the classroom teaching, we gathered in the courtyard of the school to watch a local drum dance, listen to a poem reading, and finally a rap presented by about 10 young students. The drumming I had already seen before, though it was still impressive. The poem made me tear up, I shit you not. It was amazing!! These students were speaking so clearly, confidently, and about topics that are often difficult to discuss [one young girl firmly stated something like the following - "hey you old men. stop seducing young girls, stop raping us. you are infecting us with your diseases, you are ruining are lives. we want to study, we want to grow, we want to choose what we do with our lives."]

Then during the rap, one of the younger guys had such a great sense of beat and rythym and word-style that I wish I had a recorder to tape him, so I could take it to the studios absolutely sure that they would sign him for a record deal, based on some of the CRAP I hear on a regular basis on the radio....

So it was a pretty whirlwind 3 hours or so, and after it was done we said our goodbyes and piled into the cars and sped off to Mwanza to a fancy hotel for lunch. I had to bite my tongue a bit - there were comments about how poor one of the schools looked, there were dirt floors, students had no desks, there are 6 toilet holes for 600 students [not to mention only 13 or so teachers].... and there we were having a lunch that probably could've boughten ALL the needed furnitures.

But I was too worried about that, you see, I had another problem. Everyone I was with was, well, most of them were from Dar es Salaam, all were fabulously wealthy by Tanzanian standards, and they were refined. That is a word I do not like. I am proud NOT to be refined, at times. Who am I trying to impress anyways? Well yesterday I was a bit ashamed, because everyone was using a knife and fork to eat their food.

Now, is this such a problem? Well, first remember that for basically the last year and a half, 2 of my 3 meals of the day are eaten with my hands. And these are not sandwiches, I'm talking about fish and rice and meat and beans, etc etc.....
Secondly, I felt the whole knife/fork thing was taken to a bit of a ridiculous extreme. I understand eating a fish filet with a knife and fork, but fried chicken?? How on earth can you get all the meat off the bone? Hell, many Tanzanians then like to break open the bone and suck out the marrow, you sure as heck can't do that with utensils!!!

So I did the best I could, struggling for about 10 minutes, then gave in and started eating with my hands. I did not, however, lick my fingers. I don't think anyone noticed, and after lunch I continued to try to shmooze with these bigshots and got no questions or comments like 'Oh, you are from America, huh? And in America do you eat like barbarians with your hands? Or do you have forks and knives there as well?".....

other news:
The way things are going, I will be teaching nothing but condoms by the time I leave here. I had a lesson at the TTC on Wednesday all about condoms, which of course went well, I've never taught condoms and had a disappointed audience. It's far from over though, so i'll be continuing where I left off [female condoms!!!! this is where the lesson gets fun, from giggles and jokes to absolute silence, COMPLETE attention].

My garden, after a series of temporary setbacks, now officially rules. I have onions, spinach, pumpkin, zuchinni, carrots, sunflowers - what next?!! And even better news, one of my papaya trees has started bearing fruit, as well as the passionfruit vine. Now just keeping my fingers crossed for bananas, I just want to eat ONE piece of TROPICAL fruit from a tree that I planted before I leave...

More later. Time to go home, it's trash-burning day!! My favorite time of the week! These are not exclamation points of irony!! Really!

random thoughts

2006-04-30T11:19:00.000+03:00

I'm in Mwanza town, having just enjoyed, REALLY enjoyed, a smaller scale version of the breakfast brunch that I enjoyed in Dar. nice.

Last night I came into town to teach another period at the Teachers Training College. I went on Thursday to attend the graduation, which was a fantastic experience. I got to see traditional dancing [ngoma], songs, poems, speeches, and my 5 good friends who were in the Lifeskills club who were graduating were VERY excited to see me and take pictures. It was a nice break from normal work, and a rare opportunity to really see some of the impact that I guess i'm having on these folks.

However, graduation combined with Easter, Muslim holidays [id el something i forget], Tanzanian Union day [celebrating the merger of Tanganyika, i.e. the mainland, and Zanzibar], and the upcoming May 1st national holiday [woohoo socialist roots!!!], has led to major disruption of our studying schedule. So they invited me to come spend the night at the college, and stay overnight in one of the guest houses. So I came, and we met to study the disease progression and testing procedures for HIV. Well, we started at 8:00 with about 15 people and finally finished up at quarter to 11 with a good 30+ club members!! I was really shocked and pleased, they didn't even appear to be too tired, all seemed very interested in the topic at hand.
It also provided me a very interesting opportunity to see college life here in Tanzania.
SURPRISE
It's not that different from the states. Crowded, loud, dirty, noisy, but full of youthful energy, passionate conversations, and hard working people. I dare say harder working people - how many american college students get together to study on Saturday night, and then make it to Church the next morning at 8?!?!

There is one other thing that always amazes me when I'm on my way out to the TTC. There is a big market on the corner of the main road and the unpaved one that goes out to the college, and there are ladies selling all kinds of fruits and produce, woven mats to sit/pray on, clay pots, clothes, etc. Now those of you who know me well know that I hate shopping, and thus have very little expertise when it comes to department store sales. But one thing i'm most sure of is that if any department store in the States tried to display their clothes the way it's done here, they'd be out of business.

Imagine a coat hanger. It's a triangle, right? Now take that triangle and make it into a circle. Then make it bigger. Then stretch a dress or skirt around it, making sure that the waist area of this garment looks like it's about to bust because of this circle of wire. This is how Tanzanian women assess their potential purchases. By making sure there's plenty of room where it counts, because that IS where it DOES count, at least in this culture. There's even a swahili word for 'big butt', which is 'wowowo' [i like to think it means whoa whoa whoa because people are impressed].

Speaking of wowowo - sometimes in Swahili, in order to add emphasis or slightly change the meaning of a word, it is repeated several times. So 'hapa' means 'here,' and 'hapahapa' means 'right here.' For some reason the other day, when I was at a nearby volunteers house feasting on some excellent chilli they made to celebrate Union day [even though there's no connection remotely between Tanzania and chili other than that there's lots of beans here....], I commented that this chili would be really good with a baked potato. But that there's not enough big potatoes here to make it work. I was then challenge - 'why sure, there are big potatoes here!' To which I replied, in English, 'well yeah, but bakedpotatobakedpotatobakedpotato?!!' It made sense at the time....

Rains are improved, though it hasn't rained since last week, when I had gone to the big weekly friday market to buy dustbins for condom disposal in guesthouses, and got caught in the downpour on my way home. Tanzanians, despite having a 'rainy season', don't really deal with rain. The basic strategy is that, if it starts to rain, you seek out the nearest awning or house and wait until it stops. Because it pretty much always does. So that's what I did, I stopped.

There was a kick-ass rainbow that followed, one that reminded me of a science class from 7th grade. Every rainbow has a second, complimentary rainbow above it, which is fainter, and is also inverted in colors [VIBGYOR]. I think at one point in my life I started a band called 'inverted rainbow', but that seems awfully lame looking back on it....

All this typing has got me hungry again - time to go find some yogurt. Which the more I look at it is really just chunky milk here, but I like it. None of this skim crap.

and.... i got nothing

2006-04-21T11:28:00.000+03:00

I've just spent 5 minutes staring at a blank computer screen, trying to figure out what to write.

But that's OK, because there's air conditioning!!!

Well, so things are going pretty well here, other than a boil on my knee (?!) that hurts.

SUNDAY - Easter day. I slept in until 9am, which is basically unheard of here [in fact, I believe it is the ONLY time i've slept in past 8 in the year and a half i've been here]. I spent the day hanging out, baking brownies and banana bread to bring to my neighbors, then GORGING myself on an Easter feast of goat, spiced rice, milk, fruits, and the cakes. I ate full meals at 2pm and again at 8pm, and didn't eat on Monday until late lunch. stuffed.

TUESDAY - I didn't do anything. It was nice.

WEDNESDAY - Part two of my condom seminar for workers at the guesthouses (hotels) in Misungwi town. Can I just say, after I finish my two years here, I believe I will look back on this as the most fun of any of my projects. The participants NEVER have gotten any sort of trainings like this (some didn't even attend school - of 12, 3 could not read or write their names). They wore their fancy clothes, brought their own notebooks and pens even though I provided them, and were really excited and anxious to participate and show some pride for the underappreciated work that they do.
The highlight was easily a roleplay session on how to sell condoms. I started by roleplaying the guesthouse worker, basically doing the worst possible job I could and making it very difficult for someone to buy condoms (raising the price, laughing, ignoring, not being too discreet, etc).
Then I asked for volunteers to roleplay ways to improve on my performance, to correct the mistakes I had made, and almost every single participant ended up doing a little drama - and doing them damn well. It gave me a whole lot of confidence that these folks can really get the job done. I plan on following up with them in the upcoming weeks to make sure that they have condoms available at each guesthouse, advertisements are up, displays are ready, etc.

FRIDAY - this morning I managed to make 2 little kids cry, just by looking at me. New meaning to 'freaky friday', as I do indeed feel like a walking sideshow on occasion.
I'm off to the big market today, which is a weekly thing on friday, to look for small dustbins to give to the guesthouse workers to put in the bathrooms for condom disposal.

That's all I got. I'm gonna have to regroup on this blog thing, it's falling apart.
I once again request suggestions/questions for future topics.

champagne and granola, rice and beans

2006-04-14T10:31:00.000+03:00

i haven't written for about two weeks, in no small part because 4 of those days i was stuck on a bus. i think the title of this post sums up rather nicely, in order, the 1st and 2nd of these weeks

rewind

I spent the first week in april traveling to and from Dar es Salaam to attend a meeting of volunteer representatives from all over the country, to voice volunteer concerns and address these issues to the peace corps staff. blah blah blah blah...... even though I only got to stay for 3 days in the big city, i had a blast spending time with my fellow volunteers whom I rarely get to see [or meet new ones i've never even met], and do all the things american volunteers love to do when they get the chance, including:

going to the American Club, which is like a country club that is free for all Americans, and you can rent DVDs, get great food like sandwiches and mexican and burgers, go for a swim in the pool, etc.

going BOWLING?!?! that was kind of a surreal experience. it was remarkably similar to a bowling alley at home, only a lot more Indian people, and the average weight of the bowlers had to be a good 20 pounds lower than in central wisconsin. I bowled like a 115 or something - not too bad since i haven't played in 2 years...

surfing the internet at the PC office volunteer lounge, without paying! and it's fast satellite internet!! this is my excuse why i haven't written a blog entry, i was too busy reading news, searching for good books in the lounge library, watching comedy central clips, and the like.

and finally, perhaps the highlight of the entire trip to dar, and the thing that made the 4 days of sitting on a busride through Kenya to get to and from Dar [yes, 4 days on a bus for a 3 day meeting, isn't that nice?!] ----- the Holiday Inn breakfast buffet.

