When You Can't Hold On...Hold On

Saw something today, that if I could write it right, I won’t have to write no more...

...And I’m being followed by a moonshadow, moonshadow.

Asked the Mwenyekiti wa Kijiji (the Village Chairperson (kiti means chair, mwenye means a person with or on, so mwenyekiti literally translates as “the person with the chair”)) a few days ago what groups there were in the village. He gave me the full list: Vijana (youths), Wanawake (women), Wazee (elderly), and Wakulima (farmers). Then he told me there was a group of wananchi (countrymen) wenye VVU/UKIMWI (with HIV/AIDS). And they were meeting Wednesday at 10. He’d pick me up at a quarter till.

Meeting starts around 11:30, kama kawaida (like usual). No worries. I spend the hour or so sitting around, talking a little bit with one man about the difficulties in getting medicine, but mostly...just...I don’t know. What do you do? It’s moments like this I start looking over my shoulder for the Under Toad, because I realize how incredibly lucky I’ve been in my life. I knew there were people who looked like this, who felt like this. But I had not, until today, sat with them, spoke with them, heard them coughing, watched them limping. I was holding on with both hands during the meeting, trying to understand the Kiswahili, but I kept on being distracted. There was a woman sitting across from me, with her face in her hands. I kept thinking about that Dorothea Lange photo, of the Dust Bowl mother. The expression was the same. It was frightening. It was the look of someone who...I’m sorry...who was waiting for all of this to be over. And by all of this... you know what I mean, I think. She would speak when spoken to, and just a few words, maybe a quick attempt at a smile, and then eyes back to the floor, resuming her tired waiting.

Life does not work out for everybody, does it?

However, on a happier note, these people are pretty damn amazing. The man and women running the meeting were perfect for it. It was participatory, it had direction. They identified goals of the group (I think this was one of the first meetings), challenges, and project proposals. They decided to start a chicken-keeping project. You get three great things with that: eggs (to sell or eat), meat, and mbolea (compost). We are building a banda (shed) on September 14 (every time the people hear me say I’m going to do work, they laugh (and every time they see me doing work, they laugh harder (and every time they hear me speak Kihehe (the tribal language, different from Kiswahili (the national language)) they just about bust a rib laughing) they’ll get used to it.) I hope). Wish me luck (it took me 5 minutes to figure out that last sentence. I’m done with the crazy parentheses. Let the record show I reached the 5th degree)!

So, let’s back up a few steps. I now live in Idetelo (or Idetero...they mix and match the Ls and Rs here...just for fun, I think). I arrived here on Thursday, August 19. I will leave here in two years. I don’t think that filling the hours will be a problem. Washing all my clothes takes 2 hours. Cooking dinner takes 2 hours (I have cooked pasta with my own sauce, and a french fry omelet the Tanzanians called chipsi mayai. I also ate both of them like there was a hostage strapped to a bomb at the bottom of the plate. Made myself sick a little. Not the food’s fault (since I first wrote this post I have also made home fries, fried eggs, french toast, dinner crepes, and Tanzanian donuts called Maandazi)). Sweeping the house takes 1 hour. Washing dishes takes 30 minutes. And by the by, and this might sound like a realization thats coming a bit late in life, when you finish all that stuff...you gotta do it again the next day. I was extremely determined to not hire a house girl/boy to cook, wash clothes, do anything. I don’t like the patronism, I don’t like the symbolism, and I don’t like the precedent. But...I also want to get some actual work done here. And it is going to take a few weeks before I will know if it is possible to do both.

I arrived here on a Thursday. There was a village meeting on Friday. There were drums. That’s right. I arrive places and there are students playing drums and choirs singing songs. There was also, and I can’t make this stuff up, a man in a Phillies cap and a guy in a Steelers sweatshirt. And in that moment, none of you felt all that far away, and that was wonderful. What I’m also saying is...I expect all of these things when I return. Someone better start learning drums.

I live on a ridgeline in an area with a severe deforestation problem. The wind is fierce, the nights are very cold, but we’re close to the equator, so the sun is hot as ever. Very crazy days here. I go through lots of clothes. Plus, I’m trying to train up to marathon time. Ran for 50 minutes the other day, as the sun was setting behind an African hillside. If any of this sounds a bit surreal to you (for instance, if you remember that I used to drive a Subaru Legacy wagon and enjoy French Toast, walks on the beach, and a good glass of Rioja), welcome to my club. This is the craziest job you can imagine. Because it doesn’t end. Ever. But then...neither do most jobs. And I had a funky thought the other day, running, looking at the sun going down and the moon coming down. There can’t be such a thing as a full moon. By which I mean the full face of the moon completely illuminated for a single observer. Why, you ask? No full moon? Because the moment that the sun would eliminate the entire visible face of the moon for a single observer...the Earth begins to block the sun’s light, and that single observer sees only another dark side of the moon. Perfection, as they say, is unattainable.

Couple additions a few weeks after I wrote the main post then was unable to send it do to an Internet-less cafe. To begin with, I'm suddenly realizing that in life, I constantly carry on an inner dialogue, in which I talk to myself in the second person. Stuff like 'you will need to wash dishes' and 'I don't think that will work'. The only problem now...is that i'm thinking in the second person, in Swahili! It's driving me insane! Or maybe it's too late. Either way.

Just finished two amazing books, that could not be any more different: the first is Blindness (some of you may have seen the movie). It's a haunting novel about humanity and society and our nature, and I loved it. It is really, really heavy, though it's also strangely funny in parts. Big recommendation. Decided to follow that with The Tao of Pooh...which may have changed my life a little. If you haven't read this wonderful book, do so now. I loved it. I think it taught me a little about myself, and there's a chance it might do the same for you. So for whatever it's worth, that's what I got. Also finished Grapes of Wrath. I realize I'm a little late to the party...but that might be the best American novel I've ever read. Good lit here in the Tanzania.

A small shout out to a friend, who I don't think is reading these yet, so I'm gonna shoot her an email too. Anne Neczypor is an amazing and talented comedian, and if you don't know her yet, you will one day. We went to NYU together, and I remember her from when she was fresh out of the convent and still a heterosexual (weren't we all). Anywho, the only podcast I ended up with on my mp3 player was her amazing podcast from heretv.com, called Girls on Girls. The most surreal parts of my day are when I go to wash my dishes in basins, by candlelight, in Africa...and turn on a podcast that starts with a breathy voice saying “hey ladies...welcome to the podcast created with only you in mind. It's Girls on Girls podcast”. But being able to hear her voice has been nothing short of wonderful for me, and I owe her a huge thanks.

I’m here to stay. I’m gonna cook, garden, and fanya mambo mazuri (do great things) with my new neighbors. You are more than welcome to visit. My house is very small, I haven’t started gardening yet, my earthly possessions are all on the floor, I have enough spiders to start studying entomology, and I until I get my cat I think I may have to deal with a panya (rat) problem. But I have a poster of my friends, a painting of my lake, a single flying cow...and my windows look out on a very large world.

Love,



Dan

P.S. My post office address is:

Daniel Waldron
P.O. Box 469
Makambako, Tanzania

Send letters!

P.S.S. Be hitting up the comments on the posts!!! I will read them and cry tears of love!