I'm now connected to the internet from my house in the village!!! I bought a mobile modem last week and it has pretty much changed my life. I still don't have electricity, so don't expect me to be much more accessible, but from the time I get to town and charge my computer to the time the battery runs out, I am truly straddling two worlds. I read by candlelight, cook outside on a charcoal stove, and carry water (or rather, pay my neighbor's kid to carry water) from 2k away, yet I can keep updated on Natalie Portman's pregnancy and Lindsay Lohan's shenanigans if I so choose (which I don't). WEIRD.
So here are some updates...
First of all, I made it home safely from my in-service training in Morogoro and a week of rest and relaxation in Dar Es Salaam. Dar is a big city that has all sorts of exciting things, most notably in the part of town where diplomats and ex-pats live and shop, officially known as "the Peninsula" but (sometimes fondly, sometimes sarcastically) referred to as "America" by me and my friends. During my time in "America," I visited a few grocery stores. They are probably small by real American standards but they were scary nonetheless. I know you all think that the life I'm living out in the village is tough, but I'm more impressed at those of you that can stare at a wall of toothpaste and know which one you want. Keeping in mind that I live in a place where the nearest loaf of bread to buy is a 1 hr bus ride away, I'm sure you can understand why I caused some stares by the amount of time I spent gawking at the toothpaste selection.
I'm super pumped to be back in my village now. I've been gone waaaay too long. My counterpart (Mama Ashura) and I are geared up to start projects, though most of them will have to wait until after the planting season (April). Tomorrow, my neighbor is going to help me prepare to farm the plot of land I didn't realize I inherited along with my house. I'm also getting ready to begin two projects with the secondary school, both of which I'm really excited about. Starting mid-January, I'm going to be teaching Life Skills (aka how to not get HIV, pregnant, addicted to drugs, etc) to the Form 4s, mostly 17-19 year olds. I'm nervous about it, because I haven't had the best luck with teaching (zoom in on the preschoolers who, after two months of my tutelage, can sing the ABCs up to G, at which point it all goes to hell), but I seem to do better with older kids and the topics are sexy enough that they'll actually pay attention.
The second project has the eventual goal of getting a water tank and/or pump installed at the secondary school because right now the kids spend an ungodly amount of time fetching water rather than studying. Rather than just whipping off a grant for them, I've decided to take a painfully slow but hopefully more sustainable route. Along with the Headmistress, I'm in the process of selecting 5-10 top students to form a "water and development taskforce." Over the next semester, I'm going to teach them about grants, NGOs, aid, etc. I'm hoping to engage them in more than just project planning, but also to discuss sticky issues, like the sustainability of aid. The ultimately aim of the taskforce is for the students themselves to come up with a solution to the school's water problem. Whether they decide to fund raise in the community and build it themselves or write a grant, I'm going to do my best to support them while still granting them full ownership of the project, whether or not it succeeds.
That's the plan at least. But over the past 6 months I've learned that the only thing I can definitely count on is that nothing will happen as I expect.
Finally, I want to share with you all a funny situation I found myself in today. My neighbors, Mama and Baba Mdogo, just got home from a long journey that took them on a bus passing through a few of the national parks. I remember when my Dad and Amy got back from their safari last year I was kind of rude to them about their picture slide-show--saying it was dehumanizing for them to show off pictures of the Africans they passed on the bus the same way they show off pictures of animals. Keeping that in mind, here is what Baba Mdogo told me when I asked him what they saw on their journey: "So many animals! We saw giraffes and hippopotamus and zebras and elephants...and the wazungu [white people]! You wouldn't believe how many wazungu we saw!! They were wearing these funny hats and they all had cameras and they were speaking English so fast and some of them were speaking other languages, too. There were so many of them and they all looked so excited to see the animals. You should go to the national parks because you will have lots of wazungu friends there, Lauren!"
So there you have it, Dad. They think you're just as fascinating as you think they are.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Khanga v. Bucket: The Ultimate Standoff
Living without electricity or running water makes you appreciate things in a different way. Before I hopped on that Africa-bound plane, I had never seen, let alone wore, let alone mopped my floor with, a Khanga. Today I can safely say that I would be dead without it.
The khanga is just a thin piece of fabric. It is most frequently used as a wrap or headscarf. The internet here isn't fancy enough for me to upload a picture right now, but you should google it if you're confused.
My friend Sativa is convinced that the bucket has more uses than the khanga. Buckets are useful, don't get me wrong. You should definitely read her blog post about them (www.sativamarie.wordpress.com) and make up your own mind. But I feel, in the name of fairness, you deserve to hear the khanga's side of the story. Sativa says I'm copying her by writing this post. She is a bully. That is why I call her "Dada Mkubwa," which means "big sister," because big sisters are bullies. I think. I've never actually had one.