The Holiday Inn is one of the top hotels in Dar in terms of luxury. They have a breakfast buffet every day of the week, which costs a whopping 12,000 shillings [about 10 dollars, expensive even in the states!!]. So what on earth would make a PCV shell out 2 days worth salary to eat at this breakfast buffet? In no particular order of preference, here are the answers to that question:

individual pots of coffee, hot chocolate, or tea
breads with assorted cheeses, cheese ball, and deli meats
assorted flavors of yogurt
croissants
granola oats with option to mix raisins, apricots, cashews, prunes, dates, etc....
a large variety of fresh fruits [mangoes, banana, apple, pineapple, etc]
sugary cereals available in those fun travel-sized boxes [i had cocoa krispies]
eggs made any way you like [fried, sunny side up, scrambled, omelet]
sausages
bacon
MORE BACON
fried tomatoes
waffles
pancakes
calimari
assorted syrups and sauces [including chocolate sauce]
assorted fresh fruit juices
champagne(!!!)

and the real kicker - this is a buffet. Which means once you start, you can keep going until they kick you out at noon. We got there around 9am, left around 11:30. I lost track of how many plates I managed, but i didn't eat much the rest of the day, that's for sure.

fast forward

i survived the bus ride back despite a breakdown near arusha [for those interested, trace the main road north from Dar, through Nairobi, and back to Mwanza - that was my route]. i was very warmly recieved by people back in Misungwi. In fact, i took it as a sign of my level of integration that some people didn't even notice I had been gone - apparently i manage to blend in as much as a white person can that I'm no longer the spectacle i once was.

i also brought back with me a bunch of 8 coconuts, which i got for about 80 cents on the road out of dar. As much as i hate bus rides, i REALLY enjoy purhcasing things out of bus windows, since at every potential stop or crossroads en route, there are MOBS of older women or younger men trying to sell coconuts, fruits, buckets of tomatoes, dried fish, souvenier crap, you name it.
so i bought coconuts, and this past wednesday my housegirl cooked rice and beans for me. rice and beans and COCONUT.

this is something that we had every day when I was staying in Morogoro, but Mwanza is by a lake, not the ocean, and there aren't too many coconut trees so they are expensive. Needless to say, suffering withdrawl after the holiday inn extravaganza, the ZING provided by the coconut [as well as the side of guacamole] really made coming back to rice and beans OK.

other news in brief:

the rains have improved, and while there is still talk of 'hunger' this year [and corn is continuing
to be distributed to those in most need], at least some crops should work out this year.

i will be using my long easter weekend, and the fact that the schools are closed next week, to finish up work on my Condom project with guesthouse workers. FUN! looking forward to it.

i knew i was settled back home when, after taking my larium on Wednesday, i actually had a dream in which i was speaking Kisukuma - kiswahili i've been dreaming for months now, but this was the first in the tribal language. Impressive? try confusing - i was, for some reason, speaking it with a bunch of other white people...

tgif

2006-03-31T17:08:00.000+03:00

even though my work schedule isn't THAT based on the 5 day work week.
what do i do on a typical weekend?

first, friday i usually get home from work and dont go out again. friday in Misungwi is the big market day, and lots of people from surrounding villages come to buy soap and maize and all kinds of stuff, some important and some junk.

while the people of Misungwi are used to me, many of these villagers are not. and so I don't like having to deal with them. today i went and got a glass of yogurt (not yogurt like we think of it, more like chunky milk - but it's great with a little bit of sugar) and came up to use some internet (AC!!!)

my housegirl cooked for me, rice and beans today, which will go nicely with the avocado i got in mwanza yesterday, make a little guacamole and stir in some cumin in the beans and i'm having mexican! will go even better as i plan on stopping by a neighborhood bar and picking up a cold beer or two (which is plenty, beers are bigger and stronger here than in the states)

tomorrow i will spend the day walking around and greeting people, since i spent the last 3 days in Mwanza for work and will be going next week to Dar for a meeting [short meeting, LONG bus ride]. so gotta remind people, once again, that i'm not leaving for good so don't be surprised when i return.

i also have to invite my guesthouse workers to part 2 of my seminar on condoms. one of the funnest projects i've done here, and i can't wait for the follow up. i could talk about this stuff all day.... oh wait, i DO!!! it's my JOB!!!!!

then i'll top that off with some more yogurt, watching some tv at my friend Dominics house, playing cards with the neighbors, finishing my book [see link to the right] and the fun task of picking a new one [thanks aunt karen!!!!!], changing my cats litterbox (disgusting), hiding from either sun or rain, whichever of the two is harsher, and i'll round out the weekend by finally getting a chance to talk to some of the new volunteers in our region, whom i've met for all of 5 minutes 4 months ago.

by the way, yesterday i had the most fantastic grilled fish of my life. i even ate the head, it was that good!

on a lighter note...

2006-03-23T08:24:00.000+03:00

last couple of entries have been fairly heavy.
now something...not.
there are many cultural differences between America and Tanzania. Some of them are easier to get used to, others more difficult.
one which has been a real pleasure to adapt to is like this:

Tanzanians pick their noses. anywhere. anytime. in front of anyone.

it took me all of, i'd say, 1 day to get use to this and decide to jump right in and do it myself. and can i say, how fantastic it is?!!

i mean, i've thought about it a lot as I teach various groups about the immune system (usually in relation to HIV/AIDS). snot (mucous) is part of the immune system, designed to capture particles that enter and remove them through coughing or sneezing or the like. what does this mean? it means boogers are SUPPOSED to come out, i think something we were all aware of.

now the question is, why should i sit there uncomfortably while there's a big booger in my nose, just so i dont make other people uncomfortable watching me pick it out?!

i say pick, it has been a fabulous liberation while i've been here, and will be a hard habit to break when i return to the states - which is why i've decided not to break it. watch out folks, upon my return i'll be a lean mean nose-pickin machine....

dupe?

2006-03-19T09:15:00.000+03:00

the last time i wrote, i was
"out of breath," "irate," "here in Mwanza," and "not just irate, [but] also sad."

fast forward to about 30 minutes after i left the internet cafe two days ago.
new descriptives: i was 'confused' 'pissed off' and 'felt like a chump'

i haven't gotten a chance to write about it, and my feelings have subdued, but given how passionately i wrote my last entry i felt i had better write a follow-up to explain change of sentiments.... [if you haven't read the entry previous to this one, you better stop and go read it before continuing]

by the time i got in the car to head back to Misungwi, i had started replaying the whole scene in my mind. something felt not right, and it wasn't just a sense of despair about human compassion, responsibility, and the like. something didn't seem to fit.

where had i heard about something like this happening before? i couldn't put my finger on it...
through some sort of intervention [though not divine, since i don't believe in that sort of thing], i happened to be staring blankly out the window of the car and saw someone walk by in a University of Chicago sweatshirt.

my first thought was - 'HEY, U of C! Sweet!' my second thought was 'YO dude, it's freakin roasting out, why are you wearing a sweatshirt?!' and my third thought was 'BING'

I had figured it out.
In Chicago we had gotten repeated warnings about a popular scam. That's right, a scam. I don't remember how it went, something about someone approaching you and wanting to split a bunch of money they found if you are willing to help them [part of this help means going to the bank and withdrawing lots of your own money - DUH, warning lights and sirens going off, right? right, that's why I never really paid attention and can't remember more details of this scam]

so the details stumped me, but i had already seen the light - could that whole emotional incident actually have been the work of 2 partners-in-crime trying to rip me off? i tried to work out how the scenario might go:

1) simple distraction: i'm most familiar with this from stories of small children in Rome [gypsies], but i'm sure it's pretty popular tactic worldwide. as i'm pleading with this guy to return the cash, he, or one of his buddies, pickpockets me or makes a move for my backpack.

NOPE, wasn't missing anything [wasn't carrying much either, but since I'm white I'm as good a target as anyone]

2) the set-up: i've heard about this with drugs in northern african countries. a dealer and a cop work together, the dealer sells you illegal drugs ridiculously cheap, then the cop busts you right away and they split the big bribe you're forced to dole out. could this have been similar, but
trying to split up stolen money instead?

NOPE: 1st, if you buy into the 'white people have money' preconception that is a driving motivation behind scenario one (which I do), why would some random white dude need to split a few extra bucks with someone he met on the street?! and 2, what police officer would believe an unemployed random Tanzanian dude over a white employee of a well-known NGO? [sad but true]. The case wouldn't stick, and the bribe would suck. I would give up, lets say, another mechanical pencil.

3) hook, line and sinker: the finder of the money offers to go and split it up with you if you don't tell, but of course to do this you'd better go someplace private. once you're there, and probably after realizing that it was actually one big bill rubber-banded around a wad of plain paper, he holds you up and you're left without shoes, pants, or a clue.

BINGO: this seems like the most logical choice, and sure enough, last night I confirmed with a neighbor that he has had this sort of thing happen to him before [seeing someone drop a big chunk of cash, and then recieving an offer to split it, which he turned down having already heard the stories].

Ugh, once i had heard this confirmation, i felt sick. because i don't like being duped. and i don't like feeling stupid. but at the same time, i felt mad. why? because the shmucks who did this were pretty piss-poor scam artists, and that's how i've now internally justified my naivety. I would've figured the scam out, except they ran it so poorly i had no idea what is was!!!
evidence:

1) the guy who picked up the cash never offered to split it with me. maybe they had planned poorly, and didn't mean to target a white guy? and he was shocked? or maybe they had picked me out but then he got flustered [maybe he was a virgin to this particular operation] and decided to back out? either way, had he told me "yo dude lets go split this up in that alley over there" i like to think that I would've been NOT AN IDIOT and figured out what was going on...

2) the guy who dropped the cash turned back and started looking for it. one key element to this scam is that he's just supposed to keep walking. if he turns back, we have the opportunity, which we acted on, to return the money. if the money is returned, the scam has failed. he should've kept walking and left it to his buddy to try to reel me in.

