Coming Home: Part 1

A few months ago, in a small Senegalese village, I was lying on the floor in a mud hut trying to avoid movement in order to minimize potential for heatstroke. Even at this remote corner of the world, accessible only by bicycle or foot, I was able to talk to my dad on a cell phone. As long as I didn’t sweat so much that the phone broke. In the course of this particular conversation I made a provocative leftist political comment, as I am wont to do, and in exasperation Dad responded, “I can’t wait until you come back home to the real world.”

An awkward pause later, my brain started to explode. With over half of the world’s population living on less than $2.50 a day, it’s obviously impossible to call West Bloomfield, Michigan—with a median family income of over $100,000 a year (as of 2007)—the “real world.” But then, it was my real world for the first 21 years of my life. So if Michigan is, in some way at least, my “real world,” but my Peace Corps life is the “real world” for the actual majority of people on this planet, then… whose reality…what’s really …what does it mean for a world or an experience to be “real” anyway?

Oy.

And now here I am again. A week and a half ago I finally came home… to my former real world… to West Bloomfield, Michigan.  I’m currently stretched out in my queen size bed, listening to the whistling winds of the outskirts of Frankenstorm Sandy, still awake at 3am trying to wrap my head around what it means to be home. People keep asking me what the strangest part about being home is. I’m never quite sure how to respond. Sometimes I talk about the magic of flush toilets or the miracle of microwaves. Sometimes I mention hot showers, potable tap water, or the ease with which I can do suddenly do pretty much anything my heart desires.

That’s all part of it, of course. But there’s something deeper I’ve been struggling to explain and haven’t quite found the words. Maybe I can get it out here…  

Sometimes it’s like waking up in an alternate reality where I’m the only one who sees anything alternative about it. Other times it’s like stepping into a play halfway through, terrified that I don’t know my lines, only to realize that deep down in a part of me I didn’t even realize existed, I already know the script by heart.

I know it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I’ll never forget how to be the person I was for the first twenty one years of my life, but its somehow mind-boggling to feel how, even after all I’ve been through, I can step right back into my old shoes—or rather my brand-new Ugg boots—and I’m back to being a plain old American again. Or at least I’m able to pass for one in public.

I keep expecting someone to read it in my face in line at Starbucks. To see it in my terrified expression as I flee Target after an aborted attempt at shopping. I keep fearing—or maybe hoping—that someone will call me out on my bullshit attempt to pass as a “real” American when up until a week ago I had never heard of Honey Boo Boo and I still don’t know the words to Call Me Maybe.  

And then sometimes, maybe even most of the time, everything feels totally normal. Which makes the switch to unnormal feel even crazier. The borderline moments, the real insanity, comes when I look at myself in the mirror, spick and span wearing fresh new clothes, and get the eerie feeling that I’m staring at an avatar of myself.  Who is this person and why does she look like she belongs here?

There’s so much more I want to tell you folks, but it’s late and I’m exhausted… and I also want to take a moment for a quick disclaimer. A lot of you have been following my blog because you like hearing about life as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I don’t know where life’s about to take me, but for the foreseeable future this is going to turn into a blog about something very different from Peace Corps life. Along with my friends, the Zain calling plan, excessive amounts of yoga, running, reading, cooking and baking, Blogging kept me sane for the past two years. I don’t know why it can’t do the same as I take on the final and what many say is the hardest challenge of Peace Corps --  coming home. So, I guess what I’m saying is, after a long break during my travels (which I’ll try to come up with a re-cap of soon) I’m back if you’ll have me. And the glory of self-publishing on the internet is that I’m back even if you won’t have me.

peace-ing out

Happy Kikwa drags her mouse over the tab next to my name that says Active and changes it to Departed. Reason for leaving? the screen prompts. Happy clicks: Completion of Service. We cheer and high-five. And just like that, I have joined the ranks of the bold, the glorious, the wacky, the famous, and the utterly confused about the future… I am a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. I am Lauren Fink, RPCV Tanzania 2010-2012. (Nevermind that I won't be "returning" for another 4 months. Fancy titles don't have to make sense to be awesome.)

Tomorrow at 2:50pm, I’m boarding a plane to Dakar, Senegal. Waiting for me there is the boy I love, languages I don’t (yet?) know, friends I haven’t yet made, a new culture to explore, heat and humidity galore, and all the fish, peanuts, and French bread I can eat.

But today I'm thinking more about the things I leave behind. A country that has adopted me as one of its own. The poetic rattle of fast consonants, Swahili rolling off my tongue and weaving its way through my dreams. A two year old boy who calls me fiancé and loves me with a tenderness and simplicity no adult could match. The regal village women who have taught me more than I learned in sixteen years of formal education, holding their heads high as they carry baskets and buckets and babies and the future of the village in their hearts and their laughs. 

