Which is the funniest line from Muppet Family Christmas, wherein Grover demonstrates, with vigor, how he is NOT stirring ("as in, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse").
Hell of a thing happened the other day. It was getting a bit late in the day, a little bit dark, and I had forgotten to pick up fish for the cat (a treat I like to give him if I’m not cooking dinner). So I wandered my way down to the club, and made my way to the fishmonger’s den (entering any of these drinking chambers feels like you’re going into an orc’s lair). The lantern was lit, the lighting was eerie, but familiar. The fish were almost gone, but there were enough for the cat (he’s not overly picky). I walked in, took a look around, said a quick hello, and started picking fish. Then....slowly....I realized that something momentous had happened, in that very instant.
Nobody stopped talking. Nobody was staring raptly at the white dude. No one, in point of fact, seemed to care very much that I was there.
My mother takes pride in the fact that she (and all mothers) knew, long before scientists verified it, that children don’t grow gradually every day. They do, in fact, grow in spurts, and come down some mornings longer than you left them the night before. Somehow, that night, my villagers and I were just a little taller. In some ways, it isn’t the greatest story in the world. It probably means that my villagers are finally bored with me, that I have truly become old news. But to that I say, humbug. To become old news in an African village is the aspiration of every Peace Corps Volunteer. But it is even more than that. My friends in that room were talking about politics, and religion, and how they fit together in modern Tanzania. It was an engaging, interesting discussion, and I was ever so happy to eavesdrop in on it (another feat that was once impossible). In other words, what they were talking about IS a hell of a lot more interesting than me, and I was thrilled that they agreed. In the end, I’m talking about inclusion. I’m talking about belonging. I don’t fit in. I may never fit in. That does not mean that I do not belong.
I am currently reading a book called “Will in the World”, about the life and times of one William Shakespeare (or Shakeshafte, as he was also called). One of the earliest passages struck me. The writer was talking about how even though the language was English, anybody who was anybody spoke Latin. Latin was the language of instruction, the language of the elite, the universities. The queen and her advisers all spoke it. If you didn’t know Latin you probably weren’t worth the time to teach it. And if you take English and Latin, and substitute Swahili and English, respectively, you have the exact same condition in Tanzania.
I hate it. A lot. Swahili is a beautiful language, descending from the Bantu family of languages and heavily blended with Arabic. When it is spoken properly, it has a musicality to it that is remarkable. But what language are secondary school students and university students taught in? English. What is the language of the courts? English. What language do I hear brokenly screamed at me whenever I walk anywhere, at anytime? English.
On one hand, I appreciate the effort. Being bilingual is an admirable goal, and Tanzanians are a lot closer to it than other peoples I could name. On the other, actual hand, I hate it. What English really does, in my mind, is enforce and reinforce the idea that anything “African” is inherently inferior. Why, in God’s name, should a Tanzanian boy be learning African History in English? What purpose does that really serve? If the goal is that he learn another language, then make sure he has some great English teachers and that he does his homework. But the purpose of History is not to learn English. It’s to learn History. Let him learn that. There are all sorts of students, quick and bright, who fail Math, Science, and Civics, just because they don’t understand English, the language of instruction. Even worse, to my eyes, is the pandering to tourists, which I realize is not limited to Tanzania. Isn’t it the job of the tourist to know how to get around the country which he/she is visiting? I love any Tanzanian who automatically greets me in Swahili, expecting me to know his language, because dammit, we’re in his country. I wish more felt that way. There’s still this weird, lingering, debilitating colonial aftertaste...and it makes me sick. I’m happy to be treated well, as a guest. But it almost feels to me like it is time for some self-righteousness. I take solace in the fact that there aren’t a whole lot of English walking around spouting Latin. Perhaps these things just take time.
My pigs have arrived! I started planning a pig project with my AIDS group back in March, and 9 months later, we’re hog wild in Idetero. Before I get into any of the salient details, the pigs have the following names, courtesy of myself and one Kelsey Drake: Evil Dr. Porkchop, The Uncultured Swine, The Baconatrix, Rooter, Wilbur, Babe, Hamlet, Spider Pig, Miss Piggy, Harry Porkchop, Piglet, and Oprah. They are each being kept by a member of a group called Jipe Moyo, which is made up exclusively of people living with AIDS/HIV. I’ve written plenty about this group, so I’ll skip to the project itself.
On Monday, December 12, we had a pigkeeping training. It was done by my local livestock guy, who is the most metrosexual man you may ever find in a Third World village, fond of cashmere vests and tight white pants. Everybody passed (there were no tests). I also had everybody sign a contract, agreeing to the rules and regulations of the project (I’m my father’s son). Three or four of the group can’t read, so I read it aloud and then they put their thumbs in ink and signed it. On Tuesday, December 13, I went into town and bought over a metric ton of pig feed (mostly corn meal and sunflower cake). Then, along with help from some truly lovely people, I loaded it into the back of a beat-ass truck and somehow or other got it to the village. At that point each group member had to get it back to their own house. One member relied on two village drunks to load a 100-kilo bag onto a bicycle and push it a kilometer. I may never have laughed so hard. I had to run yelling after random villagers asking for help, but everybody got their food home. On Wednesday, December 14, I brought back medications for mange, worms, and bacterial infections. And on Thursday, December 15th, I brought home the bacon.
It wasn’t easy. The district loaned us a truck, but we had to fill it with sawdust and build something so the pigs wouldn’t jump out (in case they had tired of this world). We then picked up the swine, which involved wrangling. I caught a pig!! I was so stoked! Having loaded all the pigs (who then started biting each other), we set off. The Tanzanians with me told fart jokes. I laughed. And then we got to the village, and I hopped off to show the way, then hopped onto the back of the truck. Why the back of the truck? So I could stand up, above the truck, as we pulled into view of my group. So I could take off my hat and wave it over my head like a cowboy bringing in the herd. So I could yell “Sooooiiiiiieeeeee!”, and mean it. These are the happy times. The pigs are doing well, I visit them often. Wilbur is probably my favorite. He’s a happy pig.
It’s Christmas. Odds are strong that you knew that before you clicked on my blog. I’m not really sure what to write here. My house will have two stockings, a plastic Christmas tree, one cat, and a tall guy. Merry it will be, crowded it will not. I don’t have anything profound or germane to add on to what I wrote last year. If anything, the thing that most strikes me now is how quickly a year can leave you, how quickly this one has left me. I blinked, and it was gone, and it seems that so much of what I did, or tried to do, was just keeping up, running as the world turned, trying not to be flung off of it. But for a moment, just before the end of the year, I have a chance to catch my breath, to look backwards and forwards, unsure of what I’ve done and unsure of what I’m about to do. Because that’s what Christmas is to me. A time to reset, a time to just be joyful, and figure out how to be happier, to be better, in the year that’s to come. I’m sitting in a Tanzanian hostel. I just finished watching The Muppet Family Christmas (technology is wonderful). At one point Kermit says to Robin (his tiny protege), “Life would pass in a blur if not for times like these.” The frog speaketh truth.
I love you all. I’ll never be happy about the prospect of leaving Tanzania, but I am giddy at the idea of spending next Christmas surrounded by my wonderful friends and my incredible family. I miss each of you, and I miss all of you. Yet for this last Christmas in Africa, I’m quite happy to be here, now. These are also my friends, and I love them dearly. I’ve never known less what a new year might bring, but I’ve also never been so excited by not knowing. Thank you for reading. May your holidays be merry, may your troubles be forgotten, and may your hopes burn ever brighter. God bless us, every one.
Merry Christmas.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Monday, December 5, 2011
R.I.P. Terrance
It’s another morning in East Africa. One of my best friends and favorite people here just got on a bus. She’s going to Kenya, then Uganda, then the good old U.S.A. I don’t know when or where or, for that matter, if we will see each other again. Another reminder, as if I needed one, that time is slipping quickly, and inexorably, into the past. Before too too long I myself will be getting on a bus. And I’m not ready. The only problem with that is that 8 months from now, I will still not be ready. It’s worth mentioning that some people have asked me what I’m planning to do after this. Even more of you might have thought of asking of me. The answer is, I don’t know. I have a million ideas, and not a single answer. Which is both horrifying and exciting. But, since there’s naught to be done, I have more fun stories to relate.
Thanksgiving happened! It was such a great day! I had spent the preceding week tracking down a turkey (in the business sense, not like I was in the woods actually tracking anything). I found one. I went to pick him up the day before Thanksgiving with 2 other volunteers. We chose a nice fat one. We named him Terrance. Tom seemed too predictable. We then put him in a box, put the box in the back of a taxi, and drove 45 miles over a horrible road with the turkey in the back, and 7 people up front (in a car about the size of a Honda Civic). Halfway there, I wanted to be with Terrance in the back. But we got there (there is the beautiful Mufindi Highlands. It’s like the Sound of Music hills, but prettier). And we let Terrance graze for a while (his legs were tied up). We also started calling him Tayshaun, T-Money, and T-Pain, as if by giving him lots of names we could lessen the inevitable shock when we...you know...ate him.
But before you could say “apocalopalypse” we were putting him on the scale, sharpening the knife, and boiling the water (for plucking). He weighed in at 5.5 kilos (not large, but everybody got plenty of meat, so who cares?). And he was calm, almost accepting. We took him off to a grass knoll, and we had a basin. The Tanzanian with us was ready to do the slaughter. But no. I asked for the knife, telling the Tanzanian “nilimfahamu bora” (“I knew him best”). Geneva held the legs. I held the neck. I reassured Terrance that all would be well. And then I cut his head off.
For those playing the home game, I have now chopped down a Christmas tree with a machete and slaughtered the Thanksgiving turkey with a dull knife (it took a bit of doing). I’m thinking of marketing Dan’s Hands-On Holidays. We could make our own gunpowder for July 4 fireworks, and dress up a hen as a rabbit for Easter. Any other ideas?
The holiday itself was nothing short of marvelous. It felt like Thanksgiving, which is, in and of itself, a monumental achievement. There were 16 people, American, Canadian, German, and British. There was turkey, there was stuffing, there was green bean casserole (made by me and Glenn and Meredith), there was pasta salad (made by me), quiche, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, rhubarb tort, scalloped potatoes, cheesecake, and more. We played football and frisbee. We played Celebrity and Mafia. When we finished eating, we passed out like a bunch of wolf cubs on the lawn. I was the Toast Master for the entire 3-day party (my favorite toast was when we actually had toast for breakfast. We toasted toast). And I got to stand in front of some of my dearest friends, some of my newest friends, all of whom I like more than I would have thought possible, and raise a glass to friends, family, and home, wherever they might be found. Then we got back to work.
Work, in this case, was a 4-day boys empowerment conference, called Mabadiliko Yanawezekana (Changes are Possible), put together by my fellow volunteers and I. There were 41 boys from 8 villages, and we taught them about goal-setting, business planning, reproductive health, gender equality, AIDS/HIV, and many other subjects. Highlights: there was a condom demonstration at a nearby soccer field. We had a wooden penis (actually several). But some of the boys, bless their hearts, were worried that the condoms might be too small. So what did we do? My good friend Geneva took one for the team, stepped up, and allowed another volunteer to properly pull a condom down her entire forearm. The picture is visual poetry, the boys were stunned to silence, and I may make t-shirts. There was a talent night, where I got up and led the volunteers in a camp song that I have been using since 1997. The boys loved it and got up to do the second verse with us. I also got to lead my favorite session, the Q and A. We put a box out at the beginning of the seminar, and let them write all sorts of anonymous questions. Then we answer them, or if possible, throw it back to the boys and let them answer themselves. A lot of it was fairly in-depth sexual stuff, as they get very little education in these things. We did our best to answer them. But there was one question that gave us pause: “what are the dangers of having sex with animals?”
...
We were flummoxed, unprepared, bamboozled. We were thrown off our game, so we threw it to the crowd. One kid, who is about 5’ and maybe weighs 90 pounds soaking wet, stood up, and said, in a bold, clear voice,
“utaumizwa”
“You will get hurt”
At which point we went to lunch.
After the conference was over I went to a World AIDS Day celebration in a nearby town (it was organized by one of my fellow volunteers). It was a hell of a party. The guys running it worked the crowd beautifully. They had a speed-eating contest (rice and beans followed by a soda), tongue twisters (Asha Osha Uso (Asha clean your face)), and lots of crowd interviews about AIDS. There was one fairly heinous moment, when the master of ceremonies had 3 little girls stand up in front of the crowd. He started asking each one about their parents. All their parents are dead. He asked them where they live now. At this point the one answering questions started crying. But under no circumstances are we going to allow a child in misery to disrupt the narrative, so he just kept asking questions. How do you feel about your parents being gone? How the hell do you think she feels? I hated it. It nearly made me physically ill. I suppose, to his credit, I should mention that they then raised money for the girls school supplies and uniforms. But there are better ways of doing that. These are humans, and they’re young, and they’re scared. They are not textbook examples of suffering, they are actual examples of suffering. There’s a difference, and one demands empathy, not exploitation. Lord save us from well-intentioned people.
Anyway, the real reason I was there is that my AIDS group was performing a couple of songs. And they knocked it out of the freaking park. I was sitting there, and I was near tears. Not because the songs were sad. They weren’t. Because I had lived in this village for 3 days when I went to the second meeting that this group had ever had. I wrote about it in my blog, I remember. There was an air of finality, of morbid acceptance, that pervaded that room. I know I wrote about looking at one mama, with her face in her hands, and me thinking of Dorothea Lange and writing “life doesn’t work out for everybody, does it?” But here’s the thing: that woman’s name is Mama Dennis. And she’s pretty damn awesome.
I’m not sure what happened, but somewhere along the way these people, who had been brought together by a terrible epidemic, started really enjoying being together. And watching them sing and dance, remembering how they never used to speak above a whisper...I’ve never been so proud of anybody in my entire life. My best friend in the group told me the other day that she wanted to live until she was 50. I laughed at her, because she’s about 35. Until I remembered that she is living with HIV, and 50 is a hell of a goal. I hope, I pray, that she gets there. But she isn’t going to live forever, and neither am I. Yet until then, she is singing, with a clear and beautiful voice, about a disease that has found her but not stopped her, in the hope that others might be free of it forever. I love her. I love all of them. For them, and you, and the opportunity to live this life, I am thankful.
Thanksgiving happened! It was such a great day! I had spent the preceding week tracking down a turkey (in the business sense, not like I was in the woods actually tracking anything). I found one. I went to pick him up the day before Thanksgiving with 2 other volunteers. We chose a nice fat one. We named him Terrance. Tom seemed too predictable. We then put him in a box, put the box in the back of a taxi, and drove 45 miles over a horrible road with the turkey in the back, and 7 people up front (in a car about the size of a Honda Civic). Halfway there, I wanted to be with Terrance in the back. But we got there (there is the beautiful Mufindi Highlands. It’s like the Sound of Music hills, but prettier). And we let Terrance graze for a while (his legs were tied up). We also started calling him Tayshaun, T-Money, and T-Pain, as if by giving him lots of names we could lessen the inevitable shock when we...you know...ate him.
But before you could say “apocalopalypse” we were putting him on the scale, sharpening the knife, and boiling the water (for plucking). He weighed in at 5.5 kilos (not large, but everybody got plenty of meat, so who cares?). And he was calm, almost accepting. We took him off to a grass knoll, and we had a basin. The Tanzanian with us was ready to do the slaughter. But no. I asked for the knife, telling the Tanzanian “nilimfahamu bora” (“I knew him best”). Geneva held the legs. I held the neck. I reassured Terrance that all would be well. And then I cut his head off.
For those playing the home game, I have now chopped down a Christmas tree with a machete and slaughtered the Thanksgiving turkey with a dull knife (it took a bit of doing). I’m thinking of marketing Dan’s Hands-On Holidays. We could make our own gunpowder for July 4 fireworks, and dress up a hen as a rabbit for Easter. Any other ideas?
The holiday itself was nothing short of marvelous. It felt like Thanksgiving, which is, in and of itself, a monumental achievement. There were 16 people, American, Canadian, German, and British. There was turkey, there was stuffing, there was green bean casserole (made by me and Glenn and Meredith), there was pasta salad (made by me), quiche, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, rhubarb tort, scalloped potatoes, cheesecake, and more. We played football and frisbee. We played Celebrity and Mafia. When we finished eating, we passed out like a bunch of wolf cubs on the lawn. I was the Toast Master for the entire 3-day party (my favorite toast was when we actually had toast for breakfast. We toasted toast). And I got to stand in front of some of my dearest friends, some of my newest friends, all of whom I like more than I would have thought possible, and raise a glass to friends, family, and home, wherever they might be found. Then we got back to work.
Work, in this case, was a 4-day boys empowerment conference, called Mabadiliko Yanawezekana (Changes are Possible), put together by my fellow volunteers and I. There were 41 boys from 8 villages, and we taught them about goal-setting, business planning, reproductive health, gender equality, AIDS/HIV, and many other subjects. Highlights: there was a condom demonstration at a nearby soccer field. We had a wooden penis (actually several). But some of the boys, bless their hearts, were worried that the condoms might be too small. So what did we do? My good friend Geneva took one for the team, stepped up, and allowed another volunteer to properly pull a condom down her entire forearm. The picture is visual poetry, the boys were stunned to silence, and I may make t-shirts. There was a talent night, where I got up and led the volunteers in a camp song that I have been using since 1997. The boys loved it and got up to do the second verse with us. I also got to lead my favorite session, the Q and A. We put a box out at the beginning of the seminar, and let them write all sorts of anonymous questions. Then we answer them, or if possible, throw it back to the boys and let them answer themselves. A lot of it was fairly in-depth sexual stuff, as they get very little education in these things. We did our best to answer them. But there was one question that gave us pause: “what are the dangers of having sex with animals?”
...
We were flummoxed, unprepared, bamboozled. We were thrown off our game, so we threw it to the crowd. One kid, who is about 5’ and maybe weighs 90 pounds soaking wet, stood up, and said, in a bold, clear voice,
“utaumizwa”
“You will get hurt”
At which point we went to lunch.
After the conference was over I went to a World AIDS Day celebration in a nearby town (it was organized by one of my fellow volunteers). It was a hell of a party. The guys running it worked the crowd beautifully. They had a speed-eating contest (rice and beans followed by a soda), tongue twisters (Asha Osha Uso (Asha clean your face)), and lots of crowd interviews about AIDS. There was one fairly heinous moment, when the master of ceremonies had 3 little girls stand up in front of the crowd. He started asking each one about their parents. All their parents are dead. He asked them where they live now. At this point the one answering questions started crying. But under no circumstances are we going to allow a child in misery to disrupt the narrative, so he just kept asking questions. How do you feel about your parents being gone? How the hell do you think she feels? I hated it. It nearly made me physically ill. I suppose, to his credit, I should mention that they then raised money for the girls school supplies and uniforms. But there are better ways of doing that. These are humans, and they’re young, and they’re scared. They are not textbook examples of suffering, they are actual examples of suffering. There’s a difference, and one demands empathy, not exploitation. Lord save us from well-intentioned people.
Anyway, the real reason I was there is that my AIDS group was performing a couple of songs. And they knocked it out of the freaking park. I was sitting there, and I was near tears. Not because the songs were sad. They weren’t. Because I had lived in this village for 3 days when I went to the second meeting that this group had ever had. I wrote about it in my blog, I remember. There was an air of finality, of morbid acceptance, that pervaded that room. I know I wrote about looking at one mama, with her face in her hands, and me thinking of Dorothea Lange and writing “life doesn’t work out for everybody, does it?” But here’s the thing: that woman’s name is Mama Dennis. And she’s pretty damn awesome.
I’m not sure what happened, but somewhere along the way these people, who had been brought together by a terrible epidemic, started really enjoying being together. And watching them sing and dance, remembering how they never used to speak above a whisper...I’ve never been so proud of anybody in my entire life. My best friend in the group told me the other day that she wanted to live until she was 50. I laughed at her, because she’s about 35. Until I remembered that she is living with HIV, and 50 is a hell of a goal. I hope, I pray, that she gets there. But she isn’t going to live forever, and neither am I. Yet until then, she is singing, with a clear and beautiful voice, about a disease that has found her but not stopped her, in the hope that others might be free of it forever. I love her. I love all of them. For them, and you, and the opportunity to live this life, I am thankful.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Ragamuffins
This blog is in memory of Anita Box. She taught me a lot, but mostly she taught me that being smart didn't mean you couldn't be exciting, and perhaps more important, excitable. Thank you teach. I'll miss you.