Anyway. The many uses of a khanga:
- The Classic (wrapping around your waist)
- Tablecloth
- Carpet
- Drapes
- Poster/general wall art
- Get your local tailor to make you a: dress, shirt, pants, skirt, hat, dira, headscarf, etc etc etc)
- Cape to wear to the Harry Potter movie in Dar Es Salaam ("I'm so not going with you to that," - Jen)
- Any/all articles of clothing for kids
- Grocery bag
- To cover up your luggage if you don't want people to see how fancy your bags are
- Menstrual pads (if anyone wants information on how to do this, attend your local Peace Corps girls conference)
- Oven mitts (but be careful, I've already burned holes in 3 khangas doing this...)
- Head wrap (all styles--the bigger the better)
- Apron (kinda synonymous with "the classic")
- Filter for water (but not a substitution for boiling!)
- Diaper (if you believe in that kind of thing, most Mamas just let the kiddos run free)
- Blanket and/or sheets
- Bathing suit cover
- "Farm clothes"
- Prayer rug (I'm actually not sure this would be allowed--I'll ask a Mama and let you know)
- Yoga mat
- Covering up your tanktop when you can't stand the heat
- Really cheap sunscreen
- Hijab
- Sending subliminal messages (each khanga has a saying on the bottom in Swahili, usually it's things like "God's word is the final word" but sometimes it's more sassy and less religious.)
- Face mask when the dust and/or body odor takes over your nasal passages
- Make-shift curtain when you have to chimba dawa* on a bus ride
- "Mattress mambo" (if you have to ask, you're too young to know)
- Travel pillow
- Door mat
- Umbrella
- Required uniform for any village funeral or wedding
- Fanny pack (Sativa's favorite)
- To strap a child to your back (he ain't going nowhere)
- To shield yourself when breastfeed--though open-air is the preference in my village
- Jifunga-ing** when you're wearing scandalous things like jeans or a knee-length skirt
- When it gets old, it becomes a rag/mop/etc
- Automatic hand-dryer (minus the automatic)
- Bathing suit (or so I hear, this sounds kind of impractical)
- If you're in a really hard spot, toilet paper
- Gauze and pretty much any other medical supply
I'll keep adding if I think of more things... let me know if you come up with any I haven't thought of!
* "Chimba dawa" is literally "dig for medicine," but it's a euphemism for pissing on the side of the road
** "Jifunga" literally means "close yourself"
- Campaign
The khanga is just a thin piece of fabric. It is most frequently used as a wrap or headscarf. The internet here isn't fancy enough for me to upload a picture right now, but you should google it if you're confused.
My friend Sativa is convinced that the bucket has more uses than the khanga. Buckets are useful, don't get me wrong. You should definitely read her blog post about them (www.sativamarie.wordpress.com) and make up your own mind. But I feel, in the name of fairness, you deserve to hear the khanga's side of the story. Sativa says I'm copying her by writing this post. She is a bully. That is why I call her "Dada Mkubwa," which means "big sister," because big sisters are bullies. I think. I've never actually had one.
Anyway. The many uses of a khanga:
- The Classic (wrapping around your waist)
- Tablecloth
- Carpet
- Drapes
- Poster/general wall art
- Get your local tailor to make you a: dress, shirt, pants, skirt, hat, dira, headscarf, etc etc etc)
- Cape to wear to the Harry Potter movie in Dar Es Salaam ("I'm so not going with you to that," - Jen)
- Any/all articles of clothing for kids
- Grocery bag
- To cover up your luggage if you don't want people to see how fancy your bags are
- Menstrual pads (if anyone wants information on how to do this, attend your local Peace Corps girls conference)
- Oven mitts (but be careful, I've already burned holes in 3 khangas doing this...)
- Head wrap (all styles--the bigger the better)
- Apron (kinda synonymous with "the classic")
- Filter for water (but not a substitution for boiling!)
- Diaper (if you believe in that kind of thing, most Mamas just let the kiddos run free)
- Blanket and/or sheets
- Bathing suit cover
- "Farm clothes"
- Prayer rug (I'm actually not sure this would be allowed--I'll ask a Mama and let you know)
- Yoga mat
- Covering up your tanktop when you can't stand the heat
- Really cheap sunscreen
- Hijab
- Sending subliminal messages (each khanga has a saying on the bottom in Swahili, usually it's things like "God's word is the final word" but sometimes it's more sassy and less religious.)
- Face mask when the dust and/or body odor takes over your nasal passages
- Make-shift curtain when you have to chimba dawa* on a bus ride
- "Mattress mambo" (if you have to ask, you're too young to know)
- Travel pillow
- Door mat
- Umbrella
- Required uniform for any village funeral or wedding
- Fanny pack (Sativa's favorite)
- To strap a child to your back (he ain't going nowhere)
- To shield yourself when breastfeed--though open-air is the preference in my village
- Jifunga-ing** when you're wearing scandalous things like jeans or a knee-length skirt
- When it gets old, it becomes a rag/mop/etc
- Automatic hand-dryer (minus the automatic)
- Bathing suit (or so I hear, this sounds kind of impractical)
- If you're in a really hard spot, toilet paper
- Gauze and pretty much any other medical supply
I'll keep adding if I think of more things... let me know if you come up with any I haven't thought of!
