Would like to begin today’s post with a few tales about my friend Razzaq. Razzaq is three. When you ask Razzaq how old he is, he says “Tatu!” This means three. Very good Razzaq. When you ask Razzaq what grade he is in, he answers, “Tatu!” Not quite accurate. When you ask Razzaq how many kilos he weighs, he says, “Tatu!”. Awww...you’re cute.
And cute he is. It’s as if his father, my principal counterpart, designed a child purposely to amuse me. He is short...and funny. It is as if his cheeks have grown fully, and the rest of his body is moving at normal pace. He has the chubbiest cheeks I have ever seen on a child. They seem to be squeezing his eyes in, and his voice also sounds like it is being squeezed, like he is always talking around a muffin he hasn’t finished eating. He also waddles when he walks, and occasionally sports a three piece black suit…which he wears to the farm, and while playing in the dirt (more on this later). I find him adorable. One day when he was pretending to drive the stool he was sitting on, making all sorts of car noises, I asked him if the stool he was driving had gears. “LAZIMA ina gia!”, says our budding Jimmy Johnson (definitely the first and probably only NASCAR reference this blog will see). By which he meant, “OF COURSE it has gears!”.
He is also one of the biggest fans of my favorite greeting with small Tanzanian children: the exploding fist bump. I say, “Nipe tano!” (give me five), and hold out my fist. They give me a bump, and then we do the explode and say “ripua!” (explode). Some of the kids like it, most don’t get it, but every time I see chubby-cheeked Razzaq he walks up to me with a fist and says in his squeezed little voice, “Nipe tano!!!”. Makes me laugh every single time.
Last Razzaq story. When my partner and I talk at his house, we always do so in his living room, with a door that leads right out to his courtyard. The courtyard is also where the kukus (chickens) spend their time. Inside is the usual source of food, so the kukus occasionally try to enter. This is no good, as they might lay eggs, or other organic material, anywhere inside the house. So during our conversations about village development and cross-culture, we also spend lots of time shooing kukus outside. One day Razzaq was waddling around without purpose, so my counterpart gives him a purpose. He finds a stool (the aforementioned car with gears) and a stick. He sits Razzaq in the doorway and gives him the stick. We now have a mlinzi (guard). Attaboy Razzaq.
The rains have been getting interesting these days. Went a couple days without them last week. Then came Sunday. Am sitting in my house after church, just reading. It’s felt real quiet for a few hours, like it does before a storm. The clouds, which usually roll in slowly, one by one, are just a towering mass of gray. It begins to rain, then rain heavily. And then, for the first time, it begins to hail. I have a metal roof. This makes a drizzle sound like a shower, a shower sound like a hail storm, and a hail storm...it’s hard to describe. The storm lasted about 20 minutes. It felt like forever. The pea-sized hail hammered my roof, and it wasn’t just that I couldn’t hear. It was that the sound became so deafening it was like white noise in my head. I remember wondering if this is what Noriega felt like DOUBLE CHECK NORIEGA. It was a novelty for a couple minutes, and then it started to hurt. So this is how I ended up like a five year-old in the middle of a storm, with my head buried under the pillow, waiting for the storm to pass.
Speaking of unusual pain. Nothing here is quite as tied to my identity as a rough-and-ready Peace Corps Volunteer as my panga (machete). I love it. It’s coming back with me. So when my neighbor told me I had to build trellises for my tomatoes, I was thrilled. A chance to use the machete without chasing mice! Still have not caught one yet, got a lot of work to do to catch up with Kelsey (a naturally gifted rat-catcher). So I pull out a few bamboo poles from my fence and start hacking. It’s awesome! And then it’s not! Because I slip, and instead of delivering the final blow to a piece of muhanzi (bamboo), I deliver a rather nice blow to my wrist, leaving a nice little gash. Which is how I ended up with my very first, and very favorite, machete wound. Living the dream people. The. Dream.
To pick up my earlier point about clothes. Razzaq wearing a full suit is not all that unusual. I am never, and I mean never, the best dressed person in my village. Every day there are Tanzanian men in my village with immaculately pressed shirts and slacks with creases so sharp they don’t need machetes (but they still use them, because machetes ongeza (increase) manhood). These are not rich people, but the cultural ideal is to look your best at all times. I occasionally feel self conscious; maybe I’m underdressed (I never leave the house without a button-down shirt, but occasionally early morning visitors get a glimpse of my Dark Side of the Moon pajama pants. Eat your heart out)? Here is where it gets really fun. These beautiful dress slacks and sharp dress shirts…they wear them everywhere. Particularly to the farm. Nothing preps you for the first time you are digging up potatoes with a man who looks ready to address a jury. It’s a very different cultural thing, and I don’t completely understand it. But for Tanzanians, appearances are incredibly important, even occasionally to the detriment of the task at hand. I cannot count the number of times I have had to sign guest books. Every school, office, hospital, and hostel has one. I am a permanent guest. Does the thing matter? Not really. But its presence makes things official…and that is what matters. My cow group does not have an office, any money, any cow sheds, or any feed (though we are working on all those things). But dammit, we’ve got a sign in book. All is well.
Was out for a walk in the middle of the night to send some text messages (I only get service to send messages if I walk a few hundred feet uphill. The full moon is out, and Wow it is bright. I am looking around, and I am literally seeing colors of plants and houses in the middle of the night. It’s like the negative of the world I’m used to, and it’s unbelievably beautiful, like some mischievous god spray-painted the village with silver. It is so bright, in fact, that I have an idea. I reach into my pocket and pull out my notebook. Sure enough, I’m right. Which is how, twenty minutes later, our humble narrator finds himself outside on his folding chair, reading “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”, completely by moonlight. Next time I’ll find something slightly more poetic, but even reading about clinical neurology, I was mbinguni (in heaven). No flashlight needed. Not tonight.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
The Ball Drops
Happy New Year!!! 2010, crazy year. 2011, willing to put some money down, gonna be crazier. I base this on the assumption that 2011, for me anyway, is the year of the Wildebeest. Africa, all year long, probably the only year of my life I’ll spend away from the US of A. Get to how I spent my New Year’s Eve in a bit, but for this particular blog post, especially since it’s going up at the same time as a rather sermon-like Christmas post, I thought I would stick to some little stories of the days and nights of Africa.
Some of you have heard this one, but it’s undeniably awesome...so bear with me. My neighbor and confidante comes to me one day and asks me if we can talk about a kitu cha siri (secret thing). I say, sawa (okay). So he tells me that he has been talking with another man, who wanted to know if I could help him out with the sale of a particular item. What item, inquires the volunteer? It appears that our unnamed villager has acquired some mercury. Mercury? Yes, mercury. How did this gentleman acquire this mercury. From a factory. Okay....we’ll go with that. Can I sell this mercury? Nope. Why not? Because I’ve lived here 2 months, and my training did not cover markets in rare materials, which may or may not be a bit hot. Ok, says my counterpart.
A month passes.
Once again, my counterpart throws a “Hodi” my way (sort of a verbal ‘knock knock’). I say come on in, the chai is fine. Have I figured out where to sell the mercury yet? Nope, haven’t knocked that item off the list yet. But you’ve asked? Sure. Why not. So my counterpart inquires as to whether or not I might be able to facilitate a transaction between our same enterprising villager and a as-yet-to-be-found buyer. A transaction regarding what item? The mercury? No no, though that would be nice. But lo, our mysterious purveyor of industrial chemicals has come across a new toy. What? Uranium. Uranium? Yeah...uranium. Where is said uranium? Like, do I need to put on my lead bib? Oh, it’s safe. Of course it’s safe. The village doesn’t have running water, but the uranium is in a controlled environment. And now I’m wondering...how long till I’m peddling homespun weapons of mass destruction? Do I have the power to get a country on the axis of evil? Could I myself get on the axis of evil? Fingers crossed.
New Year’s Day, I’m in church. Cuz I was raised right, god-fearin and church-goin. At the end of Mass (a cool two hours), we do the collection. Before the collection, the Katakista asks us all for a special, year-starting donation, for the purposes of adding rooms on to the church. So we pony up, we dig deep in the pockets. Tanzanians always announce the amount of contribution. So we have to count it. Whilst they count the money, we sing, we dance, and I notice, that in addition to the lock box of cash, someone has placed a paper bag...perhaps in lieu of a donation. And sure enough, when we read the totals, we have contributed: eighteen thousand shillings, half a debe of corn (about 10 liters), and a simbilisi. To answer the obvious question, simbilisi is a Kihehe word. It means guinea pig. At which point, appropriately, the bag begins to move...and I begin to wonder. Some days, the cat does drive me crazy. Maybe some Sunday morning your boy saves himself his usual five hundred shilling donation...and the Catholic Church gets a bona fide rat catcher. Just kidding. I hope.
Out running one day, notice a bunch of holes dug in the sand. What are these, I wonder? So on the way back, I realize that there are 10 holes, dug in two rows of five. They have a few rocks, or peach pits, in each hole. At which point I realize that I am looking at a game board. It’s a wonderful African parlor game called Mancala. And your boy just ran straight through the parlor. My manners, oh my manners.
The mbunge (basically our congressman) came into town. Fielded questions from anybody who wanted to ask them. Have heard a lot of bad stories about a lot of representatives, but everybody here seems to think he’s doing well, and he doesn’t make a habit of promising things beyond his reach. The only reason I mention the story is that one of the questions he fielded was from one of the village elders, who wanted to know what he could do about the price of sugar. In some ways, ridiculous. In some ways, a hell of a lot more relevant than the hoops we make our politicians jump through.
I have a bike! I’ve got a bike, you can ride it if you like, it’s got a basket, a bell that rings, and things that make it look good (Pink Floyd, Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Really, really weird album.) Bought it in Mafinga (note Fozzie Bear). Spent a decent amount of shillings on it. Also had it shoved into the back of a Kosta, came out looking like a Dali bike. Anywho, gave it to the fundi wa baiskeli (bike repair guy). He does pretty quick work, has it ready to ride around 10 the next morning. I’m sitting in his yard, watching him work. My counterpart tells me that he is a very famous fundi. I pay the famous fundi. I board the bike, head off to visit my nearest mzungu (whitey) neighbor, a delightful Wisconsonian named Kenzie. I get about a kilometer down the road, reach the bottom of a hill, and start to pedal for the first time. At which point one pedal comes off. I put it back on, try pedaling delicately. The pedal now comes apart like a banana unpeeling itself. Thanks, famous fundi. Haven’t yet learned the Kiswahili for refund. I’m willing to bet he hasn’t either.