And of course, a list of things I leave behind wouldn’t be complete without a list of the lost, the broken, the stolen—the things that have reunited with the great Tanzanian ether, or perhaps are being bartered over in a sketchy alley market in Arusha. Anyone who’s traveled with me knows that I have an almost impressive habit of leaving personal items like a trail of bread crumbs wherever I go, and I also seem to be a favorite target of pickpockets and thieves. Must be my winning smile. So, dear friends, let’s take a moment of silence to remember the wallet (stolen), two debit cards (stolen), three cell phones (stolen, left on a bus, took a swim), one iPod (stolen), one earring (stolen rather artfully out of my ear while I was wearing it), pajama pants (disappeared into thin air), two solar lanterns (broken, stolen), running shoes (left at a hotel), two flash-drives (disappeared into thin air), Teva sandals (left at a hotel), headlamp (broken), several boxes full of American goodies (lost in the mail), uncountable tee-shirts (forgotten on hotel laundry lines), bathing suit (somewhere in the vast Indian Ocean), khanga fabric (no idea where that one went), and of course, the awkward bag of underwear and bras (left on a bus for some lucky driver’s girlfriend to enjoy).

This list is probably incomplete, so let’s take an extra moment of silence in remembrance of all the things I’ve already forgotten.

Before you judge, remember that two years is a long time. Then go ahead and judge because it’s really kind of dumb.

Shame aside, listing it all out like that makes me smile because in retrospect, I don’t ever think about that stuff anymore. Like the Buddhist concept of nonattachment teaches, possessions are more of a burden than a blessing most of the time. With the exception of the cell phones and the debit cards, most of the crap I’ve lost or had stolen was stuff I didn’t even need to replace, at least not at much cost. Sure, my Tevas were neat, but a pair of $1 sandals made out of tires suit the purpose just fine, and they look cooler.  The same goes for 50 cent tee-shirts I bought at the local market to replace $20 American Apparel shirts. When it came time to leave my village, the pile of things I was giving away or leaving behind ended up being about 5 times as large as the bag of things I decided to keep. The Buddha would have been proud of how my possessions and I parted ways so peacefully.

Fellow PCV Tyler and I stayed up late the other night making lists of all the things we thought we “needed” before we spent two years living in rural Tanzanian villages. I was pretty sure I could live without electricity, but I thought I would die without music. Then my iPod was stolen. Turns out that a bus-ride spent humming to myself is almost as enjoyable as one spent listening to the Mountain Goats, if you have the right attitude. We laughed at the idea that we would ever need running water. Sure, running out of water completely—which is a common problem in the dry season—sucks legitimately, but when there’s a full bucket readily available, I never once thought, “Damn, I wish this were coming out of a tap instead of being scooped up in a cup.”

I do have needs, of course, though beyond food, water, and shelter they are exclusively immaterial. I need community. I need neighbors to eat with, laugh with, and cry with. I need challenges to rise to and a feeling of purpose. I need the freedom and the forgiveness to make mistakes and learn from them. I need to believe in the goodness of humanity. I need to be heard and I need to hear what others have to say. I need love. I need the support of my family. 

                         

I once wrote that I will never stop being an American. I will never stop being a village girl, either. Not as long as I remember the joy of a hot pot of ugali dipped in sticky green mlenda, or the way the sun burns out slowly behind the mountain at the end of each long day. Not as long as I remember the grin on Hawa’s face when she shows off an impressive piece of schoolwork, or Husseini’s half-giggle of anticipation when he hears my voice at the door. Not as long as I remember the hours spent in silence with Mama Hawa, because we don't have to say what we know the other knows. 

As long as I remember these things, the beat of the collective village heart will beat inside me, keeping pace with my own and reminding me of all the incredible people who have made me who I am today. 

So, good friends, I guess this is goodbye. Thank you all for taking this journey with me, giving me a place to share my thoughts and be heard. I’m off to West Africa and whatever challenges and adventures it will bring. I’ll keep writing and might even start another blog, but this chapter is officially closed.

The End.

Lauren Fink

RPCV Tanzania '10-'12 

beginning of the end

Thank you so, so much to everyone who donated to the Education for Liberation library project. Our fundraising efforts exceeded my wildest hopes and dreams. Because of your donations, the students of Endagaw will be able to study out of textbooks for the first time ever. It’s magical.

I guess I’ve been avoiding writing this month’s blog entry because I’m not ready to start talking about the end. There’s no denying it, I’ve hit the two years mark and I booked a one-way plane ticket to Dakar, the first stop on my upcoming West African adventure. On July 28^th, I am leaving Tanzania for the foreseeable future. My last month as a Peace Corps Volunteer starts now.

How do I begin to describe what this feels like? I’m spinning in emotional circles. Sometimes I look back over the past two years and wonder what superhero has been living my life. More often, I feel like a fraud in a gaudy cape. I spend hours just thinking about all the things I could have done differently, better, more sustainably. Sometimes I look at villagers whose names I don’t even know and see best friends I could have made if I just gave them a chance. I look at problems in the village with experienced eyes and simple solutions suddenly come to me-- projects that will never be.  

I know it’s pointless to think that way. Of course I have regrets, but I’ll learn from them, and my life will be better for it. I’ve already seen that happen in this most recently library project. I really feel like I’m doing it right this time. It’s a good feeling.

My computer battery’s dying so I can’t write more, but I just wanted to drop a note so everyone knows I’m alive and busily putting your donations to work. 

Hey, you! Donate to the Education for Liberation Library Project. Karmic Rewards Guaranteed!