3) this all happened right in front of a newspaper stand, and i distinctly rememer making eye contact with at least 2-3 other guys when i grabbed the finder by the hand to follow the loser and return the money. is this really a scam you would pull in front of such a large audience, unless perhaps they ALL were part of it?! I wouldn't think so, especially in Tanzania - you see, being a thief here can be lucrative, but also pretty freaking dangerous. If someone shouts 'thief', it usually ends up in huge gang of idle young men suddenly mobilized to chase down the accused as he runs away, and beat him senseless, to near death, or occasionally to death, upon catching up to him. I've been in Mwanza and seen people running down the street with, for example, a big wooden bench, hoping to use to to beat a thief into a bloody pulp. In fact, this is part of the reason I thought the finder finally agreed to follow me to return the money - if he hadn't, if he had started running now that the loser had realized he'd lost it, he might have had some trouble, to say the least. And i'm looking in retrospect here, but did it seem like those newspaper guys were smiling as they watched all this unfold, perhaps just waiting for and relishing the potential opportunity for a chase-after/beat-down?

so anyways, that leaves me pretty confused. either it was a POORLY RUN SCAM, which only worked to the effect that my sympathy got the best of me and i forked over 1,000 shillings to the finder out of pity, or it was really the incident as I first interpreted it, a case of lost and found, with a large side of ingratitude.

i was dejected after writing my last entry, thinking about the poor finder stealing the money if there's a next time, thanks to the losers ungrateful 'screw you'. i'm even more dejected now, as i expect if i ever see anyone drop a wad of cash again, i myself will probably walk right on by....

readers: thoughts? inputs?

basic human decency

2006-03-17T13:21:00.000+03:00

i am out of breath. and i am irate.
i have run to the nearest internet cafe here in Mwanza.
i am not just irate, i am also sad.
i'm not clever or patient enough, nor do i have a good enough memory, to maintain a database of quotes, either on paper or in my head.
but i'm sure that there's is a really good quote out there, somewhere, about how all of lifes problems stem from one basic thing: money.
or maybe two basic things, lest i forget about love, though sometimes i feel the two [money and love] go way more hand in hand than they should...

examples of this, i see them every day. people starving without money, people killing over money, relationships ruined, etc etc.
now, granted, Tanzania is a far poorer country than the USA, so in some ways this is amplified here (i.e. money for survival). At the same time, the profound sense of community and deeply-entrenched attitudes and effects of socialism on Tanzanian society also sometimes make me think that money is not nearly as big a deal as it is in the states.

back to my story. i had a meeting in mwanza today, it went well, nothing unusual.
i left the office, and started walking towards my favorite restaurant, a pizzeria, though i rarely get the pizza, i like the fresh fruit and bread rolls.
as always, the streets were bustling with people selling newspapers, handkerchiefs, etc [i.e. all those people who were rioting last week were back at business].
and then it happened.

one young man, walking directly in front of me, dropped what can only be described as a large roll of cash. or perhaps another way to describe it would be 'wad.' on top was a 2,000 shilling bill, inside i can only guess.
i would say, in approximation, he dropped about 200,000 to 300,000 shillings. could've been as little as 100k, or as much as 500k.
by the way, the average Tanzanian's income is less than 1 dollar a day, so that's less than 300,000 a year. granted in the city it's a bit higher, but not necessarily much.
thus, this young man dropped a year's salary on the street, and i stopped in my tracks.

then another young man, in much rattier clothes, picked it up and looked at me. i looked at him. his eyes seemed to say it already, but he quietly told me 'chill'.
i looked back, and i think my eyes spoke too: 'that money is not yours.'

he grabbed my hand, and we stopped in place. he asked me to stay quiet. in the meantime, the other young man started feeling in his pockets (he was muslim, wearing a full-length robe that i'm not sure of the name), and turned back to look for his cash.
he was panicking.
i would have too.

so he passed by us, and without talking, still hand-in-hand, i walked with the second guy to follow after him, and began calling out 'brother, brother'. he who found it was obviously more reluctant, but i did not have to drag him, and he eventually was the one who got the other man's attention.

so the loser turned around and we approached him, and i said simply 'you dropped this.'
i was prepared to make a comment on the generosity of the finder, when the loser said, without provocation, forcefully,
"i'm not giving up even 100 shillings" [equivalent: less than a dime]
he stormed away.

the finder looked at me, and again his eyes had words for me: "happy now?!"
he began walking away.

i was torn. half of me wanted to follow the loser and CHEW HIM OUT for being such an asshole.
[i have been advised to reduce my use of profanity in this blog to better represent PC, but i am sorry, for me the use of 'asshole' is a mild version of how i could express my feelings for this guy]

the other half, which won out, followed the finder, called out to him, and while reaching in my pocket beggingly pleaded to him "let's not steal from each other, right? at the end of the day, everyone will be broke". i gave him 1,000 shillings, he tersely thanked me, and walked away.

that was the end of it.
i'm trying to remember how this sort of thing might play out in the states. i guess it depends on where and who and when. at home, in wisconsin, wallets are turned into information desks of department stores when found in parking lots, at least sometimes.
in chicago - probably not so much.

but back to here and now. i am still shaking writing about this, i didn't think i could feel this strongly. this guy, the finder, though reluctant, knew that the decent thing to do would be to return this money that was not his to it's rightful owner. i encouraged this, and while it is likely he would not have given it back had i not been there, i in no way forced him to do so.
the loser? a young man, probably sent by his boss to make a bank deposit or something of the like, how does he show his appreciation? by telling us to piss off.

i am sure, guaranteed, that the finder will never again take the good-samaritan route.
and that makes me sad.
and mad.
and so i think i'll go home and talk to some TZ friends about this.
and then try to forget about how i turned one man's lucky day into the fish that got away, and saved the ass of another who turned out to be an ungrateful prick, who didn't even say thanks.

my faith in humanity, reaffirmed and rechallenged in the span of 1 minute.

**a short postscript to this entry. i feel the need to assure clarity of message to readers of this blog. in this post, i in no way have lost faith in Tanzanians, or Africans, or etc. To the contrary, i am still more than convinced that the Tanzanians I have met and know, and even some strangers I don't, are far more kind and friendly and decent than, say, New Yorkers. Sorry New Yorkers, but it's true, you're worse than Chicagoans, and that's why i've singled you out. But even Chicagoans, i'm not sure they can compare to many of the Tanzanians i meet.

So this story could've taken place in Chicago, or Stevens Point, or anywhere else. but it happened here, so i wrote about it. please don't read into it any cultural assumptions, or make collective assessments of the people here. it wouldn't be fair.

***and finally, though this incident has taken up an entire entry, it only reflects the last 10 minutes of my life here. other than that, things are good - i had a fun trip into a village, a description of which you can find in Andrews blog, link to the right. work at the teachers training college is going well, life in Misungwi is pleasantly normal, rain is more frequent and electricity is - dare i jinx it by saying - back on, on a regular basis. and that is the REST of my life, in a nutshell.

ask for a little.....

2006-03-09T15:33:00.000+03:00

yesterday was the craziest day of my life

FIRST, I was in Mwanza to teach my Lifeskills period at the Teachers Training College. That went fantastically well, they performed a great drama and I taught the most tiring and draining lesson that I think any of us health volunteers teach (it's about behavior change concepts. very abstract. vague answers. )

So what was crazy was what had preceded it: I had gone to the AMREF office and, after waiting fruitlessly for the internet to come back, decided to go get some lunch. On my way walking down the street, I saw some gawkers standing on a corner and looking down the road - usually a cue for me to keep on walking and don't look back. But I rubbernecked and checked to see what was going on, and saw about 10 individuals chucking rocks at a big building.

Over the next hour, I pieced together the following: There are guys who walk around the streets selling all kinds of stuff: pants, underwear, handkerchiefs, sunglasses, toothpaste, cheap plastic made-in-china trinkets, perfumes, electronics (that break after 10 minutes of use), the list goes on and on. Well, they're not supposed to be selling this stuff on the street. Though I later heard a claim that they had been given permission to do so during the election campaign, so no one would get upset, lets not ruffle any feathers. But now action is being taken, and yesterday the police confiscated all of their goods - quite a big loss to people that don't exactly have the easy life.

So they started chucking rocks. And breaking windows. And burning stuff. And vandalizing cars. People were running down the streets, sirens going off, sound of tear gas bombs being thrown. I at this point had gotten to my favorite restaurant, and looked on stunned as the owner quickly rushed to the entrance and locked us all in by slamming shut the big iron gate. He opened it up after about 10 minutes, and I immediately paid my bill and grabbed a cab to the offices, and then got the hell out of town as quick as I could.

Scattered news reports (since electricity was out), 1-3 people died. Lots of business vandalized, even as I was in a car going out of the city yesterday I saw that ALL the businesses had shut their doors, very unusual for middle of a Wednesday, I temporarily felt like I was in a war-zone, it was abandoned. My first thought was, 'this is the stuff that most Americans usually see on the news about Africa, funny I'm seeing it for the first time and it's completely unreal.'

So that was exciting. But I got out, taught my lesson, got a car home, and arrived in my house just in time.....

...for the biggest freaking monsoon of a rainstorm I have ever witnessed in my life. Winds, hail, pouring rain - my house flooded, I did my best to barricade doors and shutters and windows, though it didn't do much good. Moved a lot of stuff into my dry bedroom, which doesnt flood. All this while the electricity was out and it was too windy to use candles, so I was going by the faint glow of my cell phone light.

Now you do the math here: daytime rioting/tear gas bombs, overnight thunder, and Wednesday is the day I take my 'dream-enhancing' anti-malarial medication. Yeah, that was a fun night.

Thanks to all those sympathetic to the East African drought, but be more selective when asking for rain - we need just the right amount, not too little, not too much. All the corn around here is pathetically sagging to the ground, I can only hope it rebounds.

And on a completely unrelated but incredibly surreal note, the day BEFORE yesterday I was priviledged to watch the Miss World Tourism show, taped in Arusha, Tanzania. Pretty bizarre, when you're used to a culture where modesty is a virtue and women wrap cloth around the clothes they're already wearing, to see 100 ladies strutting their stuff in swimsuits. This pageant looked a little, well, how do I say this politely, 2nd rate. The models were ok, lots of wardrobe malfunctions (though none of the interesting type, the only thing that fell down were lots of bizarre hats). No representative from the USA. Miss Canada was, again looking for polite words here, 'beefy'. Maybe that's not polite. But hey, its cold there, right?!

back and forth, and back

2006-03-04T12:47:00.000+03:00

I've been blessed by a muse since my last update, which may or may not be related to having read the first 50 or so pages of the first Harry Potter novel - i was, to say the least, not impressed. OK for childrens reading, but perplexing when I recall all those businesswomen (and men) reading it on the El on the way home from work....

On Thursday night, after a long day of work at the office and an evening of watching entertaining, but poorly acted, Tanzanian dramatic 'films' [I guess I wasn't as fried as i thought - we watched for about 2 hours], I left my neighbors house and got ready for bed. I was feeling pretty happy - I had recently begun hanging out more with my friend whom I will call 'Ras', short for 'rasta', since he has dreaded hair - this evening I had spent with him and his 6 brothers and sisters, who share closet-sized rooms [curse you Harry Potter, 'closet' reference is NOT my muse speaking] in a somehow rundown building next door to my house. I got into bed and, as I was drifting in and out of stage 2 sleep, heard a seemingly far-off wailing sound. Friday, returning late evening from work, I got word that my friend's 13-year-old brother, who had been coughing and wheezing during the movie, had died late Thursday night. My friend, who is my age and the oldest member of the family around, was responsible for making burial arrangements.