Speaking of Mzungu. I hear it every day, normally shrieked by tiny children in a tone of voice that grates at the molars. It’s pronounced m-ZOOn-goo. And that is exactly what I am. I’m the zoo animal. Very high end. I’m a big white polar bear, with his own spiffy cave. And the cave is safe. But I get so little work done there. Listening to U2 the other day, ‘Breathe’. Great line in the song that goes, “every day I have to find the courage to walk out into the street.” And it’s...it’s actually legitimately hard. I’m a freak. A friendly one, who speaks the language. But I don’t belong. And some days that really sucks, to be stared at, to be different. On the other hand, in America, the very sight of me doesn’t induce shrieks of delight from random children. There are pluses, there are minuses. But every day I make a point to go for a walk, to see people, to have them see me. I call it showing the flag. Kuonyesha bandera.
For a few weeks, I would see flashes of light in the distance at night. Didn’t know what they were. Asked a guy in the street. He said, “sayansi” (science). Thanks. Didn’t believe that it was lightning. No thunder, really cold for heat lightning. But that’s what it is. And it comes in every night. It’s everywhere, ominous and silent. What is not silent is the nearby drummers. Most nights they start up around nine. Drums, somewhere in the distance. Children shrieking. Feels like a ritual. I’ve thought about going out one night and finding the drums. Just like I’ve thought about asking some of the science teachers to explain the cold lightning. But I haven’t. Because right now I have these beautiful mysteries. The drummers with no faces, the lightning with no voice. And maybe learning more doesn’t always make something better. There are so few mysteries left. I’m not ready to risk ruining mine.
People talk about this experience changing you. I get what they’re saying...but I don’t agree. It’s not like I’m changing. It feels more like I’m being distilled. Things seem to mean more, and I want to do more with them. It is almost like I’m getting closer to the center of me. Like I’m more Dan Waldron than I ever used to be. As my bald buddy put it, you start to feel like a round peg in a round hole. It’s taken a while, but it is a beautiful thing to feel at home in your own head, welcome in your own skin.
So New Year’s Eve. Went over to my neighbor’s house. He sparked up the generator, and we watched Tanzanian television for four hours. Clock hits midnight, we stand up and sing the Tanzanian national anthem. And it’s a nice moment. I head back to my house. It’s a beautiful night. I pull my folding chair out into the lawn. I spark up a cigar, I open a tiny bottle of Scotch. My lovely lady calls, and that’s wonderful. My family calls (the donators of said scotch and stogie), and it’s amazing. And last, my boy Kucz calls. Because the people I love are amazing. And Mom asks at some point, “I bet the stars are unbelievable, aren’t they?” And all I can say...is “yup”. Because beautiful doesn’t cut it, not tonight. Remembering that Incubus song, with the poem about the backlit canopy with holes punched in it. And I wish you were here. But what a beautiful night. Haven’t had much Scotch in a while. Which might explain why 2am finds your boy outside, dancing under the stars to “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, performed by the Band, whiskey in one hand, cigar in the other, as stupid and happy as I ever hope to be, dancing the night away. It’s gonna be a good year.
Some of you have heard this one, but it’s undeniably awesome...so bear with me. My neighbor and confidante comes to me one day and asks me if we can talk about a kitu cha siri (secret thing). I say, sawa (okay). So he tells me that he has been talking with another man, who wanted to know if I could help him out with the sale of a particular item. What item, inquires the volunteer? It appears that our unnamed villager has acquired some mercury. Mercury? Yes, mercury. How did this gentleman acquire this mercury. From a factory. Okay....we’ll go with that. Can I sell this mercury? Nope. Why not? Because I’ve lived here 2 months, and my training did not cover markets in rare materials, which may or may not be a bit hot. Ok, says my counterpart.
A month passes.
Once again, my counterpart throws a “Hodi” my way (sort of a verbal ‘knock knock’). I say come on in, the chai is fine. Have I figured out where to sell the mercury yet? Nope, haven’t knocked that item off the list yet. But you’ve asked? Sure. Why not. So my counterpart inquires as to whether or not I might be able to facilitate a transaction between our same enterprising villager and a as-yet-to-be-found buyer. A transaction regarding what item? The mercury? No no, though that would be nice. But lo, our mysterious purveyor of industrial chemicals has come across a new toy. What? Uranium. Uranium? Yeah...uranium. Where is said uranium? Like, do I need to put on my lead bib? Oh, it’s safe. Of course it’s safe. The village doesn’t have running water, but the uranium is in a controlled environment. And now I’m wondering...how long till I’m peddling homespun weapons of mass destruction? Do I have the power to get a country on the axis of evil? Could I myself get on the axis of evil? Fingers crossed.
New Year’s Day, I’m in church. Cuz I was raised right, god-fearin and church-goin. At the end of Mass (a cool two hours), we do the collection. Before the collection, the Katakista asks us all for a special, year-starting donation, for the purposes of adding rooms on to the church. So we pony up, we dig deep in the pockets. Tanzanians always announce the amount of contribution. So we have to count it. Whilst they count the money, we sing, we dance, and I notice, that in addition to the lock box of cash, someone has placed a paper bag...perhaps in lieu of a donation. And sure enough, when we read the totals, we have contributed: eighteen thousand shillings, half a debe of corn (about 10 liters), and a simbilisi. To answer the obvious question, simbilisi is a Kihehe word. It means guinea pig. At which point, appropriately, the bag begins to move...and I begin to wonder. Some days, the cat does drive me crazy. Maybe some Sunday morning your boy saves himself his usual five hundred shilling donation...and the Catholic Church gets a bona fide rat catcher. Just kidding. I hope.
Out running one day, notice a bunch of holes dug in the sand. What are these, I wonder? So on the way back, I realize that there are 10 holes, dug in two rows of five. They have a few rocks, or peach pits, in each hole. At which point I realize that I am looking at a game board. It’s a wonderful African parlor game called Mancala. And your boy just ran straight through the parlor. My manners, oh my manners.
The mbunge (basically our congressman) came into town. Fielded questions from anybody who wanted to ask them. Have heard a lot of bad stories about a lot of representatives, but everybody here seems to think he’s doing well, and he doesn’t make a habit of promising things beyond his reach. The only reason I mention the story is that one of the questions he fielded was from one of the village elders, who wanted to know what he could do about the price of sugar. In some ways, ridiculous. In some ways, a hell of a lot more relevant than the hoops we make our politicians jump through.
I have a bike! I’ve got a bike, you can ride it if you like, it’s got a basket, a bell that rings, and things that make it look good (Pink Floyd, Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Really, really weird album.) Bought it in Mafinga (note Fozzie Bear). Spent a decent amount of shillings on it. Also had it shoved into the back of a Kosta, came out looking like a Dali bike. Anywho, gave it to the fundi wa baiskeli (bike repair guy). He does pretty quick work, has it ready to ride around 10 the next morning. I’m sitting in his yard, watching him work. My counterpart tells me that he is a very famous fundi. I pay the famous fundi. I board the bike, head off to visit my nearest mzungu (whitey) neighbor, a delightful Wisconsonian named Kenzie. I get about a kilometer down the road, reach the bottom of a hill, and start to pedal for the first time. At which point one pedal comes off. I put it back on, try pedaling delicately. The pedal now comes apart like a banana unpeeling itself. Thanks, famous fundi. Haven’t yet learned the Kiswahili for refund. I’m willing to bet he hasn’t either.
Speaking of Mzungu. I hear it every day, normally shrieked by tiny children in a tone of voice that grates at the molars. It’s pronounced m-ZOOn-goo. And that is exactly what I am. I’m the zoo animal. Very high end. I’m a big white polar bear, with his own spiffy cave. And the cave is safe. But I get so little work done there. Listening to U2 the other day, ‘Breathe’. Great line in the song that goes, “every day I have to find the courage to walk out into the street.” And it’s...it’s actually legitimately hard. I’m a freak. A friendly one, who speaks the language. But I don’t belong. And some days that really sucks, to be stared at, to be different. On the other hand, in America, the very sight of me doesn’t induce shrieks of delight from random children. There are pluses, there are minuses. But every day I make a point to go for a walk, to see people, to have them see me. I call it showing the flag. Kuonyesha bandera.
For a few weeks, I would see flashes of light in the distance at night. Didn’t know what they were. Asked a guy in the street. He said, “sayansi” (science). Thanks. Didn’t believe that it was lightning. No thunder, really cold for heat lightning. But that’s what it is. And it comes in every night. It’s everywhere, ominous and silent. What is not silent is the nearby drummers. Most nights they start up around nine. Drums, somewhere in the distance. Children shrieking. Feels like a ritual. I’ve thought about going out one night and finding the drums. Just like I’ve thought about asking some of the science teachers to explain the cold lightning. But I haven’t. Because right now I have these beautiful mysteries. The drummers with no faces, the lightning with no voice. And maybe learning more doesn’t always make something better. There are so few mysteries left. I’m not ready to risk ruining mine.
People talk about this experience changing you. I get what they’re saying...but I don’t agree. It’s not like I’m changing. It feels more like I’m being distilled. Things seem to mean more, and I want to do more with them. It is almost like I’m getting closer to the center of me. Like I’m more Dan Waldron than I ever used to be. As my bald buddy put it, you start to feel like a round peg in a round hole. It’s taken a while, but it is a beautiful thing to feel at home in your own head, welcome in your own skin.
So New Year’s Eve. Went over to my neighbor’s house. He sparked up the generator, and we watched Tanzanian television for four hours. Clock hits midnight, we stand up and sing the Tanzanian national anthem. And it’s a nice moment. I head back to my house. It’s a beautiful night. I pull my folding chair out into the lawn. I spark up a cigar, I open a tiny bottle of Scotch. My lovely lady calls, and that’s wonderful. My family calls (the donators of said scotch and stogie), and it’s amazing. And last, my boy Kucz calls. Because the people I love are amazing. And Mom asks at some point, “I bet the stars are unbelievable, aren’t they?” And all I can say...is “yup”. Because beautiful doesn’t cut it, not tonight. Remembering that Incubus song, with the poem about the backlit canopy with holes punched in it. And I wish you were here. But what a beautiful night. Haven’t had much Scotch in a while. Which might explain why 2am finds your boy outside, dancing under the stars to “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, performed by the Band, whiskey in one hand, cigar in the other, as stupid and happy as I ever hope to be, dancing the night away. It’s gonna be a good year.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Yes Virginia...
i heard the bells on Christmas day, their old familiar carols play. and wild and sweet the words repeat, of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
Merry Christmas from Africa, you joyful band of ne’er-do-elves. It rained for three hours yesterday, and before that it was about 95 degrees and dry, and after it was 75 and humid. Not quite Bing Crosby or Parson Brown type weather, but all in all, given my housing, I appreciate the temperatures.