* "Chimba dawa" is literally "dig for medicine," but it's a euphemism for pissing on the side of the road
** "Jifunga" literally means "close yourself"
- Campaign
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
TZ Twins
I’m in Morogoro right now at in-service training (IST), which is kinda like Camp Peace Corps Part 2. After spending the past three and a half months alone in our villages, all 39 members of my training class are back together for training and to share our site experiences. The first day we all drew creative, artistic, or graphical interpretations of our experience over the past six months. I drew a color coded line graph that depicted my happiness, feeling of success, and integration. Apparently I'm a little left brained. The lines were all over the place, and also tended to be pretty aligned with one another--I can't integrate if I'm not happy, I don't feel happy when I don't feel successful, etc.
Some of the more creative volunteers drew pictures. Katie, who spent a lot of time traveling due to medical and administrative issues, drew a map of Tanzania and outlined her emotions on each of her many bus rides. My friend Justin titled his y-axis "craving for taco bell." One girl just balled up her paper and taped it to the wall. And we all knew what she meant by that, because we've all felt that way too at some point or another. It was comforting to realize that we're all going through this crazy experience together.
Last night, our “counterparts,“ people from our villages that we’ve chosen to be partners and advisors over the next two years, arrived. This next week seems likely to be a sort of “worlds collide” type experience.
The first activity we did was for each PCV to introduce their counterpart and then be introduced by her or him. It was immediately evident that we have all chosen what can only be described as our Tanzanian clones. Quiet people choose quiet people, class clown types used their introductions as an opportunity for a duet standup act, the academic types tended to choose students or teachers, and a girl I’ve always described as an “old soul” chose an adorable and sprightly 70-year-old man.
I’m no exception. My counterpart, Mama Ashura, was the first woman in the group to talk (in this culture, women are usually pretty quiet in groups when men are present). Like me, she has a tendency to dominate conversations, always has an opinion, and frequently raised her hand when a question was asked, eager to show off that she had an answer and unafraid to give a wrong one. We did a group activity that involved writing on big poster papers and I looked over from my group and saw that she, like me, had taken on the role of scribe. And anyone who’s been in a class with me also knows that I have a nasty habit of chit-chatting to my neighbors during lectures. Mama Ashura was constantly leaning over to whisper things to me, give her opinions, giggle over inside jokes, or ask me for translations when the speaker lapsed into English.
Creepy, right?
During the session today, our counterparts had an opportunity to list some of the myths they have heard in the villages about Peace Corps. Among the highlights (and lowlights) were:
- We are CIA spies (the classic)
- We are photographers intending to take pictures of Tanzanians to either sell in America for large sums of money or to share with our friends back home so we can laugh at how poor people are here (if you laugh at the pictures I post online, unless they are of people being funny, I will be very angry at you)
- Our parents lived in Tanzania many years ago and we have come to retrieve the things they left behind (this weird myth exists in my village, apparently--Mom, Dad, anything you need to tell me?)
- We are here on a bioterror/business venture in which we will spread strange diseases, and later return with an expensive cure (this terrifying rumor was also a Mama Ashura contribution)
Most of today was spent clarifying what Peace Corps is and what it isn’t. For the record, none of that is true.
After this training, I'm heading to Dar Es Salaam (the capital) for a few days to do some administrative stuff, shopping, and most importantly to see the new Harry Potter movie!!! I'm taking a slightly longer route back to my village (the shortest possible route would be 2 days anyway) because apparently the rains have started so once I'm there, I'll be stranded in a muddy mess of roadlessness for a good long time. Hopefully I'll be able to be in touch somewhat, but if I seem to have gone quiet for a few months, that'll be why. (And now I can't get "I bless the rains down in Africa" out of my head. Awesome.)
Some of the more creative volunteers drew pictures. Katie, who spent a lot of time traveling due to medical and administrative issues, drew a map of Tanzania and outlined her emotions on each of her many bus rides. My friend Justin titled his y-axis "craving for taco bell." One girl just balled up her paper and taped it to the wall. And we all knew what she meant by that, because we've all felt that way too at some point or another. It was comforting to realize that we're all going through this crazy experience together.
Last night, our “counterparts,“ people from our villages that we’ve chosen to be partners and advisors over the next two years, arrived. This next week seems likely to be a sort of “worlds collide” type experience.
The first activity we did was for each PCV to introduce their counterpart and then be introduced by her or him. It was immediately evident that we have all chosen what can only be described as our Tanzanian clones. Quiet people choose quiet people, class clown types used their introductions as an opportunity for a duet standup act, the academic types tended to choose students or teachers, and a girl I’ve always described as an “old soul” chose an adorable and sprightly 70-year-old man.