This morning I had a near-nirvana experience; partly influenced by the fact that I was woken up at 8am by the PC car waiting to drive me back to site (I got a visitor today), partly by the car ride itself - can't beat an airconditioned landcruiser, partly by a violent night of 'HOSTAGE - starring Bruce Willis' inspired dreams, partly by a heavy blanket of fog covering both the rolling landscape and my hay-fever affected, itchy-as-hell eyes. The rain has become a steady presence these days, and it shows - grass has replaced the barren dustbowl fields, tree leaves are green and have ceased making amplified crumpling-of-paper noises when the wind blows, and people are out in the fields, farming away by handheld hoes.

It was a quiet, peaceful morning, and I got a good 30 minutes of solid reflection in before being greeted, welcomed, and cruelly mocked by the blaring, thumping celebration of my neighbors' choir rehearsal.

ummm......

2006-03-02T15:53:00.000+03:00

so I just wrote a post a few days ago, and I'm at the internet now, mostly because every day there is electricity I feel this huge pressure to spend the whole day consumed in front of a computer, television, radio, or reading at night with a little more light than can be provided by a cheap candle....

but now that i've gotten here, i realize i dont have a whole lot to say.

that last sentence, more than the long-winded stories or anecdotes i've ever written on this blog thing, is occasionally the most accurate way of summing up my experience here. i kinda like it that way.

ok, screw blog, forget emails, even the stuff on nytimes is boring - every day it's war, taliban, confusingprescriptiondrugplan, nuclearcooperation (huh?!?! first - was surprised, and i'm being ironic here, that the first article i've read involve "bush" and "nuclear cooperation" did not in any way involve reduction or halting of weapons production. not saying that it was very feasible to get this outcome, but still not surprised. second - whoops, i forgot, i meant to say 'nukular') .

i'm off to drink uji (that porridge, remember?), shoot the shit with some local friends, basically VEG for the next 3 hours.... electricity is nice, but today i'm fried

habari za siku nyingi?

2006-02-26T14:00:00.000+03:00

...how is the news of many days?

it's been a while since my last post. what has happened to me over the last 2 weeks?

I got violently ill and threw up all over the road and my house. Am pretty sure it was food related. My first time getting sick in over a year, so I really can't complain. The first time I barfed was around noon, I was coming back to my town from a nearby secondary school, and simply hoping against hope that I could make it until my bus stop before projectile vomiting all over the place. I did, by about 10 seconds - as soon as i got out of the car, my breakfast got out of my stomach. Which is a shame, because I had eaten like 2 big bananas and 5 of the little tiny sweet bananas [which are way better, by the way - some people here only eat the little ones, and use the big ones, the ones we're used to in the States, to make banana beer]. So my appetite for bananas has been pretty much non-existent for the past week. It's a shame.

Getting sick is not fun, but nothing has made me feel more loved and accepted here in the community - my neighbors immediately came to my support, cooking me sensitive-stomach foods (uji -porridge, soup broth), checking up on me, etc. Well ok, my neighbors cook for me a lot on a regular basis anyways, but they were EXTRA concerned now. And since all of Thursday and Friday i was stuck at home, by the time I got around to the market and walking around town on Saturday, everyone was asking 'where've you been?' and, upon hearing that I was sick [for those who hadn't already heard - not many white folks hunched over puking on the side of the road by the Catholic Church on a regular basis, so when it does happen people talk], giving me their regrets (i'm so sorry! pole sana!!).

When not getting sick, I have been continuing to bump my shins on stools and burn my hands with wax while fumbling around my house by candlelight in the evening. Electricity is still a problem - enough said.

My coworker here in Misungwi, who is also my boss and good friend, left this past week. She got a job helping to ensure delivery and proper use of ART drugs (anti retroviral therapy for people with HIV/AIDS). I'm happy for her, as this job makes good use of her doctor background, and she's working on behalf of my personal hero - the job she got is with the Clinton Foundation.

I started working again with a new club at the Teachers Training College in Mwanza - the members from last year have left to go do practice teaching out in the field, so we've started up again with new college members. I wanted ideally 15-20 people, but 45 came to the first meeting - started off right away with some interesting discussions, when I gave them the 'Question of the Week' - should condoms be available free at secondary schools? Lots of hands shot up, and got some very intelligent and well-defended answers on both sides. After the discussion I began relating what it was like at my high school, and then began wondering if the changing political climate has affected policies like these....

RAIN!!! It's rained a few times in the past weeks, enough for me to collect a ton of sweet, sweet drinking water (rain is really the best here, and much cleaner - just boil, dont even usually have to filter). Of course this is also good news for the farmers, who while mostly giving up on rice, will hopefully get decent crops of 'hunger' foods like sweet potatoes, cassava, and millet. Not sure how this perception came to be, since maize and rice are not native crops here, but they are really revered by almost everyone, even in villages - if you have money, you eat this, if not, you eat the others (what i called 'hunger foods'). Which is sadly ironic, because as i have seen first hand this year, the corn and rice crops are SO sensitive to weather conditions, if the rains are not enough or late or whatever, harvests are seriously affected.

One last moment that still sticks out in my mind - I went to visit a friend of mine, a 'fundi' (carpenter), who I hadn't seen in a few weeks. He made almost all my furniture in my house for me (pictures soon, I promise!) and recently, just in time, helped me install shutters on my windows to keep out the blowing rain. And he's fun to talk to - very lively and energetic, likes teaching me Kisukuma, and though he only studied in primary school (imagine stopping at grade 6), he loves having intelligent conversations with me about development here in Tanzania, global environmental issues, you name it. He doesn't feel too comfortable stating his own opinions, but he loves hearing me talk about things, and usually I just end up saying what he hints at in more concrete and clear language (my kiswahili is sweet these days).

So I went to visit. He was busy with his apprentices, making a coffin for a nearby villager whose father died, and who was sitting there watching them make it. I of course felt that I had intruded, but he invited me to a chair and was very excited to see me. Soon we began talking about death ('you mean in America, you don't go to your neighbors funeral unless you are his friend?! why?!?! you mean it's possible to not know your neighbors?!'), the current economic condition here, and a myriad of other things. We got to talking about how the old man who had passed away lived in dirt house with thatched roof, but had over 100 cows - which, sold at 100,000 shillings apiece, would build a really kick-ass house here [think mansion, or wealthy chicago suburbs]. The son then told me, translated through my fundi friend since he only knows kisukuma, that at home there are sacks and sacks of rice and corn, but that the family still doesn't eat enough.

Anyways, we started talking about a ton of differences between TZ and USA, many stemming from budgets/planning/cultural differences such as importance of home-ownership vs. cow-ownership, etc. At which point my fundi friend asked - so, if we have so much here, why are so many Tanzanians still poor? It must be laziness and stupidity.

Now, there are certainly a few people I have met in my time here that, yes, their main problem is that they are stupid and lazy. But i'm talking about a VERY few people here - a lot of the population is incredibly resourceful, and does some remarkable things with limited capital and education (like my hotel-owner friend, who is doing spectacularly for himself, also based on a primary school education). So i immediately disagreed that no, the problem is not stupidity. What then, asked the fundi - why do people here still own 100 cows while they sleep on dirt floors without even a mattress?

That's a hard question. I said it's all about perspective - a whole lot of people act simply on what they know, and until they are able to hear or see a different perspective, only then will they see reason to change. That didn't register, so I gave an example of a farmer and a livestock owner. The farmer just keeps farming by hand, without fertilizer, until the livestock owner one day comes and asks, in disbelief, why the farmer doesnt use cows to plow, and manure to fertilize? The farmer, in the meanwhile, sees how the livestock herder struggles and walks for miles to find adequate food for his emaciated-looking herd - why doesn't the herder plant a small field of leaves and grasses for the cows to eat?

It clicked, and both the fundi and the son, waiting for his fathers coffin, smiled. We went on from there - the whole conversation lasted a good hour and a half, and the time flew. It was the best time I've had in months.

One day puking, the next having life-defining, cross-cultural, essence-of-humanity moments. Good thing my life seems to balance itself out.

how could i forget?

2006-02-26T13:54:00.000+03:00

sunday is a day of rest, a day of worship....
and this morning I got one of the weirdest requests ever.

i answered a call of 'hodi' at my gate to find two middle-aged men wanting to talk to me.
they wanted to know if I, or anyone I know, might be interested in purchasing a raw diamond.

huh?!?!

yes, a raw diamond. 'do you have it here?' i asked - and then got a chance to see it. it was very clear, and it was pretty small, but i'm sure there is still some value, if it's real. there are diamonds all over these parts - within 100 kilometers of here there are numerous hotspots, and in Shinyanga is one of the worlds largest diamond mines. some places, you see hundreds of little pits dug all over the place on the sides of the paved road, limited-budget attempts at striking rich.

i got to hold the rock, for about 5 seconds. 'no, i dont know how to price diamonds, nor do i have money for it. um, ok, i'll ask around in mwanza and see if anyone is interested.'

is this even legal?

and now, some visuals

2006-02-14T15:25:00.000+03:00

....after a long delay. this post has taken several days to make happen. i originally wanted to post pictures back on monday, but SURPRISE - the electricity was out. So apparently the blackout schedule is indeed settled, and for Misungwi it means no electricity during the day, from 6am until 7pm, every day of the week except Friday (well, now i'm just making this shit up - i thought it was EVERY day, but there was electricity today, so i'm back to having no clue what to expect)

Anyways, without further ado, here is a glimpse of my life here...

... starting with my cat eating a lizard:

This uploading thing takes way longer than i thought. here are some pictures of my house: bedroom, kitchen, and living room...

...or maybe not. WHOOF, I will have to budget a lot more time for this in the future. Or I may set up a yahoo account or something. i dunno, this is a bit ridiculous.

so i guess this post is actually one (singular) visual - but it's a pretty fierce one, huh?

ok, i'm going home now. i puked my guts out yesterday (think it was something i ate - how appropriate, then, that i've posted a picture of my cat eating a lizard. she barfed too) anyways, i need to rest, and try to finish my book before the lights go out again...

water/electricity

2006-02-12T09:27:00.000+03:00

If I remember correctly - it was quite a while ago - one of the first debates between Peace Corps Volunteers when we got to Tanzania was on running water vs. electricity: Which would you rather live without?

The first few weeks, there actually seemed to be some discussion around this point. At the time, I had both electricity and semi-running water from an outside tap source, so I didn't have much to input. Then something happened to the pipe, a clog or a leak or i dont know what, and for a period of 2 or so days there was no water. My mind was changed.

Fast forward a year. Ask almost ANY of this same bunch of volunteers now, and I'm willing to bet 95% will answer, without a moment of hesitation, that they would rather have running water than electricity.

Well, looks like our decision, having running water or electricity, has been made for us - THANKS A FREAKIN BUNCH, mother nature.

Tanzania depends on hydro-electric power generators for at least a significant portion of the daily electrical output (not sure what percentage, but it's high). Tanzania is also, at pretty much a nation-wide level, experiencing a severe drought this year - the expected rainy season from December to January basically DID NOT OCCUR in numerous parts of the country.