Was on my way into Dar one day last week, to see some very special people. Had to be there, left early to make sure I would be. Then, on the way, our bus hit a cow. Cow didn’t die. My timetable kind of did. We were udders-up for a while, but in the end I made it. It’s just always this stuff, the ridiculous and the unexpected, that gets me. I was in my friend Tala’s village making compost. And we had all the little kids out and gathering leaves. We thought we had enough leaves...until the little buggers started eating them. And you’re just never prepared for that. At no point when you are preparing yourself to leave your home and hearth, your country and your countrymen, in order to build a better world, do you think about what you’ll do when the kids start eating the compost leaves. It’s a gamechanger. And then the cow gets up and walks away. And you sort of think to yourself...”cow, you just made me late. I kind of want to eat you.” But then you remember, to err is human, to forgive bovine. (cue rimshot)
There’s a great example of the differences between our cultures, and I’ve been meaning to mention it forever. I was talking on Skype with my lovely lady one day, and she told me that I looked thinner. This very well might be the case, but either way, sweet of her to say. I came back to my village the next day, and all my villagers were very happy to see me. They said, “hongera! Umenenepa sana!” Which basically means, “Congratulations! You’ve swelled up like a balloon!”
See, in Tanzania, being fat is a symbol of prosperity, of wealth. In America, it is generally a symbol of laziness, I guess. But we are one of the first societies in history where the poor people are fatter than the rich people. And that’s actually pretty damn weird. Tanzanians think it’s crazy. They might be right. But they take the flattery to a bit of an extreme. I twisted my ankle one day playing frisbee. One of my villagers told me that I couldn’t walk because I had become admirably obese. Sweet lady. But the kicker was a few weeks ago. A village health worker told a friend of mine that she hadn’t recognize me, I was that fat. At which point a part of me just wants to go, “Really? Really? You really didn’t recognize me? You thought, perhaps, that another 6’2” white man, this one deliciously plump, had moved into the village, and everybody had forgotten to tell you? You thought that was what happened!?” This rant would then be followed by a swift flick to the very center of her forehead. But I do and say none of this. Why? Because I’m fat. And we are a jolly people.
Every time I walk into a classroom, the students are required to all stand up, and intone, (with varying levels of intensity, depending on the teacher, the temperature, and the time of day), “Elimu ni bahari, shikamoo mwalimu”. This means (as always, roughly), “education is the sea, we respect you teacher”. Each school has its own motto, most revolving around a central theme. I have seen all of the following: “elimu ni taa” (education is the light), “elimu ni unfunguo” (education is the key), “elimu ni kazi” (education is work), “elimu ni ukombozi” (education is salvation), and “elimu ni nanasi” (education is a pineapple). One of those is a lie. Well, actually, all of them might be lies. Which is my point.
Kiswahili has a ton of sayings like this. Not just about education. “Water is life”, “togetherness is strength”, “food is good” (made that last one up). Which, on one level, are true. And on another level, they are at best unnecessary and at worst plain stupid. I like writing. I like using similes and analogies and symbolism. If we all just said exactly what we mean...blogs would be shorter, I suppose...but subtlety and understanding would be in far shorter supply. The problem is that words are innocent little ragamuffins, and they can, against their will, be put to all sorts of daft, or even nefarious, purposes. Kwa mfano, for example, i.e., I really like this one baseball podcast. It’s smart, incisive, and often hilarious. But it is also sponsored by a company called RainEx, which makes wiper blades. The company’s tagline is “RainEx. It’s like weather never even happened.” Which is just a really stupid thing to hear somebody say out loud. As is “Travel should take you places” (Thank you, Hilton).
The ability to simplify is great, and necessary. The ability to oversimplify is dangerous. We see this in our candidates. Running our country is an immense task, incalculably complex. Infants are probably not up to the task. Yet that is the level of debate that we most often see. If the issues being debated are too complex for our understanding, why is that the fault of the debaters? Why would we want the person who is best at speaking Bumper Sticker? Education is learning, studying, expanding mental horizons, challenging your own prejudices, and a million other complex concepts. It isn’t the sea (that’s the big blue wet thing), a key (which opens stuff), or a pineapple (which tastes like sunshine).
October 29, 2008, I sent in my application to the US Peace Corps (the Phillies also won the World Series). October 29, 2011, I woke up before dawn in the middle of Tanzania. I packed my bag, walked 6 miles to the next village, and got on a bus to go get my family. There’s a Kiswahili song I love. It says, “milima haikutani, bali watu hukutana”. It means that mountains can’t meet with one another, but people can. In just a few hours, my two separate lives came together. Little bit like having your parents meet your girlfriend. Except that it’s really having your parents meet your entire other life. The mountains stayed where they’ve always been. But my father ate ugali with my best friend, my sister spoke to church leaders born 7,000 miles from her home, and my mother made Tanzanian children laugh, by pretending to be a lion. In a small village in East Africa, there’s a beautifully painted wall, with lions, and elephants, and a long-necked giraffe. And the next time a kid asks, “chui ni nini?” (what is a leopard?), the teacher will take him or her outside and show him the handsome cat lounging on a tree branch. And then they’ll know.
It’s easier than you might believe to be cynical here. We have so very far left to go. Yet if you climb the mountain and look at where we started...we have come so very far. Some steps are larger than others. Roads bring people closer to global markets, health clinics keep children alive. But the path that will unite us is long and unfinished, and not all the paving stones need be enormous. My mother can’t stop malaria, and she can’t draw water from stone. But she managed to paint a mural with three family members, a gifted, dedicated teacher, and 35 primary school students. Clinics don’t tell stories, and wells can’t make anybody laugh. We’re in the business of development. Not development of things, but of peoples. Making each other laugh, bringing color to a bare wall, bringing happiness, even for a moment, is not insignificant. Development is hard, slow going. But we’re a little closer today than we were the day before.
Was on my way into Dar one day last week, to see some very special people. Had to be there, left early to make sure I would be. Then, on the way, our bus hit a cow. Cow didn’t die. My timetable kind of did. We were udders-up for a while, but in the end I made it. It’s just always this stuff, the ridiculous and the unexpected, that gets me. I was in my friend Tala’s village making compost. And we had all the little kids out and gathering leaves. We thought we had enough leaves...until the little buggers started eating them. And you’re just never prepared for that. At no point when you are preparing yourself to leave your home and hearth, your country and your countrymen, in order to build a better world, do you think about what you’ll do when the kids start eating the compost leaves. It’s a gamechanger. And then the cow gets up and walks away. And you sort of think to yourself...”cow, you just made me late. I kind of want to eat you.” But then you remember, to err is human, to forgive bovine. (cue rimshot)
There’s a great example of the differences between our cultures, and I’ve been meaning to mention it forever. I was talking on Skype with my lovely lady one day, and she told me that I looked thinner. This very well might be the case, but either way, sweet of her to say. I came back to my village the next day, and all my villagers were very happy to see me. They said, “hongera! Umenenepa sana!” Which basically means, “Congratulations! You’ve swelled up like a balloon!”
See, in Tanzania, being fat is a symbol of prosperity, of wealth. In America, it is generally a symbol of laziness, I guess. But we are one of the first societies in history where the poor people are fatter than the rich people. And that’s actually pretty damn weird. Tanzanians think it’s crazy. They might be right. But they take the flattery to a bit of an extreme. I twisted my ankle one day playing frisbee. One of my villagers told me that I couldn’t walk because I had become admirably obese. Sweet lady. But the kicker was a few weeks ago. A village health worker told a friend of mine that she hadn’t recognize me, I was that fat. At which point a part of me just wants to go, “Really? Really? You really didn’t recognize me? You thought, perhaps, that another 6’2” white man, this one deliciously plump, had moved into the village, and everybody had forgotten to tell you? You thought that was what happened!?” This rant would then be followed by a swift flick to the very center of her forehead. But I do and say none of this. Why? Because I’m fat. And we are a jolly people.
Every time I walk into a classroom, the students are required to all stand up, and intone, (with varying levels of intensity, depending on the teacher, the temperature, and the time of day), “Elimu ni bahari, shikamoo mwalimu”. This means (as always, roughly), “education is the sea, we respect you teacher”. Each school has its own motto, most revolving around a central theme. I have seen all of the following: “elimu ni taa” (education is the light), “elimu ni unfunguo” (education is the key), “elimu ni kazi” (education is work), “elimu ni ukombozi” (education is salvation), and “elimu ni nanasi” (education is a pineapple). One of those is a lie. Well, actually, all of them might be lies. Which is my point.
Kiswahili has a ton of sayings like this. Not just about education. “Water is life”, “togetherness is strength”, “food is good” (made that last one up). Which, on one level, are true. And on another level, they are at best unnecessary and at worst plain stupid. I like writing. I like using similes and analogies and symbolism. If we all just said exactly what we mean...blogs would be shorter, I suppose...but subtlety and understanding would be in far shorter supply. The problem is that words are innocent little ragamuffins, and they can, against their will, be put to all sorts of daft, or even nefarious, purposes. Kwa mfano, for example, i.e., I really like this one baseball podcast. It’s smart, incisive, and often hilarious. But it is also sponsored by a company called RainEx, which makes wiper blades. The company’s tagline is “RainEx. It’s like weather never even happened.” Which is just a really stupid thing to hear somebody say out loud. As is “Travel should take you places” (Thank you, Hilton).
The ability to simplify is great, and necessary. The ability to oversimplify is dangerous. We see this in our candidates. Running our country is an immense task, incalculably complex. Infants are probably not up to the task. Yet that is the level of debate that we most often see. If the issues being debated are too complex for our understanding, why is that the fault of the debaters? Why would we want the person who is best at speaking Bumper Sticker? Education is learning, studying, expanding mental horizons, challenging your own prejudices, and a million other complex concepts. It isn’t the sea (that’s the big blue wet thing), a key (which opens stuff), or a pineapple (which tastes like sunshine).
October 29, 2008, I sent in my application to the US Peace Corps (the Phillies also won the World Series). October 29, 2011, I woke up before dawn in the middle of Tanzania. I packed my bag, walked 6 miles to the next village, and got on a bus to go get my family. There’s a Kiswahili song I love. It says, “milima haikutani, bali watu hukutana”. It means that mountains can’t meet with one another, but people can. In just a few hours, my two separate lives came together. Little bit like having your parents meet your girlfriend. Except that it’s really having your parents meet your entire other life. The mountains stayed where they’ve always been. But my father ate ugali with my best friend, my sister spoke to church leaders born 7,000 miles from her home, and my mother made Tanzanian children laugh, by pretending to be a lion. In a small village in East Africa, there’s a beautifully painted wall, with lions, and elephants, and a long-necked giraffe. And the next time a kid asks, “chui ni nini?” (what is a leopard?), the teacher will take him or her outside and show him the handsome cat lounging on a tree branch. And then they’ll know.
It’s easier than you might believe to be cynical here. We have so very far left to go. Yet if you climb the mountain and look at where we started...we have come so very far. Some steps are larger than others. Roads bring people closer to global markets, health clinics keep children alive. But the path that will unite us is long and unfinished, and not all the paving stones need be enormous. My mother can’t stop malaria, and she can’t draw water from stone. But she managed to paint a mural with three family members, a gifted, dedicated teacher, and 35 primary school students. Clinics don’t tell stories, and wells can’t make anybody laugh. We’re in the business of development. Not development of things, but of peoples. Making each other laugh, bringing color to a bare wall, bringing happiness, even for a moment, is not insignificant. Development is hard, slow going. But we’re a little closer today than we were the day before.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Ambapo Pana Moshi, Pana Moto
“Ambapo” means “where”, “pana” means “there is”, “moshi” means “smoke”, and “moto” means “fire”.
I wanted this particular job for a lot of reasons. Travel, service, knowledge. But I’d be lying if I told you that a big reason I wanted to join the Peace Corps wasn’t because of adventures. I wanted them. I’ve gotten them. This is the story of one of them.
We were building pigpens (that’s how all good stories start). It was about 3pm, the afternoon of a hot dry day, at the tail end of a string of hot, dry days. Everything in my village was brown, and will be for a few more weeks, until the rains start. We were building pigpens. When I say we, I mean my AIDS group, along with the two carpenters donating their time to help out the community. We were just about to finish Pigpen #8. Then the village chairman (my boss, a human shark lookalike, and just generally one of the greatest badasses I’ve ever met) comes by with some news. There’s a fire. And we’ve got to put it out. Me, two carpenters, and 8 HIV-positive women look at each other for a moment. Then we put down our tools and start walkin.
It’s a good 3 kilometers from where we were building the pigpens to fire. In those 3K most of my friends from the pigpen group fall back a little ways. While the chairman told us that everybody was going out, this seems to be more on the male side of the work spectrum. I fall in with an older babu (grandfather) that I know pretty well. He sells fish in the small village market. I ask him whether or not we are going to pick up some buckets for water. He laughs at me. I’m a little taken aback. Was just askin, after all. He says something about branches. I don’t get it. I will later.
The sky has seemed hazy for a while now, but I don’t get a real good idea of the fire until we come over a ridgeline...and it’s smoke. Everywhere. And we’re still a ways from the fire. But this is clearly not some lark. This fire can, and probably is, taking out farms, tree nurseries, maybe even houses. I found out later that it came right through where our beehives had been hung up (luckily they were hung with wire). This fire is the real deal. I’m not really sure whether or not I’m supposed to be nervous about this. I just keep walking. I hear something that sounds like a wrapper being crinkled. The wrapper gradually starts to sound bigger and bigger. All of a sudden, we’re there. Somebody is cooking with gas. Flames are all in front of us, and white smoke is billowing over our heads. I’m suddenly conscious of just how little water there is in my immediate reality. It feels like I’m standing on a hay bale while playing with matches. But second thoughts would have been more useful first. The babu stops in fronts of me, grabs his machete, and cuts down two 4’ branches, leaves and all. He hands one to me, keeps the other himself, and heads on in. I pull my bandana out of my pocket, tie it over my mouth and nose, grab my branch (not that I know what it’s for yet), and walk into a forest fire.
It’s hot, and I can’t breathe. The babu ahead of me is beating something with his branch. I get it. We’re going to beat this fire, like the proverbial red-headed stepchild. Real men fight fire with sticks. Of course, at some point all your leaves burn off and the stick catches on fire, but that’s what you bring the machete for: to cut a new fire extinguisher off of the nearest tree. This is simple. This is brilliant. I wish I’d invented the stick.
Couple of problems though. This fire is not small, everything is absurdly dry, and the wind is blowing at full force today. I see flames get as high as 10 feet (pretty high in grasslands), and more than once I see flames just roast an adult tree in a matter of seconds. Obviously running head on into an inferno isn’t going to work here. Me and the babu seem to have been given the left flank. Of course, that means that the wind is blowing straight at us. And so is the fire. We look at it for a second. The wind gusts. The fire jumps. We run away. The wind dies down. We cautiously return. If we wait much longer the fire is going to enter a pretty thick stand of trees, and we’re going to have a hell of time. Perhaps it would be best to do the thing.
Somehow or other, we get started. It feels sort of like charging the battlements of some tiny, hot castle. I start just beating the ground with my branch, trying to put out all the sparks, stamping on embers. Then it gets too hot, or the wind picks up, or enough smoke enters my lungs that I turn away for a few seconds, try to remember where I am, and start over. It basically works like this, we put out a spot and then move along the flanks of the fire, putting it out in a straight line, moving from side to side. The area that’s already has been burned holds no real danger, so the actual fire is only a few feet deep. Me and the babu leapfrog each other, occasionally cutting down a new branch. Then we have to double back, because of course we missed some sparks. Then something on fire is on my arm, and then it’s off. Then the wind picks up for a minute, and a 5 year-old pine tree goes up like a bonfire. Some part of me becomes aware that this is not a part of my normal routine. Then it’s back in again.
I literally have no idea how long me and the babu were beating out the fire. It might have been an hour. It might have been half that. I know at one point I was yelling at the babu that we would drink free pombe (booze) tonight. I also know that my eyes were tearing and my nose was running the entire time, so badly that my bandana clogged up and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. At some point babu gave me the machete. At some point I realized that I could hear a lot less crackling, and that I’d been doing this for a while. It was around then that I realized that most of my clothes had been covered in black.
Babu leads us down into a little gorge. There are a few sparks to be put out here. We knock ‘em out with our fire-whackers. Then...it’s over. Babu just turns around and walks back up the hill. I’m not really sure what to do, or where to go. I do know that I’ve got a rock concert’s worth of adrenaline still kicking, and that I’m barely able to breathe through my bandana. I pull it down around my neck, and start walking up after my old man, the fishmonger.
What follows next is one of those moments I hope I never get old enough to forget. I come back up out of the gorge, and see that the fire is out, hopefully completely, on all sides. I walk a little farther, following my guy, and then I see, a little ways ahead, my boss. The chairman. There’s other people standing behind him, and a bunch of them clearly did not know that I was in there, because they gasp (hot crowd. Get it?). But the chairman doesn’t gasp. Doesn’t make a sound. Far too much of a badass for any of that. I realize how I must look to him: grimy, blackened, holding a machete in one hand and a burned-out branch in the other, bandana hanging round my neck, walking out of the smoke. All he does is grin, in the most wonderful sort of way. This is the man that picked me up on my very first day, that watched me butt my head against so many walls, that was there to advise me and correct me, that has seen some of what I’ve tried to to begin, ever so slowly, to catch hold. And in that moment, in that little, tiny, half-smirk of a grin...I see he’s proud of me.
I walk up to him. He says, “Kazi”. That means, “work”. I reply, “tuko hai”.
That means, “we’re alive”.
I wanted this particular job for a lot of reasons. Travel, service, knowledge. But I’d be lying if I told you that a big reason I wanted to join the Peace Corps wasn’t because of adventures. I wanted them. I’ve gotten them. This is the story of one of them.
We were building pigpens (that’s how all good stories start). It was about 3pm, the afternoon of a hot dry day, at the tail end of a string of hot, dry days. Everything in my village was brown, and will be for a few more weeks, until the rains start. We were building pigpens. When I say we, I mean my AIDS group, along with the two carpenters donating their time to help out the community. We were just about to finish Pigpen #8. Then the village chairman (my boss, a human shark lookalike, and just generally one of the greatest badasses I’ve ever met) comes by with some news. There’s a fire. And we’ve got to put it out. Me, two carpenters, and 8 HIV-positive women look at each other for a moment. Then we put down our tools and start walkin.
It’s a good 3 kilometers from where we were building the pigpens to fire. In those 3K most of my friends from the pigpen group fall back a little ways. While the chairman told us that everybody was going out, this seems to be more on the male side of the work spectrum. I fall in with an older babu (grandfather) that I know pretty well. He sells fish in the small village market. I ask him whether or not we are going to pick up some buckets for water. He laughs at me. I’m a little taken aback. Was just askin, after all. He says something about branches. I don’t get it. I will later.
The sky has seemed hazy for a while now, but I don’t get a real good idea of the fire until we come over a ridgeline...and it’s smoke. Everywhere. And we’re still a ways from the fire. But this is clearly not some lark. This fire can, and probably is, taking out farms, tree nurseries, maybe even houses. I found out later that it came right through where our beehives had been hung up (luckily they were hung with wire). This fire is the real deal. I’m not really sure whether or not I’m supposed to be nervous about this. I just keep walking. I hear something that sounds like a wrapper being crinkled. The wrapper gradually starts to sound bigger and bigger. All of a sudden, we’re there. Somebody is cooking with gas. Flames are all in front of us, and white smoke is billowing over our heads. I’m suddenly conscious of just how little water there is in my immediate reality. It feels like I’m standing on a hay bale while playing with matches. But second thoughts would have been more useful first. The babu stops in fronts of me, grabs his machete, and cuts down two 4’ branches, leaves and all. He hands one to me, keeps the other himself, and heads on in. I pull my bandana out of my pocket, tie it over my mouth and nose, grab my branch (not that I know what it’s for yet), and walk into a forest fire.
It’s hot, and I can’t breathe. The babu ahead of me is beating something with his branch. I get it. We’re going to beat this fire, like the proverbial red-headed stepchild. Real men fight fire with sticks. Of course, at some point all your leaves burn off and the stick catches on fire, but that’s what you bring the machete for: to cut a new fire extinguisher off of the nearest tree. This is simple. This is brilliant. I wish I’d invented the stick.
Couple of problems though. This fire is not small, everything is absurdly dry, and the wind is blowing at full force today. I see flames get as high as 10 feet (pretty high in grasslands), and more than once I see flames just roast an adult tree in a matter of seconds. Obviously running head on into an inferno isn’t going to work here. Me and the babu seem to have been given the left flank. Of course, that means that the wind is blowing straight at us. And so is the fire. We look at it for a second. The wind gusts. The fire jumps. We run away. The wind dies down. We cautiously return. If we wait much longer the fire is going to enter a pretty thick stand of trees, and we’re going to have a hell of time. Perhaps it would be best to do the thing.