Just finished my two week in-service-training, where I got to see all of my friends from the beginning of my service. Was really phenomenal, in that we all got to spend a lot of time doing a lot of different things, and relaxing in ways that we often aren’t capable of in our villages. On the down side, got back into my village yesterday, and the time I have here, which was beginning to seem so short and action-packed...it’s stretched out again ahead of me. It’s all perspective, but when you have a few pizzas and hear a few carols...ugali and cement walls and mud...they lose their romantic appeal, at least for the first few days. I think after New Years I will fall back into my rhythm. Here’s hoping.
till ringing, singing on its way, the world revolves from night to day. a voice, a chime, a chant sublime, of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
The first Christmas that I shall ever spend without my family. It won’t be the last. God willing, next year’s Christmas will be the last. But who knows? No one. No person knows where he or she will be next Christmas. ‘through the years we all will be together, if the fates allow’. Well this year, they didn’t. But it’s enough for one little man to know that his family and his friends are well, and that they love him, more than he could possibly deserve. In this year, more than any that have come before, I have been loved and surrounded by love, and it has been...a present. What we have is the something special. I don’t mean prosperity and affluence. I mean happiness, and friends, and lives without lies. It has long been my thought that there are happy people and miserable souls in every walk of life, every tax bracket, in first class and in coach. This year, and most years, I am one of them. And it is because you all remain happy.
and in despair i bow my head. there is no peace on earth, i said. for hate is strong and mocks the song, of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
Maisha ni Magumu (life is hard). It would not be a Christmas card from Africa without acknowledging the circumstances of the people with whom I share the yuletide. Do they know it’s Christmastime at all? Yes, yes they do. I have been doing a lot of thinking about the goals of my organization in the last few days, and the goals of so many of the wonderful organizations that do hard, unglamorous work to bring light, even Christmas lights, to a part of the world cautiously emerging from the darkness. But, in my thinking, that attitude is the problem.
I deal with dozens of Tanzanians every day. Some are smarter than me. Some are not. Very, very few were educated as well as I was, and because of that, I possess basic knowledge and processing systems that exceed theirs. I’m not superior to a one of them. Nor are they superior to me. But in the context in which we relate, and in most fundamental relations between developed nations and developing nations, I become the elder statesman. And it makes me feel...awful. I talk to African teachers twice my age, with five times my experience. I need their stories, their advice. But we don’t play on their field. We play on mine. So now it’s me playing the sage, doling out approval or wisdom...and that’s wrong. I become a parent, granting permission or denying cupcakes based on behavior. And that’s not what I am.
This new country of mine has a proud, dignified history, one that goes back far before colonialism, a history that begins with the very first steps of mankind as we know it. But they have drank of the milkshake and seen the glittering streetlights...and that history is being discarded. Ancient women, who should be lording over me and doling out their tales, their advice...they bow to me, and are afraid to speak to me, lest I disapprove. Every other teenager I meet is on his way to America, would much rather talk about Barack Obama than Jakaya Kikwete. And the playing field does not feel level. Because in reality, the playing field is not level. They want to be a developed, Western-style democracy. A TV in every living room and popcorn in every microwave. And those things are great. I know I love them, and I suspect they may as well. It is not for me to judge their desires. To get them, however, they are forced to jump through hoops, learn new rules, be punished when they err like tardy children. There is something fundamentally patronizing about all of it. I get that the fields are not equal. I am here to teach. They are here to learn from me. But maybe it’s one of those fake-it-till-you-make-it deals. Maybe if you expect people to be late to meetings or to skim from budgets, you’ve already lost. Maybe I’m not treating them as equals either. Maybe change begins with the agent of change.
On December 25th, we stop and celebrate for our love for each other. For whatever it may be worth, the people I live with in my village are as worthy of love and admiration as any I have ever met or hope to meet. There are Tanzanian heroes, villains, poets, thieves, carpenters, fathers, and mothers. Their fineries may not be quite as fine, their houses not perhaps so grand. But what we need to truly believe, not just profess but actually believe, is that the quality of a man’s possessions in no way determines or indicates the quality of the man, or woman. On Christmas morning here, we will awake in Africa, hug one another, open our small gifts, slaughter our roosters, and be happy it came. That somehow or other, it came just the same.
then peeled the bells more loud and deep. god is not dead, nor does he sleep. the wrong shall fail, the right prevail. with peace on earth, goodwill to men.
For it is this most beautiful time of year that we alter our hustle and bustle and take time to recognize each other for what we are: beautiful and loving partners in each other’s humanity. No man is an island, and the bell tolls for all of us. There are those of us who manage to survive alone, but in my heart I believe they are the poorer for it. I know the temptation; in fact I feel it often. How easy to care for yourself, to feed your mouth and no other, to win or lose on your lonesome. How hard to offer the little pieces of yourself that love requires, to put your heart on the block, to be broken or sold according to the whims of strangers. But we do it. Why? Because there is something in each of us, some wonderful goodness that it is criminal to conceal. We are not for ourselves. We are for others. To teach, to build, to lead, these are the skills we have, and they are all ways in which we participate in the same rockin’ roller coaster that is this lifetime. In this last year, I have been so damn lucky to live among all of you. I’ve been able to share the lives of my beautiful friends, my unbelievable family, and the love of my life. And they have been able to share my life. Our failures were eased by those who still believed something better lay within us, and our successes were sweeter because they were toasted among friends, high, loud, and repeatedly. On this most unusual of Christmases, I do not feel alone. I am not alone. And that is the purest, most precious present I have ever received. I love you all. Have a very Merry Christmas, and a very Happy New Year.
Merry Christmas from Africa, you joyful band of ne’er-do-elves. It rained for three hours yesterday, and before that it was about 95 degrees and dry, and after it was 75 and humid. Not quite Bing Crosby or Parson Brown type weather, but all in all, given my housing, I appreciate the temperatures.
Just finished my two week in-service-training, where I got to see all of my friends from the beginning of my service. Was really phenomenal, in that we all got to spend a lot of time doing a lot of different things, and relaxing in ways that we often aren’t capable of in our villages. On the down side, got back into my village yesterday, and the time I have here, which was beginning to seem so short and action-packed...it’s stretched out again ahead of me. It’s all perspective, but when you have a few pizzas and hear a few carols...ugali and cement walls and mud...they lose their romantic appeal, at least for the first few days. I think after New Years I will fall back into my rhythm. Here’s hoping.
till ringing, singing on its way, the world revolves from night to day. a voice, a chime, a chant sublime, of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
The first Christmas that I shall ever spend without my family. It won’t be the last. God willing, next year’s Christmas will be the last. But who knows? No one. No person knows where he or she will be next Christmas. ‘through the years we all will be together, if the fates allow’. Well this year, they didn’t. But it’s enough for one little man to know that his family and his friends are well, and that they love him, more than he could possibly deserve. In this year, more than any that have come before, I have been loved and surrounded by love, and it has been...a present. What we have is the something special. I don’t mean prosperity and affluence. I mean happiness, and friends, and lives without lies. It has long been my thought that there are happy people and miserable souls in every walk of life, every tax bracket, in first class and in coach. This year, and most years, I am one of them. And it is because you all remain happy.
and in despair i bow my head. there is no peace on earth, i said. for hate is strong and mocks the song, of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
Maisha ni Magumu (life is hard). It would not be a Christmas card from Africa without acknowledging the circumstances of the people with whom I share the yuletide. Do they know it’s Christmastime at all? Yes, yes they do. I have been doing a lot of thinking about the goals of my organization in the last few days, and the goals of so many of the wonderful organizations that do hard, unglamorous work to bring light, even Christmas lights, to a part of the world cautiously emerging from the darkness. But, in my thinking, that attitude is the problem.
I deal with dozens of Tanzanians every day. Some are smarter than me. Some are not. Very, very few were educated as well as I was, and because of that, I possess basic knowledge and processing systems that exceed theirs. I’m not superior to a one of them. Nor are they superior to me. But in the context in which we relate, and in most fundamental relations between developed nations and developing nations, I become the elder statesman. And it makes me feel...awful. I talk to African teachers twice my age, with five times my experience. I need their stories, their advice. But we don’t play on their field. We play on mine. So now it’s me playing the sage, doling out approval or wisdom...and that’s wrong. I become a parent, granting permission or denying cupcakes based on behavior. And that’s not what I am.
This new country of mine has a proud, dignified history, one that goes back far before colonialism, a history that begins with the very first steps of mankind as we know it. But they have drank of the milkshake and seen the glittering streetlights...and that history is being discarded. Ancient women, who should be lording over me and doling out their tales, their advice...they bow to me, and are afraid to speak to me, lest I disapprove. Every other teenager I meet is on his way to America, would much rather talk about Barack Obama than Jakaya Kikwete. And the playing field does not feel level. Because in reality, the playing field is not level. They want to be a developed, Western-style democracy. A TV in every living room and popcorn in every microwave. And those things are great. I know I love them, and I suspect they may as well. It is not for me to judge their desires. To get them, however, they are forced to jump through hoops, learn new rules, be punished when they err like tardy children. There is something fundamentally patronizing about all of it. I get that the fields are not equal. I am here to teach. They are here to learn from me. But maybe it’s one of those fake-it-till-you-make-it deals. Maybe if you expect people to be late to meetings or to skim from budgets, you’ve already lost. Maybe I’m not treating them as equals either. Maybe change begins with the agent of change.
On December 25th, we stop and celebrate for our love for each other. For whatever it may be worth, the people I live with in my village are as worthy of love and admiration as any I have ever met or hope to meet. There are Tanzanian heroes, villains, poets, thieves, carpenters, fathers, and mothers. Their fineries may not be quite as fine, their houses not perhaps so grand. But what we need to truly believe, not just profess but actually believe, is that the quality of a man’s possessions in no way determines or indicates the quality of the man, or woman. On Christmas morning here, we will awake in Africa, hug one another, open our small gifts, slaughter our roosters, and be happy it came. That somehow or other, it came just the same.
then peeled the bells more loud and deep. god is not dead, nor does he sleep. the wrong shall fail, the right prevail. with peace on earth, goodwill to men.
For it is this most beautiful time of year that we alter our hustle and bustle and take time to recognize each other for what we are: beautiful and loving partners in each other’s humanity. No man is an island, and the bell tolls for all of us. There are those of us who manage to survive alone, but in my heart I believe they are the poorer for it. I know the temptation; in fact I feel it often. How easy to care for yourself, to feed your mouth and no other, to win or lose on your lonesome. How hard to offer the little pieces of yourself that love requires, to put your heart on the block, to be broken or sold according to the whims of strangers. But we do it. Why? Because there is something in each of us, some wonderful goodness that it is criminal to conceal. We are not for ourselves. We are for others. To teach, to build, to lead, these are the skills we have, and they are all ways in which we participate in the same rockin’ roller coaster that is this lifetime. In this last year, I have been so damn lucky to live among all of you. I’ve been able to share the lives of my beautiful friends, my unbelievable family, and the love of my life. And they have been able to share my life. Our failures were eased by those who still believed something better lay within us, and our successes were sweeter because they were toasted among friends, high, loud, and repeatedly. On this most unusual of Christmases, I do not feel alone. I am not alone. And that is the purest, most precious present I have ever received. I love you all. Have a very Merry Christmas, and a very Happy New Year.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
A Nyoka in the Nyasi
I’m going out of my tiny little mind. Why, you ask? Because I’m trying to do too much, in too little time. And every time somebody says, “unaweza kutusaidia?” (can you help us?)...what does your boy do? Does he responsibly say that he will only be here for two years, not two decades? Does he provide a coherent outline of the ways in which he is able to help, establishing conditions and limits of assistance? Nah. He usually says, “inawezakana” (it is possible). Which it is. Which all things are. And yet...and yet. All we can do is jitahidi (do our best).
