Sitting in my dark house, lit by a single flickering candle, thinking about one of the worst things I ever did to anybody. The background: my parents moved into their current office (thought current being a relatively temporary word lately with the Waldrons. I don’t think they’ve changed their citizenships. Yet.) in the early 90’s. I was a youngin, and got to play around, a lot, in the new digs. For those of you who haven’t visited the offices of Waldron and Waldron (not true, but brings to mind my parents as Muppets in the Christmas Carol, shackled in chains and singing to Scrooge. Watch the movie. Right now), you walk inside and you are on landing, stairs leading up and down. My parents work on the top floor. The bottom floor, for many years, was vacant. My sister and I used it as a place to play on the trampoline (...why was there a trampoline in the basement of a law office, Mom and Dad?), and to pass the time as children will do. And then one day...I let my better demons get the best of me. It went something like this:
I knew my sister would be coming downstairs soon. I don’t remember why I knew, but knew I did. And this was at a point in my life where scaring people was still really, really fun (I also used to enjoy hiding a rubber snake in my parents bed. Amazing I lived till puberty). So I went downstairs, into the cave. I remember it was always very, very cool down there...and just a little dank. And it was essentially underground. No light. None. And I waited.
Waiting in pitch blackness is an exercise in relativity. After 5 minutes, time begins to flow like a river through mine. You think you hear something, you make up a story for it. It could be anything. Someone sneezes three offices down, somebody pops open a soda, and you tense. She’s coming! Now’s the moment! You forget that when the moment does come, it won’t be ambiguous. You’ll know. It’s like waiting for the subway. You get excited for every flicker of light off the walls, then when the actual train comes, you remember...it’s a train. It coming, and it’s going, and you’ll know when it does. And all you can do is ride it.
Vicky comes down the stairs, slowly, quickly, don’t remember. She reaches the landing, the doorway, then starts the descent. I get excited, giggly even. Then the guy in white on the right shoulder mentions that this is a really terrible idea, a cruel idea, even. And he’s right, and I know it. But she’s coming down the stairs, and I’m here, and it’s too late now, even if I say something, it will scare her. So I might as well go for the gold. And when my wonderful, beautiful sister reaches the bottom of the stairs, she reaches her hand into the dangerous darkness, groping for a light switch she’ll never find. Because five fingers that aren’t supposed to be down there close around her wrist, and she begins to scream.
There are certain expectations you have to have in order to survive. Every day all of you live with the expectation that the other cars will stay on their side of those thin yellow lines. But those lines are thin. And they won’t stop a car. They won’t stop anything. And the moments we recognize that fact are the moments we realize how fragile our worlds are. You have to believe that the boogie man isn’t under the stairs, or else you’d never go down them. So we all tell our kids its safe, and we all tell ourselves its safe. But one day it wasn’t. Not at all. Sorry about that Vick. I really really am.
I wrote this because I’m reading Bag of Bones, by Stephen King, alone, in the middle of the night. I’m only a little ways in, but it feels like a good one (books and football games, you can tell early on if they’re gonna be good. Relationships and baseball are different. They can start slow but go the distance, or there can be fireworks at the start...and then the crowds end up leaving early). So far, it is the story of a writer whose wife dies before they are very old, and he is being figuratively (or maybe literally...dun dun DUN) haunted by her memory. Now I’m a guy who gets into his reading. Emotional reads get me going if they are good, and creepy stories give me the creeps. But if you want to really stand up those hairs on the back of your neck, try reading a frightening story alone, your house lit by one candle, your last candle, very far from home.
Because alone, in the middle of a new and strange land, all that lights the way is your sanity, your faith that your perception of reality matches reality. And sometimes, late at night, the wind begins to blow a little, and that candle begins to flicker. And you start to wonder...could it ever blow out? How dark would it get, inside my house, inside my mind? And the answers are...of course it could. And it would be very, very dark. And if there’s not enough light to see your hand, how can you be sure it’s still there? If you’re alone, in the dark, how can you be sure you’re really alone...
Well that got dark, didn’t it? Didn’t mean to frighten anybody, but I can assure you that I’m not sitting in the dark, water dripping through my fingers, talking about snails crawling on the edge of straight razors (first person to post the movie I’ve just referenced...can adopt a Tanzanian child?). Although I must say that one of the volunteers I met the other day was talking about living on your own, and he said something to the effect of, “yeah, you do find yourself saying ‘huh, I got a little weird for those last six months there, didn’t I?’” And I see what he means. Kwa mfano (for example), I was in town the other morning to get money and bread and a package (thanks Mom and Dad and Vicky!), and I went into a bathroom, and saw my own reflection. No, I hadn’t developed a uni-brow or a lazy eye or a swarthier complexion. But it was still really weird seeing myself. I don’t have a mirror, is the thing. I see my own face about once every two weeks. And while I don’t think anything is changing...I’m also not sure I would know. No mirrors, real, or otherwise.