Somehow or other, we get started. It feels sort of like charging the battlements of some tiny, hot castle. I start just beating the ground with my branch, trying to put out all the sparks, stamping on embers. Then it gets too hot, or the wind picks up, or enough smoke enters my lungs that I turn away for a few seconds, try to remember where I am, and start over. It basically works like this, we put out a spot and then move along the flanks of the fire, putting it out in a straight line, moving from side to side. The area that’s already has been burned holds no real danger, so the actual fire is only a few feet deep. Me and the babu leapfrog each other, occasionally cutting down a new branch. Then we have to double back, because of course we missed some sparks. Then something on fire is on my arm, and then it’s off. Then the wind picks up for a minute, and a 5 year-old pine tree goes up like a bonfire. Some part of me becomes aware that this is not a part of my normal routine. Then it’s back in again.
I literally have no idea how long me and the babu were beating out the fire. It might have been an hour. It might have been half that. I know at one point I was yelling at the babu that we would drink free pombe (booze) tonight. I also know that my eyes were tearing and my nose was running the entire time, so badly that my bandana clogged up and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. At some point babu gave me the machete. At some point I realized that I could hear a lot less crackling, and that I’d been doing this for a while. It was around then that I realized that most of my clothes had been covered in black.
Babu leads us down into a little gorge. There are a few sparks to be put out here. We knock ‘em out with our fire-whackers. Then...it’s over. Babu just turns around and walks back up the hill. I’m not really sure what to do, or where to go. I do know that I’ve got a rock concert’s worth of adrenaline still kicking, and that I’m barely able to breathe through my bandana. I pull it down around my neck, and start walking up after my old man, the fishmonger.
What follows next is one of those moments I hope I never get old enough to forget. I come back up out of the gorge, and see that the fire is out, hopefully completely, on all sides. I walk a little farther, following my guy, and then I see, a little ways ahead, my boss. The chairman. There’s other people standing behind him, and a bunch of them clearly did not know that I was in there, because they gasp (hot crowd. Get it?). But the chairman doesn’t gasp. Doesn’t make a sound. Far too much of a badass for any of that. I realize how I must look to him: grimy, blackened, holding a machete in one hand and a burned-out branch in the other, bandana hanging round my neck, walking out of the smoke. All he does is grin, in the most wonderful sort of way. This is the man that picked me up on my very first day, that watched me butt my head against so many walls, that was there to advise me and correct me, that has seen some of what I’ve tried to to begin, ever so slowly, to catch hold. And in that moment, in that little, tiny, half-smirk of a grin...I see he’s proud of me.
I walk up to him. He says, “Kazi”. That means, “work”. I reply, “tuko hai”.
That means, “we’re alive”.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Sisi Wote ni Wamarekani
Welcome back, sports fans. Just another month in our hobbled blogger’s (having some minor foot problems, but they did let me use the phrase ‘hobbled blogger’) existence. I’m currently in Dar Es Salaam to design the training curriculum for the next group of volunteers on their way to this fair country. Because, after 15 months, I am apparently expected to know what the hell I’m talking about. And in 10 months, I’m expected to be gone.
However, in the meanwhile, nipo (I’m here). I had the unusual experience in the last month to attend two different dowry-paying parties. While I’m sure most of you require no explanation, a dowry is the price that a prospective groom (or more likely, his parents) pays to the bride’s family, in order to buy her away from them. Let’s set the obvious criticism of this practice, that it’s really not a great idea to sell women, aside for the moment. Because the ceremonies themselves were pretty interesting. For one party, I was invited on behalf of the groom (I know his uncle very well). For another party, I was invited by the mother of the bride. When we are going to the party on the groom’s side, we say we call it “paying the dowry”. When we’re throwing the party at the bride’s house, we call it a “Send-Off”. Works like this: anywhere from 3 months to 3 years ago, the respective parties have met and negotiated the dowry to be paid. Anything is on the table, even the table. By which I mean you can pay in livestock, cash, shovels, sheets, buckets, furniture, and probably other, more ridiculous stuff. First negotiation takes place in a 10’x14’ room, with approximately 30 people. They pay up about $400, couple of shovels, 2 cows, and a goat. Only problem is that they agreed on 4 cows. Shida, ipo (there is a problem). There is a flurry of negotiation (present is a representative of the village government, as well as a negotiator for each side (not a direct family member of bride or groom)). It is finally agreed that the remaining two cows must be paid within one year. The deal is sealed. And then everybody starts screaming. So that’s fun.
We go outside, we dance a really fun dance called the “dua”, which is a lot of stomping. I’m a big fan. We eat (always must eat). We dance some more. And then I get some of the more delicate background on the dowries. For instance, if the bride dies before there are kids, or (in rare cases) divorces him...yeah, they’re gonna want that cash back. And those cows. But if the husband dies, and there is still an outstanding balance on the dowry...they gotta pay that...or he doesn’t get buried. I’ve actually been around for one of those days. We sat around for 4 hours after we dug a hole, just waiting for someone to put into it.
The second negotiation is more about me than it was about them. I got invited to a party at 8am. I teach class at 2pm, and I need to leave by 1:30. No problem, right? Of course there’s a problem. But I stubbornly think that I can make this work. I show up, help set up, learn how to cook pilau (an indian spiced rice, pretty tasty). I sit around, talking shop with some friends. And then the negotiations start. Small problem here is that there were 2 cows agreed on. And they only have one...and a half. Which is how they say it. They actually have some cash that they scraped up, because they have no cow. There’s a lot of fighting over this. They promise to pay at the end of the month. Course, that’s what they said last month (if this sounds like a discussion you’ve had with your landlord, then yeah, that’s about right). Lots of posturing, lots of yelling. Then suddenly we agree, and start stomping around again. But it’s now 1pm. And because I’ve been invited by the send-off side, I’m supposed to participate in the ceremony. Never mind that I’ve never met the girl in my life, somehow I’m the guest of honor. Two things to do there: 1. Call the school and tell them I can’t teach today (this is not a big deal in Tanzania) or 2. Leave the party right now and risk offending my villagers. What do I do? Neither, and both, and nothing well. I stay long enough in a side room for them to fill me up with rice and potatoes and onions and tomatoes. I make some small talk. Then I bolt like hell out of the party at 2pm, ignoring the questioning looks (they don’t think I’ve eaten yet. What kind of a batshit crazy madman leaves a place without eating?) I get to the school at 2:20pm. They say I can’t teach. I fume. Still can’t teach. Ask to address the assembly and to meet shortly with my students. They say sure. Where’s the assembly? Oh, it’s over, there go the students now. And so once again I left one party too early to get to another party too late. I did this in a misguided belief that I could please everybody. I managed to please nobody. Some lessons keep unlearning themselves in my mind.
On to cheerier stories. Couple fun anecdotes of Africa. Went to a beach while I was in Dar. There was a public bathroom, and when I entered it, I noticed a sign. It was asking us not to throw our sanitary napkins into the toilet. Perfectly reasonable request. But why should we not do this? “To preserve the natural harmony of the septic tank”. Which is possibly the greatest use of the English language of all time, anywhere.
Sitting at my table in my house, having a meeting with a church leader. On my table are a number of knicknacks and paddywacks, including a very special item from home. It’s a snake, his body is made out of a bike chain and his head is a bottle opener. He also has a short, maybe 1” tongue. And apparently my buddy, the church leader, was dealing with some wax buildup. Because in mid-conversation, he reaches down, picks up my snake bottle-opener...and inserts it into his ear. I do not know, I can not possibly remember another word that was said in that meeting. It is lost for all time. In one ear....and out the other.
A different meeting, a different church leader. Little background: in February, my darling mother was nice enough to send me the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. I’m not sure this was such a good idea. It was like giving a thirsty man just a straw. Anywho, back to the meeting. My table has some knots in it, so when we set out to make a schedule for the upcoming weeks, the church secretary reaches under my table to the shelf, in search of something to write on. He picks up something and places it on the table. Looking up at us is the Green M&M. She’s crawling on a beach, looking sultry. This is the back cover. The front cover, if exposed during this meeting, might get me excommunicated (or it might make all the church leaders want to emigrate to America. Either way, bad news). Again, there was a schedule made. Again, I do not remember one thing we talked about. The second he lifted up the paper, I grabbed the magazine, hid it under the table, and later took it outside the house and buried it under 6’ of dirt. Maybe not that last part. Should have, though.
Two final items, both a little serious. I was at a meeting with the district government to present our upcoming milk-cow project. They were receptive and helpful...as long as we didn’t ask for any material assistance, and as long as we did everything they told us to. Since we needed some material assistance, and we wanted trainers to come to our villages who were outside the government structure, there was a bit of conflict. That, in and of itself, was not even a little surprising. There was some posturing and some compromising, and then stuff got done. What was remarkable was that there were 7 people in the meeting: Myself, my counterpart, Kenzie (my nearest Peace Corps neighbor), her counterpart, and three district livestock officers. And there were two sides in the meeting: Us, and them. But when I say us, I don’t mean just Peace Corps, white people, outsiders. I mean the village against the district. The people on the ground versus the bureaucrats. Two Tanzanians and two Americans trying to make change happen, together. It was a wonderful realization, when I looked back on it later, that here is this village, with these people, who trust me, in their own way, to have their best interests in mind, even more so than their government. Humbling, but pretty freaking awesome.
I was in church two Sundays ago. It was a peculiar morning, giving that it was September 11th. I just wasn’t entirely certain how I felt, or how I was supposed to feel. It’s everywhere. It’s in things I never even think about. It’s in friends we’ve lost, that day or in the days that followed. It’s in our music, our movies, our books. So I go to church. And this is the day the Italian padre decides to join us. And he sees me, and he always calls me out when he does. It’s not a bad thing, he just likes to single me out for the congregation. I privately hate it. Today he says that we should say a prayer, because ten years ago today the American people began “tabia ya kuogopa”. It means “a behavior of being afraid”. And I may not like the man. But he was probably right. I sat down that night to write in my journal. And I tried to figure out a way that the world had responded well, a way that things had, by the strangest path imaginable, gotten better. I remembered that the September 12th edition of Le Monde had the headline “Nous sommes tous Américains”.
“We are all Americans”
"Sisi Wote ni Wamarekani"
But they don’t write that anymore, do they? I couldn’t think of something, I couldn’t find a silver lining. Probably because there isn’t one. I’m not a believer that things happen for a reason. I think sometimes awful things happen in our lives. And maybe the kindness and dignity and bravery shown that day was a way in which we could compare all the goodness we are capable of with the evil we’d been forced to confront. But even if that’s true...it’s a comparison we all could have done without, isn't it? I wish it had never happened. Yet wishes aren’t horses, and I can’t ride. We live with the world we live in. We do the best we can. We roll with the punches. And whatever happens next, we'll deal with that too.
However, in the meanwhile, nipo (I’m here). I had the unusual experience in the last month to attend two different dowry-paying parties. While I’m sure most of you require no explanation, a dowry is the price that a prospective groom (or more likely, his parents) pays to the bride’s family, in order to buy her away from them. Let’s set the obvious criticism of this practice, that it’s really not a great idea to sell women, aside for the moment. Because the ceremonies themselves were pretty interesting. For one party, I was invited on behalf of the groom (I know his uncle very well). For another party, I was invited by the mother of the bride. When we are going to the party on the groom’s side, we say we call it “paying the dowry”. When we’re throwing the party at the bride’s house, we call it a “Send-Off”. Works like this: anywhere from 3 months to 3 years ago, the respective parties have met and negotiated the dowry to be paid. Anything is on the table, even the table. By which I mean you can pay in livestock, cash, shovels, sheets, buckets, furniture, and probably other, more ridiculous stuff. First negotiation takes place in a 10’x14’ room, with approximately 30 people. They pay up about $400, couple of shovels, 2 cows, and a goat. Only problem is that they agreed on 4 cows. Shida, ipo (there is a problem). There is a flurry of negotiation (present is a representative of the village government, as well as a negotiator for each side (not a direct family member of bride or groom)). It is finally agreed that the remaining two cows must be paid within one year. The deal is sealed. And then everybody starts screaming. So that’s fun.
We go outside, we dance a really fun dance called the “dua”, which is a lot of stomping. I’m a big fan. We eat (always must eat). We dance some more. And then I get some of the more delicate background on the dowries. For instance, if the bride dies before there are kids, or (in rare cases) divorces him...yeah, they’re gonna want that cash back. And those cows. But if the husband dies, and there is still an outstanding balance on the dowry...they gotta pay that...or he doesn’t get buried. I’ve actually been around for one of those days. We sat around for 4 hours after we dug a hole, just waiting for someone to put into it.
The second negotiation is more about me than it was about them. I got invited to a party at 8am. I teach class at 2pm, and I need to leave by 1:30. No problem, right? Of course there’s a problem. But I stubbornly think that I can make this work. I show up, help set up, learn how to cook pilau (an indian spiced rice, pretty tasty). I sit around, talking shop with some friends. And then the negotiations start. Small problem here is that there were 2 cows agreed on. And they only have one...and a half. Which is how they say it. They actually have some cash that they scraped up, because they have no cow. There’s a lot of fighting over this. They promise to pay at the end of the month. Course, that’s what they said last month (if this sounds like a discussion you’ve had with your landlord, then yeah, that’s about right). Lots of posturing, lots of yelling. Then suddenly we agree, and start stomping around again. But it’s now 1pm. And because I’ve been invited by the send-off side, I’m supposed to participate in the ceremony. Never mind that I’ve never met the girl in my life, somehow I’m the guest of honor. Two things to do there: 1. Call the school and tell them I can’t teach today (this is not a big deal in Tanzania) or 2. Leave the party right now and risk offending my villagers. What do I do? Neither, and both, and nothing well. I stay long enough in a side room for them to fill me up with rice and potatoes and onions and tomatoes. I make some small talk. Then I bolt like hell out of the party at 2pm, ignoring the questioning looks (they don’t think I’ve eaten yet. What kind of a batshit crazy madman leaves a place without eating?) I get to the school at 2:20pm. They say I can’t teach. I fume. Still can’t teach. Ask to address the assembly and to meet shortly with my students. They say sure. Where’s the assembly? Oh, it’s over, there go the students now. And so once again I left one party too early to get to another party too late. I did this in a misguided belief that I could please everybody. I managed to please nobody. Some lessons keep unlearning themselves in my mind.
On to cheerier stories. Couple fun anecdotes of Africa. Went to a beach while I was in Dar. There was a public bathroom, and when I entered it, I noticed a sign. It was asking us not to throw our sanitary napkins into the toilet. Perfectly reasonable request. But why should we not do this? “To preserve the natural harmony of the septic tank”. Which is possibly the greatest use of the English language of all time, anywhere.
Sitting at my table in my house, having a meeting with a church leader. On my table are a number of knicknacks and paddywacks, including a very special item from home. It’s a snake, his body is made out of a bike chain and his head is a bottle opener. He also has a short, maybe 1” tongue. And apparently my buddy, the church leader, was dealing with some wax buildup. Because in mid-conversation, he reaches down, picks up my snake bottle-opener...and inserts it into his ear. I do not know, I can not possibly remember another word that was said in that meeting. It is lost for all time. In one ear....and out the other.
A different meeting, a different church leader. Little background: in February, my darling mother was nice enough to send me the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. I’m not sure this was such a good idea. It was like giving a thirsty man just a straw. Anywho, back to the meeting. My table has some knots in it, so when we set out to make a schedule for the upcoming weeks, the church secretary reaches under my table to the shelf, in search of something to write on. He picks up something and places it on the table. Looking up at us is the Green M&M. She’s crawling on a beach, looking sultry. This is the back cover. The front cover, if exposed during this meeting, might get me excommunicated (or it might make all the church leaders want to emigrate to America. Either way, bad news). Again, there was a schedule made. Again, I do not remember one thing we talked about. The second he lifted up the paper, I grabbed the magazine, hid it under the table, and later took it outside the house and buried it under 6’ of dirt. Maybe not that last part. Should have, though.
Two final items, both a little serious. I was at a meeting with the district government to present our upcoming milk-cow project. They were receptive and helpful...as long as we didn’t ask for any material assistance, and as long as we did everything they told us to. Since we needed some material assistance, and we wanted trainers to come to our villages who were outside the government structure, there was a bit of conflict. That, in and of itself, was not even a little surprising. There was some posturing and some compromising, and then stuff got done. What was remarkable was that there were 7 people in the meeting: Myself, my counterpart, Kenzie (my nearest Peace Corps neighbor), her counterpart, and three district livestock officers. And there were two sides in the meeting: Us, and them. But when I say us, I don’t mean just Peace Corps, white people, outsiders. I mean the village against the district. The people on the ground versus the bureaucrats. Two Tanzanians and two Americans trying to make change happen, together. It was a wonderful realization, when I looked back on it later, that here is this village, with these people, who trust me, in their own way, to have their best interests in mind, even more so than their government. Humbling, but pretty freaking awesome.
I was in church two Sundays ago. It was a peculiar morning, giving that it was September 11th. I just wasn’t entirely certain how I felt, or how I was supposed to feel. It’s everywhere. It’s in things I never even think about. It’s in friends we’ve lost, that day or in the days that followed. It’s in our music, our movies, our books. So I go to church. And this is the day the Italian padre decides to join us. And he sees me, and he always calls me out when he does. It’s not a bad thing, he just likes to single me out for the congregation. I privately hate it. Today he says that we should say a prayer, because ten years ago today the American people began “tabia ya kuogopa”. It means “a behavior of being afraid”. And I may not like the man. But he was probably right. I sat down that night to write in my journal. And I tried to figure out a way that the world had responded well, a way that things had, by the strangest path imaginable, gotten better. I remembered that the September 12th edition of Le Monde had the headline “Nous sommes tous Américains”.
“We are all Americans”
"Sisi Wote ni Wamarekani"
But they don’t write that anymore, do they? I couldn’t think of something, I couldn’t find a silver lining. Probably because there isn’t one. I’m not a believer that things happen for a reason. I think sometimes awful things happen in our lives. And maybe the kindness and dignity and bravery shown that day was a way in which we could compare all the goodness we are capable of with the evil we’d been forced to confront. But even if that’s true...it’s a comparison we all could have done without, isn't it? I wish it had never happened. Yet wishes aren’t horses, and I can’t ride. We live with the world we live in. We do the best we can. We roll with the punches. And whatever happens next, we'll deal with that too.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Siku Mbaya
I know I put up a post not all that long ago. However, I wrote that post a few weeks ago...and a few days later...I had a bad day. How bad a day? Let’s begin at the beginning, transported, as it were, by the magic of imagination...
I am in Iringa, my banking town. It is Saturday. I am headed to Dar Es Salaam, the largest city in country, Sunday morning. My ticket is for 6am, on an overcrowded bus through the mountains. Why 6am, you ask? Because it was cheaper. And while my friends and I were planning on going out...I guess I planned on sleeping on the bus. Which I did. Just not on the bus I planned. Here we go.
In Iringa there is a large rock. I believe it’s called Gongilanga...we call it Pride Rock...and every time we go up there we mock and scorn the first mshamba (redneck) to shout out, “one day son, all of this will be yours”. If there is a more beautiful place to watch the sunset, I’ve never seen it. On Saturday we went up there around 6pm or so, had a nice hike, watched the sunset, and came back down. Thus began what was really a wonderful night. We stopped by a bar on the way back down the hill to have a quick drink. I should mention at this point that I was out with my friends from my region, who were all in town for a final meeting to close out our Girls Conference. There were also a bunch of new volunteers in town who had not yet sworn in and who had just finished a one-week shadow. We get to catch up like this maybe every other month or so, and it’s always great to see a lot of people after weeks in the village living by ourselves.
We all went out to dinner that night, which in and of itself is always an adventure. Most Tanzanian restaurants only pack one or two ovens...charcoal ovens. So when we show up en masse, like a dozen or so, our food sometimes takes about two hours to arrive. This is not a huge problem, as the place has a balcony that overlooks Iringa. It is one of the only mzungu (white person) places in town, so it usually attracts an interesting crowd. That night we met a bunch of English women in town for a month or two to work at an orphanage. I also played my first few games of Tanzanian 8-ball (you get two shots after scratching...weird), lost 2 and won 2. Food arrived, we ate, we laughed, and we left...to go dancing.
