So I had a whole long blog typed up, but Karibu Tanzania, it's not looking like I'm going to be able to upload it anytime soon. No worries, I'll just give the cliffnotes. Pretty much my experience so far can be summed up with a single story, which goes something like this...
I got a cell phone! Then I dropped it in the pit latrine. Then my Mama decided it was a good idea to build this ten foot long pole-with-a-bowl-attached contraption thing to literally scoop it out. Of the giant underground pool of human shit. I thought that was a brilliant idea at the time. So did the 50 or so kids from the village who all came over to laugh in my face. Word travels fast. We got the phone out. It was gross. I bought a new one anyway.
This was an important cultural lesson. I'm aware that the normal American response to dropping your 30 dollar cell phone into a giant pile of shit ten feet below the ground (not that that's a normal American thing to do, but you know what I mean) is to think, "Well, guess I'm down 30 bucks. Sucks." But for people living on less than a dollar a day, it would be insane to not go to absurd lengths like taking the roof off of the bathroom hut (don't ask, it was necessary) to extract the valuable item.
Besides exemplifying the differing perspectives we have on money, which are pretty obvious, some more subtle cultural lessons were hidden in the drama. I recently learned that there is no Swahili equivilant for the English construction "to have" as in "to possess." In Swahili, you never "have" an item, you say that you happen to "be with" the item. It doesn't get much more collectivist than that. My host family, despite being desperately poor by pretty much any standard, showers me with gifts and delicious meals on a daily basis. They also went out of their way to extract my disgusting piece of unnecessary electronic-ness from their pit latrine. And they did so while smiling and laughing with me.
I have so much more to write but I only have 4 minutes before the internet shuts off! I also want to let everyone know that I have my site information!! After training ends and I'm officially sworn in as a volunteer, I'll be "installed" on August 18th in a very remote village at the base of Mt. Hanang. I couldn't be more pleased with my placement, it is everything I could have hoped for with a cool/dry climate to boot! Send me warm socks and bring your hiking boots if you come to visit!! I'll give more information later, I'm not sure I'm allowed to post the name of the actual village on this blog but if you're interested you can email me.
I'll be posting my new address in a few weeks, but you can send things to the old one and they'll make it to me eventually. Big thanks to everyone who has sent me letters so far. They keep me going.
so much love,
Lauren
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Pole pole ndio mwendo (Slowly slowly is the speed)
The past week and a half has felt like a year, but now that I’ve settled into a routine time has suddenly sped up. Training has been incredible so far, and I’ll be sad to see it end--though the prospect of moving to a new part of the country and settling in to what will become my home for two years is exciting as well.
It’s hard to explain all of the emotions I go through on a daily basis. There is so much I want to say but it’s hard to find the words. I think I’ll start by explaining what a normal day is like for me in my new home.
I wake up at 5am to the crowing of a rooster. I lay in bed for a while staring at my mosquito net and thinking about whatever crazy dream I just had (realistic and bizarre dreams are a side-effect of the malaria prophylaxis). At 5:45 I crawl out of bed and put on a pair of long pants, a modest tee-shirt, and a kanga (kinda like a wrap). The kanga is very important -- once I forgot to put my kanga on over my pants and my host Mama looked at me as if I’d just walked out of my room naked.
I walk down the mud road that is beginning to glow bright orange as the sun slowly rises. I wave to sleepy neighbors who collecting buckets of water from the well near our home or chasing after escaped goats. I meet up with a couple other PCTs for a morning jog. I’m quite convinced that people would pay good money for a virtual reality “African Village” exercise/video game. The point of the game would be to gather as many points as possible as you run through two or three villages and frantically try to remember how to speak Swahili while enjoying the delicious feeling of humidity filling up your gasping lungs. You get 20 points for each person you properly greet, lose 100 points if you fail to say “Shikamoo” to an elder (an important sign of respect) if a barefoot kid or neighbor decides to follow you for a while, it could go either way. You gain 30 points if you are able to sustain a 2+ minute conversation, but you lose 30 points if you can’t communicate with your new running mate.
After coming home from my morning run, I enjoy the luxury of a warm shower. And by warm shower, I mean Mama heats up water before putting it in a bucket for me to pour over my body. No joke, I love bucket baths. I don’t know why, but my steaming bucket bath is the highlight of my morning. Tanzanians are extremely cleanly people, so Mama makes me take a bucket bath at night as well. Very little can compare to a warm bucket bath under the incredible Tanzanian stars. After bathing, I grab some tea and breakfast and then head to school. It’s not unusual for a small crowd of children to follow me to school--less so now that the village is getting used to having five wazungu (white people) hanging around all the time, but for a while it was like something out of a movie. I think my fellow PCT Logan put it accurately when he said that sometimes he feels like he fell asleep watching a commercial for one of those "sponsor a child" things and woke up here.
After a long day of Swahili class, I go for a “language walk around” in which I’m supposed to converse with villagers using the Swahili words I learned that day. It usually goes something like this (note the 300 greetings, they are a crucial part of any Tanzanian conversation)
Me: Hello! How are you today?
Child: Hello! I’m fine, thanks. How is school?
Me: Good. How is home?
Child: Good. How is your Mama?
Me: Good. How is your family?
Child: Good. How are your studies?
Me: Good. I am learning, slowly. This is a tree.
Child: Yes, that is a tree. *says something I don’t understand*
Me: *awkward pause* How old are you?