What I mean is that if I started wearing skinny jeans and pink polo shirts around in Paupack (like an Italian guy I met a few days ago in Africa), odds are one of the people who love me and care about me would tell me I looked like a continental idiot. But here...they all think I’m crazy anyway. So anything I do is just another crazy thing the crazy guy is doing. They have no expectations of Dan Waldron, or at least no expectations of his behavior or appearance (going to segue out of the 3rd person now). Which means...I might get weird. Weirder. There’s an off chance I’ll have some moments of weirdness. Like talking to the cat. Or eating cookie dough raw. Or maybe occasionally sitting on the floor at the proper angle so that I can only see sky through the windows, so I can pretend I’m in the movie “Up” and the house is flying (two of those happened. Maybe three).
So this section I will write in Kiswahili. Translation to follow:
Ningependa kuchukua nafasi hii kupongeza rafiki yangu atakayeolewa Jumamosi inayokuja, Bibi Brittany Scott. Najua yeye na mchumba wake (Bwana ADAM HAMWAY) wataishi pamoja, watacheka pamoja, na Mungu akipenda, watashinda pamoja mpaka watakuwa wazee bila meno. Ninawapenda sana ninyi wote wawili, na nitakuwa na huzuni sana kukosa harusi yenu. Mcheze dansi kuku chizi. Nakuomba.
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulation my friend who will be married this Saturday, Miss Brittany Scott. I know she and her fiance (Massa Adam Hamway) will live together, laugh together, and God willing, will succeed together until they are old people without teeth. I love you both very much, and I will be very sad to miss your wedding. Dance the funky chicken. I beg you.
I never want to make this blog about what these people don't have, and we do have. As I see it, we are all doing the best we can, and the people I love spend a whole lot of time giving back. There are people who take advantage of opportunities in both cultures, and people who make their own opportunities. That being said...I hate you all. I spent an entire day on Thursday building shelves with a hammer that was attached to its handle by hope, nails that had the strength of linguini, and a saw that I believe was used to amputate General Rosewall Stormyside's leg in the Civil War. Adding to that...I'm a really bad carpenter. The resulting shelves look like something out of a Salvador Dali painting. I miss flat floors. I miss power tools. Hate you all. Not a lot. Just a little.
To close, I am in fact doing some work, not just sawing off my own hand for the fun of it. We had our first meeting of my secret cow group the other day (I will be sad when we tell people about the group...and it just becomes a cow group). We are a long ways away from actually getting cows from Heifer International, but I do have high hopes. And one very special goal: I fully intend, for purposes of tracking the cows, to give them names. And what better names than the names of a certain Cow Group in Northeastern Pennsylvania? Debby, Molly, Susie, Marsha, Jeanne, Susie, you get the idea :) Though, assuming all works out, there will be one bull. I’m leaning heavily towards calling the bull Uncle Louie. But if anyone has a convincing argument that I should name the bull after them, write me a letter. I’m listening.
In the interests of full disclosure, I’m not supposed to be initiating projects yet. And I’m not. This was an idea from my neighbor (there’s a similar project in his parents’ village). I’m just the token white guy (this is true in most settings). Seriously, it’s a tricky balance. Pushing projects through quickly is a recipe for disaster. But I have people who want to do something special, and are ready to get to work. They aren’t asking me for grant money or material support, at least not yet. Who am I to tell them they have to wait for me to get my adverbs in the proper order? The key, I think, is to ask as many questions as possible, and to spend every moment thinking of all the stuff that could go wrong, then solutions. Kind of like preparing for a date. You bring that spare pair of pants. Cuz something might go wrong. Or right. Moving on.
But for all my wasiwasi (worries), I had kind of a funny moment the other day. A great old Neil Young song comes on. “Cortez the Killer”. And as I’m listening to the lyrics and remembering all the lovely development work my boy Cortez pulled off, it did occur to me that he set the bar pretty low for people working in new countries and with new cultures. I’m thinking I can do better.
Keep On Rocking in the Free World,
Dan
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
Ice, Ice Daddy
Having a brief online chat with Michael Rudez while I write this. We’re talking about unpaid internships…and it occurs to me that I am in the middle of the ultimate unpaid internship. Except to get milk for the boss’s coffee…I need to start a farm collective and secure a loan from Heifer International. Sawasawa (the same).