For those who aren't in the reading-a-blog mood and just want to give money and go on with their days, here's the punchline: http://tzreads.org/projects/education-for-liberation/  

And now, a little blog post that will hopefully inspire you to donate:

The other day, my friend Kim mentioned that she had been born with a deformity that was fixed by wearing leg braces during the first 6 months of life. I was pretty surprised to hear that—Kim is one of the best and most passionate athletes I know, finishing half marathons in less than 1.30 and competing in Iron Man races for fun. She commented that she doesn’t know what kind of person she would be if she had grown up in Tanzania, where her easily fixed deformity would have turned her into a life-long cripple. She can't imagine an alternative life where she wouldn't have been able to become an athlete.

It’s similar to how I feel about my passion for books and learning. In a lot of ways, I define myself by my love of school and my ability to get so lost in a book that hours go by like seconds. Being “book smart” is part of who I am. As is the fact that I was able to attend one of the best colleges in America and succeed there. But like Kim, I was born with a deformity—actually, a couple—that would have made me an entirely different person if I were raised in a Tanzanian village. I have imperfect eyesight, corrected with glasses, and I was born with a lazy eye that was corrected with surgery when I was a child. I have also struggled with attention deficit disorder for my entire life.

Combined, these abnormalities would have doomed me in a bookless Tanzanian classroom. I wouldn’t be able to see the board, and even if I could, I probably wouldn’t be able to pay attention long enough to copy down the information carefully and properly. I’ve always been the kind of student who needs to study at my own pace, which might be faster or slower than a teacher’s lecture. I succeeded in school because I was able to study out of books. Without books, I am sure I would have failed. Here in the village, students are lucky if they get to consult a book once during their time in school. There are so few copies of the textbooks that students will often end up sharing one book for 15 students, or just listen to the teachers read aloud from the only copy.

When I look at my students here in the village, I see kids failing not because they are stupid but because their learning style isn’t catered to in a place where close attention to a teacher's lecture is the only learning option. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if we could provide enough textbooks that even ADD kids with crappy eyesight had a fighting chance at success?

Get excited, because that’s exactly what we’re going to do. And you’re going to help me. Yes, you. Click on the link below to see my fundraising page for Tanzania Reads, an organization that helps struggling schools like mine purchase textbooks and create reading spaces. We have until June 10^th to raise as much money as we possible can. The sky is the limit—the need here is that great.

http://tzreads.org/projects/education-for-liberation/

Don't take my word for it, though. Here's a quote from two teachers at my school, Mr. Yusufu and Mr. Shirima about the importance of textbooks: 

“Teaching has become a difficult task due to lack of teaching and learning resources including textbooks ... our teaching methods do not address all of the students’ learning styles. Many students cannot learn at all without seeing words, vocabulary, diagrams etc.”

A lot of you have been reading this blog for the past two years and wondering what you can do to help. This is the only chance you’re going to get. I’m leaving the village in 2 months and I want to leave behind something more than just the memory of a hyper white girl who likes to talk bluntly about awkward topics. I want to leave behind something that will help kids like me reach their full potential.

Here's that link again: http://tzreads.org/projects/education-for-liberation/ 

So go click on that link and give as much as you can, then treat yourself to a big ole pat on the back. Every little bit counts.

birth day

Yesterday I showed up at the clinic to weigh babies, as I do every Wednesday. This week, the nurse on duty had a special surprise for me: she asked if I wanted to help her deliver a baby. It was a morning of firsts—Mama's first time giving birth, my first time attending a birth, the baby’s first time venturing out of the womb. The nurse laughed at how excited I was. To a Tanzanian woman, the fact that I had made it to the ripe age of 23 without having witnessed a birth was kind of ridiculous. 

Staring into the terrifying mess between the soon-to-be-Mama’s thighs, I saw oozing gooey whiteness, chunky dark redness, and, lower down, dripping out of a smaller hole, mucus-y yellow-brownness with a distinct and unpleasant smell. I know I’m supposed to use positive adjectives to describe such a miraculous event, but my first thought was: gross.

Then everything changed. Hiding shyly behind this curtain of deeply human fluids, I glimpsed the tiniest hint of curly black hair. That detail, extraordinary and dizzying, turned the scene from disgusting to indescribably beautiful.

A brand new life. A tiny, helpless, wrinkled being in the process of discovering that his cozy little home—all he’d ever known—was merely the prelude to a grand and tragic symphony. As the soft walls that had held him in a tight embrace for the entirety of his being began to contract, pushing downwards and outwards, the little dude began to hear epic chords, the music of a world he didn’t realize he’d been preparing to enter ever since the moment, about nine months ago, when, through a serendipitous mix of timing and the idiocy of the young, sperm from a commitment phobic taxi driver met with and entered the egg of a pretty village girl with very dark skin, chubby cheeks, and deep black eyes. The girl, Amina, had run away to the big city to find a new life. And so she did, through not in the sense she had hoped. Now, back in the village, the new life Amina found in the city was ready to make his debut, and I was there to cheer him on.