The effects of this, then, are two fold. As they say in Kiswahili maji ni shida sana, 'water is a big problem.' It is dirty, it is expensive, and it is hard to get. I have heard scattered reports of cholera outbreaks increasing in frequency and scale. FUN!

**Food for though: Prior to coming to Tanzania, the most I ever worried about cholera was when guiding myself and my family/friends through the interior of the country on the Oregon Trail, trying not to capsize our wagon, while shooting as many 200 kilo bison as I could (yes, I know, not very wise given that I was fully aware of their once near-extinction numbers).**

So water is a problem. Of course, this problem also then extends to food, since there are basically no irrigation systems in the country and farmers rely heavily on rains for maize, rice, and other crop harvests. Here nearby Lake Victoria, a few farmers are having a field day planting and harvesting bountiful crops - in places where the lake has receded so much that large new areas of farmland have become available. Again in Kiswahili, tutakuwa na njaa mwaka huu, 'we will be hungry this year.'

But getting back to the topic of the water/electricity debate, since water is a problem that means - BING! - so is electricity. And as of last week, they have officially begun a nation-wide rationing of electricity. In Misungwi, we did not have power from Wednesday through Saturday, though I hear that once the rationing system is well settled our area will be cut off on Thursday and Saturday, from 5am until 11pm. Mwanza town is on a different schedule, which will probably be coordinated beautifully to coincide with the days I'm most frequently in town being the days without power.

So it's a pain, but what can I do. Quite a few volunteers live without electricity ALL the time, the problem is that I've gotten used to it, to my appliances, to putting off my work until 9 or 10 pm, and so when the power's cut it is just a huge pain in the neck. I don't even have a kerosene lantern, I just use candles.

[to give you an impression how bored I was the other night, I found a shutter-delay feature on my new camera that allowed me to take a picture of the candle, move the camera around really fast, and have the image come out looking like the flame formed a loop or a line in the air. this kept me occupied, quite intently, for a good hour and a half. At least the power wasn't cut out for the finale of the African Cup soccer tournament, in which all my neighbors were sorely disappointed that Egypt beat the Ivory Coast - there is definitely a 'sub-saharan' vs. 'northern' african rivalry here, or as most of my neighbors put it, 'black africans vs. arabs.' Ah, gotta love the political-correctness]

So anyways, thats the situation here, and it also explains why I still haven't gotten around to posting pictures - had no interent access, the office has been closed, and since my fan isn't working i've been generally too lazy to do much of anything that involves leaving my house after 10am or before 5pm. But I keep talkin about em, so as soon as they are available I will be posting (starting with the cat/lizard, followed by my boredom-induced candle experiment, and then some shots of my house).

One last thing speaking of pictures - it's weird having my picture taken with friends/neighbors/other people here. I guess I've never explicitly stated this, but I might as well now - you see, everyone around me is African. They are black. This is not a sensitive term here - Tanzanians will say, when trying to describe to me someone I'm not sure I know, 'that really really black one' or 'the white one' [meaning not as black as others]. But yeah, everyone here is black, with the exception of me and a few albinos whom I rarely see because they live in a nearby village, and I assume keep indoors for protection most of the time.

Now, I know that I'm white, and I know that everyone else is black, but to be honest this is not something that I notice on a day-to-day basis. And I also feel very proud to say that there are at least a few people here, perhaps many, who no longer notice or particularly pay attention to my whiteness. But then I'll have my picture taken with a group of students, or the neighbor kids, and I can't help saying to myself 'damn, I am really really freakin white.'

Though to be honest, my whiteness is not so much today. I''ve got a nice coat of dirt that gives me some color. I haven't bathed yet today [my guard used up the water, yaargh], nor did I bathe yesterday [not a fan of cold baths, too lazy to heat up my water on a charcoal stove]. Ahh, the joys of a water shortage/electricity rationing.

this blog entry is written with one purpose in mind....

2006-02-05T14:55:00.000+03:00

PROCRASTINATION.

I'm a big fan of 'to-do' lists, because they make me feel productive. Also, i'm scatter-brained enough that if I don't write them, I have no flippin clue what i'm supposed to do at any given moment.

I usually pack such lists with overly simple things, and occasionally things i've already actually done, so that I am able to cross them out and feel good about myself.

Ok, no judging folks.

Unfortunately, procrastination is an evil temptress. [is 'procrastination' feminine? not very many women I know seem very good at it. maybe that's why they're not tempted by it/her??]

Thus, I am sitting in the internet cafe, reading news, checking movie reviews, talking with my friend about good Tanzanian music. All the while, being taunted by my 'to-do' list, sitting on the computer desk next to me, in plain view.

Here's what it looks like:
[commentary will be presented in brackets - a grammatical tool, along with parantheses, that I am perfectly aware I overuse]

'SUNDAY' [block letters so I don't forget what day it is] [that last comment is not a joke]

- take a shower
[start it simple - though to give myself credit, taking a shower here is not as easy as it is in the states, especially since i was low on water today]
- use internet
[hey!! so it's actually not procrastination if I plan it into my schedule, right?! ok, i'll buy that]
- ngao spray/mop
[ngao is cheap, effective mosquito killer. i mop my floors with it and spray curtains and doorways once every 4 months or so. still malaria free after 1 year+!!]
- kitchen light
[has been busted for a few weeks. so i cook by candle light, or eat at the insanely early hour of 6pm, or at the neighbors house still]
- buy running shorts (bukta in kiswahili)
[good running shorts are imperative before starting any exercise regimen. this is what i've been telling myself for the past 2 months now. i have yet to start running. but i still keep it on my list]
- text Rehema, Mosquitonet
[Rehema because I want to meet to talk to her about The Revenge, which ended last week!! Thank goodness, because I was starting to become seriously upset with the amount of time I wasted watching that stupid show. Also, her cousin is visiting her from California for a few weeks - along with her friend. Nudgenudge, winkwink, saynomore.]
[Mosquitonet is a friend from the Teachers Training College, whose actual name is Chandarua, which in kiswahili does indeed mean mosquito net. gotta remind him to make an announcement about our Lifeskills club]
- visit shoe guys
[I have some good friends who work at a shoe store. haven't talked to them for awhile, need to stop by and say hi, plus I need a new pair of shower sandals, the ones I really liked and had fixed up oh 4-5 times have finally bit the dust, I will post a picture of them when I get a chance, yes i took a picture of them because I really liked them]
- practice LSAT
[self explanatory, yikes! planning my future is scary, but at least i like logic/reasoning problems. so i figure this is an acceptable balance. actually registering for the text might be more nightmare-inducing, especially if it's near larium-night]
- read Form III essays, lesson plan for Tuesday, peer-educator selection
[ok, so i have to throw in some work in here too. preparing to teach at secondary school on Tuesday, as well as teachers college on Wednesday, and the impending surge of AMREF workshops, meetings, seminars, supervisions, etc that have started this past week and will be picking up to a level of near-insanity until calming down again sometime in June]
- read Augie
[like I said, gotta keep some of this stuff fun, and budget time for my current novel]
- neighbor spy
[not as bad as it sounds - more like 'politely start chit-chatting with my next door neighbors who have a very loud church choir rehearsal 6 days a week, to see if the rumors that they are moving into the old TANESCO (electric company) office building are true, and if it is offer my assitance with the move, and then once I get back into my house doing an embarassing dance to celebrate, and if it's not true sighing and going to visit some friends far away until they are done with rehearsal at around 7pm']

WHOOF. it's 3:30 pm, and i've managed to do numbers 1 and 2 on this list. however, I never actually check off 'shower' on my list, since often times the other list items that follow it, combined with oppresive equatorial heat, require at least another rinse in the evening.

ok, time to get started....

i am very happy and stupid

2006-01-30T09:09:00.000+03:00

yeah, so turns out i had turned on the 'moderate comments' function on this thing, but didn't have a clue that meant I had to approve every one - so thanks to all who have been commenting for the last month or so!
have it worked out so that you can comment freely without being censored by me, that is until I start getting the obnoxious spam comments again..

I am VERY close to posting pictures on this thing ---- a new dimension to my observations, should be exciting, and I promise the first picture to be posted will be the cat eating a lizard (no barf pics)

PEACE

lizard butt

2006-01-29T15:32:00.000+03:00

there is a lizard butt (well, i guess I should say 'tail'), sitting in the kitchen of my house.

I heard Lupe, my cat (named after a needy mother from my favorite soap opera, 'The Revenge', which, by the way, is definitely nearing a spectacular finale - Renaldo has died, Rodrigo is on the run, Isabella is finally softening up and Alejandro/Soledad are together again after a blessing from, and a miscarriage by, Carolina) making a commotion yesterday afternoon, in the empty, aka 'cat room' of my house.

I went in to investigate, and found her playing with a sizeable lizard (though, disappointingly, not one of the ones with a pink head and purple butt - those are my favorite). I took some video of it with my new camera (thanks Dad and Mom!), which i will attempt to post here in the near future (along with more pleasant pictures, like Zanzibar).

I wasn't sure if this was just a game or a meal, but it turned out to be the latter. This morning I woke up to found, joy of all joys, some barfed up lizard head in my doorway, and a big fat lizard butt in the middle of the kitchen ('leftovers'). For all the credit I usually give cats as the superior species to dogs, which I still strongly believe in, they can all be pretty freaking stupid sometimes. Then again, I know plenty of humans who drink themselves silly and barf all over the place too - guess stupidity knows no boundaries.

I still haven't mopped up the barf, am waiting to see if the stupidity extends to re-eating gross lizard remains she failed to properly digest the first time. Plus, I have no water. My guard was suposed to bring me some, but was at a funeral and so very late. The rains here in Tanzania were supposed to have started in December, continued Jan, paused in Feb, and then really pick up March through June. Well, it didn't rain in December, and after a few good downpours in early January (enough to get farmers out to their fields to plant), it has again cut out here in the Mwanza region, leaving things pretty dry, dusty, and hot.

The small-picture side of this is that I can't clean up my cat's vomit, I'm down to only one bath a day (using about 10 liters of water instead of my normal 15), and when I blow my nose my snot is a nice brownish/sandy color. The big-picture is that Tanzanian farmers are essentially 'good-luck' dependent, i.e. they plant water-intensive crops like maize (gotta have their maize porridge) but then have no means of irrigating in case the rains, as they have this year, decide to take a month off.

Some places along the Lake are a bit better, though this involves lots of time and labor hauling pails of water up to the farms. Which, by the way, is how most farming around this region is done: by hand. Plowing is done with a hoe - I've seen a small handful of people using cows to plow the fields, much more common is to see a whole family (5-year-old children included), each with hoes in hand, heading out early morning to dig up some dirt.