Discos. Fun places. Places of joy, loud music, moving lights...and prostitutes. Can’t speak for their primary talents, but I’ve watched them on the dance floor. Wanaweza (they can bring it). The disco is always an interesting scene. Nobody is too impressed by me, but when the female volunteers show up, there’s always a stir. I end up doing a lot of pass-blocking for my friends (gotta watch the blind sides). But tonight the crowd is fairly tame, and there are a whole lot of us, which is always more fun. The DJ also plays a lot of American music, for which we are eternally grateful. Another volunteer and I try a swing-dance lift...she hits the deck. We try again...no luck. Third time’s the charm...and she’s up!
We stay till about two in the morning, and then we go to get some food...and things take a turn. There is a Tanzanian cafeteria open 24/7 (civilization has arrived!), and we are able to get some rice and beans. And as we are sitting at the table, thanking Mungu (God) for late night food, one of my friends has a bright little idea. The next time he has a bright little idea, I’m going to beat him over the head with a fimbo (stick), strap him to a kitanda (bed), and gag him with a parachichi (avocado). But tonight he’s got an idea. And he’s going to convince all of us of it.
Back to the rock.
This, in and of itself, is a horrible idea. It is 2am. It is cold. And the rock is on top of a mountain. Mountains are high. There is a road, but it’s awful, and cars can’t make it that far up. To add injury to insult, a strange thing has happened. Over the last couple years, at random times, my ankles will sort of sprain themselves. I could literally be sitting still, doing nothing, and all of a sudden my left foot is the size of a nanasi (pineapple). Which is exactly what has happened while we are eating late night food. It isn’t too bad at the start, which is why I get in the cab. But by the time we get out, I am walking like a pirate. Everybody else beats me up the rock, but I do make it. And, to my deranged buddy’s credit, it is beautiful, looking over the city, asleep in the moonlight. Of course, having reached the top, all of my friends follow the city’s example, and fall asleep. I would love to, but at this point my ankle is screaming in pain. A smarter man would wait for his friends to wake up, and deal with the pain. But a smarter man would have been in bed by 10pm to get up for a 6am bus. So he’s not here to help us, is he?
I get up and climb back down the rock. I reason (accurately, I still maintain) that my friends will awake, call me, and since they each have two working legs, catch up with me rather quickly. All of this works right up to the point where my friends get lost, walk through a backyard, and end up wandering the wrong way on the main highway. They still catch a cab before I do...because there ain’t no justice. I head for the aforementioned bar where we got a quick drink earlier in the night, figuring that even though it is 3am, there may still be cabs. Again, sound theory fails me. Because I have forgotten to account for a couple of things: 1. that the bar is about two miles away down a loose gravel road, and 2. that I have one working leg. Count ‘em Jim, one. But the hill won’t walk itself. Here we go.
I won’t bore you with the details. It hurt, a lot. There were dogs, and they barked, and when I reached the end of one fence, another one took up the call. I would have been pretty easy to track. I think about stopping, and then realizing my bus leaves in two hours...I don’t.
I am reminded of Chaucer in ‘Knight’s Tale’. To trudge: the slow, weary, depressing yet determined walk of a man who has nothing left in life except the impulse to simply soldier on. Amen brother.
I eventually reach flat ground, and supercharge myself up to about 2 miles an hour. I get to the bar. It is, of course, closed and abandoned. Except no! There is a lonely looking dude sitting outside, in front of a grill. There’s nothing on the grill, but I’m in no position to pry. Can he call me a taxi? Maybe. It is, at this point 4:30 in the morning. The walk has taken some time. He says the cab is coming. I sit in pain. I ask him to call again. Still coming. More pain. I get up to go. Cab shows up. I try not to kiss the cabbie. I succeed. The night, such as it was, is drawing to a close. I stumble/limp into my room at 5am. My alarm is set for 5:30am. So I do what only a true idiot, who has learned nothing that life has tried to teach him, would do. I go to sleep. Will be easy to get up in a half hour, right? And if I don’t, my roommate will surely wake me in plenty of time to catch the 6am bus, which he also is riding. Right?
I wake up at 6:20. Because Fate thinks she’s funny. I call my friend. Yes, she’s on the bus. Yes...it has left. Did my roommate try to wake me? Nope, that didn’t happen. Okay then. I won’t cry. Big boys don’t. Just gonna check out, hurry up to the bus stand, and see if the company will give me a discounted ticket. Of course, when I check out, my roommate also hasn’t paid his half of the room. So that’s fun. Who likes money anyway? I limp up to the bus stand. They will give me another ticket, for an extra 10,000 shillings. Swell. All this money was just driving me crazy anyway. I get on the bus, extremely excited about a 9 hour drive, by myself, on a hard seat, on a pretty awful road. Thankfully I can’t manage to stay conscious for more than about two hours of the whole trip. Luckily, when I arrive, I can sort of walk. I’m so excited by this fact that I waltz off the bus, completely forgetting the plastic bag with all my toiletries. Cuz who likes to be clean? Finally, against all odds, have fought through all manner of obstacles, I reach my hotel in Dar. I am ready to shower, change, weep for a while, then eat a horse, dead or alive. I get to the desk, ready to be presented with the keys to my sanity. What’s that you say? There’s no reservation. Didn’t my friend make one? Apparently not. It is at this point that I realize that I’ve lost my toiletries bag. It is at this point that I begin retracing all the decisions in my life that led me to this moment. It is, at this point, that I collapse in a corner, begin to suck on my thumb, and wait for someone else to make it better.
I had a day like this once. It was funnier, and less painful. I left New York in the morning in the van I needed to return. Got pulled over for speeding in New Jersey. As a result, I missed my train. Grand. Saw my parents, had lunch with a buddy. My parents drove me for the next train. It pulled out as we pulled in. Grander. My parents now drove me back to New Jersey (like breaking back into Alcatraz), and put me on the platform in plenty of time for the next train. It arrived, and I got on. And it promptly started going west. New York was east. Four hours or so later, I got off the subway in New York. A four hour journey had taken eleven. When I got off the subway, for the first (and hopefully last) time in my life, I bend down and kissed the New York sidewalk (if you have since kissed these lips, I apologize). That day was annoying, but it was funny. This day, in Tanzania, was painful. It was long and it was embarrassing. And after my thumb was removed from my mouth, after I was placed into a room, and after I had taken the most needed shower in the history of man, the first thing I thought of was all of you. Because while this day long, painful, and embarrassing, that does not mean it cannot be funny. All that’s needed to turn an awful experience into a funny story is a willing audience. So now, as always, I salute you, dear readers. Before, all I had was a sore bottom, no shampoo, and a series of regrets. Now, I’ve got a story.
I am in Iringa, my banking town. It is Saturday. I am headed to Dar Es Salaam, the largest city in country, Sunday morning. My ticket is for 6am, on an overcrowded bus through the mountains. Why 6am, you ask? Because it was cheaper. And while my friends and I were planning on going out...I guess I planned on sleeping on the bus. Which I did. Just not on the bus I planned. Here we go.
In Iringa there is a large rock. I believe it’s called Gongilanga...we call it Pride Rock...and every time we go up there we mock and scorn the first mshamba (redneck) to shout out, “one day son, all of this will be yours”. If there is a more beautiful place to watch the sunset, I’ve never seen it. On Saturday we went up there around 6pm or so, had a nice hike, watched the sunset, and came back down. Thus began what was really a wonderful night. We stopped by a bar on the way back down the hill to have a quick drink. I should mention at this point that I was out with my friends from my region, who were all in town for a final meeting to close out our Girls Conference. There were also a bunch of new volunteers in town who had not yet sworn in and who had just finished a one-week shadow. We get to catch up like this maybe every other month or so, and it’s always great to see a lot of people after weeks in the village living by ourselves.
We all went out to dinner that night, which in and of itself is always an adventure. Most Tanzanian restaurants only pack one or two ovens...charcoal ovens. So when we show up en masse, like a dozen or so, our food sometimes takes about two hours to arrive. This is not a huge problem, as the place has a balcony that overlooks Iringa. It is one of the only mzungu (white person) places in town, so it usually attracts an interesting crowd. That night we met a bunch of English women in town for a month or two to work at an orphanage. I also played my first few games of Tanzanian 8-ball (you get two shots after scratching...weird), lost 2 and won 2. Food arrived, we ate, we laughed, and we left...to go dancing.
Discos. Fun places. Places of joy, loud music, moving lights...and prostitutes. Can’t speak for their primary talents, but I’ve watched them on the dance floor. Wanaweza (they can bring it). The disco is always an interesting scene. Nobody is too impressed by me, but when the female volunteers show up, there’s always a stir. I end up doing a lot of pass-blocking for my friends (gotta watch the blind sides). But tonight the crowd is fairly tame, and there are a whole lot of us, which is always more fun. The DJ also plays a lot of American music, for which we are eternally grateful. Another volunteer and I try a swing-dance lift...she hits the deck. We try again...no luck. Third time’s the charm...and she’s up!
We stay till about two in the morning, and then we go to get some food...and things take a turn. There is a Tanzanian cafeteria open 24/7 (civilization has arrived!), and we are able to get some rice and beans. And as we are sitting at the table, thanking Mungu (God) for late night food, one of my friends has a bright little idea. The next time he has a bright little idea, I’m going to beat him over the head with a fimbo (stick), strap him to a kitanda (bed), and gag him with a parachichi (avocado). But tonight he’s got an idea. And he’s going to convince all of us of it.
Back to the rock.
This, in and of itself, is a horrible idea. It is 2am. It is cold. And the rock is on top of a mountain. Mountains are high. There is a road, but it’s awful, and cars can’t make it that far up. To add injury to insult, a strange thing has happened. Over the last couple years, at random times, my ankles will sort of sprain themselves. I could literally be sitting still, doing nothing, and all of a sudden my left foot is the size of a nanasi (pineapple). Which is exactly what has happened while we are eating late night food. It isn’t too bad at the start, which is why I get in the cab. But by the time we get out, I am walking like a pirate. Everybody else beats me up the rock, but I do make it. And, to my deranged buddy’s credit, it is beautiful, looking over the city, asleep in the moonlight. Of course, having reached the top, all of my friends follow the city’s example, and fall asleep. I would love to, but at this point my ankle is screaming in pain. A smarter man would wait for his friends to wake up, and deal with the pain. But a smarter man would have been in bed by 10pm to get up for a 6am bus. So he’s not here to help us, is he?
I get up and climb back down the rock. I reason (accurately, I still maintain) that my friends will awake, call me, and since they each have two working legs, catch up with me rather quickly. All of this works right up to the point where my friends get lost, walk through a backyard, and end up wandering the wrong way on the main highway. They still catch a cab before I do...because there ain’t no justice. I head for the aforementioned bar where we got a quick drink earlier in the night, figuring that even though it is 3am, there may still be cabs. Again, sound theory fails me. Because I have forgotten to account for a couple of things: 1. that the bar is about two miles away down a loose gravel road, and 2. that I have one working leg. Count ‘em Jim, one. But the hill won’t walk itself. Here we go.
I won’t bore you with the details. It hurt, a lot. There were dogs, and they barked, and when I reached the end of one fence, another one took up the call. I would have been pretty easy to track. I think about stopping, and then realizing my bus leaves in two hours...I don’t.
I am reminded of Chaucer in ‘Knight’s Tale’. To trudge: the slow, weary, depressing yet determined walk of a man who has nothing left in life except the impulse to simply soldier on. Amen brother.
I eventually reach flat ground, and supercharge myself up to about 2 miles an hour. I get to the bar. It is, of course, closed and abandoned. Except no! There is a lonely looking dude sitting outside, in front of a grill. There’s nothing on the grill, but I’m in no position to pry. Can he call me a taxi? Maybe. It is, at this point 4:30 in the morning. The walk has taken some time. He says the cab is coming. I sit in pain. I ask him to call again. Still coming. More pain. I get up to go. Cab shows up. I try not to kiss the cabbie. I succeed. The night, such as it was, is drawing to a close. I stumble/limp into my room at 5am. My alarm is set for 5:30am. So I do what only a true idiot, who has learned nothing that life has tried to teach him, would do. I go to sleep. Will be easy to get up in a half hour, right? And if I don’t, my roommate will surely wake me in plenty of time to catch the 6am bus, which he also is riding. Right?
I wake up at 6:20. Because Fate thinks she’s funny. I call my friend. Yes, she’s on the bus. Yes...it has left. Did my roommate try to wake me? Nope, that didn’t happen. Okay then. I won’t cry. Big boys don’t. Just gonna check out, hurry up to the bus stand, and see if the company will give me a discounted ticket. Of course, when I check out, my roommate also hasn’t paid his half of the room. So that’s fun. Who likes money anyway? I limp up to the bus stand. They will give me another ticket, for an extra 10,000 shillings. Swell. All this money was just driving me crazy anyway. I get on the bus, extremely excited about a 9 hour drive, by myself, on a hard seat, on a pretty awful road. Thankfully I can’t manage to stay conscious for more than about two hours of the whole trip. Luckily, when I arrive, I can sort of walk. I’m so excited by this fact that I waltz off the bus, completely forgetting the plastic bag with all my toiletries. Cuz who likes to be clean? Finally, against all odds, have fought through all manner of obstacles, I reach my hotel in Dar. I am ready to shower, change, weep for a while, then eat a horse, dead or alive. I get to the desk, ready to be presented with the keys to my sanity. What’s that you say? There’s no reservation. Didn’t my friend make one? Apparently not. It is at this point that I realize that I’ve lost my toiletries bag. It is at this point that I begin retracing all the decisions in my life that led me to this moment. It is, at this point, that I collapse in a corner, begin to suck on my thumb, and wait for someone else to make it better.
I had a day like this once. It was funnier, and less painful. I left New York in the morning in the van I needed to return. Got pulled over for speeding in New Jersey. As a result, I missed my train. Grand. Saw my parents, had lunch with a buddy. My parents drove me for the next train. It pulled out as we pulled in. Grander. My parents now drove me back to New Jersey (like breaking back into Alcatraz), and put me on the platform in plenty of time for the next train. It arrived, and I got on. And it promptly started going west. New York was east. Four hours or so later, I got off the subway in New York. A four hour journey had taken eleven. When I got off the subway, for the first (and hopefully last) time in my life, I bend down and kissed the New York sidewalk (if you have since kissed these lips, I apologize). That day was annoying, but it was funny. This day, in Tanzania, was painful. It was long and it was embarrassing. And after my thumb was removed from my mouth, after I was placed into a room, and after I had taken the most needed shower in the history of man, the first thing I thought of was all of you. Because while this day long, painful, and embarrassing, that does not mean it cannot be funny. All that’s needed to turn an awful experience into a funny story is a willing audience. So now, as always, I salute you, dear readers. Before, all I had was a sore bottom, no shampoo, and a series of regrets. Now, I’ve got a story.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Given Days
So...breasts. There are many of them in the world, they’re all around me, and they’re often out. Not like people go running around naked or anything like that. But nursing children has gotta be done, there ain’t no formula....and the women here are, as a rule, rather charitably endowed. Which means that during conversations, or even meetings, one of the most important skills for a Peace Corps Volunteer to cultivate is the ability to maintain eye contact...no matter what. It’s gotten to the point that Cirque du Soleil could be performing naked behind whoever I’m talking with. I might not be listening, but I’m looking you in the eye.
Legs, on the other hand, are a horse of a different color. Tanzanian women do not show their legs. Not their knees, not their upper calves. Doesn’t happen. And you just kind of get used to that. Then all of a sudden your boy is back in the United States, where the Bill of Rights specifically allows for the showing of as much upper thigh as possible. Not only is he back in the United States of Amazing, but he’s at a water park. Where people where bathing suits. And suddenly the eye contact skills come in handy once again. Not that I was ogling around ogling like a degenerate (maybe a little), but more that I had to fight the urge to tell half of the people I passed by that, for the sake of communal decency, they needed to cover up. Now. There were no Victorian bathing costumes handy, or I would have been slinging those babies like it was 1799.
Have been noticing a weird dichotomy in Tanzania. My work takes me into town fairly often. When I say town, I generally mean Mafinga or Iringa. Mafinga has maybe 50,000 people, Iringa maybe double that. Both have electricity, running water, TVs in most houses, a couple halfway decent restaurants, and a ton of bars. These people don’t grow corn. They buy it. Now most of the people who live in town either came from rural villages, or have family who still live there, or both. They travel vijijini (to the villages) pretty often, they know how to swing a jembe (hoe), and they respect the rural life, even though they don’t really want to live porini (in the wild). But not all. The weirdest thing has happened to me a few times. I’ve had Tanzanians, people who were born, bred, and have lived their entire lives in cities or bigger towns, absolutely bust a gut laughing when I tell them I live in a village. What do you use for electricity, they ask? I don’t have any, I say. How do you get your water, they ask? I carry it. Then they start laughing. They make jokes. How will you call us? Do you have cell service? Or do you have to climb a tree?
No. No trees involved. Thanks.
It IS funny. I get it. I come from a fairly developed nation, and the notion of me sitting outside, hand-scrubbing me civvies, still makes me laugh, even though I do it every Thursday. But this isn’t my country. It’s theirs. And the rural life is a foreign concept to them. So is the poverty. There’s this huge and growing disconnect between rural and urban Tanzania. 50% of rural households are designated as living in poverty, compared to 38% urban. 85% of the country’s poor live in rural areas. Health care is also far worse in the villages. So is education. So, oddly enough, are taxes. Rural Tanzanians pay a ton more taxes (for schools, water systems, road services, construction of village buildings, etc.), mostly because they are much easier to find then their cosmopolitan brethren. Tanzania had 8 million people 50 years ago. Now there are more than 40 million people, and a greater and greater number are moving into town every year (urban growth rate is 5%, rural is 2%). There was even a Tanzanian television show called Maisha Plus (Life...Plus) where they sent 10 urbanites off to live in the villages for a few weeks or months, and it was hilarious, because none of them had any idea what the hell to do (Paris, Nicole, anyone?). Development is good in a lot of ways. A good education, water, light, roads, none of these are bad things. But when I, who have lived here for 14 months, have seen and experienced a side of Tanzania that some Tanzanians are unwilling to acknowledge...I see a problem. When villagers who earn well under $2 a day are being governed exclusively by people with Landcruisers and refrigerators...I see a disconnect.
If you ever want an interesting look at a part of the world not all that far from me, read What is the What, by David Eggers. It’s written pamoja (together) with a Sudanese man, Valentino Achak Deng, who had to flee his country in the 80’s because of the widespread slaughter of Southern Sudanese by the North (this is, of course, ongoing, but we’ll set that aside for the moment). He paints a beautiful picture of rural Sudan, and he talks about an argument that gets right to the heart of the problem that a lot of development workers have. One rich man in his village buys a shiny, shiny, shiny, new bicycle. Nobody has ever seen anything this beautiful. Men are ready to divorce their wives and marry it (kidding). But then a debate breaks out in the community. The bicycle is covered in plastic wrap for transport. Many men in the village don’t want the owner to remove the plastic wrapping. Because then...the bicycle will get dirty. Whereas if we don’t remove the plastic...the plastic gets dirty.
This isn’t me being funny. There are plenty of bicycles I’ve seen in Tanzania with the plastic wrapping still on, where it’s been for years. It’s tied up somehow in this belief that if the thing itself is never tarnished, it’s still perfect. Even if it looks horrible. And I get it. I got a new pair of running shoes for Christmas, and I took a picture of them, before I ran them into the ground. And my villagers don’t have cameras. But where we get into trouble is when this desire to preserve the perfection of things overrides the desire to use them. Another story (this is third hand, so the details might be a bit sketch): an aid organization, in another country, gives a village school a set of colored pencils and a coloring book for each student. The organization comes back a couple years later, and one of the reps who was there for the last giveaway asks if the kids liked using the coloring sets. The head teacher of the school smiles, nods, and leads the aid worker to the storage room, where we find, of course, all the coloring sets sitting, unused, in their original wrappers. We are saving them for a special day, he says. For kesho (tomorrow), maybe? But kesho never comes.
Would like to close this post with a little bit about a particular Tanzanian phrase that always strikes me deeply. Two or three times, when I have heard a friend talk about the death of someone close to them, they have said, “Mungu alimpenda mno”, or “nilimpenda sana, lakini Mungu alimpenda zaidi”. “God loved him/her too much” or “I loved him very much, but God loved him more”. One of my very best friends said that to me a few days ago, before going to the funeral of one of her old friends. There is something beautiful, I think, about death being treated like that, like a going home. We only have so many years, so many days, so many hours. And then they’re gone. I’m not sure what I believe. I didn’t come here to learn about faith, and yet faith is what more and more of my writings are about. Likewise, I didn’t come here to find my purpose, and yet the question following me every day is: what will I do with my given days? This time, this job, this side of life, have meant more to me than I can ever express in these many meager words. But it’s halfway over. Every new day is another step down the hill, not up it. But down the hill towards what?