Heading to training in two days. Which I’m sure will be wonderful. I am more than a little nervous, because I have been living myself, in what is still a pretty quiet village, despite my best efforts to give all its inhabitants ulcers (welcome to “civilized” living. Maybe not all it’s cracked up to be. Enjoy the Pepto.) I am about to go to training, with 40 other Americans, most of whom are rather...well, loud. Wonderful people, left hearth and home to travel to sehemu (place/s) unknown. But still...yeah...loud. One of the things I love about my friends and loved ones is an ability to be still, to watch a sun set without talking it to bed. One of the things that would truly baffle a lot of you reading this is the sheer amount of time I spend sitting...and waiting...and that’s it. I’m expected to be early, they’re expected to be late, and while that might change one day...bado (not yet). I’ve come to enjoy the odd hour or two that I spend just thinking thoughts, preparing my mind for siku za mbele (days in front, or days to come). Likewise, one of the things I miss most about my friends are the nights where we do very, very little. Sometimes it is enough to be together, and that’s it. So many nights someone wants to go out, and someone wants to stay in. And I love going late night with the good people, but I love even more staying in, and talking, and listening, and learning about how other people live life.
Had an interesting meeting a few days ago. A certain group (perhaps farmers’ collective would be a better term) asked me to help them start an animal husbandry project, specifically of modern castes of pigs. The local breed of swine (also my nickname in college) is an older, smaller one, that does not produce swinelets as efficiently as other breeds. Myself and my counterpart, a teacher at the primary school, head to the meeting. It goes well...to a point. My counterpart is a highly intelligent guy, and understands quite a bit about modern economics. As such, he’s as qualified, if not more so, than me to lead these people. Unlike me, amekuwa kunywa pombe kabla ya kikao (he had been hitting the sauce before the meeting (perhaps not a literal translation, but you get my meaning)). He was not sloshed, but he was perhaps not as diplomatic as he could have been. All I mean is that he started pushing ideas onto the group. Good ideas, yes, but it has always been my strategy to help people discover something themselves...not rub their noses in it. It may have been an issue of cultural differences, so I asked somebody else, got some assurance that a more diplomatic way of leadership would have been better, and said those words that no partner ever wants to hear...”tunahitaji kuongea.”
“We need to talk.”
Because apparently I have entered into a bromance. We are really quite cute. We say goodnight to each other every day, we cook for each other, his children play at my house...and occasionally we share a beer after a long day at work. Great guy, just needs to remember that the way the message is conveyed matters just as much as the message mwenyewe (itself). Maybe more.
Tomorrow, nitapanda (I will plant). I wasn’t sure I could learn Kiswahili, cook, or slaughter a chicken. But I can! This is the last step. I still am not entirely convinced that if I put something in the ground, and care for it properly, that it will grow. All I ask is a few prayers, for good rain, and for good harvests. I will eat my own food come spring, Mungu Akipenda (if god wishes).
So tomorrow came (and one day it won’t, so for its coming I was grateful), and I planted. I now have a beautiful double-dug garden, courtesy of myself and two village youths, planted ultra-close with mahindi, viazi, kabichi, karoti, nyanya, and pilipili hoho (corn, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, and bell peppers). But before I planted...funny thing happened. As I’ve detailed in other blog posts, most mornings begin with me going into my cooking shed to heat up water for coffee and bathing. But this fateful morning I slept through my alarm, and was awakened by the dulcet tones of my fundi (tradesperson, anything from tailor to bike repairman), who had come to put on my gate, to repel those most evil of vermin, chickens. They want to eat the seeds I’m about to plant, and Danny don’t play that (hate to be called Danny). So fundi arrives. I wake up. I stumble out in my Dark Side of the Moon pajama pants, and we start talking door-stuff. He asks me where it is, and I tell him, it’s in the jikoni (in the kitchen shed). He goes in, comes out a moment later, and asks, “unafuga nyoka?”
...No, I’m not keeping a snake...
I have to say, I handled it pretty well. My response was basically, okay, what are we doing about this. And then he got a certain tool, and beheaded it, and we all looked at the dead adder which had entered my kitchen in the night, and it was already a unique, special day. However, later, as I’m sitting around, watching the sun set...I go in there every morning, bleary-eyed. And adders are apparently not very aggressive, so certainly a good chance I would have been fine, just scared witless. But...damn. That could have been last call. There are snakes and random mortal hazards in America too, so please don’t worry about me. So on this particular year, when I am not America, when I was a pilgrim on Thanksgiving in a different land, I found myself thankful for very different things. I am thankful for not being miserable, for the friends I have here, Tanzanian and American, but also for the friends I have left behind, who have not forgotten me, at least not all of them. And lastly, I'm thankful for being alive. It has been an unbelievable year since my last Thanksgiving, and the next one promises to be no less special. If I can keep my feet off adders, I have a future. But if I can't, it's been one hell of a ride.
I have recently posted a bunch of photos, which I believe my lovely family will have transferred somewhere for all to see. I took the vast majority of them in one day, one day that I allotted for the taking of pictures. If you look at one picture, of a forest (a planted forest, but still a forest) from a distance, you should know that at that precise moment, it began to rain. The rains are coming slowly this year, but they are coming. The rain began that day, and it will end sometime in late May. What was once brown shall become green, and he who was once dry shall be wet. The rains came. We depend so much on these seasons, that fall shall follow summer, that cold shall precede warm, and then vice versa. And maybe we are messing up our little planet so much that one day it will be snowing in July and hailing butterflies on Christmas. But the rains came. As they have come since time immemorial. If things do not change, or perhaps even if they do, there may be a year when we wait for the rains...and they do not come. But for now the world turns, and the snake continues to swallow his tail (and nothing else), as he will for many moons to come. Because the rains came. For this we are thankful.
Love,
Dan
Heading to training in two days. Which I’m sure will be wonderful. I am more than a little nervous, because I have been living myself, in what is still a pretty quiet village, despite my best efforts to give all its inhabitants ulcers (welcome to “civilized” living. Maybe not all it’s cracked up to be. Enjoy the Pepto.) I am about to go to training, with 40 other Americans, most of whom are rather...well, loud. Wonderful people, left hearth and home to travel to sehemu (place/s) unknown. But still...yeah...loud. One of the things I love about my friends and loved ones is an ability to be still, to watch a sun set without talking it to bed. One of the things that would truly baffle a lot of you reading this is the sheer amount of time I spend sitting...and waiting...and that’s it. I’m expected to be early, they’re expected to be late, and while that might change one day...bado (not yet). I’ve come to enjoy the odd hour or two that I spend just thinking thoughts, preparing my mind for siku za mbele (days in front, or days to come). Likewise, one of the things I miss most about my friends are the nights where we do very, very little. Sometimes it is enough to be together, and that’s it. So many nights someone wants to go out, and someone wants to stay in. And I love going late night with the good people, but I love even more staying in, and talking, and listening, and learning about how other people live life.
Had an interesting meeting a few days ago. A certain group (perhaps farmers’ collective would be a better term) asked me to help them start an animal husbandry project, specifically of modern castes of pigs. The local breed of swine (also my nickname in college) is an older, smaller one, that does not produce swinelets as efficiently as other breeds. Myself and my counterpart, a teacher at the primary school, head to the meeting. It goes well...to a point. My counterpart is a highly intelligent guy, and understands quite a bit about modern economics. As such, he’s as qualified, if not more so, than me to lead these people. Unlike me, amekuwa kunywa pombe kabla ya kikao (he had been hitting the sauce before the meeting (perhaps not a literal translation, but you get my meaning)). He was not sloshed, but he was perhaps not as diplomatic as he could have been. All I mean is that he started pushing ideas onto the group. Good ideas, yes, but it has always been my strategy to help people discover something themselves...not rub their noses in it. It may have been an issue of cultural differences, so I asked somebody else, got some assurance that a more diplomatic way of leadership would have been better, and said those words that no partner ever wants to hear...”tunahitaji kuongea.”
“We need to talk.”
Because apparently I have entered into a bromance. We are really quite cute. We say goodnight to each other every day, we cook for each other, his children play at my house...and occasionally we share a beer after a long day at work. Great guy, just needs to remember that the way the message is conveyed matters just as much as the message mwenyewe (itself). Maybe more.
Tomorrow, nitapanda (I will plant). I wasn’t sure I could learn Kiswahili, cook, or slaughter a chicken. But I can! This is the last step. I still am not entirely convinced that if I put something in the ground, and care for it properly, that it will grow. All I ask is a few prayers, for good rain, and for good harvests. I will eat my own food come spring, Mungu Akipenda (if god wishes).
So tomorrow came (and one day it won’t, so for its coming I was grateful), and I planted. I now have a beautiful double-dug garden, courtesy of myself and two village youths, planted ultra-close with mahindi, viazi, kabichi, karoti, nyanya, and pilipili hoho (corn, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, and bell peppers). But before I planted...funny thing happened. As I’ve detailed in other blog posts, most mornings begin with me going into my cooking shed to heat up water for coffee and bathing. But this fateful morning I slept through my alarm, and was awakened by the dulcet tones of my fundi (tradesperson, anything from tailor to bike repairman), who had come to put on my gate, to repel those most evil of vermin, chickens. They want to eat the seeds I’m about to plant, and Danny don’t play that (hate to be called Danny). So fundi arrives. I wake up. I stumble out in my Dark Side of the Moon pajama pants, and we start talking door-stuff. He asks me where it is, and I tell him, it’s in the jikoni (in the kitchen shed). He goes in, comes out a moment later, and asks, “unafuga nyoka?”
...No, I’m not keeping a snake...
I have to say, I handled it pretty well. My response was basically, okay, what are we doing about this. And then he got a certain tool, and beheaded it, and we all looked at the dead adder which had entered my kitchen in the night, and it was already a unique, special day. However, later, as I’m sitting around, watching the sun set...I go in there every morning, bleary-eyed. And adders are apparently not very aggressive, so certainly a good chance I would have been fine, just scared witless. But...damn. That could have been last call. There are snakes and random mortal hazards in America too, so please don’t worry about me. So on this particular year, when I am not America, when I was a pilgrim on Thanksgiving in a different land, I found myself thankful for very different things. I am thankful for not being miserable, for the friends I have here, Tanzanian and American, but also for the friends I have left behind, who have not forgotten me, at least not all of them. And lastly, I'm thankful for being alive. It has been an unbelievable year since my last Thanksgiving, and the next one promises to be no less special. If I can keep my feet off adders, I have a future. But if I can't, it's been one hell of a ride.