That said, they really get their shit done here. The Sukuma people in Mwanza region are apparently known for a strong work ethic, and what I guess I would call a stubbornness, in that they don't like to depend on food from other parts of the country, but like to be self-sustaining. But you can only work so hard when natural forces are working against you!

Long story short: waiting for guard to bring water, housegirl to clean puke, and mother nature to CUT THESE PEOPLE SOME FUCKING SLACK AND LET IT POUR ALREADY.

10 cent shit

2006-01-27T17:24:00.000+03:00

I'm sorry, this is gross, but it has to be the first thing I write about, because it's so damn funny.

Not sure how I missed it for a whole year, but yesterday I was walking along one of the winding roads of downtown Mwanza, and came across a public bathroom with the following largely, clearly written on the front wall:

HAJA NDOGO - 50
HAJA KUBWA - 100

Basically, 'little one' is 50 shillings (nickel), 'big one' is 100 (dime). And in case 'little one' and 'big one' isn't clear enough for you, I could also say 'Number 1' and 'Number 2', or 'piss' and 'shit.'

So, for some reason or another, the first thought that popped into my head was 'why is the shit more expensive? I doubt there's toilet paper anyways [usually just water to splash-clean]'

Then, I thought, well, usually when you take a shit, you invariably take a piss. Now, is the 100 shilling 'shit' option an all-inclusive package, piss and shit combined, or is this like an ala carte thing where I would have to pay 100 for just the shit, and fork over an extra 50 for the piss. Because I would be pretty upset if it were the later - it kinda seems like they'd be forcing you into it, since I personally find it hard to NOT piss after going Number 2, and quite frankly I'm surprised anyone would pay 50 shillings to piss in a bathroom anyways, well at least men, since most men here just piss anywhere they feel like.

This is something that I will have to do a bit more research on. But just out of curiosity - since I'm white, I can just walk 5 minutes down the street and take a dump in the SAFI (clean) white-people hotel bathroom. There's toilet paper there, and fancy hand soap. They don't question me or anything, I just go, do my business, and leave. Doubt a Tanzanian could do the same.

Let's see, what's new. Secondary School students are back in class, though I haven't started going to teach yet. I will though, since the teachers set a whole period aside in the schedule for my lesson (for the WHOLE school - eeks- will take some coordination to pull this off). We had a two-day planning meeting for my AMREF work for the year, with all of the District Government big-potatoes. It's kind of interesting, they all seem quite fond and possessive of me, often in a parent-son type relationship (since they are all most definitely older than myself). Now if I can translate this relationship, which has taken me a whole year to slowly build and develop, into something that can actually help me get some kick-ass work done in the year up-coming, well then, that would be fantastic. Today I sat in on a meeting of counselors/testers from the few VCTs in Misungwi district (Voluntary Counseling and Testing centers). It was a pretty informative meeting, though I didn't have a ton to contribute, and they seem interested in involving me in their ongoing efforts to improve testing facilities and encourage more people to get tested - especially working with community drama groups to encourage people to visit their facilities.

That's all to report - well, not all, but I'm damned tired today and am looking forward to getting home and fixing me some guacamole with what - judging by looks, texture, and intution - I believe may be the best avocado I've ever purchased. It's huge, and was only 15 cents!

PEACE
--afterthought--
*I have gotten a request to write a bit more about transporation here in Tanzania, as well as agriculture/farming/rainy season. I will get to those in the next few entries.

**In the meantime, why isn't anyone making comments on this thing?! I'm not pathetic, but that doesn't mean I won't beg and grovel. The heading at the top of this page isn't that far from the truth, I basically do NOT speak English most days here, and you all would be very, very sad for me if you saw how excited I get seeing that I have even one comment!!

the postman always begs twice....

2006-01-22T12:24:00.000+03:00

I had a fun encounter on Wednesday at the post office in Mwanza, one that I'm sure would've made me lose my cool had I not just finished a fantastically relaxing and refreshing 2 week vacation...

I recieved a slip in my AMREF mailbox that said I had a package waiting for me at customs in the main Mwanza Post office - dated December 23rd. 'CHRISTMAS CANDY, HERE I COME!!!' was my first and only thought. So I went to pick it up - silly me - at about 1:15 in the afternoon.

Me: 'Hi, I'm here to pick up my package!'
Post Office Guy: 'The customs guy is at lunch. Sorry'
Me: 'Oh, so can someone else help me?'
POG: 'No, there's only one guy who can help you, and he is at lunch'
Me: 'So he just left, huh? When will he be back?'
POG: 'Actually, he hasn't been here all day, but I think he's at lunch now, he should be back soon.'
Me: 'Ummmm.... How do you know this if you haven't even seen him yet today?
POG: [no response]
Me: 'You see, I don't live in Mwanza town, so it's kind of an inconvenience for me to try to work around this dude's schedule. Maybe you can give him a call and see when he'll be back?'
POG: [calls the dude] 'He's at lunch. He'll be back at 2:30.'
Me: 'Ok, what time does he leave for the day?'
POG: '3pm'

fantastic
So at this point, I went to have a great Indian lunch with the two other volunteers in the region, Andrew and Ryan, both of whom apparently have blogs [see links]. After stuffing my face with curries and parathas, I glanced at my watch to see - 3:05pm. GREAT. So I did something I pretty much NEVER do in Mwanza - hopped in a cab - and arrived at the Post Office at 3:10. Let's pick up the conversation again here:

Me: [pant, pant] 'Hi, I'm here to pick up my package from the customs dude'
POG: [extremely guilty look on his face] 'Um, he's not here'
Me: 'What?! But i've been sitting here for 15 minutes waiting for him, he shouldn't have left yet! [yes, I lied. what's your point?!]
POG: 'Oh, um...... actually, he didn't come back from lunch'
Me: [mischevous, 'i'm gonna be demanding and not culturally sensitive' grin on my face]
Ok, buddy, let me tell you something. I had to pay 1,500 shillings to come to Mwanza today, and will have to pay the same this evening to return. I just took a 1,000 shilling cab so I could rush my ass over here and greet our friend, the customs dude, so I can pick up a package that has been sitting at this post office for a month since you guys were too late or lazy to send me the slip telling me to pick it up. Either you give me 4,000 shillings to I can go through this whole charade again tomorrow, or call him and tell him to get the hell over here and give me my package'
POG: 'Ummmm......take it easy, give me a minute...'
[on phone to customs dude] 'Hey, there's this white guy here who was looking for you earlier, and he's pretty angry now. Come over here and do your job'

[10 minutes pass.... I sit on bench, smiling passively-aggressively at every PO employee I see]

Customs Dude: 'Ok, where's this impatient white guy at?'
Me: 'Here I am, how are you today sir?' [continuing with the passive-aggressiveness]
CD: 'Oh, you know Swahili. Oh. Ok, where is your package?'
Me: 'That's what I'd like to know'
CD: [goes to find the parcel in question, a large box from my Aunt labeled 'books and magazines'] 'Ok, let's see here..... so with the customs fees and tarriffs and everything, that'll be 24,000 shillings please'
Me: 'No.'
CD: 'No, you didn't understand. You have to pay fees depending on the value of the goods that have been sent to you'
Me: 'Ok, but the number you came up with was based on postage fees, not value declaration. The package is valueless, it's all old magazines' [another lie - not true Aunt Karen, it was a VERY valuable gift!!]
CD: 'Ummmmm......Oh. Ok. Well, let's open it up and take a look.'
Me: 'Is Tanzania still a democratic country? Or are all packages opened up these days?'
[POG got a real kick out of that last statement, much to the chagrin of CD]
CD: 'Fuck you, rich white guy' [well, at least that's what I assume he said to himself]
[opens package, begins looking through contents - magazines, Christmas candy, BEEF STICKS!! - sure he had NO CLUE about those, cocoa mixes, mechanical pencils, etc]
CD: 'Ok, so how much money do you have?'
Me: [SILENT, with 'give me a break' written all over my face]
CD: 'You have 5,000 shillings?'
Me: 'No. The holidays just passed, and you know how money is after the holidays' [BEST EXCUSE EVER, got it from about the million Tanzanians I've heard use it]
CD: 'Oh. So.....' [starts fiddling with one of the mechanical pencils, but shows no sign of giving up this discussion]
Me: 'Do you like pencils?'
CD: 'Is that what this is? Yes, I do.'
Me: 'Enough, take 3 pencils, go back to wherever you were, and let me get the hell on my way.'
CD: [NO hesitation] 'OK. Thanks. Have a nice day'
Me: 'Yeah, buddy, you too.'

I love larium

2006-01-19T09:52:00.000+03:00

the last few mornings have been pretty wild, but nothing like this morning.

you see, i've been going to sleep without turning my alarm clock on because, well, I just finished vacation and I'm not quite ready to start the whole waking-up-early-and-going-to-work-on-time thing, not just yet.

so now the sleep-lab geek in me comes out. as all in the sleep-profession know, most people get lots of deep, restful sleep in the early and middle parts of the night, while mornings are dominated by increasingly long bursts of REM sleep, the stage of sleep that produces dreams, interspersed with periods of lighter sleep. this REM sleep, based on my personal sleep history (which I know in WAY too much detail), typically comes for me in 30-60 minute intervals that start around midnight and increase in frequency up until waking time. well, let me tell you - with my alarm clock off i have gotten some pretty wicked-serious REM sleep, and when you combine that with my anti-malarial medications (most-common side effect = incredibly vivid dreams, bordering on nightmares), needless to say the results are freakin entertaining.

this morning's example (or the little I remember of it - i'd say I typically only comprehend about 20% of what I dream...):

it was the day of my wedding. so for those of you who know me, you know that this is a nightmare, not a dream. HA! i tried to get a look at the bride, but I didn't recognize her face. people were calling her Natalie, and people were calling me Chad (NO clue why, but still pretty sure it was me). she had buns in her hair though, a very unusual style for a bride on her wedding day, and thus I bring your attention to

REASON #1 - why I am convinced that I will marry Natalie Portman (aka Queen Amidala)

anyways, I can't be sure it was her though, since I spent most of the time staring at her body. no, this is not because i'm a pig, it's because her wedding dress was very unique. it was a standard white-flowy-fluffy-lacy-frilly-girly-yadayadayada dress, except for one unique feature - it had a HUGE red maple leaf plastered across her stomach. now, this really would make no sense, if it weren't for the fact that at my neighbor's house a few nights ago, we watched a bad imitation of WWE professional wrestling, and one of the wrestlers was a very proud Canadian who had the maple leaf on his coat, his speedoshorts, his shoes, and spraypainted in his hair. the wrestling was really bad, nowhere near the quality of Smackdown or Raw, but my neighbors loved it none-the-less.

so as i was staring and pondering the mystery of this national-pride wedding garment, it suddenly morphed from a bright red maple leaf into a bright blue star of david.