The first thing I noticed after the nurse gently wiped away the blood and discharge was that Amina’s vagina seemed strangely one-dimensional. I saw what looked like two holes—the top one a few centimeters larger than the bottom one. The two holes were separated by an inch-and-a-half wide, half centimeter thick membrane. There was nothing else, just the holes. The baby’s head was now pushing against the membrane, stretching it and trying to rip it in two. The nurse tried to help the little dude get past this unnatural barrier. The membrane and the slit-like appearance of the woman's genitals is the result, the nurse explained, of a severe form of female circumcision that involves removal of the clitoris, inner and outer labia, and the sewing up of the remaining tissue. This form of female circumcision is fairly uncommon in Tanzania, and definitely against the law, but it continues to happen today, always in secret and usually to girls between ages 2 and 8. I fought the urge to go to the room next door where the woman’s mother was waiting and yell at her for letting her daughter go through that awful ritual however many years ago. The nurse seemed to think it more prudent to admonish the girl herself. 

“If you hadn’t been cut, the baby would have been born by now. Instead, it’s in distress and you’ve been in pain for almost 10 hours. If this baby is a girl, remember this moment when your mother tries to talk you into cutting her,” the matronly woman said with a disapproving scowl.

There was an awkward pause broken by another wave of contractions. More black hair came into view through the widening—but still not wide enough—top section of the woman’s unnaturally segmented vagina. The head floated into view. The area between Amina’s fleshy thighs began expanding outward, pushing… pushing… pushing… and then, suddenly, the baby’s head began to recede.

“I can’t do it,” Amina whispered as she collapsed back on the hard examination table. “I give up.”

“Not an option,” the nurse replied matter-of-factly. “Shut up and push.”

Unconvinced that this was a time for tough love, I moved to take the girl’s hand and tried to think of something encouraging to say.

“Your baby has a lot of hair,” I offered.  

Amina’s short laugh set another contraction in motion. As the baby’s hair slid back into view, Amina continued to whisper over and over again, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

I watched more and more hair slide into view and the head start squeezing into a cone-shape. The hint of a forehead peeked out uncertainly.

“You can, you can, you can,” I chanted in time with Amina’s protests.

“Shut up and push!” the nurse repeated sternly. I gave her a mean look and she grinned at me, then reached in with her hand to cup the awkwardly shaped head, twisting it like she was trying to unscrew a stubborn light bulb.

The unnatural membrane—leftover from a cruel needle stitching up a place that should never be stitched—began to stretch. Beads of blood appeared, much brighter red than the dark, chunky kind still oozing out from deep inside.

And then, suddenly, a face! A scrunchy, wrinkly, angry-looking face. Before I had time to fully register the bizarre sight of a squished head poking out between its mother’s thighs, the rest of the baby’s body flopped out and into the nurse’s practiced hands. I took a quick peek and informed Amina that she had given birth to a son. She smiled weakly. Three and a half kilograms of human being had suddenly joined the world, but something wasn’t right. The baby’s skin was rapidly turning yellow, chest and belly looking sickeningly deflated. I held my own breath as I waited, waited, and waited for the baby to inhale. He didn’t.

The nurse, unfazed by the infant’s terrifyingly lifeless presentation, worked quickly and quietly, placing the baby on Amina's chest, instructing her to hold him. Amina's lungs filled up with each breath as though she was trying to breathe for both herself and her baby. The nurse sucked out some yellowish goo from the baby’s mouth and nose and pumped gently against his chest. Tears began to spring to my eyes with the horrifying realization that the baby might be dead, and the nurse started blowing on his slack, yellow face. As she did this, she used both hands to tie off and cut the umbilical cord with a single graceful motion.

Suddenly, as though he had just remembered that he was supposed to breathe in order to survive, the little guy took the tiniest gulp of air and let out a strangled gasp. Tears of relief ran down my cheeks as the nurse kept up her regimen of blowing into his face and pumping his chest.

Once the baby seemed to have figured out the basics of survival in the world outside the womb, the nurse lifted the whimpering infant, wrapped him in a clean blue khanga, and placed him on a metal scale. His face turned from yellow to pink as she recorded his weight. Leaving the baby on the scale, she turned back to the mother to help remove the placenta.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the baby. Alone on the cold scale, he seemed impossibly small and helpless. He was breathing less deeply than he had been in his mother’s arms and the pinkness in his face was fading as quickly as it had appeared. I know absolutely nothing about newborns, but something told me he needed to be held. He had yet to open his eyes.  

“Can I pick him up?” I asked the nurse, both eager and terrified at the prospect that she’d say yes.

“Yes,” she said.

Carefully cupping his head, I lifted the baby boy and held him gently against my chest. I took a few deep breaths, hoping he would learn from my example. Color rushed back into his face and his big brown eyes shot open. He looked up at me and scrunched his nose as though he was trying to figure something out. Then he let out a loud, healthy cry.

“I’m here,” he announced in the ancient language of newborns.