I’m no exception. My counterpart, Mama Ashura, was the first woman in the group to talk (in this culture, women are usually pretty quiet in groups when men are present). Like me, she has a tendency to dominate conversations, always has an opinion, and frequently raised her hand when a question was asked, eager to show off that she had an answer and unafraid to give a wrong one. We did a group activity that involved writing on big poster papers and I looked over from my group and saw that she, like me, had taken on the role of scribe. And anyone who’s been in a class with me also knows that I have a nasty habit of chit-chatting to my neighbors during lectures. Mama Ashura was constantly leaning over to whisper things to me, give her opinions, giggle over inside jokes, or ask me for translations when the speaker lapsed into English.
Creepy, right?
During the session today, our counterparts had an opportunity to list some of the myths they have heard in the villages about Peace Corps. Among the highlights (and lowlights) were:
- We are CIA spies (the classic)
- We are photographers intending to take pictures of Tanzanians to either sell in America for large sums of money or to share with our friends back home so we can laugh at how poor people are here (if you laugh at the pictures I post online, unless they are of people being funny, I will be very angry at you)
- Our parents lived in Tanzania many years ago and we have come to retrieve the things they left behind (this weird myth exists in my village, apparently--Mom, Dad, anything you need to tell me?)
- We are here on a bioterror/business venture in which we will spread strange diseases, and later return with an expensive cure (this terrifying rumor was also a Mama Ashura contribution)
Most of today was spent clarifying what Peace Corps is and what it isn’t. For the record, none of that is true.
After this training, I'm heading to Dar Es Salaam (the capital) for a few days to do some administrative stuff, shopping, and most importantly to see the new Harry Potter movie!!! I'm taking a slightly longer route back to my village (the shortest possible route would be 2 days anyway) because apparently the rains have started so once I'm there, I'll be stranded in a muddy mess of roadlessness for a good long time. Hopefully I'll be able to be in touch somewhat, but if I seem to have gone quiet for a few months, that'll be why. (And now I can't get "I bless the rains down in Africa" out of my head. Awesome.)
Monday, November 29, 2010
Reality
I haven't spent a lot of time in this blog talking about the difficult times. Maybe I've been misleading you, in which case I'm sorry. So here's the truth: At least once a day, the thought runs through my head--"I could go home right now. I could call it quits and be eating a goat cheese salad [or pizza, or thai food, or mint chocolate chip ice cream, or...] in 72 hours." That's the sort of thing we're not supposed to admit, but it's true. It doesn't mean I'm going anywhere anytime soon. At least once a day I also think, "I'm the luckiest human being in the world." The combination of these two thoughts, and the short time frame within which both of them float through my mind, is referred to by volunteers as the "roller coaster." The thing about roller coasters, even emotional ones, is that they are simultaneously thrilling, terrifying, fun, and nauseating.
Some days I would rather sit in my house and stare at the wall than attempt to have a coherent conversation in Swahili. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the cultural barriers separating me from my new friends--it has become apparent over the past few months that there really are some things that can't be understood cross-culturally. As close as I am to my Mamas, there is so much about me they will never understand. And I'm sure they feel the same way about me. And sometimes I just want to sit in my house and sob hysterically about the things I've witnessed here, and the fact that there is so, so little I can do to help. Other times I just feel totally numb. I find myself making really off-color jokes, which I guess is my way of trying to deal with things that are just beyond my comprehension. AIDS? Food insecurity? If I can't laugh, I'll cry. Sometimes I do cry. The realization that, statistically, at least a few of the children I play with on a daily basis are going to die of preventable disease. How are you supposed to deal with that? Everyday, I rotate between feelings of anger so intense I think it might eat me alive and numbness to the point of boredom and sadness so deep I might get lost inside it.
The roller coaster has been getting faster. The twists are more nauseating, the rails a little rickety-er, the drops are more dramatic. I find myself overwhelmed by the simplest decisions -- do I hold on or throw my hands up? Do I scream with joy or scream with fear? And really, is there even a difference?
Some days I would rather sit in my house and stare at the wall than attempt to have a coherent conversation in Swahili. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the cultural barriers separating me from my new friends--it has become apparent over the past few months that there really are some things that can't be understood cross-culturally. As close as I am to my Mamas, there is so much about me they will never understand. And I'm sure they feel the same way about me. And sometimes I just want to sit in my house and sob hysterically about the things I've witnessed here, and the fact that there is so, so little I can do to help. Other times I just feel totally numb. I find myself making really off-color jokes, which I guess is my way of trying to deal with things that are just beyond my comprehension. AIDS? Food insecurity? If I can't laugh, I'll cry. Sometimes I do cry. The realization that, statistically, at least a few of the children I play with on a daily basis are going to die of preventable disease. How are you supposed to deal with that? Everyday, I rotate between feelings of anger so intense I think it might eat me alive and numbness to the point of boredom and sadness so deep I might get lost inside it.