Legs, on the other hand, are a horse of a different color. Tanzanian women do not show their legs. Not their knees, not their upper calves. Doesn’t happen. And you just kind of get used to that. Then all of a sudden your boy is back in the United States, where the Bill of Rights specifically allows for the showing of as much upper thigh as possible. Not only is he back in the United States of Amazing, but he’s at a water park. Where people where bathing suits. And suddenly the eye contact skills come in handy once again. Not that I was ogling around ogling like a degenerate (maybe a little), but more that I had to fight the urge to tell half of the people I passed by that, for the sake of communal decency, they needed to cover up. Now. There were no Victorian bathing costumes handy, or I would have been slinging those babies like it was 1799.
Have been noticing a weird dichotomy in Tanzania. My work takes me into town fairly often. When I say town, I generally mean Mafinga or Iringa. Mafinga has maybe 50,000 people, Iringa maybe double that. Both have electricity, running water, TVs in most houses, a couple halfway decent restaurants, and a ton of bars. These people don’t grow corn. They buy it. Now most of the people who live in town either came from rural villages, or have family who still live there, or both. They travel vijijini (to the villages) pretty often, they know how to swing a jembe (hoe), and they respect the rural life, even though they don’t really want to live porini (in the wild). But not all. The weirdest thing has happened to me a few times. I’ve had Tanzanians, people who were born, bred, and have lived their entire lives in cities or bigger towns, absolutely bust a gut laughing when I tell them I live in a village. What do you use for electricity, they ask? I don’t have any, I say. How do you get your water, they ask? I carry it. Then they start laughing. They make jokes. How will you call us? Do you have cell service? Or do you have to climb a tree?
No. No trees involved. Thanks.
It IS funny. I get it. I come from a fairly developed nation, and the notion of me sitting outside, hand-scrubbing me civvies, still makes me laugh, even though I do it every Thursday. But this isn’t my country. It’s theirs. And the rural life is a foreign concept to them. So is the poverty. There’s this huge and growing disconnect between rural and urban Tanzania. 50% of rural households are designated as living in poverty, compared to 38% urban. 85% of the country’s poor live in rural areas. Health care is also far worse in the villages. So is education. So, oddly enough, are taxes. Rural Tanzanians pay a ton more taxes (for schools, water systems, road services, construction of village buildings, etc.), mostly because they are much easier to find then their cosmopolitan brethren. Tanzania had 8 million people 50 years ago. Now there are more than 40 million people, and a greater and greater number are moving into town every year (urban growth rate is 5%, rural is 2%). There was even a Tanzanian television show called Maisha Plus (Life...Plus) where they sent 10 urbanites off to live in the villages for a few weeks or months, and it was hilarious, because none of them had any idea what the hell to do (Paris, Nicole, anyone?). Development is good in a lot of ways. A good education, water, light, roads, none of these are bad things. But when I, who have lived here for 14 months, have seen and experienced a side of Tanzania that some Tanzanians are unwilling to acknowledge...I see a problem. When villagers who earn well under $2 a day are being governed exclusively by people with Landcruisers and refrigerators...I see a disconnect.
If you ever want an interesting look at a part of the world not all that far from me, read What is the What, by David Eggers. It’s written pamoja (together) with a Sudanese man, Valentino Achak Deng, who had to flee his country in the 80’s because of the widespread slaughter of Southern Sudanese by the North (this is, of course, ongoing, but we’ll set that aside for the moment). He paints a beautiful picture of rural Sudan, and he talks about an argument that gets right to the heart of the problem that a lot of development workers have. One rich man in his village buys a shiny, shiny, shiny, new bicycle. Nobody has ever seen anything this beautiful. Men are ready to divorce their wives and marry it (kidding). But then a debate breaks out in the community. The bicycle is covered in plastic wrap for transport. Many men in the village don’t want the owner to remove the plastic wrapping. Because then...the bicycle will get dirty. Whereas if we don’t remove the plastic...the plastic gets dirty.
This isn’t me being funny. There are plenty of bicycles I’ve seen in Tanzania with the plastic wrapping still on, where it’s been for years. It’s tied up somehow in this belief that if the thing itself is never tarnished, it’s still perfect. Even if it looks horrible. And I get it. I got a new pair of running shoes for Christmas, and I took a picture of them, before I ran them into the ground. And my villagers don’t have cameras. But where we get into trouble is when this desire to preserve the perfection of things overrides the desire to use them. Another story (this is third hand, so the details might be a bit sketch): an aid organization, in another country, gives a village school a set of colored pencils and a coloring book for each student. The organization comes back a couple years later, and one of the reps who was there for the last giveaway asks if the kids liked using the coloring sets. The head teacher of the school smiles, nods, and leads the aid worker to the storage room, where we find, of course, all the coloring sets sitting, unused, in their original wrappers. We are saving them for a special day, he says. For kesho (tomorrow), maybe? But kesho never comes.
Would like to close this post with a little bit about a particular Tanzanian phrase that always strikes me deeply. Two or three times, when I have heard a friend talk about the death of someone close to them, they have said, “Mungu alimpenda mno”, or “nilimpenda sana, lakini Mungu alimpenda zaidi”. “God loved him/her too much” or “I loved him very much, but God loved him more”. One of my very best friends said that to me a few days ago, before going to the funeral of one of her old friends. There is something beautiful, I think, about death being treated like that, like a going home. We only have so many years, so many days, so many hours. And then they’re gone. I’m not sure what I believe. I didn’t come here to learn about faith, and yet faith is what more and more of my writings are about. Likewise, I didn’t come here to find my purpose, and yet the question following me every day is: what will I do with my given days? This time, this job, this side of life, have meant more to me than I can ever express in these many meager words. But it’s halfway over. Every new day is another step down the hill, not up it. But down the hill towards what?
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Leaving Home and Coming Home
I stepped off the bus into a dry heat. I shook a few hands, picked up my bags, and made my way up the street. My front door was locked, and the lock was rusted. Used the back door. Put my bags down, stretched, and walked up to the canyon, where I had last looked over this little slice of the world. It had been 25 days since I’d been in my village. In that time I had seen 2 of my best friends married to 2 beautiful people, been welcomed home into a house I’d never seen before, been greeted at the airport by a reception committee that I hadn’t seen for a year (except on my bedroom door), rafted down a river, lost sunglasses, kayaked down a river, got bit by a spider, healed, addressed a Rotary Club, helped stage the entertainment for Peace Corps’ 50th Anniversary celebration in Tanzania, delivered a well-received speech at said celebration, knocked beer bottles off ski poles with a frisbee, watched fireworks over water, drank beer, jumped fences, gave toasts, got bought shots, won at trivia, went on roller coasters, saw the Phillies ring the bell, saw old friends, hugged my mother, lost to my father at pool, drove my sister crazy, and fell in love all over again. There were hellos and goodbyes and so longs, there was crying and laughing and, by god, there was dancing. And now...now it’s over. Until next time. Until next time.
Coming back to the village was like remembering an old song. The smells, the faces, the air. My house is still here. My friends thought I’d left them, but were happy to be proven wrong. My cat had forsaken me, but I lured him back with fish, affection, and promises I don’t intend to keep. And my work...my work. Got back on a Thursday, and after about half an hour to digest the fact that this life was not imagined (no more than my American one, anyway), I realized that it was, in theory, a work day for my tree nursery. So I thought I’d go have me a look, see how the pine seedlings are doing. I was prepared (and mildly expecting) for some regression, for some dead seedlings. Yet nothing, nothing at all, could have prepared me for how damn proud I was when I arrived, and found...people. Working. Working hard. Thrilled to see me, but as a friend, not as a savior. Green, happy, tiny pine trees. It....works. This wasn’t just some cockamamie scheme, because now they believe in the work we’re doing. And in that belief lies all the difference. I would be remiss if I did not give all the credit to one Charles Kiswaga (I call him K-Swagga), who is the unrelenting taskmaster that actually made this happen, that made a cranky, travel-sore volunteer feel like a proud papa on the hour of his homecoming. Here’s to you, K-Swagga.
I have to move again. Not far, at least. Not this time. My village, unbeknownst to me (yet knownst to them), only had a one-year lease on my house (I use the term lease loosely), and it is up. So they have built a new house at the primary school which will house myself, future volunteers, and eventually, a primary school teacher or two. Yet not eleven months after I boldly claimed that this house would be the longest standing home that I would have had since high school...out I go, once more, into limbo. I have not stayed anywhere for more than 10 months in the last 8 years. It’s not a bad thing, not really. An old mentor once told me that your first five apartments should be better stories than apartments...check. But all this moving has caused a phenomenon that I’ve noticed in myself and many of my friends. I go home both ways. When I was headed to America, I was going home. When I was headed back to the village, I was headed back home. I've got one year left in a spectacular job...but then it's time to find one home. Just one.
To finish: I was graced with an opportunity to give 4 speeches in 3 weeks. The first of these was the speech I gave at the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps’ work in Tanzania. I shared the dais that night with the Director of Peace Corps, the Ambassador of the United States to Tanzania, the Under-Secretary of the Tanzanian Ministry of Education, and my boss, the Director of Peace Corps Tanzania. It was one of the greatest honors of my life. At least a dozen people helped me to write the speech you are about to read, and without even one of them, its reception would have been impossible. Thank you Andrea, Brian, Stephen, Natalie, Anne, Katie, Paul, and all the rest. It very recently occurred to me that what I’m going through right now is not an introduction to my life...it is my life. And though I may live quite a long time, I will never forget coming down from the podium that night...and seeing people standing. And applauding. For one amazing night, in the middle of Tanzania, I was a mile off the ground. And then I got on the plane. For a whole other adventure.
Anywho. Here's the speech. I hope you like it.
Dr. Florence Turuku, Ambassador Lenhardt, Director Williams, Country Director Wojnar-Diagne. Distinguished guests, fellow volunteers, ndugu wenzangu. Take a moment to look around. We are not natural neighbors. We come from different generations, from different states and different countries, from different religions and backgrounds. But today we are united in a community of hope, brought together by an unshaken devotion to our common humanity. So it is today, and so it was at the beginning of our journey.
50 years ago a group of driven individuals arrived in what was then Tanganyika. It wasn’t a country yet, it wouldn’t be for four more months, and when they arrived, they were greeted by a sign which read “Beware the lions” And there it started. But who were these people, these reckless ambassadors? Reading the first curious accounts, the first letters home from a new frontier, one gets a sense of their characters. Who were they? They were George Schreiber, who talked about embodying “ a pioneer type of spirit”. They were George Johnson, who said “Peace Corps exists as an embodiment of a conviction that the best way to achieve global understanding is to put Americans in contact with other nations.” There were 35 of them, engineers, surveyors, and geologists. They came from Princeton, Harvard, Michigan. And they were drawn together by a man who stood on the steps of Ann Arbor and told the assembled students that based on “your willingness to not merely serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete.” 5 months later, the Peace Corps was signed into law, with Kennedy again telling us that “We will send those abroad who are committed to the concept which motivates the Peace Corps. It will not be easy:”
Across the nation, people were moved. They volunteered, they went to boot camp (Drill sergeant and all), and they became the first soldiers in an army of peace. 50 years later, that army has fought poverty, hunger, disease, and subjugation in 139 countries, side by side with peoples of every language, tribe, and religion. Kennedy’s words have outlived him. The army fights on. And though it sometimes feels as though we are pushing at the ocean, progress has been made.
Yet for all the measurable progress, so much of what Peace Corps does is unquantifiable. There is no box that shows how amazed the children were when the seedlings began to grow, no graph to measure the change in a woman living with HIV when she realized she had become a leader. And more: how many Tanzanians knew, until the moment they were proven wrong, that Americans could never swing a jembe? How many Tanzanians did not believe that we could dance? And how many of us volunteers never guessed at the number of different ways life could be lived, and lived beautifully, until we came here? We might have read about the poverty, but how little did we know about the generosity? These things may be unquantifiable, but they are no less real. Mwalimu Nyerere said "To measure a country's wealth by its gross national product is to measure things, not satisfactions." Many other organizations build more things. Yet I doubt there is another organization that builds more satisfactions.
But where do we go from here? The goal of our work is to make the continuation of our work unnecessary. We are not there yet, in fact we are nowhere near the limits of our potential. Success is based on expectations, but it is also limited by them, and we are limiting ourselves, and our communities. We are still prisoners of what Michael Gerson called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”. We must never tire of pushing ever upward. We have come so very far, Tanzanian and American alike, still we have so very far yet to go. This is a party to celebrate 50 years of friendship and accomplishment, but it can be more. Let us stand together tonight and take this anniversary as an opportunity to recommit to the spirit of the Peace Corps, to remember the sense of duty that brought us all here, to do better, to go farther, to try harder. We can expect far more from one another, but we can also offer far more of ourselves. American poet Robert Browning wrote, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Today is a golden opportunity on this golden anniversary to not set limits on our potential, but rather expand our expectations.
I don’t know much. I left America a year and a week ago, and I’m just beginning to realize what I don’t understand. But I love this job. There is nothing like it. I said goodbye to everything and everyone I held dear, climbed onto a plane with a large group of strangers, got pushed out at 30,000 feet, landed, and began to plant trees, dig wells, and teach beekeeping. One day, maybe, I will get good at my job, at which point it will be time to leave. And after all of that, after the level of insanity I’ve put myself and my loved ones through, the thought that will keep me up at night: is how do I get back to Tanzania?
Because somewhere along the way, something changes. We came here as ambassadors from America, to show Tanzanians what America is really all about. But now…now we have become ambassadors to America, from Tanzania. For the rest of our days we will do all we can to represent Tanzania: its beauty and its need, its poverty and its riches, its depth of generosity and humanity. The Kiswahili word for together is “pamoja”. It literally means “in one place”. And if that’s the case, none of us will ever be together again. A part of us never left America, the land of the free, the home of the brave. But a part of us will never leave Tanzania, “nakupenda na moyo yote”. Part of us will always be Tanzanian, rising with the sun, gripping the hands of strangers-turned-family, forever exchanging with unguarded smiles the news of the morning.
Peace Corps is not for everybody. As Kennedy said, “it will not be easy.” It is painful, and it is lonely. Yet none of us here today have to be here. We could be living closer to our loved ones. We could be making more money. We could be cooler, or more comfortable, and God knows we could be cleaner. But each of us decided that there were more important things to us than comfort, that while a ship in the harbor may be safe, that is not what ships are built for. Everyone here today, Tanzanian and American, has dedicated a portion of their lives to the belief that with devotion, and kindness, and an insistence on a brighter future, change is possible. Everyone here today is part of something greater than themselves. We are all soldiers in an army of peace. An army that marches on, as our President Barack Obama said, “with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us.”
Coming back to the village was like remembering an old song. The smells, the faces, the air. My house is still here. My friends thought I’d left them, but were happy to be proven wrong. My cat had forsaken me, but I lured him back with fish, affection, and promises I don’t intend to keep. And my work...my work. Got back on a Thursday, and after about half an hour to digest the fact that this life was not imagined (no more than my American one, anyway), I realized that it was, in theory, a work day for my tree nursery. So I thought I’d go have me a look, see how the pine seedlings are doing. I was prepared (and mildly expecting) for some regression, for some dead seedlings. Yet nothing, nothing at all, could have prepared me for how damn proud I was when I arrived, and found...people. Working. Working hard. Thrilled to see me, but as a friend, not as a savior. Green, happy, tiny pine trees. It....works. This wasn’t just some cockamamie scheme, because now they believe in the work we’re doing. And in that belief lies all the difference. I would be remiss if I did not give all the credit to one Charles Kiswaga (I call him K-Swagga), who is the unrelenting taskmaster that actually made this happen, that made a cranky, travel-sore volunteer feel like a proud papa on the hour of his homecoming. Here’s to you, K-Swagga.
I have to move again. Not far, at least. Not this time. My village, unbeknownst to me (yet knownst to them), only had a one-year lease on my house (I use the term lease loosely), and it is up. So they have built a new house at the primary school which will house myself, future volunteers, and eventually, a primary school teacher or two. Yet not eleven months after I boldly claimed that this house would be the longest standing home that I would have had since high school...out I go, once more, into limbo. I have not stayed anywhere for more than 10 months in the last 8 years. It’s not a bad thing, not really. An old mentor once told me that your first five apartments should be better stories than apartments...check. But all this moving has caused a phenomenon that I’ve noticed in myself and many of my friends. I go home both ways. When I was headed to America, I was going home. When I was headed back to the village, I was headed back home. I've got one year left in a spectacular job...but then it's time to find one home. Just one.
To finish: I was graced with an opportunity to give 4 speeches in 3 weeks. The first of these was the speech I gave at the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps’ work in Tanzania. I shared the dais that night with the Director of Peace Corps, the Ambassador of the United States to Tanzania, the Under-Secretary of the Tanzanian Ministry of Education, and my boss, the Director of Peace Corps Tanzania. It was one of the greatest honors of my life. At least a dozen people helped me to write the speech you are about to read, and without even one of them, its reception would have been impossible. Thank you Andrea, Brian, Stephen, Natalie, Anne, Katie, Paul, and all the rest. It very recently occurred to me that what I’m going through right now is not an introduction to my life...it is my life. And though I may live quite a long time, I will never forget coming down from the podium that night...and seeing people standing. And applauding. For one amazing night, in the middle of Tanzania, I was a mile off the ground. And then I got on the plane. For a whole other adventure.
Anywho. Here's the speech. I hope you like it.
Dr. Florence Turuku, Ambassador Lenhardt, Director Williams, Country Director Wojnar-Diagne. Distinguished guests, fellow volunteers, ndugu wenzangu. Take a moment to look around. We are not natural neighbors. We come from different generations, from different states and different countries, from different religions and backgrounds. But today we are united in a community of hope, brought together by an unshaken devotion to our common humanity. So it is today, and so it was at the beginning of our journey.
50 years ago a group of driven individuals arrived in what was then Tanganyika. It wasn’t a country yet, it wouldn’t be for four more months, and when they arrived, they were greeted by a sign which read “Beware the lions” And there it started. But who were these people, these reckless ambassadors? Reading the first curious accounts, the first letters home from a new frontier, one gets a sense of their characters. Who were they? They were George Schreiber, who talked about embodying “ a pioneer type of spirit”. They were George Johnson, who said “Peace Corps exists as an embodiment of a conviction that the best way to achieve global understanding is to put Americans in contact with other nations.” There were 35 of them, engineers, surveyors, and geologists. They came from Princeton, Harvard, Michigan. And they were drawn together by a man who stood on the steps of Ann Arbor and told the assembled students that based on “your willingness to not merely serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete.” 5 months later, the Peace Corps was signed into law, with Kennedy again telling us that “We will send those abroad who are committed to the concept which motivates the Peace Corps. It will not be easy:”
Across the nation, people were moved. They volunteered, they went to boot camp (Drill sergeant and all), and they became the first soldiers in an army of peace. 50 years later, that army has fought poverty, hunger, disease, and subjugation in 139 countries, side by side with peoples of every language, tribe, and religion. Kennedy’s words have outlived him. The army fights on. And though it sometimes feels as though we are pushing at the ocean, progress has been made.
Yet for all the measurable progress, so much of what Peace Corps does is unquantifiable. There is no box that shows how amazed the children were when the seedlings began to grow, no graph to measure the change in a woman living with HIV when she realized she had become a leader. And more: how many Tanzanians knew, until the moment they were proven wrong, that Americans could never swing a jembe? How many Tanzanians did not believe that we could dance? And how many of us volunteers never guessed at the number of different ways life could be lived, and lived beautifully, until we came here? We might have read about the poverty, but how little did we know about the generosity? These things may be unquantifiable, but they are no less real. Mwalimu Nyerere said "To measure a country's wealth by its gross national product is to measure things, not satisfactions." Many other organizations build more things. Yet I doubt there is another organization that builds more satisfactions.
But where do we go from here? The goal of our work is to make the continuation of our work unnecessary. We are not there yet, in fact we are nowhere near the limits of our potential. Success is based on expectations, but it is also limited by them, and we are limiting ourselves, and our communities. We are still prisoners of what Michael Gerson called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”. We must never tire of pushing ever upward. We have come so very far, Tanzanian and American alike, still we have so very far yet to go. This is a party to celebrate 50 years of friendship and accomplishment, but it can be more. Let us stand together tonight and take this anniversary as an opportunity to recommit to the spirit of the Peace Corps, to remember the sense of duty that brought us all here, to do better, to go farther, to try harder. We can expect far more from one another, but we can also offer far more of ourselves. American poet Robert Browning wrote, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Today is a golden opportunity on this golden anniversary to not set limits on our potential, but rather expand our expectations.