“Karibu nymbani,” I replied. "Welcome home." 

empowered

A few weeks ago my fellow Hanang volunteers and I held a girl's empowerment conference. For four days, I watched 29 girls come out of their shells, make friends from other villages, put on plays about peer pressure and the dangers of unprotected sex, giggle hysterically at condom balloons, confidently answer questions during Jeopardy on the last day... it was a blast. Since the conference, I've been thinking a lot about women's empowerment, which got me thinking that I should write a blog entry about women's empowerment. But I didn't want to tell another sob story. There are so many sob stories out there about African women falling victim to some atrocity or another. After a certain point, sob stories are disempowering. Instead, I'm going to tell a story about a group of strong women who are kicking ass and taking names. And they didn't need an American to come in and tell them how to do it.

For months now I've been hearing about these infamous "Mama's meetings" taking place down at the grazing/market grounds. All women in the village are required to go (except me because apparently I'm not considered entirely female due to my foreignness...apparently). The women who attend the meetings are also required to keep their specific proceedings secret--which doesn't seem to stop some of the gossipier Mamas from telling me everything that happens after each meeting. At first all they did was sit around talking and talking and talking and talking about all the problems in the village. People in this village love to talk about problems and brainstorm solutions. Implementation of those solutions is a less common phenomenon. So I was pretty surprised when I heard that, on recommendation of the Mamas, a curfew has been implemented in the village.

How does a group of unarmed, technically powerless community members enforce a curfew? Anyone found wandering outside after 10pm runs the risk of being picked up by community patrol groups and, if they refuse to beg forgiveness and go home immediately, might find themselves thrown into the river and then forced to roll around the in dirt. Seriously. For women who have been drinking, the curfew is much stricter, 5pm. This is supposedly to give them enough time to sober up and cook dinner for their families, as well as to avoid becoming targets of violently drunk men.  

In addition to the curfew, the Mamas have succeeded in implementing and enforcing new prohibition laws, banning a particularly strong kind of local brew and restricting drinking before noon. They have also begun a particularly fierce campaign to combat the increase in "matusi"--bad language. I've greatly increased my Kiswahili vocabulary by asking the Mamas what kinds of words they mean when they say "matusi". I am now fully prepared to insult anyone's mother in all sorts of creative ways. It's probably best I avoid using my new vocab, though. The consequence of saying gross things about other people's mothers could range from paying a heavy fine to being exiled from the village to death by Barbaig tribal magic. Eek.

Those who break the new laws are brought to justice before the meeting-at-the-grazing-grounds--which, if they actually attended like they are required to, would mean every adult woman in the village and a few important men, non-voting observers. In this case, "justice" usually means paying a fine of one goat or sheep or, if the offense is particularly awful, an entire cow. The women at the meeting then call a man in to slaughter the animal and then divide up the meat amongst themselves.

Unlike in court, where a person can get off of any crime lacking in evidence by simply refusing to admit guilt, there is no escaping justice at the Mama's meeting. If a person refuses to admit to his alleged crime and pay the fine, he risks getting cursed by old women from the Barbaig tribe--who oversee the proceedings of the Mama's meetings as sort of mentors. Most people would rather pay a fine than get cursed by a Barbaig woman. Apparently really bad curses can lead to illness, starvation, and the death of a family member. If you're innocent and get cursed, apparently it won't stick. But still...who wants to risk that??

The system may seem a little far-fetched to those of us who don't fear curses, but it's working. The other day a young man made a particularly crude comment to my friend Mama Bulali and she just pointed towards the grazing grounds and said, "Do you want me to give your name to the Mamas?" The guy shut up fast.

It may be hard to understand how people believe in things that are, to an American mind at least, so obviously untrue. What's so scary about a bunch of old ladies wrapped in checkered blankets and smelly leather skirts, anyway? (Well, the atheist might say, what's so scary about an imaginary all-powerful being that we've never seen or heard from?)

This question makes me think about the time I had a particularly hyper bat in my house. I ran over to my neighbors house, screaming "popo kichaa!!!" (crazy bat!!!). She came over to help me assess the situation. After a few hours of trying to kill the awful thing, my neighbor announced, darkly, that this was not a normal bat we were dealing with... it was the work of a wizard, and had been sent to me by an enemy.

So I sat down and made a list of all the people in the village who might dislike me enough to send a wizard-bat to annoy me.  

I got about 4 names on the paper before I remembered that I don't believe in wizards.

The next day, the bat mysteriously disappeared of its own volition. Now, I'm not saying I believe it was a wizard-bat. Nor am I saying it wasn't. I mean, this thing was not acting like a normal bat. But I digress. The point is that the wizard-bat taught me how even an ever-so-practical college graduate could look at a perfectly ordinary situation and, with the counsel of a trusted friend who seems to understand these things better than she does, wonder if she's found some proof of magic.


Last week I finally got a chance to visit one of these Mama's meetings. My first thought was that I seemed to walked into a live filming of the Tanzanian village version of one of those daytime talk shows. Judge Judy or whatever. People publicly denounced each other for selling illegal booze, wayward sons begged their mothers for forgiveness after being found guilty of theft, audience members booed nasty characters and cheered when justice was served.  One woman was brought before the meeting after being caught tying her sick, confused mother to a tree. The old woman's son-in-law was sought at home and brought to the meeting, where he declared his willingness to take the old woman in to his own home and keep her safe. The audience cheered like he'd just announced that he'd been selected for the national soccer team.  