The roller coaster has been getting faster. The twists are more nauseating, the rails a little rickety-er, the drops are more dramatic. I find myself overwhelmed by the simplest decisions -- do I hold on or throw my hands up? Do I scream with joy or scream with fear? And really, is there even a difference?
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Eid Mubarak and reflections on integration and success...
I pull the hem of my dira over my bare feet and hide my hands beneath my shawl. My hijab is tight and itchy around my neck but I don't pull my hands out to adjust it. Even if I wanted to, I'm practically sitting on top of the women next to me so any unperscribed movement is a poor choice. As the service begins I mimic my Mama's actions--standing, kneeling, endlessly repeating "Allah Akbar." I try to pay attention, stay open and aware of the culture, spirituality, and beauty of this event I am honored to have been invited to. But all I can think about is keeping my white hands hidden and how, for the first time in 5 months, I might, maybe, blend into a crowd. The kids in front and to the side of me can still see my pale face, but to the rows and rows of women sitting and kneeling behind me, my colorful hijab and dira won't warrent a second glance. I feel relieved, free, and human in a way I suddenly realize I haven't felt in a very long time.
But for every other hour of my life here, I will never blend in. And if anyone was watching closely they noticed me fumble over prayers, motions, the itchy hijab situation.
I'm doing what I can to integrate here, but there are some barriers I will never cross. One minute I feel like one of the gang, laughing and drinking chai with my Mamas, and the next minute I notice that a kid has burst into tears at the sight of my strange pale eyes and freckly nose, or a teenage boy is staring at me like I'm a dirty picture in the bathroom who can't see his objectifying gaze.
One story which nicely illustrates the stage of integration I'm at took place last week as i was returning home from a long and poorly planned thougrh, thankfully, safely fexecuted hike up Mt. Hanang with, no joke, 50 secondary school students. I was exhausted and grumpy and ready to be home, alone, far away from the nearest teenager. As we reached the base of the mountain, we still had another few hours of walking back to the village. So, please don't judge me for this, I left the kids with their other chaparone and made my way to the main road to try to catch a ride. (Yes, I hitchhike here sometimes, but if you saw our busses, you'd understand why.) So a young man finally picked me up and immediately started doing what most men here do upon first meeting me--talking about marraige. Usually I just laugh it off and let him off gently by saying something like "That's very kind of you, but right now I'm focused on my studies." (Which has led to a running joke in my village where the young men ask me everyday if I've learned everything there is to know yet.)
But that day, I was in a particularly irritable mood. So the driver ends up asking if I have a husband, but instead of saying "mume" he says "mzee," which works in context but literally means "old man." So I decide to mess with him and tell him I'm married to a wonderful mzee named Saidi Jumanne*. Saidi Jumanne, in reality, is my favorite "mzee" grandpa in the village. So the driver and I have this long chat where I make up all sorts of ridiculous stuff about my fictional marraige.
Finally we reach the village and I hop out of the car to a crowd of the same young men I mentioned earlier, who like to joke about when I'm going to stop studying and settle down. So they're all boisterously welcoming me home and the driver turns to them and asks if it's true that I have an mzee named Saidi Jumanne. It turns out the real Saidi was standing about ten feet away, perfectly in sight and very much in his mid-70s. The men, laughing hysterically, point in his direction and vehemently affirm that he is, in fact, my husband. The driver drove off, utterly confused.
During Peace Corps staging (the three days of logistics before we boarded the plane to TZ), we were asked to write what would make us feel like we've "succeeded" in the Peace Corps. Knowing my tendencies to be a stressed out ambitious freak, I decided to write something simpler than "when climate change halts and all of Tanzania is reforested." I wrote, "When I laugh with my neighbors." Mission accomplished, now on to deforestation...
*Not his real name, but it's equally Tanzanian
But for every other hour of my life here, I will never blend in. And if anyone was watching closely they noticed me fumble over prayers, motions, the itchy hijab situation.
I'm doing what I can to integrate here, but there are some barriers I will never cross. One minute I feel like one of the gang, laughing and drinking chai with my Mamas, and the next minute I notice that a kid has burst into tears at the sight of my strange pale eyes and freckly nose, or a teenage boy is staring at me like I'm a dirty picture in the bathroom who can't see his objectifying gaze.
One story which nicely illustrates the stage of integration I'm at took place last week as i was returning home from a long and poorly planned thougrh, thankfully, safely fexecuted hike up Mt. Hanang with, no joke, 50 secondary school students. I was exhausted and grumpy and ready to be home, alone, far away from the nearest teenager. As we reached the base of the mountain, we still had another few hours of walking back to the village. So, please don't judge me for this, I left the kids with their other chaparone and made my way to the main road to try to catch a ride. (Yes, I hitchhike here sometimes, but if you saw our busses, you'd understand why.) So a young man finally picked me up and immediately started doing what most men here do upon first meeting me--talking about marraige. Usually I just laugh it off and let him off gently by saying something like "That's very kind of you, but right now I'm focused on my studies." (Which has led to a running joke in my village where the young men ask me everyday if I've learned everything there is to know yet.)