REASON #2 - I will marry Natalie Portman!! (she's Israeli)

------
ok, so i was staring at the morphing designs on my bride-to-be's stomach, and I guess somewhere in there we actually got married, exchanged vows, etc etc. I don't remember any of that stuff, probably a defense mechanism where I block out all the really scary stuff (VOWS!!). i should be glad, because if I had heard myself say 'I do' I probably would've woken up screaming and sweating, and the rest of the dream was pretty entertaining, I would've missed out.

so yeah, cut to reception. I, along with my still faceless bride, are now for some reason or other wearing standard PeaceCorps issue bicycle helmets.

REASON #3 - anyone see Garden State?!?!!!!! Natalie wears a helmet!!!! DONE DEAL.

and we are presiding over a buffet line that includes, again for some unknown reason, a ton of crappy Tanzanian food. one interesting selection - does anyone remember those little 'troll' dolls, with the really bright and fluffy hair?! Yeah, so those were in one of the hotpots, and I observed guests grabbing them by the hair and eating the bodies. Now, I was racking my brain for an explanation of where the hell this came up in my recent life, and decided it must have been when I was in Dar-es-Salaam and went out for pork with some friends from the University. Any PCV in Tanzania can tell you that the pork here is VERY tasty....and occasionally still a bit hairy.

I myself made a beeline for the porky-trolls, when I bumped over the large serving tray holding them with my incredibly large gut. I then saw my extremely fat landlord (wearing his Steve Urkel pants) pointing and laughing at me. Now, I assume this little mind-game is a result of the fact that everyone I saw in Morogoro (host family) told me I was getting fat and growing a belly. At that point, I began to rememer how once in Morogoro I knocked the sliding door off of a minivan bus I was riding when I tried to get off and hit it with my ass. Thus, in my dream, I managed to destroy my own wedding-buffet line with my enormous mid-section.

After cleaning myself up, we began chatting with the guests. There were many - other PCVs, college friends, people from high school I haven't seen in 6 years, family, and I assume Natalie's famous Hollywood friends (though I didn't see any of them with my own eyes, except for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie but I assumed they were there to celebrate my fantastic development work in Africa, and not just because of celebrity connections). They were all pretty shit-faced drunk though, so most were passed out sprawled across their tables, it kind of looked like some sort of mass carbon-monoxide poisoning or something. This I have since interpreted as my brain being starved of oxygen, because....

At this point, sadly, I woke up. Out of breath, face down in my pillow. After regaining my breath, I spent a good 5 minutes trying to figure out what the hell I had just imagined.

How's that for a glimpse into my crazy, but still malaria-free for 1 year and 3 months, mind?!!

guess who's back? back again?

2006-01-15T11:35:00.000+03:00

First, and hopefully last, Eminem reference I will ever make on this blog. Especially since (no offense Dad, Mom, Grandparents, Aunts/Uncles, etc) most of the 'mature' readers probably have no clue what I'm talking about.

I am back in Misungwi after a record-breaking 2 weeks away from site. I have yet to venture out into the market/busstand/downtown area, I expect it will involve too many explanations of my absence and inquiries regarding gifts from Dar that it will be tough to handle, so I'm putting it off until this afternoon.

However, yesterday I hung out with the neighbors and one of my best friends, Deus, and after a few minutes of 'how's it been stranger' type banter, things were back to usual. Surprisingly, I got no comments on how my Kiswahili or Kisukuma has gotten worse, even though it definitely has after 2 weeks of almost exclusive English communication. As much as I was nervous about getting back, yesterday was just very nice and normal, something I haven't had for awhile. As to be expected on Saturdays, the electricity was out all day, so I mostly just sat around in non-awkward silence or in bits of interesting conversation with Deus. Dinner at Mama Leo's was rice and beans, something I dare say I had missed a little (though when I was in Morogoro I had coconut rice every day, something I will miss far more).

My last few days in Dar were really fantastic, fortunatley my last blog entry was not prophetic (thank goodness, as for at least one day in Dar I seemed to be calling things left and right - I had just finished talking about gross amounts of dripping sweat when my friends and I piled onto the hottest daladala ride I've had yet and, yes, had sweat dripping from our chins. Then 2 seconds later I started a discussion on personal space and having strangers' kids sitting in our laps, and - BOOM - i got stuck with an awfully fat but cute Tanzanian 2-year-old on my knees).

I spent one evening visiting a friend at the University of Dar es Salaam, and despite the brevity, it was a really great evening. I hung out with a group of about 5 well-dressed, well-educated, young and motivated Tanzanian sophomores, and had interesting discussions about elections, politics, cultures, music and movies, over beers and pork (man, I love pork). They had just finished exams, something I definitely do not miss fondly about my university experience, but I do miss the intellectual discussion and the plethora of things to do and see and talk about that exists in Dar.

After that, I went to the other extreme and took a trip back to rural, up-in-the-mountains Bigwa, site of my homestay experience over a year ago (shit, time flies). I think I've already mentioned one highlight of this excursion, the coconut rice, which went deliciously well with some spiced meat that we had to celebrate Eid el Hajj with my homestay brother and his Muslim wife. Another highlight was to get away from the hustle and bustle (and expenses!) of the big city.

But the main highlight was visiting the family (father, mother, and older brother - the little guys were gone when I was there). From a big-picture perspective, I don't know these folks all that well, and only spent two months with them when i've now been in country for over a year. But the fact that I stayed with them for my first two months, and that the basics of everything I know and depend on here I learned from them, has created some sort of sappy, weird bond that allowed us to instantly connect like relatives who hadn't seen each other for awhile. Really, really short relatives. I only spent 2 days there, but had a great time playing checkers, hiking in the beautiful Uluguru mountains up to what I call 'Banana city', eating tons of fresh mangoes, and just catching up about the past year. I especially enjoyed seeing my host brother, whom I helped out a bit with school - he is now studying in Dar in Form 5, which is like pre-college, upperlevel high school. He is far more proficient in English than a year ago, and just seems so motivated, excited, full of goals and aspirations, a very fun transformation to witness.

My last night in Dar had a great time with the 14 or so Education volunteers who are remaining - went to a nice sushi place, then out dancing til 4 in the morning. Tanzanian prostitutes are very nice and polite, but can get a tad annoying.

Enough Dar recap, I'm excited to get back to entries about regular, i.e. boring, life.

good times

2006-01-15T10:03:00.000+03:00

These are lyrics to one of the most popular songs of the past year that I've been in Tanzania. The song is called 'Starehe', which means roughly 'good times', and is sung by Ferouz featuring Professor J.
Ferouz is ill, and discusses his condition with his doctor (Professor J). My translation is not very good, i'm doing it word for word instead of by more general meaning or context, but I think it still comes across. I hope to at some point post (though i have NO clue how) a wav. file or something so that everyone can get a chance to hear this - it has a very quick, catchy beat.
Makes you question the content of most American music, huh? At least, it makes me feel this way. And this after I just quoted a shitty Eminem song...

Chorus:
Here I am in my bed,
Good times have gotten me in trouble,
to recover again is just not possible
my friends, my relatives farewell
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
Suwa Said Scot Jenta [other famous TZ singers] goodbye,
Bongo records and majani goodbye,
you won't see me again on this earth.

Now I regret to say your friend has met trouble,
the devil has succeeded to pull me in,
now I dont know who to blame,
between my own self and demons,
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
Makongo and Jiteute goodbye,
MOA and Azania goodbye,
ahhhhh.

Ferouz:
It's 1pm if I look at my watch
I've already left Jackie now i'm going to find Salama
At 6pm I have an appointment with 2 ladies,
not to mention Lillie whom I'm meeting at 8pm
Jane from Mikocheni, who is no longer on earth,
She would've been waiting for me by the rocks,
Amina and Semeni I will be meeting at Macheni
and every day I change up the order

This indeed was the course of my life,
loafing around the playing fields,
I saw nothing but fame and splendor
I partied with such haste and rashness,
I changed ladies like changing buses,
Going I got on this one, returning on that one,
I yearned to rule as king of all parties

Even to remember my God it was just a dream,
I was carried away by worldly life,
Turns out I was running from fire
and behavior of changing girlfriends I enjoyed
I especially liked my young well-dressed sistas

The bad part is that I didn't appreciate condoms,
since I knew it would reduce the pleasure of sex,
what do you know, I was losing a way
which I was advised could protect me.
The number of women was too large to count,
it reached a period where some of them I don't even remember
See? See this now?
What occured is that the sister of Bashiri,
I had already forgotten if we had been intimate,
when I saw her I seduced her again,
again for the second time.

[Chorus]

Professor J:
Hey youth, why haven't you knocked on the door?
Get in line, one by one is how we do things here,
Remove your doubts, good cures don't come quickly,
Wait while the others are treated and you will follow

Ferouz:
Doctor i've come to do a final evaluation
I believe this will be my last visit
symptoms show that I am affected (by AIDS)
but I've come to test only so that I can be sure
See, check it doctor how i've become emaciated
I am left just skin and bones
My body is dotted with sores and cuts,
don't say it these are all symptoms of Electricity (slang for HIV/AIDS)
symptoms of Electricity

Professor J:
Stop being afraid, even malaria can be like this,
you can lose weight from typhoid or TB,
if you are not open and honest you are endangering your life,
it's better to distinguish which is menacing you, huh?

Ferouz:
Frequent fevers are constantly bothering me,
I vomit and have diarrhea 62 times a week
Look, how my hair has begun to fall out
My shoulders have risen you'd say they've popped out
I have it, I have it (slang for AIDS)
(Prof J) Wait for the test!
I have it, I have it
(Prof J) don't give up now!
I have it, I have it
Doctor don't be heartening,
it's like giving a toothless man a bone to gnaw on,
Here on earth I have no importance,
i'm supposed to say goodbye to earth, i have to do so
It's better i know now, so i can start shutting down

Professor J:
No! no, these are strange decisions
It's inexperience to kill yourself like this because,
illness is normal for humans, you should know this
It's better you relax and get answers from your bloodtest

Ferouz:
Now what's going on, you see what am I waiting for?
Better I be early to rest in the cemetary

Professor J:
Good times you really enjoy but this has bad results,
Many have been ruined by promiscuity,
Tests show that it's true you are affected (AIDS),
I'm very sorry, to lose more national strength,
It's good to go to service/worship and to talk with your Creator,
Eat well, do exercise, rest your body,
If you follow these guidelines you can live positively with hope
By the way, you still have a place here, believe in yourself

Ferouz:
God who created me, now I have already wronged him,
Even the soil of heaven is insulting me,
The angels of punishment await me with pleasure,
When I reach the afterlife who will greet me?
Aaaah....

[Chorus]

port of peace...and boredom

2006-01-09T10:26:00.000+03:00

I am now entering my second week in Dar es Salaam, which I'm not sure I mentioned means 'Port of Peace'. But, as the title of the entry suggests, it's getting a little old.