Then the Barbaig ladies started leading a very passionate prayer for rain and things got less like an American TV show. The women prayed in their tribe's language, Kibarbaig, and a young man, one of a small group of sheepish-looking men present to observe, translated into the common tongue of Swahili. After a few minutes everyone (self included) was cheering and screaming "mvua inyeshee! mungu mkubwa, mvua inyeshee!" (let it rain! great god, let it rain!). After a few minutes of this I got bored and started looking around at everyone else, wondering which God we were praying to anyway... or whether we were all praying to a different God. Most of the women present were from the Iraqw, Rangi, or Nyaturu tribe. Besides myself and maybe a few of the Barbaig ladies, everyone present was a devoted Muslim or Christian. Though the prayer was being led in the traditional style of the Barbaig, the vast majority of the attendees were not (technically) believers in the Barbaig tribe's particular brand of religion.

I later asked my neighbor why people seem so confident in the Barbaig prayers, rather than praying according to Christian or Muslim traditions, or using the traditions of one of the more popular local tribes. She replied that people respect the Barbaig because they hold so firmly to their ancient way of life and believe so deeply and completely, unlike other tribes whose beliefs have been spread out and mixed up with new religions. Though they have moved up into the mountains in order to continue their pastoralist lifestyle, the Barbaig are respected as the traditional inhabitants of this area, and thus have a greater understanding of the prayer style particularly suited to this land.  

After praying for rain, we got down to the business of distributing free meat and then the meeting was adjourned in time for the women to get home and cook dinner.

where were you when the road arrived?

            Summer in the southern hemisphere. It’s the rainy season, but it hasn’t rained in weeks. Exhausted bean plants whither and die. An old man naps under a tree, conserving his energy. The sun glares down relentlessly, angrily.   

Sitting atop a pile of hot mud bricks are four small Tanzanian children and one sweat-soaked American woman. The assembly is staring at the road in front of them, enjoying the free theater of development. They watch excitedly as big yellow trucks drive by, leaving smelly but welcome tarmac in their wake.

In addition to tarmac, the truck carries an assortment of young Tanzanian men transplanted unceremoniously from cities and towns all around the country. They listen to music on their phones, talk about their many girlfriends, and yell obscenities at the random white girl hanging out with snot-nosed kids in ripped, muddy clothes. The city-boy road workers look around this dinky little village and think; I am so much cooler than this place. Or maybe they’re thinking about dinner. Actually, being young men, they’re probably thinking about sex. Anyway, they’re looking around and thinking about something.

            I pull the bright fabric of my khanga closer around my head, blocking the twin glares of sun and men.

“Where do you want to go once the road is finished?” I ask my little companions.

            “I want to go to Singida,” 5-year-old Salima announces.

            “No rain in Singida,” her older brother counters. “We’ll go to Arusha!”

            The children begin to talk excitedly about all the great things in Arusha, especially the rain and fruit. Always appreciative of my little neighbors’ explanations for the great mysteries of the world, I ask the kids why there’s lots of rain in Arusha but so little here in the village. The children look up at wispy clouds floating pathetically against a background of shocking blue.

            “The Chinese wizards,” Hussein replies sagely. Hussein is eight years old. He’s been in primary school for almost a year, so he knows things like this. He explains matter-of-factly how the Chinese road engineers set off thunder-bombs at night in order to confuse God and make the rain stop. 

            I patiently explain that the thunder-bombs are just dynamite, and that no-one—not even a Chinese engineer—is capable of stopping the rain on cue. The kids look at me like I’m an idiot.

            I wrote the beginning of this blog update about two weeks ago, before I left for Dar Es Salaam to help with a staff diversity training. When I left, the tarmac was just reaching my village, but it was still drying so cars couldn’t yet ride on it.

Before coming back to the village, I stopped in Moshi to run my second half marathon. Pretty much nothing I’m doing in the village has a fully measurable impact… ye olde pre-test/post-test might tell me that 90% of my students now know how HIV is transmitted, but it doesn’t tell me how many are going to protect themselves accordingly. So it was really nice to see that at least my personal project of getting in shape is objectively succeeding. This year I ran 15 minutes faster than last year, reaching the finish line completely exhausting and with strangely tingly limbs at just over 2 hours.

I brought the medal back and tried to convince Mama Saidi that I had come in third place (I didn’t want to push it by claiming to have come in first), but she wasn’t fooled. Her exact response was, “You aren’t a Kenyan, Lauren. You mean you came in third out of the Peace Corps volunteers.” (Actually, I tied for 4^th.)

The marathon is completely unrelated to a blog entry about the road, but I felt the need to brag. We’ll now continue with your regularly scheduling programming…

I almost missed my stop on the way home because I didn’t notice my village bus stand rushing by while the bus chugged right along on paved road. The road is now paved all the way from the biggest city in Tanzania right to my doorstep. In a few years, we might even be on Google maps. Watching the road arrive and the rains depart, I realize what a unique opportunity I have here. It’s been over a year and a half, but I’m still wrapping my head around it. I’m watching a road arrive, watching a village go through a very serious developmental growth spurt.

And I’m seriously enjoying the new perks.  