But that day, I was in a particularly irritable mood. So the driver ends up asking if I have a husband, but instead of saying "mume" he says "mzee," which works in context but literally means "old man." So I decide to mess with him and tell him I'm married to a wonderful mzee named Saidi Jumanne*. Saidi Jumanne, in reality, is my favorite "mzee" grandpa in the village. So the driver and I have this long chat where I make up all sorts of ridiculous stuff about my fictional marraige.
Finally we reach the village and I hop out of the car to a crowd of the same young men I mentioned earlier, who like to joke about when I'm going to stop studying and settle down. So they're all boisterously welcoming me home and the driver turns to them and asks if it's true that I have an mzee named Saidi Jumanne. It turns out the real Saidi was standing about ten feet away, perfectly in sight and very much in his mid-70s. The men, laughing hysterically, point in his direction and vehemently affirm that he is, in fact, my husband. The driver drove off, utterly confused.
During Peace Corps staging (the three days of logistics before we boarded the plane to TZ), we were asked to write what would make us feel like we've "succeeded" in the Peace Corps. Knowing my tendencies to be a stressed out ambitious freak, I decided to write something simpler than "when climate change halts and all of Tanzania is reforested." I wrote, "When I laugh with my neighbors." Mission accomplished, now on to deforestation...
*Not his real name, but it's equally Tanzanian
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Life is so easy in America--they drive CARS to fetch water from the river!!
Finally found some of that internet stuff again!! Welcome to Month #5. I’ve officially gone from counting days to counting weeks to counting months--the next logical increment is years. That’s kind of terrifying, kind of awesome, and makes me feel like I really haven’t done a whole lot to write home about yet considering I’ve almost been in this country for half a year now. Either way, there’s been a request for more information about what I actually do all day, so here we go.
I’m still in the “first three months at site” phase during which Peace Corps discourages starting projects. Basically my job is to just get settled in, make friends, and integrate. I’m also slowly but surely gaining confidence in Swahili and starting to be able to really get to know people in a way I couldn’t before. In the meantime, I’ve learned a lot about myself. For example: I don’t want to be a preschool teacher. It seemed like a good way to practice Swahili, but it turns out I have no patience and I’m really, really bad at controlling a room of screaming children. Another example: I am not a collectivist--my neighbors think it’s insane that I live alone and feel really bad for me because of it, but I rush home at the end of every day to enjoy my few hours of solitude. Political inclinations aside, living in America for 21 years instilled some serious individualist tendencies in me. I‘m slowly getting used to collectivism, though--if it’s 7pm and I haven’t got my charcoal stove started yet, I don’t hesitate to pop by my neighbors and guiltlessly enjoy her ugali. I’ve also been known to show up at Mama Hawa’s to ask for help with things like spiders, ant infestations, cleaning up the kerosene I spilled all over my floor, etc.
But if I’m honestly integrating, that concept has to go both ways, right? So last night a sixteen year old girl I’ve talked to a few times before showed up at my house with her one month old baby, saying she had been kicked out and had no where to sleep. She definitely wasn’t lying--I had heard from other kids that she had some serious problems at home, had dropped out of school to work after second grade, and had very little family left in the village to help her out. This was exactly the sort of “Lauren has a chance to be someone’s hero” situation that I was looking forward to. But when the time came, I am ashamed to admit I hesitated pretty seriously before taking the girl in for the night. In the end we had a peaceful evening, though she seemed very suspicious of the brown rice I cooked. I asked her what she would do if she had unlimited money and she said she’d build a three-room brick house with a tin roof and buy a plot of land near the river to plant cabbage, carrots, and green peppers (particularly lucrative crops here). Insert reality check here.
And now in no particular order, examples of the other exciting things I‘ve done in the past few months:
- Spent a day hanging out at the local water source talking to people as they washed clothes and fetched water. During this time a long group of kids came to stare at me and after about half an hour I finally turned to them and said, “I’m a human being, not a TV” and then they screamed and ran away. I also overheard my favorite quote so far: “That’s the new mzungu (white person). She lives in America. Life there is so easy--they drive their CARS to fetch water from the river!” This was followed by a very confusing attempt by me to explain indoor plumbing. I’m always surprised by the things I’m incapable of explaining… pathetically, it’s partly because I don’t actually understand how many of our modern conveniences work. Air conditioning, airplanes, the internet… as far as I know that stuff runs on magic.