Child: I am 10. *says something I don’t understand*
Me: I am 21. *pause* That is a tree. *pause* OK thank you, goodbye!
Language learning is a frustrating process, but I’m feeling more confident after this week. After getting home from school everyday, I hang out around the kitchen (which is actually a mud cave-type-thing outside our house) with Mama, who is also known as my new best friend. We chat about my day (in Swahili, no one in my family speaks English) and she quizzes me by pointing to things within eyesight and making me give her their names in Swahili. Things within eyesight include: cows, goats, chickens, fire, firewood, charcoal stove, kerosene lamp… you get the idea.
After cooking, I chill out with my host sisters and brothers for a while. We play a lot of Uno and sometimes they try to teach me songs in Swahili. Once they talked me into singing for them in English, and Mama came in and yelled at us because I’m not supposed to be speaking English. I took Mama’s willingness to yell at me as a sign that I’m integrating well into the family.
Tonight Mama was excited because I ate all of my ugali (with my hands, by the way). She said something I didn’t quite catch, but I think the gist was that she’s going to help me get nice and fat for the Tanzanian men. Love this country!
I have so much more to say but this is getting ridiculously long and I'm really running late. I'll have internet again... in another few weeks? maybe? in the meantime, see posts below and SEND ME LETTERS. I LOVE MAIL.
It’s hard to explain all of the emotions I go through on a daily basis. There is so much I want to say but it’s hard to find the words. I think I’ll start by explaining what a normal day is like for me in my new home.
I wake up at 5am to the crowing of a rooster. I lay in bed for a while staring at my mosquito net and thinking about whatever crazy dream I just had (realistic and bizarre dreams are a side-effect of the malaria prophylaxis). At 5:45 I crawl out of bed and put on a pair of long pants, a modest tee-shirt, and a kanga (kinda like a wrap). The kanga is very important -- once I forgot to put my kanga on over my pants and my host Mama looked at me as if I’d just walked out of my room naked.
I walk down the mud road that is beginning to glow bright orange as the sun slowly rises. I wave to sleepy neighbors who collecting buckets of water from the well near our home or chasing after escaped goats. I meet up with a couple other PCTs for a morning jog. I’m quite convinced that people would pay good money for a virtual reality “African Village” exercise/video game. The point of the game would be to gather as many points as possible as you run through two or three villages and frantically try to remember how to speak Swahili while enjoying the delicious feeling of humidity filling up your gasping lungs. You get 20 points for each person you properly greet, lose 100 points if you fail to say “Shikamoo” to an elder (an important sign of respect) if a barefoot kid or neighbor decides to follow you for a while, it could go either way. You gain 30 points if you are able to sustain a 2+ minute conversation, but you lose 30 points if you can’t communicate with your new running mate.
After coming home from my morning run, I enjoy the luxury of a warm shower. And by warm shower, I mean Mama heats up water before putting it in a bucket for me to pour over my body. No joke, I love bucket baths. I don’t know why, but my steaming bucket bath is the highlight of my morning. Tanzanians are extremely cleanly people, so Mama makes me take a bucket bath at night as well. Very little can compare to a warm bucket bath under the incredible Tanzanian stars. After bathing, I grab some tea and breakfast and then head to school. It’s not unusual for a small crowd of children to follow me to school--less so now that the village is getting used to having five wazungu (white people) hanging around all the time, but for a while it was like something out of a movie. I think my fellow PCT Logan put it accurately when he said that sometimes he feels like he fell asleep watching a commercial for one of those "sponsor a child" things and woke up here.
After a long day of Swahili class, I go for a “language walk around” in which I’m supposed to converse with villagers using the Swahili words I learned that day. It usually goes something like this (note the 300 greetings, they are a crucial part of any Tanzanian conversation)
Me: Hello! How are you today?
Child: Hello! I’m fine, thanks. How is school?
Me: Good. How is home?
Child: Good. How is your Mama?
Me: Good. How is your family?
Child: Good. How are your studies?
Me: Good. I am learning, slowly. This is a tree.
Child: Yes, that is a tree. *says something I don’t understand*
Me: *awkward pause* How old are you?
Child: I am 10. *says something I don’t understand*
Me: I am 21. *pause* That is a tree. *pause* OK thank you, goodbye!
Language learning is a frustrating process, but I’m feeling more confident after this week. After getting home from school everyday, I hang out around the kitchen (which is actually a mud cave-type-thing outside our house) with Mama, who is also known as my new best friend. We chat about my day (in Swahili, no one in my family speaks English) and she quizzes me by pointing to things within eyesight and making me give her their names in Swahili. Things within eyesight include: cows, goats, chickens, fire, firewood, charcoal stove, kerosene lamp… you get the idea.
After cooking, I chill out with my host sisters and brothers for a while. We play a lot of Uno and sometimes they try to teach me songs in Swahili. Once they talked me into singing for them in English, and Mama came in and yelled at us because I’m not supposed to be speaking English. I took Mama’s willingness to yell at me as a sign that I’m integrating well into the family.
Tonight Mama was excited because I ate all of my ugali (with my hands, by the way). She said something I didn’t quite catch, but I think the gist was that she’s going to help me get nice and fat for the Tanzanian men. Love this country!
I have so much more to say but this is getting ridiculously long and I'm really running late. I'll have internet again... in another few weeks? maybe? in the meantime, see posts below and SEND ME LETTERS. I LOVE MAIL.
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