I can now get to the nearest western-style coffee shop in half the time it took when I first got here, and every time the road inches a little closer to completion, the distance between me and pizza grows gloriously shorter. I’ve seen busses coming from Arusha pass by the village just 4 hours after leaving town. That same trip used to take 12 hours, and was impassible during some parts of the rainy season.

Considering the vaguely Luddite tendencies I started acquiring during my last year of college, I’m surprised by how unconcerned I am about the environmental externalities of the road. I’m just too excited about the economic and social possibilities (and, let’s be honest, my judgment is clouded by my serious food cravings). But even with this uncharacteristically optimistic perspective, I can’t help but worry. I worry about deadly collisions with daydreaming children unaccustomed to looking both ways before they cross the street. I worry about rapid population growth straining already tight resources. Most of all, in the short term, I worry about the road workers. With a girlfriend in every big town in Tanzania, they enjoy giving their STDs to local girls for the price of a soda and French fries. In a region that has managed to keep its HIV rate to a relatively low 2%, our road workers seem determined to bring this area closer to the Tanzanian average of 7%. I think about this statistic as I look at my students. There are about 300 of them. I look at their mischievous smiles, their too-cool-for-this-silly-white-girl grins, and I do the math. 7% of 300 is twenty. I can’t let myself fully digest the implications, but I’ve made a commitment to ramp up my Life Skills programming.

Speaking of Life Skills programming, I have to wrap this up. Tomorrow morning is the beginning of the Hanang District Young Women’s Empowerment Conference—an even that’s been in the making/on my mind since well over a year ago. Maybe I can’t bring back the rains and I can’t stop the road from being a vector of disease, but if all goes well over the next weekend, a few young women will come out of the conference feeling a little bit more confident, capable of protecting themselves from the struggles the road will bring and benefiting from the opportunities.  Here’s to cautious optimism and small victories.  

it takes a village

Pregnancy is not celebrated in this village. A woman with child is viewed with a simple, practical mix of pity and respect. 

There are no baby showers.

When you are expecting, you can expect to be cautiously optimistic at best.

Names are not discussed until weeks or months after the baby is born. The women here know all too well that infants can and will die. It’s harder to bury a child with a name.

Before I left for my American vacation, my neighbor whispered to me that she thought she was a few months pregnant and wasn’t feeling very well. She asked for advice, and I told her to go to the doctor.

Since then, every Wednesday, she walked an hour round-trip to the local clinic. Every Wednesday, she was told that the clinic is out of tests and medicine and she’ll have to come back the next week. 

Around 8pm on Monday night, I heard a tiny voice outside my door. I had spent a long time on the bus the day before and wasn’t feeling up to visitors, so I pretended to be asleep. When the little voice started sounding frantic, I yelled from my bed, asking who it was and what was wrong.

“I’m Hawa,” the girl replied. “Mama’s sick and wants you to call Baba and tell him to come home now.” She hesitated, and then she whispered, “I’m scared.”

I jumped out of bed and opened the door. Hawa, eleven years old with the body of a child much younger and the eyes of a woman much older, stood shaking on my doorstep. We called and called, but no one answered Baba’s phone.

“It’s ok, he’ll come home eventually,” Hawa said, uncertainly.

Adrenaline quickly killing my exhaustion, I told Hawa I’d be over in a minute.

Mama Hawa lay on her bed, emaciated limbs curled around her swollen belly, moaning softly as the waves of pain hit her. She’s 34, but at that moment she seemed no older than twelve. I asked what I could do to help, but she could hardly even reply.

A series of phone calls began. I called another volunteer to ask for advice. I called the village midwife. I called the doctor from the local clinic. I took my phone out of my pocket after mixing a sugar-salt rehydration solution and realized that I had also butt-dialed 911.

In the village, a scream for help is 911. Your neighbors are your paramedics. Anything with wheels is an ambulance. 

Mama Hawa rode to the clinic on the back of a bicycle with a flat tire.

Two other neighbors appeared at the clinic to help, and I held a bucket for Mama Hawa’s vomit while the nurse confirmed what no one wanted to admit we already knew.  

“You just wait. She will birth. No life birth,” the nurse said to me in proud, sing-song English. Her perkiness annoyed me.

“I know,” I replied in Swahili. “What can we do to help?”

“Do you have any medicine?” She asked. I knew better than to be surprised at the fact that this clinic had no medicine, and produced a few pathetic tablets of paracetamol and rehydration fluid. She seemed genuinely impressed.

“What kind of husband isn’t home by 9pm? Someone else will have to stay with her tonight,” one of the other women announced, looking at me.

During the awkward pause that followed, I reminded myself that these two women had children and husbands to go home to. I had half an episode of Gossip Girl and a skype date with my boyfriend. I agreed to stay, and the other women departed gratefully.

The hours that followed are a blur. While I fought off sleep, I heard the other patient, a woman suffering from pneumonia, talk comfortingly to Mama Hawa in their tribal language. Mama Hawa made a brave effort to communicate but mostly just moaned in response. After a few hours, her husband finally showed up looking frazzled and appropriately ashamed at his tardiness. Moaning turned to wailing and it became clear that we had to find transport to the hospital in town. Fast.

It took several calls to finally track down a functioning vehicle. The moans of a very sick woman mixed with the sputtering of a very sick car, and we slowly made our way to the hospital.