I don’t know much. I left America a year and a week ago, and I’m just beginning to realize what I don’t understand. But I love this job. There is nothing like it. I said goodbye to everything and everyone I held dear, climbed onto a plane with a large group of strangers, got pushed out at 30,000 feet, landed, and began to plant trees, dig wells, and teach beekeeping. One day, maybe, I will get good at my job, at which point it will be time to leave. And after all of that, after the level of insanity I’ve put myself and my loved ones through, the thought that will keep me up at night: is how do I get back to Tanzania?
Because somewhere along the way, something changes. We came here as ambassadors from America, to show Tanzanians what America is really all about. But now…now we have become ambassadors to America, from Tanzania. For the rest of our days we will do all we can to represent Tanzania: its beauty and its need, its poverty and its riches, its depth of generosity and humanity. The Kiswahili word for together is “pamoja”. It literally means “in one place”. And if that’s the case, none of us will ever be together again. A part of us never left America, the land of the free, the home of the brave. But a part of us will never leave Tanzania, “nakupenda na moyo yote”. Part of us will always be Tanzanian, rising with the sun, gripping the hands of strangers-turned-family, forever exchanging with unguarded smiles the news of the morning.
Peace Corps is not for everybody. As Kennedy said, “it will not be easy.” It is painful, and it is lonely. Yet none of us here today have to be here. We could be living closer to our loved ones. We could be making more money. We could be cooler, or more comfortable, and God knows we could be cleaner. But each of us decided that there were more important things to us than comfort, that while a ship in the harbor may be safe, that is not what ships are built for. Everyone here today, Tanzanian and American, has dedicated a portion of their lives to the belief that with devotion, and kindness, and an insistence on a brighter future, change is possible. Everyone here today is part of something greater than themselves. We are all soldiers in an army of peace. An army that marches on, as our President Barack Obama said, “with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us.”
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Halftime
When the change was made uptown
And the big man joined the band
From the coastline to the city
All the little pretties raise their hands
Just a thought before I get into the body of this post. Listen to Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, by Bruce and the E Street Band. Listen for the above lines. After “the big man joined the band”, Clarence Clemons plays a quick little riff, just so we all know real sure who Bruce is talking about. And it’s perfect. It’s fun, and cute, but it endows that little stretch of music with a personality. We feel like we are a part of something. Clarence Clemons passed away a couple of days ago. Bruce Springsteen said, “with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band.” And he’s right. Because in that little splice of music I described, and in a hundred others, Clarence Clemons still exists, as mighty and as marvelous as ever. And that is as close to immortality as we can ever hope to come. I will miss you, Big Man. But you’ll always be just a needle and a record away.
On to the news of the week. We did a Girls Empowerment Conference! It was really phenomenal. Ran around like a chicken who’s head had been cut off and then set on fire. This was mostly due to the fact that I did the lion’s share of the guest and site prep for the conference (transportation is easier for me than a lot of people). So when push came to shove, only I knew what was going on for some stretches of the conference. And when guests decided not to show up, it was me burning up the phone lines to find replacements. But it was really an amazing experience. Highlights include:
Me needing two hours and five different nurses at the district hospital before somebody will give me a wooden penis.
Said wooden penis being for the purposes of demonstrating circumcisions, and therefore having a little wooly hood, which the nurse demonstrated to great effect.
Me being used as a self-defense dummy. Turns out everybody, everywhere, finds a man being kicked in the groin hilarious.
Getting up and running with five of the girls for the first two mornings. It was freezing, and they had never done distance running, and they were awesome.
Jumping rope with teachers, students, Peace Corps Volunteers, everybody mixing in and out of the double dutch. Just an amazing scene.
A student asking a Tanzanian policewoman why so many cops take bribes. Trust me when I tell you, this took at ton of confidence for a Tanzanian female student to ask this question. I was blown away.
Another student asking a Tanzanian headmistress why so many male teachers impregnate their students, and what is to be done about it? See my previous note. Was real, real proud.
Me doing a Matt Nied-inspired booty dance for about 20 seconds as part of our talent show skit.
Watching the girls do their disco on the last night. Awful speaker, horrible lighting…and plain, unadulterated joy.
There are more stories, but lots of them are more disastrous. Best saved for face-to-face conversations…which just might be around the bend.
Also did a beekeeping seminar and a tree-grafting training. The beekeeping seminar was bombin’; the experts came in and gave a 3-hour seminar, then built a beehive right in front of my villagers (some of whom were blind…but they have great vision). The tree-grafting was all me, but the group got a bunch of people together, and once they got the hang of it, I couldn’t stop them, they wanted to do it for hours. It is amazing how excited people get here once they acquire a new skill. You can see them almost swell up a little bit. My tree nursery is also coming along swimmingly: we have about 8,000 pine seedlings (they grow a lot of timber by me), and we will be selling in December. My AIDS group has gotten together enough money for pig sheds, and once they build them I will be helping them to buy some superb swine. The milk cows is the last main thing, but I have several ideas for that, and I’m also doing it in conjunction with the great Kenzo, who is my nearest Peace Corps neighbor. She will lead us to the promised land, the great Kenzo. So that was the state of my village when I bid it kwa heri (goodbye).
Said goodbye to the village while my potatoes were boiling, went up to this amazing ridgeline which overlooks a 40 foot drop or so, and from it you can see for, as the Who said, miles and miles. The full moon was just coming up, and it felt like I was standing on the edge of the world. Which reminds me of something Yoda wrote me (Mom) not so long ago, that the feeling of being on the edge, of living a life of excitement and unpredictability, and even danger (rarely danger here), is addicting for a lot of people. I know it is for me. In some ways, I can’t wait to get back to my village. But I think it can take care of itself for a few weeks. I have more pressing matters to attend to…which brings us to:
I said goodbye to most of you on June 12, 2010. I said goodbye to my sister on June 13, my parents and my lady on June 14, and America herself on June 15. I never, in all my life, thought I would do a lap around the sun without seeing all the people I love. But here we are, one lap down, one to go. But first, a brief halftime. I’ve never been this excited for anything, ever. I’m jumping out of my skin. But I wanted to clear up a couple things before I saw all of you, so there would be no awkwardness:
1. I will not start weeping the first time I see a light bulb. We are definitely a little behind here, but no need to worry about me fleeing technology like a hermit. I am, after all, keeping a blog.
2. That being said…there might be a few moments during this trip when it is all a bit too much for me. I don’t get to see any of you, and suddenly I’m going to see all of you. I haven’t had root beer or a fridge in a year…now there is a fridge, and it’s filled with root beer! These are all wonderful things, but I certainly might get a little overwhelmed at times. If I do, no worries. I will simply wander outside, breathe some air, mutter in Kiswahili, relax, and rejoin the moment. So if that happens, do not fret, do not fear, I shall return.
3. The last night I was in my village, it was 35 degrees. Fahrenheit. It’s freezing. So no jokes about how hot Africa is. I’m coming home to get warm.
4. The final thing. Please don’t ask me a stock question, unless you want a stock response. I’ve been keeping this blog for a year, in an attempt to convey some part of what I’m experiencing, but so much of it I don’t even go into. This is has been and still is an unbelievable, life-changing experience. So if you ask me, “how’s Africa?”, I’m not gonna have much to say to that. It’s just kind of a hard thing to put into general terms. Whatever you want to know, I’m more than happy to talk for days about. But this has been a really important thing to me, and I’m not sure of my ability to condense it into an easy answer. I hope that makes sense.
So there it is. The last post. The buzzer-beater before the half. As Led Zeppelin wrote:
Its been a long time since I rock-and-rolled
Its been a long time since I did the stroll
Let me get back
Let me get back
Let me get back
Baby where I come from
Slaughter a pig, roll out a keg, prep the good china and the plastic plates. Time to rock and roll, time to strut the stroll. It’s been far, far, far too long. I cannot wait to hug all of you, I cannot wait to hear your stories and see your faces. I’ve been missing my old life for a long time now, and it’s hie time for me to hie my ass back where I belong. Break out the good whiskey and the pointy hats, tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree.
Sweet bird of freedom, take me home
And the big man joined the band
From the coastline to the city
All the little pretties raise their hands
Just a thought before I get into the body of this post. Listen to Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, by Bruce and the E Street Band. Listen for the above lines. After “the big man joined the band”, Clarence Clemons plays a quick little riff, just so we all know real sure who Bruce is talking about. And it’s perfect. It’s fun, and cute, but it endows that little stretch of music with a personality. We feel like we are a part of something. Clarence Clemons passed away a couple of days ago. Bruce Springsteen said, “with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band.” And he’s right. Because in that little splice of music I described, and in a hundred others, Clarence Clemons still exists, as mighty and as marvelous as ever. And that is as close to immortality as we can ever hope to come. I will miss you, Big Man. But you’ll always be just a needle and a record away.
On to the news of the week. We did a Girls Empowerment Conference! It was really phenomenal. Ran around like a chicken who’s head had been cut off and then set on fire. This was mostly due to the fact that I did the lion’s share of the guest and site prep for the conference (transportation is easier for me than a lot of people). So when push came to shove, only I knew what was going on for some stretches of the conference. And when guests decided not to show up, it was me burning up the phone lines to find replacements. But it was really an amazing experience. Highlights include:
Me needing two hours and five different nurses at the district hospital before somebody will give me a wooden penis.
Said wooden penis being for the purposes of demonstrating circumcisions, and therefore having a little wooly hood, which the nurse demonstrated to great effect.
Me being used as a self-defense dummy. Turns out everybody, everywhere, finds a man being kicked in the groin hilarious.
Getting up and running with five of the girls for the first two mornings. It was freezing, and they had never done distance running, and they were awesome.
Jumping rope with teachers, students, Peace Corps Volunteers, everybody mixing in and out of the double dutch. Just an amazing scene.
A student asking a Tanzanian policewoman why so many cops take bribes. Trust me when I tell you, this took at ton of confidence for a Tanzanian female student to ask this question. I was blown away.
Another student asking a Tanzanian headmistress why so many male teachers impregnate their students, and what is to be done about it? See my previous note. Was real, real proud.
Me doing a Matt Nied-inspired booty dance for about 20 seconds as part of our talent show skit.
Watching the girls do their disco on the last night. Awful speaker, horrible lighting…and plain, unadulterated joy.
There are more stories, but lots of them are more disastrous. Best saved for face-to-face conversations…which just might be around the bend.
Also did a beekeeping seminar and a tree-grafting training. The beekeeping seminar was bombin’; the experts came in and gave a 3-hour seminar, then built a beehive right in front of my villagers (some of whom were blind…but they have great vision). The tree-grafting was all me, but the group got a bunch of people together, and once they got the hang of it, I couldn’t stop them, they wanted to do it for hours. It is amazing how excited people get here once they acquire a new skill. You can see them almost swell up a little bit. My tree nursery is also coming along swimmingly: we have about 8,000 pine seedlings (they grow a lot of timber by me), and we will be selling in December. My AIDS group has gotten together enough money for pig sheds, and once they build them I will be helping them to buy some superb swine. The milk cows is the last main thing, but I have several ideas for that, and I’m also doing it in conjunction with the great Kenzo, who is my nearest Peace Corps neighbor. She will lead us to the promised land, the great Kenzo. So that was the state of my village when I bid it kwa heri (goodbye).
Said goodbye to the village while my potatoes were boiling, went up to this amazing ridgeline which overlooks a 40 foot drop or so, and from it you can see for, as the Who said, miles and miles. The full moon was just coming up, and it felt like I was standing on the edge of the world. Which reminds me of something Yoda wrote me (Mom) not so long ago, that the feeling of being on the edge, of living a life of excitement and unpredictability, and even danger (rarely danger here), is addicting for a lot of people. I know it is for me. In some ways, I can’t wait to get back to my village. But I think it can take care of itself for a few weeks. I have more pressing matters to attend to…which brings us to:
I said goodbye to most of you on June 12, 2010. I said goodbye to my sister on June 13, my parents and my lady on June 14, and America herself on June 15. I never, in all my life, thought I would do a lap around the sun without seeing all the people I love. But here we are, one lap down, one to go. But first, a brief halftime. I’ve never been this excited for anything, ever. I’m jumping out of my skin. But I wanted to clear up a couple things before I saw all of you, so there would be no awkwardness:
1. I will not start weeping the first time I see a light bulb. We are definitely a little behind here, but no need to worry about me fleeing technology like a hermit. I am, after all, keeping a blog.
2. That being said…there might be a few moments during this trip when it is all a bit too much for me. I don’t get to see any of you, and suddenly I’m going to see all of you. I haven’t had root beer or a fridge in a year…now there is a fridge, and it’s filled with root beer! These are all wonderful things, but I certainly might get a little overwhelmed at times. If I do, no worries. I will simply wander outside, breathe some air, mutter in Kiswahili, relax, and rejoin the moment. So if that happens, do not fret, do not fear, I shall return.
3. The last night I was in my village, it was 35 degrees. Fahrenheit. It’s freezing. So no jokes about how hot Africa is. I’m coming home to get warm.
4. The final thing. Please don’t ask me a stock question, unless you want a stock response. I’ve been keeping this blog for a year, in an attempt to convey some part of what I’m experiencing, but so much of it I don’t even go into. This is has been and still is an unbelievable, life-changing experience. So if you ask me, “how’s Africa?”, I’m not gonna have much to say to that. It’s just kind of a hard thing to put into general terms. Whatever you want to know, I’m more than happy to talk for days about. But this has been a really important thing to me, and I’m not sure of my ability to condense it into an easy answer. I hope that makes sense.
So there it is. The last post. The buzzer-beater before the half. As Led Zeppelin wrote:
Its been a long time since I rock-and-rolled
Its been a long time since I did the stroll
Let me get back
Let me get back
Let me get back
Baby where I come from
Slaughter a pig, roll out a keg, prep the good china and the plastic plates. Time to rock and roll, time to strut the stroll. It’s been far, far, far too long. I cannot wait to hug all of you, I cannot wait to hear your stories and see your faces. I’ve been missing my old life for a long time now, and it’s hie time for me to hie my ass back where I belong. Break out the good whiskey and the pointy hats, tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree.
Sweet bird of freedom, take me home
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Badass
Have been trying to load this blog for about two weeks now, but better late than never. 2nd to last blog post before I head for warmer climes (it’s freaking freezing here!)
We are preparing a girls empowerment conference at the moment. This involves many things, such as life skills, confidence building, dance parties, and lots of other sessions where Dan stands out in a field playing frisbee with his fellow males...because inside they’re talkin bout lady parts. I’m cool with being in the field.
What a Girls Empowerment Conference also involves is condom demonstrations. And while we can show the young lasses how to make the magic happen on a water bottle, banana, gently tapered carrot, or (insert your phallic vegetable of choice here...yeah), nothing beats a good old wooden penis. So I went to my village fundi (in this case, carpenter) with an unusual request. I wanted an uume wa mbao (a penis of wood). To which he replied (ever the thoughtful fundi), “unataka mbao laini, au ngumu?” You’ll understand why my giggles prevented me from answering for a few minutes after you read the following translation:
“Do you want hard wood or soft wood?”
Definitely hard wood. No warping. Definitely no warping. (Thank you, Rain Man)
A word about my cat. A talented mouser is my furry Kelsey. Not a day goes by that he does not bring me in a small present of a field mouse or a bird or a lizard. Then some days he brings in rats the size of my foot. Well played, sir cat. But the problem is that he, of course, enjoys the thrill of the hunt. By which I means he likes to play with his food. Which is fine in the normal course of things, but a little disturbing when I’m trying to have a meeting and he’s slowly slaughtering a bewildered varmit underneath my feet. Nothing, however, tops the day I awoke to the sound of him knocking over stuff in my living room, which usually means one of God’s smaller pests is near death’s door. And as it turned out, I was right. Because when I entered my main room, prepared to greet the day, I found a mouse floating face down in my cat’s water dish. It looked like a feline mob killing.
Was out a walkin’ the other day, round evenin’ time. The sun had set, but the light had not yet gone. I’ve always loved this time of day, when if you’re reading something you need to hurry, because the words grow fainter literally every second. I was looking off to the east, at the first few twinkle stars. A semi comes roaring by on the road, which is maybe thirty feet to my left, to the west. A reminder, if I wanted one (I don’t), how close is the world of diesel and capitalism and profit margins and iPhones and microwave ovens. I look back to my right, to the east, and I see a small cooking fire. A fire lit by native forests that are rapidly disappearing, a flickering symbol of the way life used to be, a way of cooking ugali and beans that has been around far longer than me...but might beat me to the grave. Find myself wondering, for the hundredth time, how one world can possibly hold all of this in it. More wonderful sights and sounds and people than I could meet in a dozen lifetimes, but the little sliver I’ve been privileged to behold keeps me in awe every single day.
I wonder, as I write the last part, if I’m guilty of romanticizing the poverty I see here. I think I absolutely am. But I make no real apologies to that. I do think life here is better in a lot of fundamental ways. Or if not better, perhaps simpler, and with that simplicity comes a grace that is treasured in America. Why is it treasured? Because of its scarcity. Here, it’s just how life goes. I miss all of you more than I can say, and when my clock hits zeroes, I’m coming back. Because I miss Americans. America...I’m not sure yet. Ask me in a month.
Two birthday celebration moments (only one of them actually happened on my birthday, but I like how we’ve all started to embrace the concept of a Birthday Week. Like the queen, we all get our seven day Jubilees.) The first was the day of my birthday, which was wonderful. I got text messages, facebook messages, and phone calls from lots of kickass people (namely all of you). I also got a piece of cake, got sung to, had a milkshake, smoked a cigar on a balcony, and saw possibly the most spectacular sunset of my life (though I think that almost every other day here, and I’m usually right). The sunset presented some logistical difficulties, however. We had to hike up to this massive rock that overlooks Iringa to watch it. But I was also jonesin for a vodka watermelon on my birthday (it ended up being made with local gin that comes from plastic baggies, but who’s counting?). So here’s the shida: it’s now getting near sunset. Have to buy the watermelon before sunset or the market or close. Do not have time to return it to our hostel. Do not want to hike up a mountain with a watermelon. Solution: find a storekeeper willing to hang onto my tikiti maji (watermelon) until we get back. Another shida: no store will be open then. So I puzzle and puzzle till my puzzler is sore, and then what to my wondering eyes should appear? The local police station. Which is how we find our hero, 6pm on his birthday, humbly asking the local constabulary to guard his birthday watermelon until his safe return.
This job rocks.
Celebration moment number two. I wrote in this blog many months ago about a wedding I went to, in far away Maduma (there was a guy guarding a cake with a stick). On the way back from that wedding there were about 30 Tanzanians in the back of the truck, and it was late, and it was cold. So what did they do? They sang the whole damn way. Flash forward: Saturday night we are at a beautiful resort in the hills near Mbeya. We want to get back to town. But taxis are scarce, and it’s a good 25 kilometers (real men use metric) back to our hostel. So we manage to shanghai a passing pickup truck. Three of us go in the cab…and the other 20 go in the flatbed. Now, it has an overhead frame, so we are able to hold on. But it’s late, and it’s cold. So what do we do? We sing the whole freaking way home. Television theme shows, 80’s Billy Joel, Journey, but nothing as loud as the Star Spangled Banner. There’s nothing like belonging to a community of people that are from home, and there’s nothing like being jammed into a truck like sardines with that group of people, cruising the miles on a dark dirt road, singing about the land of the free and the home of the brave. Happy Birthday to me.
Brief comic interlude. I taught my last Life Skills class of the semester last week. And because my co-teacher was off picking up a friend in the capital, I was solo. Which of course is the week we decided to do the sex talk with all the children. What fun for your boy. You want a true linguistics test? Try having someone explain how sex works, and how AIDS is transmitted, in their second language. Not easy. Not fun. So how do you make it easy and fun? Simple. Every time they answer a question or ask a good one, you teach them a new way to say “Awesome” in English. And if you do this, and you have the opportunity to have a classroom filled with Tanzanian students shout “Badass!” at the top of their lungs, you better take it. Because trust me, it will make your week.
I was sitting with my dear friend Kenzie one morning, and we were talking about something unimportant. And something about the moment: the coffee, the omelet we’d made on charcoal, the odd African cold, something brought the realization stinging to my eyes...I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to relive this. I may even succeed, on a few beautiful mornings in the middle of a forest somewhere in America. But what it really means is that I’m doomed to forever be torn, forever in two places. In Kiswahili the word for together is Pamoja. It literally means “one place”. And from the moment I got here...until the day I die, I think, I’ll never be together. I’ll always be Pawili. Two places. In a way, it’s torture. I feel like Sam at the end of the Ring Wars, divided, unwhole, wanting to dream all his old dreams of Rosie and the Shire, but knowing all the while that the man who started down the road at the onset of the journey is not the man who has returned. But on the other hand...I’m home. And when I come back...I’ll be home. While I’m here, I never, not for a moment, stop missing all of you. But when I’m back with you all, I will never, not even for an instant, be able to forget these blessed, fleeting years, and this beautiful, welcoming village. So many people spend their lives searching for one place where they belong, where they are loved and appreciated. Many never find it. I have two. And though these choices I’ve made have broken my heart once, and will break it again, I wouldn’t change a moment of any of it for all the stars in the sky.
