Journal Feb 12
Field Trip
This morning several other volunteers, Anna, Sonja and I went with some local CCS volunteers, Jessica (she is the one I have mentioned before who is 19 and my Tanzanian daughter – very sweet), Antone and John who are in their 20s and are also local volunteers in our program. Anton is Denzel handsome and very intelligent. We paid the two guys to escort us to Arusha National Park. They had a friend who drove us in a range rover with a sun roof (he is in the tourism business). It was about an hour drive and we saw crowds of people going to Sat. market to buy and sell.
Once we got the park, Hans – the driver put up the sun roof and we stood on our seats to get a better view. We saw giraffes walking across the road, Zebras (2 of which were in the process of making baby zebras), water buffalo, monkeys swinging from trees. This is "au natural" - they were just chillin.
Once we got further in the park, we got out to take a hiking safari. There were several rangers who had these old rifles. I was wondering if we tourists really get that unruly, but as it turned out, it was in case the wart hogs or water buffalo decided to charge us.
The hike was absolutely incredible. I was within kissing, no spitting, no, I have to be honest, I was within stone throwing distance from a giraffe. Also we saw a beautiful waterfall and were in the foot hills of Mt Meru. Anna got her foot stuck knee deep in a bog and the guys were pulling on her which made it worse and coupled with her laughing, it took a while to free her. Then much to her chagrin, the well meaning guide took her water bottle and poured it over her shoe to wash it, then re-filled it with the giardia infested water from the stream. The scenery was beautiful and it was amazing to see these animals just in their natural habitat.
After the hike, we went into the market in Arusha and did a little souvenir shopping. This is the first time I have seen the Massai women. This tribe has their own land, own customs and own style of dress. These are the ones whose ear lobes are the only thing drooping more than their boobs. Also, they wear the beaded neck collars and some have tattoos on their faces. We are going to visit them in their village in a couple of weeks. They have natural healers, so if any of you want any natural medicines, I think I can buy them - let me know.
A visitor in my room….
When we returned home, I went into my room and suddenly saw a lizard dart from behind the window. And true to prissy white woman form, I screamed and people came running including the night watchman. He was especially amused by my response. Now granted, this lizard was just a little fellow, but the thought of waking up with him staring at me from the other side of my netting was too much for me to take. So, I communicated to the watchman the help me get him out of the room, but without killing him. This required both of us chasing him around with brooms until we could guide him out the door. Next time, I'll just let him board with me. I wound up having the best night's sleep ever because of my roommates leaving, I have scored the bottom bunk and Dana, the physician left me her fan – huge score on that one. The only time I woke up was when the Mosque started their prayers over the PA on their roof at 4 AM. But, I just put in my ear plugs and went back to sleep - didn't even hear the rooster or the "marriage of the dogs" (as Tanzanians put it) that normally takes place every night.
Journal - Feb 13
In Africa, God does not hurry……
First I have to say that I have been treated as a queen today. My day started with Jesca walking to escort another volunteer, Anna and me for 8:00 mass. We walked along these narrow red dirt paths for about a mile and half. Being here is a little like being in the country, but there are a lot of homes with varying sized "lots". Some have an acre or so and others less. Every home has a garden/field. Right now they are planting maize and I have heard that in May, the maize is several feet high and it's harder to find your way places because the landmarks are not visible. There are no street names and really, many of these cannot really be defined as streets. Tanzanians give directions in terms of landmarks. Turn at the grocery store or the white house with the green door.
Jessica was scheduled to pick us up at 7:30 AM. Now you have to realize that "bongos" - the locals do not operate in the same way when it comes to time. Tanzanians are never late, they are merely delayed. So, Jessica picked us up around 7:50 which suited me fine because as you know, I operate more naturally on Tanzanian time than I do "muzungu" (white people) time. If there is an event that you really need to be punctual, we say "meet me at 7:30 – muzungu time". Then the person knows they have to come at exactly the right time – well sort of anyway.