Sitting in a chair, waiting at the reception desk, Mama Hawa’s water broke. There was more fluid than I expected from seeing it happen in movies. Grabbing her to keep her from hitting her head as she collapsed on the floor, I yelled for the nurses.

When the nurses arrived, I finally took a good look around. The ward contained thirty or so other sick women, sleeping or coughing or whining, two in each twin-sized bed. Most women were being looked after by relatives. Others were being taken care of by slightly less ill patients. There was one clogged latrine and no sink, water or soap in sight.

While I wondered at the gross surroundings, a thin curtain was put up. There, on the floor, Mama Hawa gave birth to a fetus a little smaller than my hand. The nurses asked for whatever khangas we had brought as a pool of blood and amniotic fluid began to seep out from under the curtain. Minutes later, the curtain was removed and the nurse handed me a small bundle of fabric.

“I’m going to go get an IV. What should we do with the dead baby?” she asked me. I stared at the bundle of fabric and swallowed my vomit.

As the exhausted patient slept in a bed also occupied by an old woman whose cough I prayed was something other than TB, her husband and I took the baby home to be washed and buried in accordance with Muslim tradition. The trip was excruciatingly long. Baba Hawa sat next to me, holding the bundle of fabric and silently weeping. The car broke down twice. We didn’t speak.

When we finally reached the village, I looked up at the stars, slightly dimed by the light of a monstrously full moon. I tried to find the constellation Orion. When I’m lonely or sad at night, I like to look up at Orion and think of him as an impeccably constant companion—there for me wherever it’s dark and not cloudy. But it was already nearing 6am and Orion had set beyond the mountains. Rising from the other side of the skyline, the Southern Cross stared down at me. After a night spent entirely out of my comfort zone, those four stars officiously reminded me that I was very, very far from home.

By the light of the rising sun, I shut my eyes and tried to sleep.

A few hours later, I walked over to the neighbor’s house and found a gaggle of Mamas cooking and looking after the children. A group of young men were solemnly digging a small grave in the yard. Word travels fast in the village. Throughout the morning, friends and family continually stopped by to offer condolence and gifts.

I sat with Hawa and her six year old brother, Muku. Muku was staring at the men digging the grave with an angry expression. He refused to talk, but finally smiled when I showed up with coloring books and markers. Silently I sat and colored pictures of cars while the women cooked and the men dug. I showed Muku how to write his name and after several failed attempts he proudly wrote “WUKU” on top of the prettiest picture. Close enough. I promised to bring it to his mom when I went to see her in a few hours.

After collecting clothes, blankets, water and food—the hospital is “bring your own everything”—I set off again. Mama Hawa wasn’t doing as well as I’d hoped. While the miscarriage may have been the most traumatic of her problems, it turned out she was also suffering from dysentery and malaria. The nurses seemed annoyed at my desire to know what her diagnoses were. Patients here are expected to just shut up and swallow whatever pills they’re given and if that medicine isn’t available, find a relative to go to town and buy it.

In a state of exhaustion such that nothing felt entirely real and everything felt entirely overwhelming, I spent the day looking after Mama Hawa along with two of her relatives who happened to be at the hospital looking after their sick mother. 

Around 3pm, I realized that I hadn’t eaten or slept in a very, very long time. I had intended to sleep at the hospital to keep Mama Hawa company, but a fellow volunteer happened to be coming back from town headed in my direction and more or less kidnapped me for my own good. She used a Snickers bar as bait. I sobbed as I left Mama Hawa’s side, terrified that she would die during the night. The other women in the ward spoke comforting words to me, but laughed with each other behind my back. “Who gets so worked up over a simple case of miscarriage, diarrhea, and fever?” they might have been saying. I forced a smile as I left, promising to bring little Muku to visit the next day.

I just got back from the hospital again. Traveling with a six year old Tanzanian kid was interesting. People kept yelling comments—some of which were rather obscene—as we walked hand-in-hand to the bus stop. We caught a ride with a Chinese road worker, which was the first piece of news that Muku relayed to his healthier looking mother. Her niece, a woman about my age and toting a 2-month-old baby, walked from her home about an hour away to help cook and clean for the patient.

I went to town to find milk and fruit and when I came back, Mama Hawa was laying next to the sleeping baby, staring at her with a desperate expression. I asked if there was anything she wanted to talk about, but she said she was just tired. She didn’t take her eyes off of her niece’s baby as she spoke.

When Muku and I got home, I asked Hawa what she had done all day.

“Cooked, cleaned, carried water, and brought corn to the machine to be ground,” she replied. I looked at her with obvious pity, and she continued: “Lots of Mamas came to help me, and I played a little too.”

Throughout this whole experience, I’ve been constantly amazed at the way people help each other out here. A woman I’ve never met walked with me all the way to the clinic in the dark. Patients helped fellow patients. Women came from all over to help cook and keep the family company. Men showed up on a moment’s notice to bury the baby. Though the official mourning process would have been considered inappropriate, friends came from hours away to help the family mourn the hopes they had built over the past months.

We’ve all heard that it takes a village to raise a child. This week I learned that it takes a village to lose a child, too.