I’m going out of my tiny little mind. Why, you ask? Because I’m trying to do too much, in too little time. And every time somebody says, “unaweza kutusaidia?” (can you help us?)...what does your boy do? Does he responsibly say that he will only be here for two years, not two decades? Does he provide a coherent outline of the ways in which he is able to help, establishing conditions and limits of assistance? Nah. He usually says, “inawezakana” (it is possible). Which it is. Which all things are. And yet...and yet. All we can do is jitahidi (do our best).
Heading to training in two days. Which I’m sure will be wonderful. I am more than a little nervous, because I have been living myself, in what is still a pretty quiet village, despite my best efforts to give all its inhabitants ulcers (welcome to “civilized” living. Maybe not all it’s cracked up to be. Enjoy the Pepto.) I am about to go to training, with 40 other Americans, most of whom are rather...well, loud. Wonderful people, left hearth and home to travel to sehemu (place/s) unknown. But still...yeah...loud. One of the things I love about my friends and loved ones is an ability to be still, to watch a sun set without talking it to bed. One of the things that would truly baffle a lot of you reading this is the sheer amount of time I spend sitting...and waiting...and that’s it. I’m expected to be early, they’re expected to be late, and while that might change one day...bado (not yet). I’ve come to enjoy the odd hour or two that I spend just thinking thoughts, preparing my mind for siku za mbele (days in front, or days to come). Likewise, one of the things I miss most about my friends are the nights where we do very, very little. Sometimes it is enough to be together, and that’s it. So many nights someone wants to go out, and someone wants to stay in. And I love going late night with the good people, but I love even more staying in, and talking, and listening, and learning about how other people live life.
Had an interesting meeting a few days ago. A certain group (perhaps farmers’ collective would be a better term) asked me to help them start an animal husbandry project, specifically of modern castes of pigs. The local breed of swine (also my nickname in college) is an older, smaller one, that does not produce swinelets as efficiently as other breeds. Myself and my counterpart, a teacher at the primary school, head to the meeting. It goes well...to a point. My counterpart is a highly intelligent guy, and understands quite a bit about modern economics. As such, he’s as qualified, if not more so, than me to lead these people. Unlike me, amekuwa kunywa pombe kabla ya kikao (he had been hitting the sauce before the meeting (perhaps not a literal translation, but you get my meaning)). He was not sloshed, but he was perhaps not as diplomatic as he could have been. All I mean is that he started pushing ideas onto the group. Good ideas, yes, but it has always been my strategy to help people discover something themselves...not rub their noses in it. It may have been an issue of cultural differences, so I asked somebody else, got some assurance that a more diplomatic way of leadership would have been better, and said those words that no partner ever wants to hear...”tunahitaji kuongea.”
“We need to talk.”
Because apparently I have entered into a bromance. We are really quite cute. We say goodnight to each other every day, we cook for each other, his children play at my house...and occasionally we share a beer after a long day at work. Great guy, just needs to remember that the way the message is conveyed matters just as much as the message mwenyewe (itself). Maybe more.
Tomorrow, nitapanda (I will plant). I wasn’t sure I could learn Kiswahili, cook, or slaughter a chicken. But I can! This is the last step. I still am not entirely convinced that if I put something in the ground, and care for it properly, that it will grow. All I ask is a few prayers, for good rain, and for good harvests. I will eat my own food come spring, Mungu Akipenda (if god wishes).
So tomorrow came (and one day it won’t, so for its coming I was grateful), and I planted. I now have a beautiful double-dug garden, courtesy of myself and two village youths, planted ultra-close with mahindi, viazi, kabichi, karoti, nyanya, and pilipili hoho (corn, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, and bell peppers). But before I planted...funny thing happened. As I’ve detailed in other blog posts, most mornings begin with me going into my cooking shed to heat up water for coffee and bathing. But this fateful morning I slept through my alarm, and was awakened by the dulcet tones of my fundi (tradesperson, anything from tailor to bike repairman), who had come to put on my gate, to repel those most evil of vermin, chickens. They want to eat the seeds I’m about to plant, and Danny don’t play that (hate to be called Danny). So fundi arrives. I wake up. I stumble out in my Dark Side of the Moon pajama pants, and we start talking door-stuff. He asks me where it is, and I tell him, it’s in the jikoni (in the kitchen shed). He goes in, comes out a moment later, and asks, “unafuga nyoka?”
...No, I’m not keeping a snake...
I have to say, I handled it pretty well. My response was basically, okay, what are we doing about this. And then he got a certain tool, and beheaded it, and we all looked at the dead adder which had entered my kitchen in the night, and it was already a unique, special day. However, later, as I’m sitting around, watching the sun set...I go in there every morning, bleary-eyed. And adders are apparently not very aggressive, so certainly a good chance I would have been fine, just scared witless. But...damn. That could have been last call. There are snakes and random mortal hazards in America too, so please don’t worry about me. So on this particular year, when I am not America, when I was a pilgrim on Thanksgiving in a different land, I found myself thankful for very different things. I am thankful for not being miserable, for the friends I have here, Tanzanian and American, but also for the friends I have left behind, who have not forgotten me, at least not all of them. And lastly, I'm thankful for being alive. It has been an unbelievable year since my last Thanksgiving, and the next one promises to be no less special. If I can keep my feet off adders, I have a future. But if I can't, it's been one hell of a ride.
I have recently posted a bunch of photos, which I believe my lovely family will have transferred somewhere for all to see. I took the vast majority of them in one day, one day that I allotted for the taking of pictures. If you look at one picture, of a forest (a planted forest, but still a forest) from a distance, you should know that at that precise moment, it began to rain. The rains are coming slowly this year, but they are coming. The rain began that day, and it will end sometime in late May. What was once brown shall become green, and he who was once dry shall be wet. The rains came. We depend so much on these seasons, that fall shall follow summer, that cold shall precede warm, and then vice versa. And maybe we are messing up our little planet so much that one day it will be snowing in July and hailing butterflies on Christmas. But the rains came. As they have come since time immemorial. If things do not change, or perhaps even if they do, there may be a year when we wait for the rains...and they do not come. But for now the world turns, and the snake continues to swallow his tail (and nothing else), as he will for many moons to come. Because the rains came. For this we are thankful.
Love,
Dan
No comments:
Post a Comment