I have recently posted a bunch of photos, which I believe my lovely family will have transferred somewhere for all to see. I took the vast majority of them in one day, one day that I allotted for the taking of pictures. If you look at one picture, of a forest (a planted forest, but still a forest) from a distance, you should know that at that precise moment, it began to rain. The rains are coming slowly this year, but they are coming. The rain began that day, and it will end sometime in late May. What was once brown shall become green, and he who was once dry shall be wet. The rains came. We depend so much on these seasons, that fall shall follow summer, that cold shall precede warm, and then vice versa. And maybe we are messing up our little planet so much that one day it will be snowing in July and hailing butterflies on Christmas. But the rains came. As they have come since time immemorial. If things do not change, or perhaps even if they do, there may be a year when we wait for the rains...and they do not come. But for now the world turns, and the snake continues to swallow his tail (and nothing else), as he will for many moons to come. Because the rains came. For this we are thankful.
Love,
Dan
Monday, November 8, 2010
Mungu ni Mwema
So this blog entry gonna be a little on the shorter side. Probably a good thing, I’ve started to trend toward writing novels. Wrote up a long entry, hated it, shan’t post it. Basically I was trying to write a day-in-the-life entry. But I kept going on tangents, and very soon the entry became a day-in-the-life-of-the-reader. And that’s no good. So here is a brief sketch of one day in my little vacation. It was Thursday, by the by:
-woke up at 6:15am to the sound of chickens and my cat.
-put on water for coffee and oatmeal
-fed cat cut up dried fish about the size of a paper clip
-took off water, poured coffee, put on water for bathing (half the water I need, I then mix it with cold water to avoid scalding.)
-do crossword, drink instant coffee, eat instant oatmeal. Instantly awesome.
-bathe (takes me about 5 liters of water…maybe less. Two to wet the body…that’s right, the body. Then soaping and shampoo, then three cups to rinse.) and shave.
-get dressed, have final cup of coffee. Leave at 8am to meet friend, we are going to his tree farm for me to look and learn.
-friend is not there.
-…still not there.
-…waiting.
-formulate new plan! My friend the witch doctor has a pine forest that he planted, and it’s quite large, and I can’t wait to go explore it…and now I can!
-Walk down to the forest, meet a few friends on the way, then point me in the right direction.
-Enter forest.
-Sit down in forest.
-Bask.
-Think about Thoreau.
-Phone rings. Thoreau never had to put up with this shit.
-Kenzie having mild crisis. I am useless to help. She figures it out.
-Bask again.
-Leave forest, go to another stand of trees, eucalyptus this time.
-Much less peaceful here. Go check out a bridge my villagers built over one of the smallish rivers. Pretty nice job actually. Might have my civil engineering buddy start working up some designs for me using just nails and rough cut pine (Kucz, this would be you).
-Head back home, stop at the store to grab some biscuits (sugar and flour…yummy), and eat them with honey and peanut butter for a snack.
-Is now about 12:30. Take a quick nap and prepare for my meeting at 2. See a friend passing, she invites me to her church later for a seminar on the word of God. She’s good people. I agree to go. I don’t know why. She’s an Assemblist of God.
-Have a meeting at 2 with the head teacher to discuss the details of my upcoming Environmental Club. There will be 35 kids (yikes!), and we will do all sorts of fun activities. Details forthcoming.
-Meeting wraps up at 3:30, I quick run to the store to buy a fungu (pile) of tomatoes for dinner, and then head to church.
-Church. There is singing, there is dancing, there may have been some speaking in tongues, but there was no laying of the hands. I would have remembered. It’s been a while…
-Free from church! Good people, the Assemblists. They sing a lot, they dance, there are drums. Little more lively than my Catholic masses.
-Friend invites me to his house. We talk for about 15 minutes, he gives me an egg and bananas. I don’t need these things. Even though my stipend is fairly low (about 190 dollars a month), it’s plenty. But I’m a guest. This is tradition. These are wonderful people.
-Go home and cook spaghetti and my homemade sauce. This takes about 2 hours, involves me grating a dozen tomatoes, chopping onions, garlic, peppers, and lighting two different stoves, one charcoal and one kerosene. It is very dark at this point, and I finish around 8pm. I use a solar lantern for light, and I listen to music. This time I don’t spill the sauce everywhere. Yay!
-Eat by candlelight. Cat purrs.
-Do the dishes (involving three basins and an orange bar of soap. Pretty easy actually).
-Write a letter by candelight. Always fun! I believe that day was to Miss Drake. This takes about a half hour.
-Read for a little by candle, then call it a day around 9:30.
-Take a half cup of water to the choo for teeth brushing and flossing.
-Change into jimmies.
-Lock door.
-Lift up mosquito net, crawl in, put on headlamp (thanks!).
-Read for about a half hour…drift off into cozy slumber.
-Repeat.
And there it is. A day in my little life. Not necessarily the normal day, but that’s only because there are no normal days. Everything before 8am and after 7pm is usually the same. In between, anything goes. Lots of days I run, lots of days I wash clothes or sweep, lots of days I show up as the guest of honor at someone’s house and get fed. It varies a lot.
Would like to return briefly to the point of the church and the forest, and the kitchen. I went to church 3 of the last 4 days. In case you are wondering, no, I have not changed that much. I didn’t necessarily enjoy all of that time spent on the wooden bench. But what I did enjoy was the singing. And the looks on peoples faces, and the happiness and relief I saw on them when we left at the end of mass. Church may not be where I get that feeling, that wonderful feeling, that realization that Mungu ni mwema (God is good), and so are we. I may not find that in church, but I do recognize it. If you could have seen my face as I sat in the midst of a farm of pine trees, you would have recognized it too. It was like being in a wooden cathedral, the columns in perfect rows marching towards the horizon, the light being filtered not by stained glass, but by pine needles and branches. It was symmetrical, it was natural, and it was beautiful. Or if you had seen me the day I cut open my cinnamon raisin bread and slathered some butter and bit in while it was still piping hot. It’s just like…alchemy. That moment when the potter and his clay interact, and when it’s over, still all you have is potter and clay, but something else is there. Something beautiful. Something gold. That’s what this experience is like for me, on the good days. And most days are good days. I think maybe it has to do with waiting so long, and working so hard, to be here, to do this. I’m just a guy, sitting in a forest, or kneading some dough. But the context, the history, the conflux of work done and work yet to be done, makes bread into gold, and pine into wine. Someone wrote me that you can't do everything in life. And that's true. You can't do everything. But you can do anything.
So I would like to address one little question that Mama Waldron has posed a few times. What am I called in my village? Sadly, I got nothing. It’s usually “Dani” or “Danieri” or “Piss Kor” (Peace Corps). Sometimes it is “Mzungu”, which is what they call all white people. Not a fan. But Daniel is not an uncommon name here, and they’re cool with it. So I have no tribal handle. Therefore, I have given myself a Tanzanian name. Not for the village, cuz they wouldn’t get it. But amongst the volunteers of my particular region, I am now known as Baba Sukari. For those asking the obvious question, Sukari means sugar. And Baba means father. Or daddy. Enjoy.
Love,
Piss Kor
-woke up at 6:15am to the sound of chickens and my cat.
-put on water for coffee and oatmeal
-fed cat cut up dried fish about the size of a paper clip
-took off water, poured coffee, put on water for bathing (half the water I need, I then mix it with cold water to avoid scalding.)
-do crossword, drink instant coffee, eat instant oatmeal. Instantly awesome.
-bathe (takes me about 5 liters of water…maybe less. Two to wet the body…that’s right, the body. Then soaping and shampoo, then three cups to rinse.) and shave.
-get dressed, have final cup of coffee. Leave at 8am to meet friend, we are going to his tree farm for me to look and learn.
-friend is not there.
-…still not there.
-…waiting.
-formulate new plan! My friend the witch doctor has a pine forest that he planted, and it’s quite large, and I can’t wait to go explore it…and now I can!
-Walk down to the forest, meet a few friends on the way, then point me in the right direction.
-Enter forest.
-Sit down in forest.
-Bask.
-Think about Thoreau.
-Phone rings. Thoreau never had to put up with this shit.
-Kenzie having mild crisis. I am useless to help. She figures it out.
-Bask again.
-Leave forest, go to another stand of trees, eucalyptus this time.
-Much less peaceful here. Go check out a bridge my villagers built over one of the smallish rivers. Pretty nice job actually. Might have my civil engineering buddy start working up some designs for me using just nails and rough cut pine (Kucz, this would be you).
-Head back home, stop at the store to grab some biscuits (sugar and flour…yummy), and eat them with honey and peanut butter for a snack.
-Is now about 12:30. Take a quick nap and prepare for my meeting at 2. See a friend passing, she invites me to her church later for a seminar on the word of God. She’s good people. I agree to go. I don’t know why. She’s an Assemblist of God.
-Have a meeting at 2 with the head teacher to discuss the details of my upcoming Environmental Club. There will be 35 kids (yikes!), and we will do all sorts of fun activities. Details forthcoming.
-Meeting wraps up at 3:30, I quick run to the store to buy a fungu (pile) of tomatoes for dinner, and then head to church.
-Church. There is singing, there is dancing, there may have been some speaking in tongues, but there was no laying of the hands. I would have remembered. It’s been a while…
-Free from church! Good people, the Assemblists. They sing a lot, they dance, there are drums. Little more lively than my Catholic masses.
-Friend invites me to his house. We talk for about 15 minutes, he gives me an egg and bananas. I don’t need these things. Even though my stipend is fairly low (about 190 dollars a month), it’s plenty. But I’m a guest. This is tradition. These are wonderful people.
-Go home and cook spaghetti and my homemade sauce. This takes about 2 hours, involves me grating a dozen tomatoes, chopping onions, garlic, peppers, and lighting two different stoves, one charcoal and one kerosene. It is very dark at this point, and I finish around 8pm. I use a solar lantern for light, and I listen to music. This time I don’t spill the sauce everywhere. Yay!
-Eat by candlelight. Cat purrs.
-Do the dishes (involving three basins and an orange bar of soap. Pretty easy actually).
-Write a letter by candelight. Always fun! I believe that day was to Miss Drake. This takes about a half hour.
-Read for a little by candle, then call it a day around 9:30.
-Take a half cup of water to the choo for teeth brushing and flossing.
-Change into jimmies.
-Lock door.
-Lift up mosquito net, crawl in, put on headlamp (thanks!).
-Read for about a half hour…drift off into cozy slumber.
-Repeat.
