Swimming in Africa: June 11, 2012
Well I’ve made it a week since staging. Have learned about 25 words of Kiswahili, how
to bucket bathe, and just about everybody’s name (50+ people). Have been on time except for once. Figured out the charging of my
electronics. I’m still sleeping poorly,
I think mostly because of the heat but jet lag, change in diet , the
anti-malarials and just plain exhaustion are in there somewhere too. Oh, and the bed in my room is super
uncomfortable.
Just to chronicle:
Arrived in Philadelphia Sunday June 03 after a pleasant flight and got
to the hotel at about 9 pm. Went out to
dinner with a group, some of whom I recognized from Fb Tanzania 2012. I had a roommate for that night, Nicole from
Dallas. Everyone was pretty jazzed. I tried out one of my Ambien and slept like a
baby.
We are official Peace
Corps Trainees:
Staging started at noon on Monday, and began a pattern which has been repeated a
number of times since then. First: Standing in line to fill out paper work. Then:
a screw-up, minor. This first time
it was head shots, ordered a.s.a.p. by the Washington office while I was in SF
early in the month, were declared non-usable and had to be re-shot. Then we were introduced to one another and
told a) Be safe b)
This is going to be hard. We were
given examples of this, and played games and talked and made up skits in small
groups to learn this. Then an
introduction to the seemingly endless string of acronyms was begun. PCV,
PCT, PCD, APCD, PCCD. Money was
discussed in excruciating detail about relatively small sums.
All of these things were to become an integral part of life
over the next few days.
After the meeting broke (later than scheduled, another PC
tradition), we all trooped down to the
Bar in the lobby to have a shot. I think
I may have impressed some by having a Verde’s (tequila and a Coors beer, thank
you Mike Green). Then it was out to
dinner with a smaller group. Pictures of
this showed up on the Internet.
Eek. Then back upstairs to pack
and try to organize once again. Last
warm shower and no sleep time at all before the alarm went off and we were
downstairs, buzzing with excitement, at 2:00 am to begin our 35 hour journey to
Tanzania.
From there it got a little crazy-making.
First a bus ride thru the pre-dawn hours, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey and finally to the JFK at 5:15 am.
We were deposited unceremoniously in the check-in hall; the counter
for our airline was not to open for another 2 ½ hours. So, a long wait there, sitting on the
terrazzo floor, talking, getting to know one another, and watching the airport
slowly come to life. Katie Downs-Angus
downloaded on to my Kindle a whole raft of books, which I am enjoying. Then, 2 ½
hours in the departure lounge, scrounging electricity for laptops,
eating horrible airport food, and talking.
After all this waiting,
it actually felt good to load in to an air plane seat and crisply begin
the 15 hour journey to Johannesburg. I
had a good position on the aisle, and tried to sleep, achieving little but a sort of
unconsciousness that didn’t bring true rest, even with a second Ambien. But the plane was new, the food edible and I
watched The Descendants on the little screen in front of me.
Then, we were in Johannesburg. There was no question of going into town, we
were transiting thru the country, and it
would have been complicated and perhaps dangerous. It was sort of Disney Africa out there in the
lounges. Lots of really spiffy shops
selling Africana and duty-free and travel aids.
I found a “Spa” and spent the absolute last of my dollars on a
pedicure. My feet were badly swollen and
it felt good, plus I needed to get the old polish off my toes.
So, 7 hours of waiting there.
Then 3 hours on a small plane to Dar. The South African guy on one side of me absolutely didn’t fit in his seat and part
of mine. He even had a giant Apple
computer that he worked on while in flight.
The other guy read his Kindle and that made me worry I had left mine on
the previous flight (I hadn’t). The food
was edible. The movie on offer was The
Descendants.
So, we got to our hostel , the Mzembazi Center, at about 10:00 pm on Wednesday. That’s about noon in Californina. I got a nice room that must have been modeled on every
cheap motel room built in the 20th
century: Green walls, not too clean, scratchy towel, hard mattress and thin
pillow. Furniture taking too much floor space, tile floor, no
place to put the luggage. I was
introduced to the mosquito net; it and I
will be making besties from here on out.
But there was a fan/electric outlet, and the bathroom sported a toilet,
not a choo. I took a ‘bucket bath” and
found that I was absolutely filthy from head to toe. Has to change the water twice.
But it was ‘not
traveling’, and to be my home for 6 nights..
I took a 3rd Ambien
and can now state that they don’t work with travel, at least not for me. At this point, I think I might be crazy, and
by that I mean, I thought I was
insane to be there, that I had
unknowingly joined a cult that has
purposefully kept me awake for 2 days running in order to break me and make
me malleable for their needs and
desires. In other words, paranoid
crazy. Only, not so crazy as not to
think , “well, that’s crazy”, when I thought it.
Call for prayer (on a loud speaker that echoes throughout
the neighborhood) goes out at about 5 am.
Roosters from then until dawn at 6:30.
Breakfast at 7:00. Classes begin
at 8:00. How silly I was to think they
would give us the 1st morning
off to recover and unpack. We’re in the
Corps now! No time to rest and maybe get
into trouble. “Class” was more
introductions, more ‘Be Safe” and more discussion about money, and of course,
more acronyms. There was also some sort of screw up about money but I honestly
don’t remember what it was. I am not
feeling quite myself. It was to be 2
weeks before I started feeling like myself.
Definitions:
Mzimbaze Centre:
Newbies like us cannot be placed in a mere hotel, too much chance of
something going wrong. So we are housed
in Catholic Conference Center in a compound that includes an ATM, a bar, a
dining room (canteen) and a number of meeting areas, including a hall big
enough to stage a huge wedding which they did on Saturday night. When the Muslims sing the call to prayer, the
nuns ring the bells. There are many kuku’s (chickens) and some goats. It was surrounded by a high wall and guarded
at night by men with guns.
Choo: (Rhymes with dough, not
chew) The African loo, or WC. When found inside houses, which is by no
means not always, a flushable pit latrine.
Also the word for the room itself, which has tiled floor and walls, so waterproof. Hand
washing and teeth brushing take place in a small sink located in the choo or in
an anteroom. Flushing is accomplished by
flushing or simply pouring a bucket of water onto and into the fixture. Five-gallon paint buckets for water are everywhere.
As I write this, have not accomplished
#2 and don’t know if I ever will.
It’s kind of scary to think about that.
Bucket bath: Neither bathing
nor showering. You fill your 5-gallon
bucket from a spigot in the choo, or carry it in if there is no running
water. You have a large cup or small
bucket with you, your towel and your soap.
Using the large cup, you dip water and pour it over yourself. Then you soap, and then dip the rest of the
water over yourself to rinse. The used
water goes down the drain, which is in the latrine fixture. (There is a
learning curve about not letting your precious American soap slip from your hands and bounce happily down into
the hole, since you are standing near or over the hole.) We were told that bathinng is typically done
morning and night by everybody with a bathing room/choo.
There is no hot water, but in Tanzania this feels rather refreshing.
I wrote this as we were preparing to leave Dar es Salaam. If there was ever place in the world where it would pay to live as a 1st world person, Dar would be it. A car (or a taxi), air-conditioning and plenty of shilingi for food are all necessary to 'enjoy' the city. Unfortunately, that was not to be my experience. Those of you who have received all or part of these posts previously know that things get better from here on out.
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