There’s this funny little custom here. In the local dialect, the first time you see someone every day, you say “Kamwene”, and they reply “Kamwene”. Roughly translated, it’s “You are well?” and “I am well”. Or literally, “Whole?”, “Whole.” All that’s totally cool, and they love it that I’m speaking the tribal language a little bit. “Twiteleka ugimbi” (we are cooking corn liquor. I have some interesting days here.) But here is the catch. And oh what a catch. The SECOND time you see somebody in a day, you CANNOT say “Kamwene”. You have to say “Wheoli” (I’m attempting to spell that, I have no idea how it’s actually spelled.) And they say “Wheoli” right back. Which is great. But it’s not great. Cuz in order for you to say the correct greeting, you have to remember everybody you see in a day!!! And that’s really hard!!! It’s not so bad for the men. They wear fairly distinctive clothing (including some truly stunning floor length women’s coats). But the women wear traditional dress, and a lot of it blends together…and about four or five times a day I get this feeling like I’m being tested. Did I see them? They look familiar. Of course they look familiar. Did they pass by and greet me when I stumbled out of my house this morning, awakened by roosters and silently cursing the beautiful sunrise that I’m seeing through one bloodshot eye? So I try to cheat, and greet in Kiswahili. But they know my tricks. I can tell. It’s this damn white skin. I’m transparent.
And here’s another funky thing, which I love. There is a tradition here that you after you have kids, you are no longer called by your own name. You are normally called Mama or Baba, and then insert the name of your firstborn child. Which creates a really interesting dilemma, wherein you have to pick a name for your first kid that you want to be called for the next however many years. I wondered if this was just my American take on things. It is not. I have met Mama and Baba Flavy, and Mama Amani (peace). Nobody names their child Flavy out of love. You name your child Flavy because you want to be Daddy Flavy. And who can blame you? My parents are Mama Vicky and Baba Vicky. Nice name, but they could have been more original. I’m thinking Flash for my first child. Daddy Flash. Or Ice. Yeah. Daddy Ice.
Let’s do a short day-in-the-life (who am I kidding? It won’t be short): Woke up at 5:30 (usually somewhere between 5:45 and 7:00, impossible to sleep longer because of the jogoos (roosters)). Started the jiko la mafuta (kerosene stove, like camping style (jiko means stove, mafuta means oil or gas)) and put on three pitchers worth of water to heat for bathing. Go back inside and cut up about two dozen fish called dagaa into little pieces for the kitten to eat. She eats them whilst I chill and listen to music for about ten minutes. It’s cold, but it’s a nice cold. Get to sleep in pants and wool socks, and wake up feeling pretty damn cozy.
Give the water 15 minutes to heat up, then combine it with three more pitchers of cold water, giving me six pitchers (or maybe a gallon, give or take) of lukewarm to hot water. I won’t need all of it. It takes roughly two pitchers to wet, and three pitchers to rinse. As I said before, it’s a bit on the frosty, so you kinda gotta hurry. Finish, and use my remaining water to shave. Change, get ready, which today means dress shirt and pants. Why? Cuz I’m going to a wedding!
We’re supposed to leave at 6:30...so 7:30 actually ain’t too bad. I shouldn’t judge, I can remember any number of times I’ve left for engagements well over an hour late. So we load 30 people into the back of a truck, me into the cab (for I am fragile and liable to crack), and we set off. We stop about 3 miles up the road for a police checkpoint, which means we actually stop 2.75 miles up the road...and unload every single person in the back of the truck, who now start hoofing it by the side of the road. There are laws about having more people than seatbelts in Tanzania too...but like lots of laws, they only apply when the lawmakers are watching. So we go through the checkpoint, pay a 2,000 shilling fine, drive a quarter mile farther up the road, and, you guessed it, all the people who have been busting it climb back into the back of the truck, and off we go. Again.
We arrive in the village of the wedding. I, and all the people in our own private Grapes of Wrath truck, were invited by the chairman of our village. So it’s me, the church choir, and 20 other people the bride and groom have never met. Again, I suppose, not so different. We hang out for a couple hours before the wedding, eating ugali and beans. Then we head to the wedding. It’s completely in Kiswahili, of course, and quite beautiful. It’s also 3 hours long...but hey, they’re gonna spend a lifetime together. Give ‘em some time to think it all over. There are a half dozen different speeches, some of them given into a microphone that makes people sound like they are reporting from a rooftop in London during the middle of the Blitz. What helped me pass the time was listening to the keyboard player. You know how sometimes, when you give a kid a kazoo, they make it the soundtrack for everything. I mean everything. That’s kind of like this guy and his keyboard. When someone said something poignant, he played rockets taking off. When people clapped, he played cymbals. And I swear to you all, when someone said something funny, he played something that sounded a lot like a frisky robot becoming aroused.