Some highlights from the past week (excluding the dentist):

-movie theater!!! I miss Doc, I miss movies. We saw chronicles of Narnia, which was kind of corny, but it was just nice sitting in the theater (air conditioning!!) and taking in the whole movie experience.

-a very expensive (12 dollars! 2 days salary!!) but well worth it breakfast buffet at the Holiday Inn here in Dar es Salaam. Included cold cereals, tons of fruits, pancakes, meat and eggs, crossaints and pastries, and even champagne!! Having Peace Corps Volunteers allowed into anything that is 'all-you-can-eat' is asking for trouble...

-an equally luxurious Thai dinner at another posh hotel. One of my fellow volunteers had his parents visiting, and they VERY graciously treated us all (close to 15 volunteers) to this fantastic dinner!! By the way, in case you didn't realize it yet Dad and Mom, you better be saving up for your visit, because my friends and I really like food. :-)

-lots of time spent at the American Club with my friends, which is basically like a fancy country club for American citizens (well, we get in free, anyone else has to pay to get in). Here we can swim in a pool for free, get some fantastic (but overpriced) food, just sit in air conditioning and watch TV, and rent any of a hundred or so movies available.

-a day at a nearby beach with some nice waves, walks, beaches, and beers (and a camel)

-walking around the main Dar es Salaam market (insanity). I really just can't describe it here, until you experience it you just can't imagine. TONS of people, TONS of food, TONS of stuff, noises, smells, sights, sounds, etc. On the way there we passed the main brewery for some fine Tanzanian beers and I tried to get us a tour/taste test, but we were turned down.

So for the next few days, I am hoping to touch base with a friend of mine who is at the University of Dar es Salaam, and get a view of campus and of college life here in Tanzania. This should be really fun, maybe even make me miss a bit the U of C.
Even more exciting, I want to pop in on my homestay family, who so wonderfully helped me during my first 2 months here in Tanzania, but have not seen since March.
And, of course, a few more stops at subways/ice cream places/etc to enjoy my last few days of metropolitan life...

props....

2006-01-06T14:21:00.000+03:00

....go out to Michelle, who, as the kids say these days, 'pimped my blog.'

coming soon: wish list, perhaps a map of Tanzania, and hopefully some sweet pictures.

yo, fools: make comments!

i want pain

2006-01-06T08:50:00.000+03:00

or so I learned yesterday.

I am still here in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania (means Port of Peace), for what Peace Corps calls our Mid Service Conference (thats right, i'm halfway finished with my work here!).

For the first two days, the 12 remaining health education volunteers met to listen to some presentations by NGOs and other organizations working in Tanzania to improve coordination between us and them, and then exchanged successes and problems we have encountered in the past year - all the while bouncing around new ideas and having a good time eating AMERICAN food (sandwiches!) and catching up.

Then yesterday we started our medical check up, and for me that meant going to the dentist - an always enjoyable experience. Well, lets just say, I was sorely disappointed!!! From what I remember about my last trip to the dentist, I expected to have a kind looking dental hygenist really go to town scraping plaque off my teeth, brutally jabbing the jabber-pick into the tops of my molars to test for soft spots, cleaning and polishing with some gritty, badly-fake-flavored creams and whatnot, and then ending the whole shebang with a not-so-delicate flossing and scolding about improved dental hygiene.

What I got was far from it - the guy kinda just looked at my teeth with a mirror, did some very minor poking, and then a very light cleaning with what I eventually gathered to be some kind of elaborate, clinical-looking water pick. I figured out the water pick part when I started drooling uncontrolably all over myself, lets just say the saliva-sucker-upper thing (do these instruments have real names?) was not up to the task during my appointment.

No flossing, no poking, no scolding, nothing. It was not painful at all, and I have now learned that that is NOT what I expect, nor want, when I go to the dentist. I want blood, I want to cry. Yesterday I felt like I could've left a big chunk of my sub sandwich in my teeth and it might still have been there even after the appointment (went to Subway for lunch - sweet. not a huge fan of globalization, but if fast-food is coming to Tanzania, at least it's Subway and not McDonalds or Taco Bell).

And that was the best option here in Dar - it was at Aga Khan, which apparently is Canadian. Those softie Canadians. I hear the Swedes are brutal, and people actually WERE crying when they left - maybe i'll make a special request for my last appointment at their place.

Today is the last day of official Peace Corps business - then a few weekend days on the beach outside of dar, and will learn if i'm heading straight back to Mwanza or waiting in Dar for a few days until a PC vehicle gives me a lift up. Which reminds me, New Years on Zanzibar was fantastic. Well, a few problems with our first resort and beach (crabby owner, excessive seaweed), but then we moved up to the north side of the island and had a fantastic day of swimming, relaxing, drinking, and talking. It was a shock to see so many other non-Tanzanians, and I wouldn't have wanted to stay much longer, but it was a much needed and appreciated 3 day vacation.

uninspired factual update (after a long bus ride)

2005-12-29T20:46:00.000+03:00

I am writing from an internet cafe here in Dar es Salaam - i'm out of the house past 9pm!! How exciting.

Less exciting was the long-ass bus ride to get here - 30 hours from Mwanza, passing through Kenya. Did get to see Kilimanjaro though - I had already seen it, but was still pretty pleased. I miss snow.

Tomorrow I believe I am getting up at the crack of dawn to take a ferry to Zanzibar, at which point I will make a beeline to the beach to go for my first swim in a LONG time. Lake Victoria looks beautiful, but is infested with schistosomiasis (blood flukes), so swimming is sort of a no-no.

I have already begun to catch up with some of my friends, many of whom I have not seen in months. This blog sure has helped me maintain my written english communication abilities, but spoken word is another thing - I literally find myself stuttering occasionally, or searching for appropriate words to express so many abstract feelings.

Mango season is slowly winding to an end, and it is sad. The coming months, howeer, will bring more oranges and guavas than I could eat in a lifetime.

Happy New Year.

calm before the storm...

2005-12-26T13:14:00.000+03:00

It was raining just now in Mwanza, but in Misungwi, hamna kitu (nothing, in Kiswahili).
However, there are ominous clouds on the horizon, and I have no drinking water, so here's hoping....

Had two guests at my site from Saturday til this morning - a personal record!! Not many visitors here. Well, 2 of 3 (myself included) are not Christmas celebrators, but we still used it as an occasion to cook a feast (though, to be honest, just visiting other PCVs is usually occasion enough, cooking is a big deal here). On Sunday, Christmas day, we cooked and then consumed, per person, the following:
3, 1/3 pound hamburgers (except for the vegetarian)
2-3 mangoes
3-4 tacos (with spicy ground beef, refriend beans, salsa, guacamole, homemade tortillas)
several slices of banana bread
fantastic homemade brownies
pilau (spiced rice) and goat meat (brought to us by my neighbors)
2-5 FANTA organes (michelle was hands-down soda champion of the day)
3 french hens, 2 turtledoves, and a partridge in a pear tree (not really, though they do raise doves here for eatin'. not sure what the hell the 'turtle' part is about, and the doves themselves look pretty gamey, not a whole lot of meat....)

The first thing I said today when I woke up: "I'm hungover, but from food."

I am now back at site (and actually hungry again!). Am looking forward to a relaxing few days of hanging at home, talking to friends, and reassuring everyone that even though I won't be around the next two weeks, NO, that does NOT meant that I ran back to the States and left them without really saying goodbye (so damn possessive, these people of Misungwi are).

Then the real fun begins - a 30some hour bus ride, hop on a ferry, and 3 beatufiul days of swimming and reading and sipping and storytelling on the beach.

Thanks to all who have sent holiday greetings, cards, and good vibes.

it's a plane??

2005-12-21T09:47:00.000+03:00

there has been a small-engine aircraft circling over Misungwi for the past week or so.

Last Friday I heard it go by no fewer than 6 times, then it seemed to have gone away, but this morning (bright and early)....it's baaaack!

My first thought, of course, was that one of the presidential candidates used a helicopter to get to and from political rallies (not to mention as a FANTASTIC way to draw airplane-curious voters, i.e. everyone who isn't both deaf and blind, to listen to his speeches), and maybe he was still cruising around. But wait, the elections were last week, so that makes no sense.

[speaking of which, the election results were announced yesterday, and despite the impressive aerial show, this candidate recieved only 6% of the vote. The leading party, CCM, once again won the elections, with President-elect Kikwete recieving over 80% of the vote. He will be sworn in today]

Very sketchy reports from people here suggest that whoever is in the plane is scouting the terrain looking for some sort of precious minerals (probably South Africans, they're all over this region when it comes to such things - there are a few gold mines just west of here, and a huge diamond mine a few hours south). This seemed like a reasonable explanation, until I started thinking. Now, i'm no geologist or whatever other professions involve looking for minerals and surveying landscapes and whatnot, but, um, what precious minerals can you detect from a small single-engine aircraft? And how? What machines do you use to find evidence of gold or diamonds or Tanzanite or who knows what, underground?

weird

mtandao

2005-12-18T15:01:00.000+03:00

means "network" in Kiswahili.

It's also what people say to refer to the two big cell-phone towers that are perched on a 'mountain' (aka big pile of rocks) about maybe 5 or 6 kilometers away from my house. Because it's on a mini-mountain and set up higher from Misungwi town, I had heard that it offers fantastic views of the surrounding environs. Of course, my lazy ass took a whole year after hearing this to actually get up the energy to go check it out.

So this morning I got up and, with the company of my friend Dominic (secondary school Biology teacher) and his brother Deus, we went to see if we could make it to the top. We did, turns out it's really not as far as it looks from my house (which is kind of in the 'suburbs' of Misungwi, not right in the town center but set uphill a bit in a wealthy part of town). When I get my camera I will return and take pictures to post here, but I'll just say that the view was not spectacular, but very, um, what's the appropriate word, nice? More than nice. In between nice and spectactular. Informative too, because it gave me my first glimpse of Misungwi as a whole, it was interesting to see where the city has experienced a spurt of growth, where people are building modern houses vs. mud/straw huts, and how the city is slowly merging with small surrounding villages. I also got a view of Lake Victoria (check out a map of Tanzania - the lake has a finger that extends south - what would we call that in English? Not a bay, maybe an inlet? Anyways, from what I saw today, it looks like some pretty nasty, shallow, schistosomiasis and crocodile infested water to me).

We also met two crazy guys who are hired to 'guard' the antennaes. I guess if they weren't there people would come to try to steal the wiring and whatnot, the main ground-line phone company in Tanzania is currently offering a reward of over a years salary for the average Tanzanian for any information about the numerous theives who dig up their cables for wires, so I assume these guards were preventing other hooligans from doing the same.

All in all, it was a very nice morning hike. Which is good because, as has been the case every other day the past few weeks, by the time it hit 11am it was already hot as hell and not a cloud in the sky.

'Mtandao' is also street-slang for HIV/AIDS, since the spread of the disease through various sexual networks can be more complex than phone wiring.