And there it is. A day in my little life. Not necessarily the normal day, but that’s only because there are no normal days. Everything before 8am and after 7pm is usually the same. In between, anything goes. Lots of days I run, lots of days I wash clothes or sweep, lots of days I show up as the guest of honor at someone’s house and get fed. It varies a lot.
Would like to return briefly to the point of the church and the forest, and the kitchen. I went to church 3 of the last 4 days. In case you are wondering, no, I have not changed that much. I didn’t necessarily enjoy all of that time spent on the wooden bench. But what I did enjoy was the singing. And the looks on peoples faces, and the happiness and relief I saw on them when we left at the end of mass. Church may not be where I get that feeling, that wonderful feeling, that realization that Mungu ni mwema (God is good), and so are we. I may not find that in church, but I do recognize it. If you could have seen my face as I sat in the midst of a farm of pine trees, you would have recognized it too. It was like being in a wooden cathedral, the columns in perfect rows marching towards the horizon, the light being filtered not by stained glass, but by pine needles and branches. It was symmetrical, it was natural, and it was beautiful. Or if you had seen me the day I cut open my cinnamon raisin bread and slathered some butter and bit in while it was still piping hot. It’s just like…alchemy. That moment when the potter and his clay interact, and when it’s over, still all you have is potter and clay, but something else is there. Something beautiful. Something gold. That’s what this experience is like for me, on the good days. And most days are good days. I think maybe it has to do with waiting so long, and working so hard, to be here, to do this. I’m just a guy, sitting in a forest, or kneading some dough. But the context, the history, the conflux of work done and work yet to be done, makes bread into gold, and pine into wine. Someone wrote me that you can't do everything in life. And that's true. You can't do everything. But you can do anything.
So I would like to address one little question that Mama Waldron has posed a few times. What am I called in my village? Sadly, I got nothing. It’s usually “Dani” or “Danieri” or “Piss Kor” (Peace Corps). Sometimes it is “Mzungu”, which is what they call all white people. Not a fan. But Daniel is not an uncommon name here, and they’re cool with it. So I have no tribal handle. Therefore, I have given myself a Tanzanian name. Not for the village, cuz they wouldn’t get it. But amongst the volunteers of my particular region, I am now known as Baba Sukari. For those asking the obvious question, Sukari means sugar. And Baba means father. Or daddy. Enjoy.
Love,
Piss Kor
Saturday, October 23, 2010
The Kuku Chizi
Sitting in my dark house, lit by a single flickering candle, thinking about one of the worst things I ever did to anybody. The background: my parents moved into their current office (thought current being a relatively temporary word lately with the Waldrons. I don’t think they’ve changed their citizenships. Yet.) in the early 90’s. I was a youngin, and got to play around, a lot, in the new digs. For those of you who haven’t visited the offices of Waldron and Waldron (not true, but brings to mind my parents as Muppets in the Christmas Carol, shackled in chains and singing to Scrooge. Watch the movie. Right now), you walk inside and you are on landing, stairs leading up and down. My parents work on the top floor. The bottom floor, for many years, was vacant. My sister and I used it as a place to play on the trampoline (...why was there a trampoline in the basement of a law office, Mom and Dad?), and to pass the time as children will do. And then one day...I let my better demons get the best of me. It went something like this:
I knew my sister would be coming downstairs soon. I don’t remember why I knew, but knew I did. And this was at a point in my life where scaring people was still really, really fun (I also used to enjoy hiding a rubber snake in my parents bed. Amazing I lived till puberty). So I went downstairs, into the cave. I remember it was always very, very cool down there...and just a little dank. And it was essentially underground. No light. None. And I waited.
Waiting in pitch blackness is an exercise in relativity. After 5 minutes, time begins to flow like a river through mine. You think you hear something, you make up a story for it. It could be anything. Someone sneezes three offices down, somebody pops open a soda, and you tense. She’s coming! Now’s the moment! You forget that when the moment does come, it won’t be ambiguous. You’ll know. It’s like waiting for the subway. You get excited for every flicker of light off the walls, then when the actual train comes, you remember...it’s a train. It coming, and it’s going, and you’ll know when it does. And all you can do is ride it.
Vicky comes down the stairs, slowly, quickly, don’t remember. She reaches the landing, the doorway, then starts the descent. I get excited, giggly even. Then the guy in white on the right shoulder mentions that this is a really terrible idea, a cruel idea, even. And he’s right, and I know it. But she’s coming down the stairs, and I’m here, and it’s too late now, even if I say something, it will scare her. So I might as well go for the gold. And when my wonderful, beautiful sister reaches the bottom of the stairs, she reaches her hand into the dangerous darkness, groping for a light switch she’ll never find. Because five fingers that aren’t supposed to be down there close around her wrist, and she begins to scream.
There are certain expectations you have to have in order to survive. Every day all of you live with the expectation that the other cars will stay on their side of those thin yellow lines. But those lines are thin. And they won’t stop a car. They won’t stop anything. And the moments we recognize that fact are the moments we realize how fragile our worlds are. You have to believe that the boogie man isn’t under the stairs, or else you’d never go down them. So we all tell our kids its safe, and we all tell ourselves its safe. But one day it wasn’t. Not at all. Sorry about that Vick. I really really am.
I wrote this because I’m reading Bag of Bones, by Stephen King, alone, in the middle of the night. I’m only a little ways in, but it feels like a good one (books and football games, you can tell early on if they’re gonna be good. Relationships and baseball are different. They can start slow but go the distance, or there can be fireworks at the start...and then the crowds end up leaving early). So far, it is the story of a writer whose wife dies before they are very old, and he is being figuratively (or maybe literally...dun dun DUN) haunted by her memory. Now I’m a guy who gets into his reading. Emotional reads get me going if they are good, and creepy stories give me the creeps. But if you want to really stand up those hairs on the back of your neck, try reading a frightening story alone, your house lit by one candle, your last candle, very far from home.
Because alone, in the middle of a new and strange land, all that lights the way is your sanity, your faith that your perception of reality matches reality. And sometimes, late at night, the wind begins to blow a little, and that candle begins to flicker. And you start to wonder...could it ever blow out? How dark would it get, inside my house, inside my mind? And the answers are...of course it could. And it would be very, very dark. And if there’s not enough light to see your hand, how can you be sure it’s still there? If you’re alone, in the dark, how can you be sure you’re really alone...
Well that got dark, didn’t it? Didn’t mean to frighten anybody, but I can assure you that I’m not sitting in the dark, water dripping through my fingers, talking about snails crawling on the edge of straight razors (first person to post the movie I’ve just referenced...can adopt a Tanzanian child?). Although I must say that one of the volunteers I met the other day was talking about living on your own, and he said something to the effect of, “yeah, you do find yourself saying ‘huh, I got a little weird for those last six months there, didn’t I?’” And I see what he means. Kwa mfano (for example), I was in town the other morning to get money and bread and a package (thanks Mom and Dad and Vicky!), and I went into a bathroom, and saw my own reflection. No, I hadn’t developed a uni-brow or a lazy eye or a swarthier complexion. But it was still really weird seeing myself. I don’t have a mirror, is the thing. I see my own face about once every two weeks. And while I don’t think anything is changing...I’m also not sure I would know. No mirrors, real, or otherwise.
What I mean is that if I started wearing skinny jeans and pink polo shirts around in Paupack (like an Italian guy I met a few days ago in Africa), odds are one of the people who love me and care about me would tell me I looked like a continental idiot. But here...they all think I’m crazy anyway. So anything I do is just another crazy thing the crazy guy is doing. They have no expectations of Dan Waldron, or at least no expectations of his behavior or appearance (going to segue out of the 3rd person now). Which means...I might get weird. Weirder. There’s an off chance I’ll have some moments of weirdness. Like talking to the cat. Or eating cookie dough raw. Or maybe occasionally sitting on the floor at the proper angle so that I can only see sky through the windows, so I can pretend I’m in the movie “Up” and the house is flying (two of those happened. Maybe three).
So this section I will write in Kiswahili. Translation to follow:
Ningependa kuchukua nafasi hii kupongeza rafiki yangu atakayeolewa Jumamosi inayokuja, Bibi Brittany Scott. Najua yeye na mchumba wake (Bwana ADAM HAMWAY) wataishi pamoja, watacheka pamoja, na Mungu akipenda, watashinda pamoja mpaka watakuwa wazee bila meno. Ninawapenda sana ninyi wote wawili, na nitakuwa na huzuni sana kukosa harusi yenu. Mcheze dansi kuku chizi. Nakuomba.
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulation my friend who will be married this Saturday, Miss Brittany Scott. I know she and her fiance (Massa Adam Hamway) will live together, laugh together, and God willing, will succeed together until they are old people without teeth. I love you both very much, and I will be very sad to miss your wedding. Dance the funky chicken. I beg you.
I never want to make this blog about what these people don't have, and we do have. As I see it, we are all doing the best we can, and the people I love spend a whole lot of time giving back. There are people who take advantage of opportunities in both cultures, and people who make their own opportunities. That being said...I hate you all. I spent an entire day on Thursday building shelves with a hammer that was attached to its handle by hope, nails that had the strength of linguini, and a saw that I believe was used to amputate General Rosewall Stormyside's leg in the Civil War. Adding to that...I'm a really bad carpenter. The resulting shelves look like something out of a Salvador Dali painting. I miss flat floors. I miss power tools. Hate you all. Not a lot. Just a little.
To close, I am in fact doing some work, not just sawing off my own hand for the fun of it. We had our first meeting of my secret cow group the other day (I will be sad when we tell people about the group...and it just becomes a cow group). We are a long ways away from actually getting cows from Heifer International, but I do have high hopes. And one very special goal: I fully intend, for purposes of tracking the cows, to give them names. And what better names than the names of a certain Cow Group in Northeastern Pennsylvania? Debby, Molly, Susie, Marsha, Jeanne, Susie, you get the idea :) Though, assuming all works out, there will be one bull. I’m leaning heavily towards calling the bull Uncle Louie. But if anyone has a convincing argument that I should name the bull after them, write me a letter. I’m listening.
In the interests of full disclosure, I’m not supposed to be initiating projects yet. And I’m not. This was an idea from my neighbor (there’s a similar project in his parents’ village). I’m just the token white guy (this is true in most settings). Seriously, it’s a tricky balance. Pushing projects through quickly is a recipe for disaster. But I have people who want to do something special, and are ready to get to work. They aren’t asking me for grant money or material support, at least not yet. Who am I to tell them they have to wait for me to get my adverbs in the proper order? The key, I think, is to ask as many questions as possible, and to spend every moment thinking of all the stuff that could go wrong, then solutions. Kind of like preparing for a date. You bring that spare pair of pants. Cuz something might go wrong. Or right. Moving on.
But for all my wasiwasi (worries), I had kind of a funny moment the other day. A great old Neil Young song comes on. “Cortez the Killer”. And as I’m listening to the lyrics and remembering all the lovely development work my boy Cortez pulled off, it did occur to me that he set the bar pretty low for people working in new countries and with new cultures. I’m thinking I can do better.