So, since church was a good 20-30 minute walk – because Tanzanians do not walk fast (I could have covered it in 15 min), we arrived at church around 8:20. But, "hakuna matata" – no worries, the priest did not arrive until 8:40. Now I want to describe this church. It is next to a cornfield and you can hear a cow lowing along with the choir from to time – she added a nice base tone to the music. Anyway, we heard the church before we saw it. The choir was singing a lovely African hymn. And, this hymn lasted about 20 minutes – all the songs were very long- but beautiful. The church was just a roof with no walls and lots of benches and a dirt floor. It was packed with around 400 people. The children do not sit with the adults, but play in the dirt at the back of church. The church is only about a year old, so they are still trying to get enough money to build walls and buy more benches. There is a pile of cement bricks sitting just outside the church and when it grows enough, they will start to build walls. We did not have a bench and we told Jessica we were fine standing, but she went to a nearby house borrowed a bench. She put it down and wiped the dust off with her bandana. She so delighted to have us there and said, "It is amazing you are here".
The apparel is part of the experience. Everyone wears their best clothes. For some, their clothes are a very nice skirt and blouse, for others, it is a well-worn conga with more than one hole in it. A few of the young girls, including Jessica wear more western clothing. The little girls wore frilly little dresses, many you can tell have been passed down many times over, but they are the best they have. I did notice there were not nearly as many men compared with women and children. Some of the men were in the area at the back of the church – probably to allow the women to sit.
Once the priest arrived, mass officially started. The altar was a wooden platform with four poles which were about ten feet tall. A white cloth with lace at the top was draped on three sides of the altar and attached to the poles. It was decorated with boughs of fake flowers, and there were some orange and white crochet lace doilies hanging in a few spots. There were four altar boys dressed in white gowns. Mass lasted until around 10:00. Can you imagine 400 Americans wearing no antiperspirant, sitting on hard benches in 86 degree weather, packed together shoulder to shoulder for that length of time without inciting a riot?
The music was absolutely beautiful I really enjoyed it. Of course mass was in Swalili so I only understood a few words. And just like in America, they had a second offering collection. I was more than happy to contribute. It was a wonderful experinece and again it struck me how happy these people are with so little and such hard lives. It's the small things in life that count for them. But really the big things if you think about it; friends, hospitality, family and faith.
After mass, we met the priest and he invited us to the rectory on Thursday. The Tanazinian men remind me of that guy who sings "You put the lime in the coconut…even though I think that guy is Jamaican). They have such a joyful way about them and just a great sense of humor too.
After mass the children all came in and sat down for a children's mass. We said habari – hello to them and they were giggling at us and so excited to see us – we were the only white people there.
The honored guests….
When we were finished socializing, we walked to Jessica's house. I would not be able to walk to any of these places on my even if there was a cold dish of chocolate ice cream awaiting me. And this is not so much due to my challenge with direction, but the fact that unless you live here, it just a tangle of paths, fields and trails.
Jessica's house is a very nice one in terms of Tanzania and apparently her family is considered wealthy. It is a stucco building with three windows in the front. The windows are decorated a white frilly metal latticework. The yard is mostly the hard red dirt. We went around the back of the house to go inside. In the back of the house are the animal pens. They have four cows, around 12 pigs, and lots of chickens. All of the chicken here is free range. They also have a dog and Anna was talking to it and petting it. Jessica was laughing about that. She said, "In America you, treat your dogs as babies. For us – only watchdog to keep out thieves."
Her mama, Digna and her sister and cousin were outside preparing our lunch. They were so happy to see us and welcomed us over and over. I think I mentioned before that people are honored to have guests in their home and especially ones who are not local. I've never in my life felt so honored and welcome in any place. They do not have a kitchen, they do all the cooking outside over a fire. They were busy chopping vegetables and fruit.
While we waited for lunch, - they would not hear of us helping at all – we went next door to Jessica's grandfather's home. Her grandfather is dead – possibly due to the fact the he had 2 wives. Yes, here it is legal to have more than one wife, but from what I can tell, most only have one – especially if they are Christian.
I have heard that Jessica's family is considered wealthy. Inside their house, there is a living room with upholsted furniture with wooden arms and legs and a cement rather than dirt floor. There is a sheet of linoleum that is laid down over the middle of the room – kind of like an area rug.. In the middle of the room was a coffee table, which is what we used to eat on. That was the only room I saw. Jessica told us that she has 2 younger brothers and two sisters. Her older sister is at University and plans to become a teacher. She has a three-year-old girl named Irene who lives with Jessica's family. By the way, all these names such as Irene, Jessica are baptism names. They all have African names too. Jessica sleeps in a tiny room with at least 4 other women and girls.