So the wedding is presided over by a 60-year old Italian priest, who speaks Kiswahili with a distinctive “It’s meeeee, Maaaaario” accent, and speaks it very well. We have a very odd conversation after the wedding. Odd, because I know he speaks English, and we both speak in Swahili. Language is a funny thing, especially when it stops defining you...or rather defines you in a different way. It’s a bridge between people, and we have completely different language, completely different bridges, for every person, every circle we move through. So here we are, an elderly priest and a young volunteer, speaking their 3rd and 2nd languages, respectively, wondering just how much is being lost in translation.
We walk from the church to the reception. I’ve only ever seen Tanzanians walk fast for weddings, and for funerals. Or maybe it’s just for free food. Pick ‘em. There is an MC shouting instructions and telling jokes. They even call him an MC. He’d fit in perfectly in any American wedding. We all squeeze into the reception hall, and here’s where the real fun starts. Because a parade starts coming up the aisle, dancing. They aren’t escorting the bride, the groom, or the parents. It’s the cake. They’re escorting the cake. Love it. Except there is something I don’t really get...there’s a guy holding a log, and he’s kind of cradling it like a baby...or something. I don’t get it, so I ask my neighbor. And it turns out that the log is supposed to be a gun. And the guy is pretending to be a soldier. A soldier. To guard the cake. What really makes this moment is the look on my neighbor’s face when he explains it. Because he gets it. It’s ridiculous. And I know it’s ridiculous and hilarious, and so does he. But leaving carrots for reindeer might be kind of hard to explain (and gnawing half of them for the sake of the kids). So would hiding eggs, dressing up like Captain Morgan, or jumping off furniture at the stroke of twelve. But I hope we never lose it. Any of it. The world gets flatter and flatter, and lots of our weird, beautiful kinks become ironed out. But somewhere, in the middle of Africa, a guy is guarding a cake with a stick. And you ain’t getting to that cake. You ain’t even getting close. That stick is loaded.
Love,
Dan
There’s this funny little custom here. In the local dialect, the first time you see someone every day, you say “Kamwene”, and they reply “Kamwene”. Roughly translated, it’s “You are well?” and “I am well”. Or literally, “Whole?”, “Whole.” All that’s totally cool, and they love it that I’m speaking the tribal language a little bit. “Twiteleka ugimbi” (we are cooking corn liquor. I have some interesting days here.) But here is the catch. And oh what a catch. The SECOND time you see somebody in a day, you CANNOT say “Kamwene”. You have to say “Wheoli” (I’m attempting to spell that, I have no idea how it’s actually spelled.) And they say “Wheoli” right back. Which is great. But it’s not great. Cuz in order for you to say the correct greeting, you have to remember everybody you see in a day!!! And that’s really hard!!! It’s not so bad for the men. They wear fairly distinctive clothing (including some truly stunning floor length women’s coats). But the women wear traditional dress, and a lot of it blends together…and about four or five times a day I get this feeling like I’m being tested. Did I see them? They look familiar. Of course they look familiar. Did they pass by and greet me when I stumbled out of my house this morning, awakened by roosters and silently cursing the beautiful sunrise that I’m seeing through one bloodshot eye? So I try to cheat, and greet in Kiswahili. But they know my tricks. I can tell. It’s this damn white skin. I’m transparent.
And here’s another funky thing, which I love. There is a tradition here that you after you have kids, you are no longer called by your own name. You are normally called Mama or Baba, and then insert the name of your firstborn child. Which creates a really interesting dilemma, wherein you have to pick a name for your first kid that you want to be called for the next however many years. I wondered if this was just my American take on things. It is not. I have met Mama and Baba Flavy, and Mama Amani (peace). Nobody names their child Flavy out of love. You name your child Flavy because you want to be Daddy Flavy. And who can blame you? My parents are Mama Vicky and Baba Vicky. Nice name, but they could have been more original. I’m thinking Flash for my first child. Daddy Flash. Or Ice. Yeah. Daddy Ice.