Keep On Rocking in the Free World,
Dan
I knew my sister would be coming downstairs soon. I don’t remember why I knew, but knew I did. And this was at a point in my life where scaring people was still really, really fun (I also used to enjoy hiding a rubber snake in my parents bed. Amazing I lived till puberty). So I went downstairs, into the cave. I remember it was always very, very cool down there...and just a little dank. And it was essentially underground. No light. None. And I waited.
Waiting in pitch blackness is an exercise in relativity. After 5 minutes, time begins to flow like a river through mine. You think you hear something, you make up a story for it. It could be anything. Someone sneezes three offices down, somebody pops open a soda, and you tense. She’s coming! Now’s the moment! You forget that when the moment does come, it won’t be ambiguous. You’ll know. It’s like waiting for the subway. You get excited for every flicker of light off the walls, then when the actual train comes, you remember...it’s a train. It coming, and it’s going, and you’ll know when it does. And all you can do is ride it.
Vicky comes down the stairs, slowly, quickly, don’t remember. She reaches the landing, the doorway, then starts the descent. I get excited, giggly even. Then the guy in white on the right shoulder mentions that this is a really terrible idea, a cruel idea, even. And he’s right, and I know it. But she’s coming down the stairs, and I’m here, and it’s too late now, even if I say something, it will scare her. So I might as well go for the gold. And when my wonderful, beautiful sister reaches the bottom of the stairs, she reaches her hand into the dangerous darkness, groping for a light switch she’ll never find. Because five fingers that aren’t supposed to be down there close around her wrist, and she begins to scream.
There are certain expectations you have to have in order to survive. Every day all of you live with the expectation that the other cars will stay on their side of those thin yellow lines. But those lines are thin. And they won’t stop a car. They won’t stop anything. And the moments we recognize that fact are the moments we realize how fragile our worlds are. You have to believe that the boogie man isn’t under the stairs, or else you’d never go down them. So we all tell our kids its safe, and we all tell ourselves its safe. But one day it wasn’t. Not at all. Sorry about that Vick. I really really am.
I wrote this because I’m reading Bag of Bones, by Stephen King, alone, in the middle of the night. I’m only a little ways in, but it feels like a good one (books and football games, you can tell early on if they’re gonna be good. Relationships and baseball are different. They can start slow but go the distance, or there can be fireworks at the start...and then the crowds end up leaving early). So far, it is the story of a writer whose wife dies before they are very old, and he is being figuratively (or maybe literally...dun dun DUN) haunted by her memory. Now I’m a guy who gets into his reading. Emotional reads get me going if they are good, and creepy stories give me the creeps. But if you want to really stand up those hairs on the back of your neck, try reading a frightening story alone, your house lit by one candle, your last candle, very far from home.
Because alone, in the middle of a new and strange land, all that lights the way is your sanity, your faith that your perception of reality matches reality. And sometimes, late at night, the wind begins to blow a little, and that candle begins to flicker. And you start to wonder...could it ever blow out? How dark would it get, inside my house, inside my mind? And the answers are...of course it could. And it would be very, very dark. And if there’s not enough light to see your hand, how can you be sure it’s still there? If you’re alone, in the dark, how can you be sure you’re really alone...
Well that got dark, didn’t it? Didn’t mean to frighten anybody, but I can assure you that I’m not sitting in the dark, water dripping through my fingers, talking about snails crawling on the edge of straight razors (first person to post the movie I’ve just referenced...can adopt a Tanzanian child?). Although I must say that one of the volunteers I met the other day was talking about living on your own, and he said something to the effect of, “yeah, you do find yourself saying ‘huh, I got a little weird for those last six months there, didn’t I?’” And I see what he means. Kwa mfano (for example), I was in town the other morning to get money and bread and a package (thanks Mom and Dad and Vicky!), and I went into a bathroom, and saw my own reflection. No, I hadn’t developed a uni-brow or a lazy eye or a swarthier complexion. But it was still really weird seeing myself. I don’t have a mirror, is the thing. I see my own face about once every two weeks. And while I don’t think anything is changing...I’m also not sure I would know. No mirrors, real, or otherwise.
What I mean is that if I started wearing skinny jeans and pink polo shirts around in Paupack (like an Italian guy I met a few days ago in Africa), odds are one of the people who love me and care about me would tell me I looked like a continental idiot. But here...they all think I’m crazy anyway. So anything I do is just another crazy thing the crazy guy is doing. They have no expectations of Dan Waldron, or at least no expectations of his behavior or appearance (going to segue out of the 3rd person now). Which means...I might get weird. Weirder. There’s an off chance I’ll have some moments of weirdness. Like talking to the cat. Or eating cookie dough raw. Or maybe occasionally sitting on the floor at the proper angle so that I can only see sky through the windows, so I can pretend I’m in the movie “Up” and the house is flying (two of those happened. Maybe three).
So this section I will write in Kiswahili. Translation to follow:
Ningependa kuchukua nafasi hii kupongeza rafiki yangu atakayeolewa Jumamosi inayokuja, Bibi Brittany Scott. Najua yeye na mchumba wake (Bwana ADAM HAMWAY) wataishi pamoja, watacheka pamoja, na Mungu akipenda, watashinda pamoja mpaka watakuwa wazee bila meno. Ninawapenda sana ninyi wote wawili, na nitakuwa na huzuni sana kukosa harusi yenu. Mcheze dansi kuku chizi. Nakuomba.
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulation my friend who will be married this Saturday, Miss Brittany Scott. I know she and her fiance (Massa Adam Hamway) will live together, laugh together, and God willing, will succeed together until they are old people without teeth. I love you both very much, and I will be very sad to miss your wedding. Dance the funky chicken. I beg you.
I never want to make this blog about what these people don't have, and we do have. As I see it, we are all doing the best we can, and the people I love spend a whole lot of time giving back. There are people who take advantage of opportunities in both cultures, and people who make their own opportunities. That being said...I hate you all. I spent an entire day on Thursday building shelves with a hammer that was attached to its handle by hope, nails that had the strength of linguini, and a saw that I believe was used to amputate General Rosewall Stormyside's leg in the Civil War. Adding to that...I'm a really bad carpenter. The resulting shelves look like something out of a Salvador Dali painting. I miss flat floors. I miss power tools. Hate you all. Not a lot. Just a little.
To close, I am in fact doing some work, not just sawing off my own hand for the fun of it. We had our first meeting of my secret cow group the other day (I will be sad when we tell people about the group...and it just becomes a cow group). We are a long ways away from actually getting cows from Heifer International, but I do have high hopes. And one very special goal: I fully intend, for purposes of tracking the cows, to give them names. And what better names than the names of a certain Cow Group in Northeastern Pennsylvania? Debby, Molly, Susie, Marsha, Jeanne, Susie, you get the idea :) Though, assuming all works out, there will be one bull. I’m leaning heavily towards calling the bull Uncle Louie. But if anyone has a convincing argument that I should name the bull after them, write me a letter. I’m listening.
In the interests of full disclosure, I’m not supposed to be initiating projects yet. And I’m not. This was an idea from my neighbor (there’s a similar project in his parents’ village). I’m just the token white guy (this is true in most settings). Seriously, it’s a tricky balance. Pushing projects through quickly is a recipe for disaster. But I have people who want to do something special, and are ready to get to work. They aren’t asking me for grant money or material support, at least not yet. Who am I to tell them they have to wait for me to get my adverbs in the proper order? The key, I think, is to ask as many questions as possible, and to spend every moment thinking of all the stuff that could go wrong, then solutions. Kind of like preparing for a date. You bring that spare pair of pants. Cuz something might go wrong. Or right. Moving on.
But for all my wasiwasi (worries), I had kind of a funny moment the other day. A great old Neil Young song comes on. “Cortez the Killer”. And as I’m listening to the lyrics and remembering all the lovely development work my boy Cortez pulled off, it did occur to me that he set the bar pretty low for people working in new countries and with new cultures. I’m thinking I can do better.
Keep On Rocking in the Free World,
Dan
Friday, October 1, 2010
Ice, Ice Daddy
Having a brief online chat with Michael Rudez while I write this. We’re talking about unpaid internships…and it occurs to me that I am in the middle of the ultimate unpaid internship. Except to get milk for the boss’s coffee…I need to start a farm collective and secure a loan from Heifer International. Sawasawa (the same).
There’s this funny little custom here. In the local dialect, the first time you see someone every day, you say “Kamwene”, and they reply “Kamwene”. Roughly translated, it’s “You are well?” and “I am well”. Or literally, “Whole?”, “Whole.” All that’s totally cool, and they love it that I’m speaking the tribal language a little bit. “Twiteleka ugimbi” (we are cooking corn liquor. I have some interesting days here.) But here is the catch. And oh what a catch. The SECOND time you see somebody in a day, you CANNOT say “Kamwene”. You have to say “Wheoli” (I’m attempting to spell that, I have no idea how it’s actually spelled.) And they say “Wheoli” right back. Which is great. But it’s not great. Cuz in order for you to say the correct greeting, you have to remember everybody you see in a day!!! And that’s really hard!!! It’s not so bad for the men. They wear fairly distinctive clothing (including some truly stunning floor length women’s coats). But the women wear traditional dress, and a lot of it blends together…and about four or five times a day I get this feeling like I’m being tested. Did I see them? They look familiar. Of course they look familiar. Did they pass by and greet me when I stumbled out of my house this morning, awakened by roosters and silently cursing the beautiful sunrise that I’m seeing through one bloodshot eye? So I try to cheat, and greet in Kiswahili. But they know my tricks. I can tell. It’s this damn white skin. I’m transparent.
And here’s another funky thing, which I love. There is a tradition here that you after you have kids, you are no longer called by your own name. You are normally called Mama or Baba, and then insert the name of your firstborn child. Which creates a really interesting dilemma, wherein you have to pick a name for your first kid that you want to be called for the next however many years. I wondered if this was just my American take on things. It is not. I have met Mama and Baba Flavy, and Mama Amani (peace). Nobody names their child Flavy out of love. You name your child Flavy because you want to be Daddy Flavy. And who can blame you? My parents are Mama Vicky and Baba Vicky. Nice name, but they could have been more original. I’m thinking Flash for my first child. Daddy Flash. Or Ice. Yeah. Daddy Ice.
Let’s do a short day-in-the-life (who am I kidding? It won’t be short): Woke up at 5:30 (usually somewhere between 5:45 and 7:00, impossible to sleep longer because of the jogoos (roosters)). Started the jiko la mafuta (kerosene stove, like camping style (jiko means stove, mafuta means oil or gas)) and put on three pitchers worth of water to heat for bathing. Go back inside and cut up about two dozen fish called dagaa into little pieces for the kitten to eat. She eats them whilst I chill and listen to music for about ten minutes. It’s cold, but it’s a nice cold. Get to sleep in pants and wool socks, and wake up feeling pretty damn cozy.