- I hang out a lot with the local wazee (old people), talking about their lives and all the things they remember about the village. Lately I’ve been on a tree kick, so sometimes I ask them to take me around and show me their favorite trees and their medicinal and technical uses. The younger community members tend to know a lot less about these sorts of things, partly because the area has been pretty badly deforested so there just aren’t as many trees to use anymore. I think this might be the start of a good project that will involve collecting this information (maybe with the help of the school kids through the environment club I am slowly in the process of organizing) and putting it into a booklet type thing. The booklet will serve partly to educate people about their local resources and partly to demonstrate the importance of reforestation and of reforesting with native species.
- I’ve started a girl’s exercise club that mostly involves me attempting to teach yoga to a group of Mamas and girls who are falling all over each other and laughing hysterically at my instructions. Some things just sound bizarre when you translate them into a language you’ve only been learning for four months… I end up saying stuff like “Now you will start as a dog which has down and then slowly turn into a child.”
Besides that I pretty much just walk around and meet people, read a lot, practice guitar, and spend way more time doing household chores than you could imagine. Washing clothes by hand is a full-day job…especially since I live 2km from my nearest water source. I’ve also been doing a lot of running--there are a lot of beautiful trails through the hills behind my house that I’ve been exploring. I’m hoping to run the Kilimanjaro half (or maybe (big maybe) full) marathon in February. I’m mostly posting that here right now so I’ll feel social pressure to actually do it because I’ve just announced to the whole wide internet that I’m going to--so be sure to make fun of me if I give up.
I’m still in the “first three months at site” phase during which Peace Corps discourages starting projects. Basically my job is to just get settled in, make friends, and integrate. I’m also slowly but surely gaining confidence in Swahili and starting to be able to really get to know people in a way I couldn’t before. In the meantime, I’ve learned a lot about myself. For example: I don’t want to be a preschool teacher. It seemed like a good way to practice Swahili, but it turns out I have no patience and I’m really, really bad at controlling a room of screaming children. Another example: I am not a collectivist--my neighbors think it’s insane that I live alone and feel really bad for me because of it, but I rush home at the end of every day to enjoy my few hours of solitude. Political inclinations aside, living in America for 21 years instilled some serious individualist tendencies in me. I‘m slowly getting used to collectivism, though--if it’s 7pm and I haven’t got my charcoal stove started yet, I don’t hesitate to pop by my neighbors and guiltlessly enjoy her ugali. I’ve also been known to show up at Mama Hawa’s to ask for help with things like spiders, ant infestations, cleaning up the kerosene I spilled all over my floor, etc.
But if I’m honestly integrating, that concept has to go both ways, right? So last night a sixteen year old girl I’ve talked to a few times before showed up at my house with her one month old baby, saying she had been kicked out and had no where to sleep. She definitely wasn’t lying--I had heard from other kids that she had some serious problems at home, had dropped out of school to work after second grade, and had very little family left in the village to help her out. This was exactly the sort of “Lauren has a chance to be someone’s hero” situation that I was looking forward to. But when the time came, I am ashamed to admit I hesitated pretty seriously before taking the girl in for the night. In the end we had a peaceful evening, though she seemed very suspicious of the brown rice I cooked. I asked her what she would do if she had unlimited money and she said she’d build a three-room brick house with a tin roof and buy a plot of land near the river to plant cabbage, carrots, and green peppers (particularly lucrative crops here). Insert reality check here.
And now in no particular order, examples of the other exciting things I‘ve done in the past few months:
- Spent a day hanging out at the local water source talking to people as they washed clothes and fetched water. During this time a long group of kids came to stare at me and after about half an hour I finally turned to them and said, “I’m a human being, not a TV” and then they screamed and ran away. I also overheard my favorite quote so far: “That’s the new mzungu (white person). She lives in America. Life there is so easy--they drive their CARS to fetch water from the river!” This was followed by a very confusing attempt by me to explain indoor plumbing. I’m always surprised by the things I’m incapable of explaining… pathetically, it’s partly because I don’t actually understand how many of our modern conveniences work. Air conditioning, airplanes, the internet… as far as I know that stuff runs on magic.
- I hang out a lot with the local wazee (old people), talking about their lives and all the things they remember about the village. Lately I’ve been on a tree kick, so sometimes I ask them to take me around and show me their favorite trees and their medicinal and technical uses. The younger community members tend to know a lot less about these sorts of things, partly because the area has been pretty badly deforested so there just aren’t as many trees to use anymore. I think this might be the start of a good project that will involve collecting this information (maybe with the help of the school kids through the environment club I am slowly in the process of organizing) and putting it into a booklet type thing. The booklet will serve partly to educate people about their local resources and partly to demonstrate the importance of reforestation and of reforesting with native species.
- I’ve started a girl’s exercise club that mostly involves me attempting to teach yoga to a group of Mamas and girls who are falling all over each other and laughing hysterically at my instructions. Some things just sound bizarre when you translate them into a language you’ve only been learning for four months… I end up saying stuff like “Now you will start as a dog which has down and then slowly turn into a child.”