We are preparing a girls empowerment conference at the moment. This involves many things, such as life skills, confidence building, dance parties, and lots of other sessions where Dan stands out in a field playing frisbee with his fellow males...because inside they’re talkin bout lady parts. I’m cool with being in the field.
What a Girls Empowerment Conference also involves is condom demonstrations. And while we can show the young lasses how to make the magic happen on a water bottle, banana, gently tapered carrot, or (insert your phallic vegetable of choice here...yeah), nothing beats a good old wooden penis. So I went to my village fundi (in this case, carpenter) with an unusual request. I wanted an uume wa mbao (a penis of wood). To which he replied (ever the thoughtful fundi), “unataka mbao laini, au ngumu?” You’ll understand why my giggles prevented me from answering for a few minutes after you read the following translation:
“Do you want hard wood or soft wood?”
Definitely hard wood. No warping. Definitely no warping. (Thank you, Rain Man)
A word about my cat. A talented mouser is my furry Kelsey. Not a day goes by that he does not bring me in a small present of a field mouse or a bird or a lizard. Then some days he brings in rats the size of my foot. Well played, sir cat. But the problem is that he, of course, enjoys the thrill of the hunt. By which I means he likes to play with his food. Which is fine in the normal course of things, but a little disturbing when I’m trying to have a meeting and he’s slowly slaughtering a bewildered varmit underneath my feet. Nothing, however, tops the day I awoke to the sound of him knocking over stuff in my living room, which usually means one of God’s smaller pests is near death’s door. And as it turned out, I was right. Because when I entered my main room, prepared to greet the day, I found a mouse floating face down in my cat’s water dish. It looked like a feline mob killing.
Was out a walkin’ the other day, round evenin’ time. The sun had set, but the light had not yet gone. I’ve always loved this time of day, when if you’re reading something you need to hurry, because the words grow fainter literally every second. I was looking off to the east, at the first few twinkle stars. A semi comes roaring by on the road, which is maybe thirty feet to my left, to the west. A reminder, if I wanted one (I don’t), how close is the world of diesel and capitalism and profit margins and iPhones and microwave ovens. I look back to my right, to the east, and I see a small cooking fire. A fire lit by native forests that are rapidly disappearing, a flickering symbol of the way life used to be, a way of cooking ugali and beans that has been around far longer than me...but might beat me to the grave. Find myself wondering, for the hundredth time, how one world can possibly hold all of this in it. More wonderful sights and sounds and people than I could meet in a dozen lifetimes, but the little sliver I’ve been privileged to behold keeps me in awe every single day.
I wonder, as I write the last part, if I’m guilty of romanticizing the poverty I see here. I think I absolutely am. But I make no real apologies to that. I do think life here is better in a lot of fundamental ways. Or if not better, perhaps simpler, and with that simplicity comes a grace that is treasured in America. Why is it treasured? Because of its scarcity. Here, it’s just how life goes. I miss all of you more than I can say, and when my clock hits zeroes, I’m coming back. Because I miss Americans. America...I’m not sure yet. Ask me in a month.
Two birthday celebration moments (only one of them actually happened on my birthday, but I like how we’ve all started to embrace the concept of a Birthday Week. Like the queen, we all get our seven day Jubilees.) The first was the day of my birthday, which was wonderful. I got text messages, facebook messages, and phone calls from lots of kickass people (namely all of you). I also got a piece of cake, got sung to, had a milkshake, smoked a cigar on a balcony, and saw possibly the most spectacular sunset of my life (though I think that almost every other day here, and I’m usually right). The sunset presented some logistical difficulties, however. We had to hike up to this massive rock that overlooks Iringa to watch it. But I was also jonesin for a vodka watermelon on my birthday (it ended up being made with local gin that comes from plastic baggies, but who’s counting?). So here’s the shida: it’s now getting near sunset. Have to buy the watermelon before sunset or the market or close. Do not have time to return it to our hostel. Do not want to hike up a mountain with a watermelon. Solution: find a storekeeper willing to hang onto my tikiti maji (watermelon) until we get back. Another shida: no store will be open then. So I puzzle and puzzle till my puzzler is sore, and then what to my wondering eyes should appear? The local police station. Which is how we find our hero, 6pm on his birthday, humbly asking the local constabulary to guard his birthday watermelon until his safe return.
This job rocks.
Celebration moment number two. I wrote in this blog many months ago about a wedding I went to, in far away Maduma (there was a guy guarding a cake with a stick). On the way back from that wedding there were about 30 Tanzanians in the back of the truck, and it was late, and it was cold. So what did they do? They sang the whole damn way. Flash forward: Saturday night we are at a beautiful resort in the hills near Mbeya. We want to get back to town. But taxis are scarce, and it’s a good 25 kilometers (real men use metric) back to our hostel. So we manage to shanghai a passing pickup truck. Three of us go in the cab…and the other 20 go in the flatbed. Now, it has an overhead frame, so we are able to hold on. But it’s late, and it’s cold. So what do we do? We sing the whole freaking way home. Television theme shows, 80’s Billy Joel, Journey, but nothing as loud as the Star Spangled Banner. There’s nothing like belonging to a community of people that are from home, and there’s nothing like being jammed into a truck like sardines with that group of people, cruising the miles on a dark dirt road, singing about the land of the free and the home of the brave. Happy Birthday to me.
Brief comic interlude. I taught my last Life Skills class of the semester last week. And because my co-teacher was off picking up a friend in the capital, I was solo. Which of course is the week we decided to do the sex talk with all the children. What fun for your boy. You want a true linguistics test? Try having someone explain how sex works, and how AIDS is transmitted, in their second language. Not easy. Not fun. So how do you make it easy and fun? Simple. Every time they answer a question or ask a good one, you teach them a new way to say “Awesome” in English. And if you do this, and you have the opportunity to have a classroom filled with Tanzanian students shout “Badass!” at the top of their lungs, you better take it. Because trust me, it will make your week.
I was sitting with my dear friend Kenzie one morning, and we were talking about something unimportant. And something about the moment: the coffee, the omelet we’d made on charcoal, the odd African cold, something brought the realization stinging to my eyes...I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to relive this. I may even succeed, on a few beautiful mornings in the middle of a forest somewhere in America. But what it really means is that I’m doomed to forever be torn, forever in two places. In Kiswahili the word for together is Pamoja. It literally means “one place”. And from the moment I got here...until the day I die, I think, I’ll never be together. I’ll always be Pawili. Two places. In a way, it’s torture. I feel like Sam at the end of the Ring Wars, divided, unwhole, wanting to dream all his old dreams of Rosie and the Shire, but knowing all the while that the man who started down the road at the onset of the journey is not the man who has returned. But on the other hand...I’m home. And when I come back...I’ll be home. While I’m here, I never, not for a moment, stop missing all of you. But when I’m back with you all, I will never, not even for an instant, be able to forget these blessed, fleeting years, and this beautiful, welcoming village. So many people spend their lives searching for one place where they belong, where they are loved and appreciated. Many never find it. I have two. And though these choices I’ve made have broken my heart once, and will break it again, I wouldn’t change a moment of any of it for all the stars in the sky.
Monday, May 2, 2011
As We Wind on Down the Road
In case you all are ever wondering what I’m doing, there’s a good chance the following scene transpires at about 9am Eastern time every day (4pm TZ time):
Our hero walks down a dusty road. The setting sun uses what little juice it still has to paint the ridges in a honeyed orange, and our boy’s shadow is thrown a country mile. You can see him this way every day: outback hat bent with love, loose button down shirt (maybe a little sweaty, maybe a little dirty), canteen clipped to his belt, jembe resting on his right shoulder, pants muddied, sandals. Usually he’s walking back from work with a couple of friends, maybe he’s followed by a curious kiddo or two. But if he’s alone, and he sees that shadow, sure as sin and right as rain he will start singing, “and as we wind on down the road, our shadows taller than our souls...” Because the shadows seem longer here. And the souls feel older. But more on that to come.
Hello friends and lovers! First things first. As I write this, it is 52 days till I arrive back on nearer shores. I’m getting a bit giddy. I hope you are too. I am also here to tell you that if you have never had the experience of explaining Easter Eggs to an East African, then you can’t die yet. Because you still have something left to try.
‘But rabbits don’t lay eggs.’
‘Yes, that’s true.’
‘So...?’ ‘
Yeah.’
Easter in East Africa is just a hell of a holiday, to begin with. I was invited to a Lutheran baptism on Easter Sunday. Which was great. It was three hours and fifteen minutes long. Which is normal. I was seated directly next to the 8-foot speaker tower. Which was painful. Especially since the keyboardist apparently thought that bleeding from our eardrums was how we should all show solidarity with Jesus. I couldn’t hear for about an hour after the service. Which was fine, because as it turned out, I didn’t need to.
We go back to my friend’s house after the service. He is one of seven children. Several of those children have multiple spouses. The more barren among them have at least five kids. So what transpires over the next FULL HOUR is an introduction of every single person there, who they are related to, how, and how was the corn crop this year? And when somebody new arrived, they were introduced, and then everybody else was introduced to them. And by the time we finished, it was time to go. Really.
There was, however, a special little rockstar at the party. This was a Tanzanian grandmother who must have been 90 years old, weighed half that many pounds, and looked like she might have left her house for the party around Groundhog’s Day. She had herself a nice little chair at the head of the couch. And when she got introduced to you, she grabbed both sides of your head, pulled your head at her, kissed one side of it, then the other, then just hang out for a while, holding your head, cuz she dug the power. What really thrilled me was the reactions from the little kids who got this treatment. If you have never actually seen an aunt pinch someone’s cheeks and make various mouth-noises, the expression on the victim (child), it doesn’t change from culture to culture. The kids just want to be outside. And auntie just wants to assert her dominance. And everybody else is just happy it ain’t them.
But life is good. I know because my English class told me so. This all came up because I was teaching them greetings. Good morning, good morning. How are you? I am fine. What’s shakin playa? Not really. Next week. But then I write on the board, “how is it going?” And one student raises his hand, and asks, “what does ‘it’ mean?” And I explain how we use it to stand in for inanimate objects, or concepts. He gets it. Except then he asks me which object or concept ‘it’ was standing in for in this sentence. And I didn’t know.
I know what ‘how’s it going’ means. So do you. But to define it? I was in the struggle, as an old friend used to say. And this was my first class. So I made up something...which might be right. I think the ‘it’ in “how’s it going” stands for life. We’re asking, how is life going? And upon giving that answer, I had to teach them how to say, “life is good.” Because it is. It’s also hilarious to hear ESL students saying it. Makes you wonder what other phrases might be useful and uproarious. Something like, “what’s up doc?” or “of course you know, this means war”. I’m a Looney Tunes fan. So are you. Or maybe a song! Everybody likes songs! But how long would it take to explain chevy and levy and whiskey and rye? Ah well, ah me. Onward we go, gently down the stream. Merrily merrily merrily merrily.
Life is but a dream.
A good dream.
A small rant, if I may. I was displeased to read about the recently concluded Barry Bonds trial. Not because I like Barry Bonds. I can’t stand him. I’ve often said that if the fan who had caught his record-breaking homer had had the stones to throw it back, it would be a better world. I believe to Bonds to be a cheat, and a liar, and a general no-goodnik. But he played baseball. And none of this matters. Not even a little.
I take my cue here from a Rolling Stones article entitled “Why Isn’t Wall Street In Jail?” I highly recommend it. The stories in it are disgusting, but the perpetrators are as yet unpunished. Nor are they likely to be soon. Not a one has been taken to court, let alone jail. But Barry Bonds puts a needle in his booty, lies about it, and that is more worth our money and our resources. Because he’s a much easier, less complicated symbol. Never mind the reality of it. I don’t want to push this topic too far, because I’m sort of comparing apples to orangutans, but my point is this: the most important decisions we make are about what we choose to care about. What are our priorities? And whoever made Barry Bonds a greater priority than the multitude of critical issues facing our country was far more concerned with looking good than doing good. End of rant.
On a sunny note, I’m beekeeping with the blind! We are starting work on a very promising project, and they are really a great bunch of people. As I’ve become fond of saying, they have very limited sight, but tremendous vision. The only problem is that my little sight jokes (or is that sight unseen?) almost caused me to lose it in a meeting the other day. Here’s the situation: when you want to ask someone how they feel in Swahili, you say, “unaonaje?” But ‘how do you feel’ is not the literal translation. The literal translation is “how are you seeing?”. Which is a rather peculiar question to ask a blind man. Especially when you follow it right up with “tutaonana baadaye”. The literal translation? “See you later.” When they asked me about a question I didn’t know they answer to? “Tutaona”...”We shall see”. As it turns out, this is completely normal, and not in the least bit offensive. Which is good, because I wasn’t sure how, after not doing yoga for about a year, I was able to get both feet in my mouth, and my head up my ass.
To conclude, another funeral. This time a neighbor, and tremendously old (she could have given the other old woman a run for her money...or a shuffling, stick-assisted, crawl for her money). We dug the grave, we put her in it, we ate. And then I found out about another tradition. Apparently after a death the friends and family stay up all night, sleeping inside the house, and even outside, if there’s not enough room (there wasn’t). I had never really been invited to one of these. But given that it was 40 feet from my door...when will I ever get another chance to live this life, right? So I go over around 9pm. Half the group is hammered. One man wants my advice planting trees (now they ask me). One woman is sure I’m the Swiss guy that has been dynamiting her road (I’m not). And then I’m invited inside.
The floor is filled with people, asleep, awake, in between. We enter a farther room. This is a mud hut with a thatched roof. No light comes in, no light goes out. The room is lit by a single lantern, and the light brushes over surfaces, without seeming to land on any of them. It’s a cave, lit by fire. I have the sensation, now familiar, of crossing a threshold, not just of a room, but of an age, a threshold of worlds. People are dancing, with joy. And they sing, and they drum, all with joy. I remember asking myself if I could possibly be living just a single lifetime. I clapped, I tried to sing. It’s a sad reality of my existence here that my very presence alters the things I’m trying to observe, do drink in. This is confirmed when a drunk staggers over. He wants to yell things in my ear. But someone stops him. An older woman, one I know in passing, no better than that. Some people, if you catch them in the right light, on the right night, you realize that they used to be kings, or queens, in another life. That was this woman, once upon a time a queen. And she shook the man off me, and she told him, “huyu ni wetu”. He is ours. Or, perhaps, he is one of us.
Later, when we were outside, they were singing. These songs were in Swahili, and one of the lines snuck up on me and surprised me. They were drumming, and dancing, and singing “tutaonana mbinguni.”
Which means, “we shall see each other in heaven.”
Our hero walks down a dusty road. The setting sun uses what little juice it still has to paint the ridges in a honeyed orange, and our boy’s shadow is thrown a country mile. You can see him this way every day: outback hat bent with love, loose button down shirt (maybe a little sweaty, maybe a little dirty), canteen clipped to his belt, jembe resting on his right shoulder, pants muddied, sandals. Usually he’s walking back from work with a couple of friends, maybe he’s followed by a curious kiddo or two. But if he’s alone, and he sees that shadow, sure as sin and right as rain he will start singing, “and as we wind on down the road, our shadows taller than our souls...” Because the shadows seem longer here. And the souls feel older. But more on that to come.
Hello friends and lovers! First things first. As I write this, it is 52 days till I arrive back on nearer shores. I’m getting a bit giddy. I hope you are too. I am also here to tell you that if you have never had the experience of explaining Easter Eggs to an East African, then you can’t die yet. Because you still have something left to try.
‘But rabbits don’t lay eggs.’
‘Yes, that’s true.’
‘So...?’ ‘
Yeah.’
Easter in East Africa is just a hell of a holiday, to begin with. I was invited to a Lutheran baptism on Easter Sunday. Which was great. It was three hours and fifteen minutes long. Which is normal. I was seated directly next to the 8-foot speaker tower. Which was painful. Especially since the keyboardist apparently thought that bleeding from our eardrums was how we should all show solidarity with Jesus. I couldn’t hear for about an hour after the service. Which was fine, because as it turned out, I didn’t need to.
We go back to my friend’s house after the service. He is one of seven children. Several of those children have multiple spouses. The more barren among them have at least five kids. So what transpires over the next FULL HOUR is an introduction of every single person there, who they are related to, how, and how was the corn crop this year? And when somebody new arrived, they were introduced, and then everybody else was introduced to them. And by the time we finished, it was time to go. Really.
There was, however, a special little rockstar at the party. This was a Tanzanian grandmother who must have been 90 years old, weighed half that many pounds, and looked like she might have left her house for the party around Groundhog’s Day. She had herself a nice little chair at the head of the couch. And when she got introduced to you, she grabbed both sides of your head, pulled your head at her, kissed one side of it, then the other, then just hang out for a while, holding your head, cuz she dug the power. What really thrilled me was the reactions from the little kids who got this treatment. If you have never actually seen an aunt pinch someone’s cheeks and make various mouth-noises, the expression on the victim (child), it doesn’t change from culture to culture. The kids just want to be outside. And auntie just wants to assert her dominance. And everybody else is just happy it ain’t them.
But life is good. I know because my English class told me so. This all came up because I was teaching them greetings. Good morning, good morning. How are you? I am fine. What’s shakin playa? Not really. Next week. But then I write on the board, “how is it going?” And one student raises his hand, and asks, “what does ‘it’ mean?” And I explain how we use it to stand in for inanimate objects, or concepts. He gets it. Except then he asks me which object or concept ‘it’ was standing in for in this sentence. And I didn’t know.
I know what ‘how’s it going’ means. So do you. But to define it? I was in the struggle, as an old friend used to say. And this was my first class. So I made up something...which might be right. I think the ‘it’ in “how’s it going” stands for life. We’re asking, how is life going? And upon giving that answer, I had to teach them how to say, “life is good.” Because it is. It’s also hilarious to hear ESL students saying it. Makes you wonder what other phrases might be useful and uproarious. Something like, “what’s up doc?” or “of course you know, this means war”. I’m a Looney Tunes fan. So are you. Or maybe a song! Everybody likes songs! But how long would it take to explain chevy and levy and whiskey and rye? Ah well, ah me. Onward we go, gently down the stream. Merrily merrily merrily merrily.
Life is but a dream.
A good dream.
A small rant, if I may. I was displeased to read about the recently concluded Barry Bonds trial. Not because I like Barry Bonds. I can’t stand him. I’ve often said that if the fan who had caught his record-breaking homer had had the stones to throw it back, it would be a better world. I believe to Bonds to be a cheat, and a liar, and a general no-goodnik. But he played baseball. And none of this matters. Not even a little.
I take my cue here from a Rolling Stones article entitled “Why Isn’t Wall Street In Jail?” I highly recommend it. The stories in it are disgusting, but the perpetrators are as yet unpunished. Nor are they likely to be soon. Not a one has been taken to court, let alone jail. But Barry Bonds puts a needle in his booty, lies about it, and that is more worth our money and our resources. Because he’s a much easier, less complicated symbol. Never mind the reality of it. I don’t want to push this topic too far, because I’m sort of comparing apples to orangutans, but my point is this: the most important decisions we make are about what we choose to care about. What are our priorities? And whoever made Barry Bonds a greater priority than the multitude of critical issues facing our country was far more concerned with looking good than doing good. End of rant.
On a sunny note, I’m beekeeping with the blind! We are starting work on a very promising project, and they are really a great bunch of people. As I’ve become fond of saying, they have very limited sight, but tremendous vision. The only problem is that my little sight jokes (or is that sight unseen?) almost caused me to lose it in a meeting the other day. Here’s the situation: when you want to ask someone how they feel in Swahili, you say, “unaonaje?” But ‘how do you feel’ is not the literal translation. The literal translation is “how are you seeing?”. Which is a rather peculiar question to ask a blind man. Especially when you follow it right up with “tutaonana baadaye”. The literal translation? “See you later.” When they asked me about a question I didn’t know they answer to? “Tutaona”...”We shall see”. As it turns out, this is completely normal, and not in the least bit offensive. Which is good, because I wasn’t sure how, after not doing yoga for about a year, I was able to get both feet in my mouth, and my head up my ass.