Give the water 15 minutes to heat up, then combine it with three more pitchers of cold water, giving me six pitchers (or maybe a gallon, give or take) of lukewarm to hot water. I won’t need all of it. It takes roughly two pitchers to wet, and three pitchers to rinse. As I said before, it’s a bit on the frosty, so you kinda gotta hurry. Finish, and use my remaining water to shave. Change, get ready, which today means dress shirt and pants. Why? Cuz I’m going to a wedding!
We’re supposed to leave at 6:30...so 7:30 actually ain’t too bad. I shouldn’t judge, I can remember any number of times I’ve left for engagements well over an hour late. So we load 30 people into the back of a truck, me into the cab (for I am fragile and liable to crack), and we set off. We stop about 3 miles up the road for a police checkpoint, which means we actually stop 2.75 miles up the road...and unload every single person in the back of the truck, who now start hoofing it by the side of the road. There are laws about having more people than seatbelts in Tanzania too...but like lots of laws, they only apply when the lawmakers are watching. So we go through the checkpoint, pay a 2,000 shilling fine, drive a quarter mile farther up the road, and, you guessed it, all the people who have been busting it climb back into the back of the truck, and off we go. Again.
We arrive in the village of the wedding. I, and all the people in our own private Grapes of Wrath truck, were invited by the chairman of our village. So it’s me, the church choir, and 20 other people the bride and groom have never met. Again, I suppose, not so different. We hang out for a couple hours before the wedding, eating ugali and beans. Then we head to the wedding. It’s completely in Kiswahili, of course, and quite beautiful. It’s also 3 hours long...but hey, they’re gonna spend a lifetime together. Give ‘em some time to think it all over. There are a half dozen different speeches, some of them given into a microphone that makes people sound like they are reporting from a rooftop in London during the middle of the Blitz. What helped me pass the time was listening to the keyboard player. You know how sometimes, when you give a kid a kazoo, they make it the soundtrack for everything. I mean everything. That’s kind of like this guy and his keyboard. When someone said something poignant, he played rockets taking off. When people clapped, he played cymbals. And I swear to you all, when someone said something funny, he played something that sounded a lot like a frisky robot becoming aroused.
So the wedding is presided over by a 60-year old Italian priest, who speaks Kiswahili with a distinctive “It’s meeeee, Maaaaario” accent, and speaks it very well. We have a very odd conversation after the wedding. Odd, because I know he speaks English, and we both speak in Swahili. Language is a funny thing, especially when it stops defining you...or rather defines you in a different way. It’s a bridge between people, and we have completely different language, completely different bridges, for every person, every circle we move through. So here we are, an elderly priest and a young volunteer, speaking their 3rd and 2nd languages, respectively, wondering just how much is being lost in translation.
We walk from the church to the reception. I’ve only ever seen Tanzanians walk fast for weddings, and for funerals. Or maybe it’s just for free food. Pick ‘em. There is an MC shouting instructions and telling jokes. They even call him an MC. He’d fit in perfectly in any American wedding. We all squeeze into the reception hall, and here’s where the real fun starts. Because a parade starts coming up the aisle, dancing. They aren’t escorting the bride, the groom, or the parents. It’s the cake. They’re escorting the cake. Love it. Except there is something I don’t really get...there’s a guy holding a log, and he’s kind of cradling it like a baby...or something. I don’t get it, so I ask my neighbor. And it turns out that the log is supposed to be a gun. And the guy is pretending to be a soldier. A soldier. To guard the cake. What really makes this moment is the look on my neighbor’s face when he explains it. Because he gets it. It’s ridiculous. And I know it’s ridiculous and hilarious, and so does he. But leaving carrots for reindeer might be kind of hard to explain (and gnawing half of them for the sake of the kids). So would hiding eggs, dressing up like Captain Morgan, or jumping off furniture at the stroke of twelve. But I hope we never lose it. Any of it. The world gets flatter and flatter, and lots of our weird, beautiful kinks become ironed out. But somewhere, in the middle of Africa, a guy is guarding a cake with a stick. And you ain’t getting to that cake. You ain’t even getting close. That stick is loaded.
Love,
Dan
There’s this funny little custom here. In the local dialect, the first time you see someone every day, you say “Kamwene”, and they reply “Kamwene”. Roughly translated, it’s “You are well?” and “I am well”. Or literally, “Whole?”, “Whole.” All that’s totally cool, and they love it that I’m speaking the tribal language a little bit. “Twiteleka ugimbi” (we are cooking corn liquor. I have some interesting days here.) But here is the catch. And oh what a catch. The SECOND time you see somebody in a day, you CANNOT say “Kamwene”. You have to say “Wheoli” (I’m attempting to spell that, I have no idea how it’s actually spelled.) And they say “Wheoli” right back. Which is great. But it’s not great. Cuz in order for you to say the correct greeting, you have to remember everybody you see in a day!!! And that’s really hard!!! It’s not so bad for the men. They wear fairly distinctive clothing (including some truly stunning floor length women’s coats). But the women wear traditional dress, and a lot of it blends together…and about four or five times a day I get this feeling like I’m being tested. Did I see them? They look familiar. Of course they look familiar. Did they pass by and greet me when I stumbled out of my house this morning, awakened by roosters and silently cursing the beautiful sunrise that I’m seeing through one bloodshot eye? So I try to cheat, and greet in Kiswahili. But they know my tricks. I can tell. It’s this damn white skin. I’m transparent.
And here’s another funky thing, which I love. There is a tradition here that you after you have kids, you are no longer called by your own name. You are normally called Mama or Baba, and then insert the name of your firstborn child. Which creates a really interesting dilemma, wherein you have to pick a name for your first kid that you want to be called for the next however many years. I wondered if this was just my American take on things. It is not. I have met Mama and Baba Flavy, and Mama Amani (peace). Nobody names their child Flavy out of love. You name your child Flavy because you want to be Daddy Flavy. And who can blame you? My parents are Mama Vicky and Baba Vicky. Nice name, but they could have been more original. I’m thinking Flash for my first child. Daddy Flash. Or Ice. Yeah. Daddy Ice.
Let’s do a short day-in-the-life (who am I kidding? It won’t be short): Woke up at 5:30 (usually somewhere between 5:45 and 7:00, impossible to sleep longer because of the jogoos (roosters)). Started the jiko la mafuta (kerosene stove, like camping style (jiko means stove, mafuta means oil or gas)) and put on three pitchers worth of water to heat for bathing. Go back inside and cut up about two dozen fish called dagaa into little pieces for the kitten to eat. She eats them whilst I chill and listen to music for about ten minutes. It’s cold, but it’s a nice cold. Get to sleep in pants and wool socks, and wake up feeling pretty damn cozy.
Give the water 15 minutes to heat up, then combine it with three more pitchers of cold water, giving me six pitchers (or maybe a gallon, give or take) of lukewarm to hot water. I won’t need all of it. It takes roughly two pitchers to wet, and three pitchers to rinse. As I said before, it’s a bit on the frosty, so you kinda gotta hurry. Finish, and use my remaining water to shave. Change, get ready, which today means dress shirt and pants. Why? Cuz I’m going to a wedding!
We’re supposed to leave at 6:30...so 7:30 actually ain’t too bad. I shouldn’t judge, I can remember any number of times I’ve left for engagements well over an hour late. So we load 30 people into the back of a truck, me into the cab (for I am fragile and liable to crack), and we set off. We stop about 3 miles up the road for a police checkpoint, which means we actually stop 2.75 miles up the road...and unload every single person in the back of the truck, who now start hoofing it by the side of the road. There are laws about having more people than seatbelts in Tanzania too...but like lots of laws, they only apply when the lawmakers are watching. So we go through the checkpoint, pay a 2,000 shilling fine, drive a quarter mile farther up the road, and, you guessed it, all the people who have been busting it climb back into the back of the truck, and off we go. Again.
We arrive in the village of the wedding. I, and all the people in our own private Grapes of Wrath truck, were invited by the chairman of our village. So it’s me, the church choir, and 20 other people the bride and groom have never met. Again, I suppose, not so different. We hang out for a couple hours before the wedding, eating ugali and beans. Then we head to the wedding. It’s completely in Kiswahili, of course, and quite beautiful. It’s also 3 hours long...but hey, they’re gonna spend a lifetime together. Give ‘em some time to think it all over. There are a half dozen different speeches, some of them given into a microphone that makes people sound like they are reporting from a rooftop in London during the middle of the Blitz. What helped me pass the time was listening to the keyboard player. You know how sometimes, when you give a kid a kazoo, they make it the soundtrack for everything. I mean everything. That’s kind of like this guy and his keyboard. When someone said something poignant, he played rockets taking off. When people clapped, he played cymbals. And I swear to you all, when someone said something funny, he played something that sounded a lot like a frisky robot becoming aroused.
So the wedding is presided over by a 60-year old Italian priest, who speaks Kiswahili with a distinctive “It’s meeeee, Maaaaario” accent, and speaks it very well. We have a very odd conversation after the wedding. Odd, because I know he speaks English, and we both speak in Swahili. Language is a funny thing, especially when it stops defining you...or rather defines you in a different way. It’s a bridge between people, and we have completely different language, completely different bridges, for every person, every circle we move through. So here we are, an elderly priest and a young volunteer, speaking their 3rd and 2nd languages, respectively, wondering just how much is being lost in translation.
We walk from the church to the reception. I’ve only ever seen Tanzanians walk fast for weddings, and for funerals. Or maybe it’s just for free food. Pick ‘em. There is an MC shouting instructions and telling jokes. They even call him an MC. He’d fit in perfectly in any American wedding. We all squeeze into the reception hall, and here’s where the real fun starts. Because a parade starts coming up the aisle, dancing. They aren’t escorting the bride, the groom, or the parents. It’s the cake. They’re escorting the cake. Love it. Except there is something I don’t really get...there’s a guy holding a log, and he’s kind of cradling it like a baby...or something. I don’t get it, so I ask my neighbor. And it turns out that the log is supposed to be a gun. And the guy is pretending to be a soldier. A soldier. To guard the cake. What really makes this moment is the look on my neighbor’s face when he explains it. Because he gets it. It’s ridiculous. And I know it’s ridiculous and hilarious, and so does he. But leaving carrots for reindeer might be kind of hard to explain (and gnawing half of them for the sake of the kids). So would hiding eggs, dressing up like Captain Morgan, or jumping off furniture at the stroke of twelve. But I hope we never lose it. Any of it. The world gets flatter and flatter, and lots of our weird, beautiful kinks become ironed out. But somewhere, in the middle of Africa, a guy is guarding a cake with a stick. And you ain’t getting to that cake. You ain’t even getting close. That stick is loaded.
Love,
Dan
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