Also living with the family is her father Charles, and mother Digna. They also take care of a young woman named Flora whose mother died when she was a little girl and was adopted by this family. Flora has a little boy named Kevin and her husband left her right after she had her baby. They have 14 people in all living in this house. They also have a houseboy and a maid. Jessica's family also takes care of several relatives financially and may not be able to send Jessica to her final 2 years of school called form 5 and form 6. It costs $120.00 a year. We volunteers want to help her because she is such a bright, sweet person. She wants to become a lawyer because "There is bribes in the government and I want to minimize". Also, she told me she hurts for the women and children and wants to work to improve their conditions. If she can get the money for form 5 and 6, Government University is free.
As we were waiting for lunch, Jessica brought in a TV – about a 19-inch. It took awhile for them to get it plugged in properly and working, but finally got it turned on. I was not really excited about it, but it actually turned out to be very entertaining. They can only get one channel. The program was a Nigerian soap opera which was dubbed with English. It was the worst acting I have ever seen coupled with the mismatched effect of the speech patterns. Then the show Perfect Strangers was on. That was kind of surreal, sitting in Africa and hearing the combination of American TV, chicken, cow and goat sounds mingling together. What an experience.
After we were served chai (which is the African word for tea – did you know that?) The tea is hot milk from their cow, a spicy tea mixture and sugar – delicious. Digna cooks for our organization so she understands about our muzungu digestive systems. Lunch was chopped mangos (they are in season), tomatoes, cucumbers and oranges. We were served a delicious rice dish with carrots, potatoes, onions and beef chunks. Also something that looked and tasted likes cooked spinach but they had another name for it. They insisted on dishing up another helping for us and even though it was really good, I was full. But I stuffed it down because the last thing I wanted to do was waste already scarce food that they were so gracious to serve us.
After they cleared the dishes – and again would not allow us to help – mama Digna brought out a platter with several bottles of soda pop – orange, lemon lime and Pepsi. She was delighted to serve this to us and so I drank a warm, sugary orange soda whether I wanted to or not.
I have realized that I cannot be in a hurry at all when living in Tanzania. By the time lunch was over, it was around 3:00 and I noticed I was feeling ansey. But we were the afternoon's entertainment and they were in no hurry for us to leave. And of course they must have a lot of work to do, but people are more important than tasks. Hmmmm – food for thought. There were several small kids at lunch and they sang us a cute African song with actions – very shyly and quietly as we have all seen kids do. Then we taught the kids, along with mama Digna the chicken dance. Mama Digna really got a kick out if that and we wound up repeating it many times for her benefit. She had a conga wrapped over her dress and lost it sometime during the dance. We decided that it means you had a good time if you lose your conga.
A good nap…….
After lunch and a thirty-minute goodbye we had an entourage to escort us home. That was followed by many more thank yous, your welcomes and promises to meet again soon.
When I got back to the compound, I was exhausted. I took a two-hour nap. It was the best nap I have ever had. When I woke up, four of the volunteers came back from a weekend safari. They were sun burned and covered in red road dust. I think another group is going next weekend and I plan to go along then. I was glad to have a less busy day today – well sort of.
Training for the Moshi 5 K race….
Then a group of us decided to go for a run. The Moshi race is in 2 weekends. Now running here is totally different from home. First, it is probably 88 degrees, next, the roads are treacherous with ruts, potholes, rocks and all kinds of people. The other thing is you cannot just get into a quiet zone and block out the rest of the world. This is because you must greet each and every person you encounter. This requires looking around so you don't miss anyone, while looking for the least hazardous area of the road to navigate. It feels like running through the woods, except instead of evergreens, maples, sumac and dogwoods, there are banana trees, acacia trees, and flowering mimosas interspersed with houses, gardens, animal pens, little stores and businesses and of course chickens, donkeys and goats along the road.