Let’s do a short day-in-the-life (who am I kidding? It won’t be short): Woke up at 5:30 (usually somewhere between 5:45 and 7:00, impossible to sleep longer because of the jogoos (roosters)). Started the jiko la mafuta (kerosene stove, like camping style (jiko means stove, mafuta means oil or gas)) and put on three pitchers worth of water to heat for bathing. Go back inside and cut up about two dozen fish called dagaa into little pieces for the kitten to eat. She eats them whilst I chill and listen to music for about ten minutes. It’s cold, but it’s a nice cold. Get to sleep in pants and wool socks, and wake up feeling pretty damn cozy.
Give the water 15 minutes to heat up, then combine it with three more pitchers of cold water, giving me six pitchers (or maybe a gallon, give or take) of lukewarm to hot water. I won’t need all of it. It takes roughly two pitchers to wet, and three pitchers to rinse. As I said before, it’s a bit on the frosty, so you kinda gotta hurry. Finish, and use my remaining water to shave. Change, get ready, which today means dress shirt and pants. Why? Cuz I’m going to a wedding!
We’re supposed to leave at 6:30...so 7:30 actually ain’t too bad. I shouldn’t judge, I can remember any number of times I’ve left for engagements well over an hour late. So we load 30 people into the back of a truck, me into the cab (for I am fragile and liable to crack), and we set off. We stop about 3 miles up the road for a police checkpoint, which means we actually stop 2.75 miles up the road...and unload every single person in the back of the truck, who now start hoofing it by the side of the road. There are laws about having more people than seatbelts in Tanzania too...but like lots of laws, they only apply when the lawmakers are watching. So we go through the checkpoint, pay a 2,000 shilling fine, drive a quarter mile farther up the road, and, you guessed it, all the people who have been busting it climb back into the back of the truck, and off we go. Again.
We arrive in the village of the wedding. I, and all the people in our own private Grapes of Wrath truck, were invited by the chairman of our village. So it’s me, the church choir, and 20 other people the bride and groom have never met. Again, I suppose, not so different. We hang out for a couple hours before the wedding, eating ugali and beans. Then we head to the wedding. It’s completely in Kiswahili, of course, and quite beautiful. It’s also 3 hours long...but hey, they’re gonna spend a lifetime together. Give ‘em some time to think it all over. There are a half dozen different speeches, some of them given into a microphone that makes people sound like they are reporting from a rooftop in London during the middle of the Blitz. What helped me pass the time was listening to the keyboard player. You know how sometimes, when you give a kid a kazoo, they make it the soundtrack for everything. I mean everything. That’s kind of like this guy and his keyboard. When someone said something poignant, he played rockets taking off. When people clapped, he played cymbals. And I swear to you all, when someone said something funny, he played something that sounded a lot like a frisky robot becoming aroused.
So the wedding is presided over by a 60-year old Italian priest, who speaks Kiswahili with a distinctive “It’s meeeee, Maaaaario” accent, and speaks it very well. We have a very odd conversation after the wedding. Odd, because I know he speaks English, and we both speak in Swahili. Language is a funny thing, especially when it stops defining you...or rather defines you in a different way. It’s a bridge between people, and we have completely different language, completely different bridges, for every person, every circle we move through. So here we are, an elderly priest and a young volunteer, speaking their 3rd and 2nd languages, respectively, wondering just how much is being lost in translation.
We walk from the church to the reception. I’ve only ever seen Tanzanians walk fast for weddings, and for funerals. Or maybe it’s just for free food. Pick ‘em. There is an MC shouting instructions and telling jokes. They even call him an MC. He’d fit in perfectly in any American wedding. We all squeeze into the reception hall, and here’s where the real fun starts. Because a parade starts coming up the aisle, dancing. They aren’t escorting the bride, the groom, or the parents. It’s the cake. They’re escorting the cake. Love it. Except there is something I don’t really get...there’s a guy holding a log, and he’s kind of cradling it like a baby...or something. I don’t get it, so I ask my neighbor. And it turns out that the log is supposed to be a gun. And the guy is pretending to be a soldier. A soldier. To guard the cake. What really makes this moment is the look on my neighbor’s face when he explains it. Because he gets it. It’s ridiculous. And I know it’s ridiculous and hilarious, and so does he. But leaving carrots for reindeer might be kind of hard to explain (and gnawing half of them for the sake of the kids). So would hiding eggs, dressing up like Captain Morgan, or jumping off furniture at the stroke of twelve. But I hope we never lose it. Any of it. The world gets flatter and flatter, and lots of our weird, beautiful kinks become ironed out. But somewhere, in the middle of Africa, a guy is guarding a cake with a stick. And you ain’t getting to that cake. You ain’t even getting close. That stick is loaded.
Love,
Dan
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