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.