Besides that I pretty much just walk around and meet people, read a lot, practice guitar, and spend way more time doing household chores than you could imagine. Washing clothes by hand is a full-day job…especially since I live 2km from my nearest water source. I’ve also been doing a lot of running--there are a lot of beautiful trails through the hills behind my house that I’ve been exploring. I’m hoping to run the Kilimanjaro half (or maybe (big maybe) full) marathon in February. I’m mostly posting that here right now so I’ll feel social pressure to actually do it because I’ve just announced to the whole wide internet that I’m going to--so be sure to make fun of me if I give up.
Monday, October 11, 2010
"Maendeleo" (Development)
I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of development. Before I came here, my belief system, peppered with radical ideology and salted with a nagging pragmatism that I can't seem to get rid of, put me pretty firmly in the "skeptical of development for environmental and cultural reasons" camp. I was, and am, incredibly disturbed by the fact that if everyone in the world lived as we do in the US, we would require something ridiculous like 7 and a half Planet Earths to sustain our destructive communities.
So here I am in a little village in Tanzania. You may be thinking of some sort of "land before time" traditional situation where people have a deep ancestral connection to the earth and everyone respects the environment and communities have lived here sustainable for thousands of years. Sorry to dissappoint, but it's not quite like that. My village is a mish-mash of many tribes, all of whom get along splendidly, but very few of whom have a traditional ancestral connection to this land. Many people I've met wound up here during the "villigization" process (Tanzania's experiment in socialism) or migrated to work on sisal plantations during the colonial period. The original inhabitants, pastoralist Barbaig, have emigrated. While many of my friends do have an environmentalist outlook, many of the villagers are just like Americans--they look at trees and see lumber, they look at all their natural resources and see ways that they can use them to make money. And why shouldn't they?
But let's pretend for a moment that community development follows a similar trajectory as individual human development. I would say my village is stuck in the middle of a very awkward pre-teen stage. Most of my neighbors live in mud or brick huts with grass roofs, but many have corrogated tin roofing, a fair few have electricity, and I know of at least five with satellite TV. Satellite TV! But no one has running water and clean water can be as far as 3 kilometers away. See what I mean about the awkward pre-teen stage of development? Here's the scary thing about comparing community development to human development... once we pass our prime, we continue "developing" until our bodies can no longer support life. Then we die. And so will our global community if we continue on the road to "dirty development" at home and abroad.
Of course it's ridiculous to say that my villagers, who have a vague idea of what life is like in the "First World," shouldn't be allowed to work towards achieving it if that's what they want. Above all else, I believe that all human beings have a right to self-determination. And many people want dirty development, at least for now. But what's the point of having highly developed, technological, advanced societies if we don't have a planet to enjoy our success on? The only possible solution I see is for a serious and fundamental shift of values to take place in our already "developed" communities. If we want our friends in the global south to live in luxury and comfort the way we do, we need to find a way to make "luxury and comfort" sustainable, starting with our own lives. Or we need to consider the real possibility that our very understanding of luxury and comfort is the problem.
So here I am in a little village in Tanzania. You may be thinking of some sort of "land before time" traditional situation where people have a deep ancestral connection to the earth and everyone respects the environment and communities have lived here sustainable for thousands of years. Sorry to dissappoint, but it's not quite like that. My village is a mish-mash of many tribes, all of whom get along splendidly, but very few of whom have a traditional ancestral connection to this land. Many people I've met wound up here during the "villigization" process (Tanzania's experiment in socialism) or migrated to work on sisal plantations during the colonial period. The original inhabitants, pastoralist Barbaig, have emigrated. While many of my friends do have an environmentalist outlook, many of the villagers are just like Americans--they look at trees and see lumber, they look at all their natural resources and see ways that they can use them to make money. And why shouldn't they?
But let's pretend for a moment that community development follows a similar trajectory as individual human development. I would say my village is stuck in the middle of a very awkward pre-teen stage. Most of my neighbors live in mud or brick huts with grass roofs, but many have corrogated tin roofing, a fair few have electricity, and I know of at least five with satellite TV. Satellite TV! But no one has running water and clean water can be as far as 3 kilometers away. See what I mean about the awkward pre-teen stage of development? Here's the scary thing about comparing community development to human development... once we pass our prime, we continue "developing" until our bodies can no longer support life. Then we die. And so will our global community if we continue on the road to "dirty development" at home and abroad.
Of course it's ridiculous to say that my villagers, who have a vague idea of what life is like in the "First World," shouldn't be allowed to work towards achieving it if that's what they want. Above all else, I believe that all human beings have a right to self-determination. And many people want dirty development, at least for now. But what's the point of having highly developed, technological, advanced societies if we don't have a planet to enjoy our success on? The only possible solution I see is for a serious and fundamental shift of values to take place in our already "developed" communities. If we want our friends in the global south to live in luxury and comfort the way we do, we need to find a way to make "luxury and comfort" sustainable, starting with our own lives. Or we need to consider the real possibility that our very understanding of luxury and comfort is the problem.
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