Actually, I must digress here. I was running the other day with another volunteer, Lindsey. As we went along, people would sometimes say "pole" which means sorry and Lindsey would say "Asante" thank you. I couldn't understand this but she explained that here, people say sorry if it looks as if a person is working hard - for example carrying a heavy load. So, here we were feeling good, looking strong and we were actually invoking pity. A little ego deflating. Also, while I was running, a 10-year-old boy ran along side me dribbeling a deflated, flat old soccer ball. He started passing it to me. Somehow an angel took over my feet and I was able to summon my old meager soccer skills, watch for ruts, run and pass the ball back and forth while he coached me in Swahili. Later I was joined by a pair of skipping, giggling little girls and did a couple blocks of skipping and hand holding with them. Yes, running here is a different and enjoyable experience.
Passing the evening…..
After the run I went inside our little living room area. It has a tile floor, which worked pretty well for yoga. I did a little of that and heard the bell for dinner. Tonight, we had a breaded, fried eggplant, mashed potatoes, a green bean/carrot mix, stringy beef and mango. Meals are served in an outdoor courtyard in the center of the compound and are completely organic. It feels like "nice" camping. You can always smell a fire burning because that is how people cook their food.
Now I am sitting at the table in the courtyard, typing my journal. It is a beautiful night and really just enjoying being outside. I spend most of my time outside if I can. When the rains start in a couple of weeks, that will be a different story. Oh and another thing about nights here. I don't know if it has to do with our location in the universe or the fact that there are no streetlights here, but the stars are absolutely incredible. I swear there are more of them here and they are brighter. It almost looks like I am sitting in a planetarium and viewing them. I hear crickets, a bird singing and an occasional dog barking, but otherwise it is very quiet and peaceful.
So that is it for now. I hope you are doing well and feeling healthy.
I may play my (actually Shre bear's) flute and then I am going to hop into my mosquito net and go to sleep. Work tomorrow.
Lala Salama…….Sleep safely
Journal Feb 14 – Happy V-day!
A day's work….
I awoke at 7:00, had breakfast and boarded the van for work. We manage to fit anywhere form 12-16 people in this 10 passenger van. Along with the CCs volunteers, there are usually a few additional people going with us. The ride is extremely hot, skin to skin sticky, dusty and bumpy. I am the last to get dropped off at the orphanage. When I got there this morning, as usual, the kids had heard the van and were crowding around for Julie (another volunteer) and I go get out. Then they swarm us, some want to be held, some want us to go play and some just bury their head in between my knees and wipe their noses on my skirt. This definitely makes me feel needed.
I spent some time talking to Sister Emaculatta about the possibility of me teaching a class to the young "nurses" about how to handle, nurture, discipline and potty train the kids. She told me that I can help to teach these girls and they may have a lasting impact on the quality of care there. She also showed me more of the grounds. They have cows, but due to lack of rain and lack of grass so not get enough milk. They have to mix the cows milk with powdered. They also have chickens, pigs, and a vegetable garden. Sister told me that they do not have any financial support on an ongoing basis. It is all on donations. Since the Tsunami, donations have dwindled due to recourses going over there. They need clothes, shoes, "nappies for the babies, and toys. If anyone has any ideas on how to get support on an ongoing bases, let me know.
Then I went into the toddler kid's room and bounced a couple of little ones on my lap. Then came in from the playground with the kids to wash hands, put the kids on the pot and change pants if needed. Then it was morning milk. After that, we have to stay in because the sun is too strong. That is the hardest part of the day because the kids are getting hungry and there are only a few toys in this room. The nurses bring in the plastic pots and have the kids taking turns peeing. Unfortunately, this is only marginally successful and there are usually a minimum of 2-3 puddles on the floor. Today, I was holding Damian and Philipo on my lap and when I got up, there was pee dripping off my skirt, down my leg and on to the floor – and I was pretty sure it was not mine. The nurses got me a towel and soap and one of the women who worked there insisted on giving me a pair of her pants to wear for the day. I was grateful. I played catch and soccer with 3 boys at once and then it was time for lunch. I fed Damian who is disabled and cannot feed himself. He is very sweet, is cross eyed and loves to cuddle. So yes, there are challenges, but I feel these kids need me there and I hope to make a difference.
After work, I went to Carina's, a little grocery store. The stores here don't have much because people grow their own food and don't need to buy much. But I bought a jar of Nutella – a hazelnut spread which is the most sinfully delicious thing on earth. It is my v-day gift to my fellow volunteers. Then I came to Kebo House which is a little restaurant - coffee - internet café. Later today we have Swahili lessons.