To conclude, another funeral. This time a neighbor, and tremendously old (she could have given the other old woman a run for her money...or a shuffling, stick-assisted, crawl for her money). We dug the grave, we put her in it, we ate. And then I found out about another tradition. Apparently after a death the friends and family stay up all night, sleeping inside the house, and even outside, if there’s not enough room (there wasn’t). I had never really been invited to one of these. But given that it was 40 feet from my door...when will I ever get another chance to live this life, right? So I go over around 9pm. Half the group is hammered. One man wants my advice planting trees (now they ask me). One woman is sure I’m the Swiss guy that has been dynamiting her road (I’m not). And then I’m invited inside.
The floor is filled with people, asleep, awake, in between. We enter a farther room. This is a mud hut with a thatched roof. No light comes in, no light goes out. The room is lit by a single lantern, and the light brushes over surfaces, without seeming to land on any of them. It’s a cave, lit by fire. I have the sensation, now familiar, of crossing a threshold, not just of a room, but of an age, a threshold of worlds. People are dancing, with joy. And they sing, and they drum, all with joy. I remember asking myself if I could possibly be living just a single lifetime. I clapped, I tried to sing. It’s a sad reality of my existence here that my very presence alters the things I’m trying to observe, do drink in. This is confirmed when a drunk staggers over. He wants to yell things in my ear. But someone stops him. An older woman, one I know in passing, no better than that. Some people, if you catch them in the right light, on the right night, you realize that they used to be kings, or queens, in another life. That was this woman, once upon a time a queen. And she shook the man off me, and she told him, “huyu ni wetu”. He is ours. Or, perhaps, he is one of us.
Later, when we were outside, they were singing. These songs were in Swahili, and one of the lines snuck up on me and surprised me. They were drumming, and dancing, and singing “tutaonana mbinguni.”
Which means, “we shall see each other in heaven.”
Monday, April 18, 2011
The Day of the Baboon's Death...
And if you want to know what the devil the title of the blog means...you will wait till the end.
Got robbed. The buggers took my solar lantern, my solar charger, my hiking boots, and a cell phone I brought from home. But I believe they were expecting my house to be wallpapered with leftover money...and when they didn’t find that, they took whatever looked shiny. Like my hammer. And my blanket. My sugar. Pasta. My extremely used shower flip-flops. Maybe not the brightest blokes, is what I’m saying.
They did, however, give me a unique opportunity: I got to see the inside of a Tanzanian police station. Was kind of like visiting a station in the Bronx in the late 70’s. Lots of guns. Old guns, new guns...and I’m not joking, a tommy gun. Motorcycles parked in the hallway, which is lit by (and I’m not joking) a single flickering bulb. I get to the end of the hallway, where the detective I need is working. But he’s a little busy...with a suspect...who they’re working over. So they beat him around a while, then I guess his questioning arm gets tired, and he comes out to talk with me. My man is a little overweight. His name is Alfred. Let’s call him Al. Al is a little overweight (they do have doughnuts here), got a nice little belly on here. Al is wearing a pair of rather tight dress pants, and the kicker is a real real tight blue polyester shirt doing its best on the belly. All my man needs is rockin pair of sideburns, and the 70’s are back. One of his assistants has a Hawaiian shirt to make Selleck proud. Another player has a tie with a knot as wide as a baby. But what made my morning is a photo album I noticed on one guy’s desk. He shows it to me, tells me it is the book of Most Wanted Subjects. Unsavory characters, I have no doubt. Cold-blooded fiends. But a little hard to take seriously when their pictures are inside a green plastic photo album...with a big cut-out heart on the front. For newlyweds. Or hardened criminals. What have you.
Couple of stories from my good friend Kenz, who lives a village over. We meet up once a week to teach Life Skills at the nearby secondary school. These little meetings are pretty wonderful for our mental health, though I’m sure all the villagers think we are insane with how much we make each other laugh. One of our favorite things: every week we ask the students in our class to write down a question. We choose five good ones and answer them the next week, after we have prepared detailed answers. But some of the questions are...well...awesome. And some of them are in English. Sometimes not very good English. Which is how Kenz and I ended up almost falling out of our chairs, laughing so hard we cried, wondering how you answer the following question:
“What is monkey?”
I feel like that is a Jeopardy answer. Maybe that student should get a prize. But unfortunately life is not all chai and biscuits for me and Kenz. She has a problem. Maybe a problem that stretches to the next level of existence. One that could threaten several lives, and the health of her own eternal soul. Her dog, you see, he ate the wizard’s chicken. And you don’t do that. Big faux pas. Huge.
Now of course the poor mutt didn’t know any better. He got out, as he is known to do (he’s better fed than a lot of children I know here, and the pooch could pull a plow). Ran around for a while, came back, tongue wagging, as happy as the cat that ate the canary. Which is all too apt, because at it turns out he’d had himself a snack of a lovely old gentleman, who, by the by, is also a wizard of some renown. I write about uchawi (witchcraft) mostly in jest, but our villagers take it entirely seriously, and I certainly don’t claim to have the world figured out, so who am I to say they are wrong? Kenz has apologized profusely, and we are currently trying to find some gainful employment for the dog so he can burn off his excess energy (he also ate one of the principal’s chickens. No curse there, so I’m told). But man, when your dog goes out running in America, you worry about cars, not hexes.
Another problem, little less out there. The leader of Kenz’s village is not a bad guy. Maybe a little. There was a plan when she arrived about building a zahanati (dispensary, capable of giving some health care, giving out some meds, and referring patients). Great idea, and the villagers had already made a lot of bricks (in the tens of thousands). Except the bricks are gone. Where? Don’t know, and wouldn’t want to speculate, but the villager leader did just buy himself a car. Then announced at a village meeting, without telling anybody first, that the whole dispensary idea is sooooo last year. Who needs health care? Peace Corps is going to get us a tractor!
I’m not joking. He announced this at a village meeting, without prepping Kenz even a little. So Kenz got to follow that act by standing up and explaining why she was not going to be buying a tractor, how they should use their government funding for something more sustainable, like a tree nursery or any number of useful projects. She did a damn good job too; when she finished, they applauded. Even the leader. The thing about the tractor is this: I used to be a socialist, before I got here. Just finished reading an amazing book, “The People’s History of the United States”, and am more convinced then ever that government needs to exist to help those who need help. But you work in villages, on communal projects...and they do not work. Where will the tractor stay? Who will drive it? What do they get paid? Who will plan the schedule? Who will fix it? What do they get paid? Where will the parts come from? The tools? The training? The gas (remember, this is a village without electricity, 20K from the nearest gas station, and 4 really bumpy kilometers off the highway)? And if there is even the slightest ambiguity in any of these answers, in two years the tractor becomes a very large lawn ornament for some lucky villagers. But here’s the great part: the village leader knows this! He told Kenz: “sure after three years it’s just going to sit there. But for those three years it will help us a lot!” I really want him to write a book. We can call it Leadership, by that guy. I don’t want to be pessimistic. And I’m not. But you can’t make plans pretending that humans are going to care as much about someone else’s farm as their own. Would be nice, but so would a singing gnome. Alas, alack.
Had a very odd meeting a few days ago. Was in a small office with a bunch of the sub-village leaders, discussing wells. Nothing too exciting. Then it starts to rain, heavily, on a tin roof, which as I’ve already described gets pretty loud. But the office has no windows. It is small. The wind is blowing in the door, as is the rain. So one of the guys closes the door. Now it’s pitch dark, and it is loud, and the meeting has come to a halt. As has the passage of time. For about a half hour, or maybe a few days, we sit there in silence, and we could be anywhere. Don’t want to get too weird here, but it was weird. It was like being asleep while being awake. Then the rain stops, and though we are awake, we awake, and the meeting continues. And nobody talks about it, so neither do I, and now I’m not really sure it happened, and if it did, what it meant.
About 30 hours ago I was told a saying in Kiswahili. At the time my counterpart and I were having kind of a rough day, and nothing was going our way. So my counterpart said something really deep, maybe. He said,
“siku ya kufa kwa nyanyi, miti yote huteleza”
“on the day of the baboon’s death, all the trees will fall.”
My first question was whether we were the baboon or the trees, at which point he doubled over in laughter. I then told him that some days we are the pigeon and some days the statue, and after I explained that he quadrupled over in laughter. But for the last 30 hours I have pondered his saying about the baboon deeply. And it can mean anything, everything, and nothing. Is it an important baboon? Does he live in the trees? Do the trees really like the baboon? Does this have something to do with the movie Fern Gully? Trust me when I tell you, this proverb can be said in any situation and made to fit. Just try to sound wise, and stroke your beard, and if you don’t have one...I can only do so much, I’m in Africa.
My primary school had a bunch of student teachers for the last month. A brief tangent: the 9 of them were dropped off and picked up by a large truck, containing 40 other student teachers, along with their belongings and mattresses. The truck came from about 180 kilometers away. I’ve seen mosh pits with more breathing room. Anyway, they were great to have around, and I got on well with them, and they picked up frisbee really fast. We had a farewell party for them, and then a dance party in one of the classrooms, which was really fun. The shida (the problem) came when me and my partner tried to leave. One of the ladies had taken a shine, it appeared. Or as my counterpart put it, “psychologically (he loves that word), it appears she has fallen in love.” At which point I made a Dan-sized hole in the wall.
When I tried to explain it to my partner later, he didn’t get it. He knows I have a girlfriend and that I love her...but those aren’t considered prohibitive factors here, to put it delicately. Then I realized, this is not a cultural thing. I remember in City Slickers, the Bruno Kirby character gives Billy Crystal a scenario: “you’re alone, camping out, and a spaceship lands. Out steps the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, and she wants to make the most amazing love with you, after which she will get back on the spaceship and fly away for ever. No one will ever know. Would you?” Billy Crystal responds: “no, because the exact situation you have described happened to a friend of mine, and his wife did find out. At the hair salon. They know everything there.” All men everywhere, take heed. But seriously, wasn't much of a choice to make. As someone or other said, He is a fool indeed who breaks a thing to find out how it works. I'm not that stupid. I've got something special, and I don't need a spaceship or a barbershop to remind me.
To close (sorry for the length), I return to the classroom. Asked a question of my students one day. I asked them why we do things we know are wrong. A boy raises his hand. Yes, little student?
"Shetani"
"Satan"
...Well yes...I suppose that's true...but...
...Was in church again the other day (my involuntary church-going has become a reluctant theme of this blog). Got to hear a local Swiss missionary talk about how these are the end times, and how some of us will betray each other (et tu, Rocco?), and all of these earthquakes are portents of the end of days. Also know a Catholic missionary who has been here for years, living in a region with a 16% AIDS prevalency, who still does not advocate using condoms. There are plenty of priests here who instruct their congregations to not use ARVs if you are HIV positive, just to pray. Because that's enough.
Well...no, it is not. Faith is a beautiful thing. It humbles and it uplifts. I think it is important to be subject to one another, and subject to something greater than ourselves. But I'm also a huge believer in the importance, and the greatness, of people. People rock. In all our hurried hubris we can accomplish great and terrible things, and though a reckoning may one day come, our failures are our own, and so are our successes. I find myself wrestling many days here with what I believe. The best I can do is this: there is more to this world, and this universe, than meets the eye. There is more that holds us together than pulls us apart. And, to paraphrase Edward M Forster, if I had to choose between my God or my friend, I hope I should have the guts to choose my friend.
Got robbed. The buggers took my solar lantern, my solar charger, my hiking boots, and a cell phone I brought from home. But I believe they were expecting my house to be wallpapered with leftover money...and when they didn’t find that, they took whatever looked shiny. Like my hammer. And my blanket. My sugar. Pasta. My extremely used shower flip-flops. Maybe not the brightest blokes, is what I’m saying.
They did, however, give me a unique opportunity: I got to see the inside of a Tanzanian police station. Was kind of like visiting a station in the Bronx in the late 70’s. Lots of guns. Old guns, new guns...and I’m not joking, a tommy gun. Motorcycles parked in the hallway, which is lit by (and I’m not joking) a single flickering bulb. I get to the end of the hallway, where the detective I need is working. But he’s a little busy...with a suspect...who they’re working over. So they beat him around a while, then I guess his questioning arm gets tired, and he comes out to talk with me. My man is a little overweight. His name is Alfred. Let’s call him Al. Al is a little overweight (they do have doughnuts here), got a nice little belly on here. Al is wearing a pair of rather tight dress pants, and the kicker is a real real tight blue polyester shirt doing its best on the belly. All my man needs is rockin pair of sideburns, and the 70’s are back. One of his assistants has a Hawaiian shirt to make Selleck proud. Another player has a tie with a knot as wide as a baby. But what made my morning is a photo album I noticed on one guy’s desk. He shows it to me, tells me it is the book of Most Wanted Subjects. Unsavory characters, I have no doubt. Cold-blooded fiends. But a little hard to take seriously when their pictures are inside a green plastic photo album...with a big cut-out heart on the front. For newlyweds. Or hardened criminals. What have you.
Couple of stories from my good friend Kenz, who lives a village over. We meet up once a week to teach Life Skills at the nearby secondary school. These little meetings are pretty wonderful for our mental health, though I’m sure all the villagers think we are insane with how much we make each other laugh. One of our favorite things: every week we ask the students in our class to write down a question. We choose five good ones and answer them the next week, after we have prepared detailed answers. But some of the questions are...well...awesome. And some of them are in English. Sometimes not very good English. Which is how Kenz and I ended up almost falling out of our chairs, laughing so hard we cried, wondering how you answer the following question:
“What is monkey?”
I feel like that is a Jeopardy answer. Maybe that student should get a prize. But unfortunately life is not all chai and biscuits for me and Kenz. She has a problem. Maybe a problem that stretches to the next level of existence. One that could threaten several lives, and the health of her own eternal soul. Her dog, you see, he ate the wizard’s chicken. And you don’t do that. Big faux pas. Huge.
Now of course the poor mutt didn’t know any better. He got out, as he is known to do (he’s better fed than a lot of children I know here, and the pooch could pull a plow). Ran around for a while, came back, tongue wagging, as happy as the cat that ate the canary. Which is all too apt, because at it turns out he’d had himself a snack of a lovely old gentleman, who, by the by, is also a wizard of some renown. I write about uchawi (witchcraft) mostly in jest, but our villagers take it entirely seriously, and I certainly don’t claim to have the world figured out, so who am I to say they are wrong? Kenz has apologized profusely, and we are currently trying to find some gainful employment for the dog so he can burn off his excess energy (he also ate one of the principal’s chickens. No curse there, so I’m told). But man, when your dog goes out running in America, you worry about cars, not hexes.
Another problem, little less out there. The leader of Kenz’s village is not a bad guy. Maybe a little. There was a plan when she arrived about building a zahanati (dispensary, capable of giving some health care, giving out some meds, and referring patients). Great idea, and the villagers had already made a lot of bricks (in the tens of thousands). Except the bricks are gone. Where? Don’t know, and wouldn’t want to speculate, but the villager leader did just buy himself a car. Then announced at a village meeting, without telling anybody first, that the whole dispensary idea is sooooo last year. Who needs health care? Peace Corps is going to get us a tractor!
I’m not joking. He announced this at a village meeting, without prepping Kenz even a little. So Kenz got to follow that act by standing up and explaining why she was not going to be buying a tractor, how they should use their government funding for something more sustainable, like a tree nursery or any number of useful projects. She did a damn good job too; when she finished, they applauded. Even the leader. The thing about the tractor is this: I used to be a socialist, before I got here. Just finished reading an amazing book, “The People’s History of the United States”, and am more convinced then ever that government needs to exist to help those who need help. But you work in villages, on communal projects...and they do not work. Where will the tractor stay? Who will drive it? What do they get paid? Who will plan the schedule? Who will fix it? What do they get paid? Where will the parts come from? The tools? The training? The gas (remember, this is a village without electricity, 20K from the nearest gas station, and 4 really bumpy kilometers off the highway)? And if there is even the slightest ambiguity in any of these answers, in two years the tractor becomes a very large lawn ornament for some lucky villagers. But here’s the great part: the village leader knows this! He told Kenz: “sure after three years it’s just going to sit there. But for those three years it will help us a lot!” I really want him to write a book. We can call it Leadership, by that guy. I don’t want to be pessimistic. And I’m not. But you can’t make plans pretending that humans are going to care as much about someone else’s farm as their own. Would be nice, but so would a singing gnome. Alas, alack.
Had a very odd meeting a few days ago. Was in a small office with a bunch of the sub-village leaders, discussing wells. Nothing too exciting. Then it starts to rain, heavily, on a tin roof, which as I’ve already described gets pretty loud. But the office has no windows. It is small. The wind is blowing in the door, as is the rain. So one of the guys closes the door. Now it’s pitch dark, and it is loud, and the meeting has come to a halt. As has the passage of time. For about a half hour, or maybe a few days, we sit there in silence, and we could be anywhere. Don’t want to get too weird here, but it was weird. It was like being asleep while being awake. Then the rain stops, and though we are awake, we awake, and the meeting continues. And nobody talks about it, so neither do I, and now I’m not really sure it happened, and if it did, what it meant.
About 30 hours ago I was told a saying in Kiswahili. At the time my counterpart and I were having kind of a rough day, and nothing was going our way. So my counterpart said something really deep, maybe. He said,
“siku ya kufa kwa nyanyi, miti yote huteleza”
“on the day of the baboon’s death, all the trees will fall.”
My first question was whether we were the baboon or the trees, at which point he doubled over in laughter. I then told him that some days we are the pigeon and some days the statue, and after I explained that he quadrupled over in laughter. But for the last 30 hours I have pondered his saying about the baboon deeply. And it can mean anything, everything, and nothing. Is it an important baboon? Does he live in the trees? Do the trees really like the baboon? Does this have something to do with the movie Fern Gully? Trust me when I tell you, this proverb can be said in any situation and made to fit. Just try to sound wise, and stroke your beard, and if you don’t have one...I can only do so much, I’m in Africa.
My primary school had a bunch of student teachers for the last month. A brief tangent: the 9 of them were dropped off and picked up by a large truck, containing 40 other student teachers, along with their belongings and mattresses. The truck came from about 180 kilometers away. I’ve seen mosh pits with more breathing room. Anyway, they were great to have around, and I got on well with them, and they picked up frisbee really fast. We had a farewell party for them, and then a dance party in one of the classrooms, which was really fun. The shida (the problem) came when me and my partner tried to leave. One of the ladies had taken a shine, it appeared. Or as my counterpart put it, “psychologically (he loves that word), it appears she has fallen in love.” At which point I made a Dan-sized hole in the wall.
When I tried to explain it to my partner later, he didn’t get it. He knows I have a girlfriend and that I love her...but those aren’t considered prohibitive factors here, to put it delicately. Then I realized, this is not a cultural thing. I remember in City Slickers, the Bruno Kirby character gives Billy Crystal a scenario: “you’re alone, camping out, and a spaceship lands. Out steps the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, and she wants to make the most amazing love with you, after which she will get back on the spaceship and fly away for ever. No one will ever know. Would you?” Billy Crystal responds: “no, because the exact situation you have described happened to a friend of mine, and his wife did find out. At the hair salon. They know everything there.” All men everywhere, take heed. But seriously, wasn't much of a choice to make. As someone or other said, He is a fool indeed who breaks a thing to find out how it works. I'm not that stupid. I've got something special, and I don't need a spaceship or a barbershop to remind me.
To close (sorry for the length), I return to the classroom. Asked a question of my students one day. I asked them why we do things we know are wrong. A boy raises his hand. Yes, little student?
"Shetani"
"Satan"
...Well yes...I suppose that's true...but...
...Was in church again the other day (my involuntary church-going has become a reluctant theme of this blog). Got to hear a local Swiss missionary talk about how these are the end times, and how some of us will betray each other (et tu, Rocco?), and all of these earthquakes are portents of the end of days. Also know a Catholic missionary who has been here for years, living in a region with a 16% AIDS prevalency, who still does not advocate using condoms. There are plenty of priests here who instruct their congregations to not use ARVs if you are HIV positive, just to pray. Because that's enough.
Well...no, it is not. Faith is a beautiful thing. It humbles and it uplifts. I think it is important to be subject to one another, and subject to something greater than ourselves. But I'm also a huge believer in the importance, and the greatness, of people. People rock. In all our hurried hubris we can accomplish great and terrible things, and though a reckoning may one day come, our failures are our own, and so are our successes. I find myself wrestling many days here with what I believe. The best I can do is this: there is more to this world, and this universe, than meets the eye. There is more that holds us together than pulls us apart. And, to paraphrase Edward M Forster, if I had to choose between my God or my friend, I hope I should have the guts to choose my friend.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)