On the Other Hand

 

Many of you pointed out to me or have remarked that my outburst of negativity in January deserves a gut check.  If I hate it so much, why am I here?  Many have offered advice and comfort, good advice and real comfort.  I got 3 valentines, two very wonderful handwritten letters and a surprising care package from my sister Becky.  (Surprising not because she isn’t caring, thoughtful and generous, but because it came out of the blue.)  My latest bout of gastro-enteritis solved itself with Pepto-Bismol and BRAT (no antibiotic intervention required),  and, after a spate of truly horrible hot steamy days and nights, the weather is a bit cooler  now as we progress toward rainy season.  For these and other reasons I ‘m in an incredibly cheerful mood, and thought that it was time for On the Other Hand:  Ten Things about Tanzania that I Love. 

Not a complete list, and only so far.  But I don’t want to bore you, my faithful readers.

1.        Packeties.  You have to understand that booze is more sinful here in TZ than it is in the US.  There are many fundamentalist Christians and Muslims who practice abstinence, and women in general are not culturally ‘allowed’ to drink.  There are, of course, many alcoholics, and alcohol abuse is evident, especially in places where jobs and money are scarce. 

Ambivalence about liquor leads I think to a manner in which hard liquor is served in TZ that I find convenient and worthy of importation to America.  Packeties are plastic sachets (little packets) of TZ-made liquor.  The type equivalents are rough:  Konyagi is ‘gin’, Valeur is ‘brandy’, and Zed is, well, flavored ‘rum’, I guess.  The packets are 500ml, a ‘tot’ or shot.  Available in bars and by the box of twenty at liquor stores, for the Tanzanian it means that there is no ordering of ‘mixed drinks’ in a bar, or, as we used to say in Waco, liquor by the drink. The barmaid brings you a soft drink and a packetie.  As a service, she will cut it open for you, but she is not ‘serving’ liquor. For me there is the advantage of inventory and portion control. You count up how many empty packeties you have, and that’s how many drinks you’ve had.   Keeps me honest, especially when I ‘m trying to keep it to 1 at cocktail hour.

They are also cheaper to buy than a bottle of booze.  The general TZ Rule of Pricing applies:  if you have enough money to buy a lot, you can afford to pay more.  In other words, the reverse of volume discounting prevails.

The portability is especially appealing. No need to carry a glass bottle around, or transfer to a flask.  Going to a BYOB party?  Packeties can be tucked in pocket or purse, and they make excellent falsies.  By the time you are not false advertising, the guy who may be attracted by said false advertising is probably too drunk to care.  You certainly are.

Finally, they can be stored in any corner of the freezer, a boon when ice is at a premium and a cold libation a must.

The downsides are few.  The obvious one is that this is Tanzanian booze, not aged in the barrel or anywhere near that.  Kinda raw. So you need to mix with a soft drink, fruit juice, or tonic for a palatable highball.  My personal fav is Valeur with Coke and a squeeze of lime.

Also, and this harkens back to the ambivalent attitude about drinking that prevails, they are not sold in dukas or in grocery stores.  There are also not many liquor stores, although you can buy them to carry away at bars.  The advantage there is that they cost hardly any more by the piece in a bar than they do when you purchase a whole box (see:  Rule of Pricing, above).

Also, they are hard to open.  It almost takes more than teeth, and with a knife you are going to have some spillage.  The plastic is extremely durable, thick and tough, due to the corrosive nature of alcohol, I guess.  Rule of Thumb, your Leatherman or Swiss Army knife should be equipped with scissors.

 

Other things I love about Tanzania are:

 

2.       Fresh fruit and minimally processed raw nuts.  Mangoes, bananas, passion fruit, watermelon, grapes, even apples, and berries in season.  Almonds, cashews, peanuts, walnuts.   All widely available ripe and delicious.

3.       I love having clothes made to order from colorful cotton cloth.  Also purses, head wraps, and napery.

4.       Care packages from home.  Although, I think I have enough Q-Tips, thank you guys.  I have about 2 thousand.

5.       Almost all the native trees have flowers.  Jacaranda, cassia, kapok, jasmine, mlonge, flamboyant, bottle brush.  All colors, all shapes, all sizes. I’m sure you know in the abstract that Africa teems with life.  Usually, this means bugs, and maybe snakes.  But it also means plants.  They strive and compete for a place here, and for trees that means big, attractive flowers.  The accompanying birds are incredibly varied and fun to watch, too.

6.       Things really are cheap, and when you find the sweet spot between serviceable, durable and extremely affordable, that’s a good place to be.

7.       I love being part of the Peace Corps.  I thought I would, and I do.

8.       Tinga Tinga paintings.  They make me smile.

9.       I love living out in the country.  This is probably the only time I will ever do it unless I move back to the farm in Waco.  (Possible, but not likely.)  The stars and moon, the quiet, the big vistas, the rambles over trails and little country roads.  Getting up early, not watching TV, and country people all add to my pleasure.  I think a lot about the farm in Waco, and my grandparents’ life there.  All good, all extremely good things.

10.   The love I feel for my students makes my heart feel wonderful.  It may be healthy, even, but anyway, I love the love.

.        

 

 

Compare and Contrast

As many of my 16 or so readers know, my daughter Josie recently took a teaching job with a company called Maple Leaf Schools, and moved to China, to a small city of 3 million near the Russian and North Korean borders.  We’ve had a couple of Skype conversations and several really nice emails.  Of course I would be interested in her new job even if I wasn’t myself 1) overseas and 2) teaching for the 1^st time (if you don’t count Sunday school.)  Josie and I always have a lot to talk about, now it seems that we have so much to talk about that I miss her even more.

We’ve been talking a lot about settling in and first days of school.  Settling in has included some very similar experiences, like gastro-enteritis (pole Neal), smelly bathrooms (nobody does plumbing like Americans, we rival the Romans in that regard), kitchens which don’t feature ovens, and buying new stuff to outfit a new home.  In my case, I had 10 weeks of being mama’d by Flora Maringo, who the Peace Corps wisely engaged to introduce me to the mysteries of the Tanzanian household.  So when I moved into my own apartment at SEGA I was at least ready to sort out taking care of myself in the manner afforded by the country.

I also made friends with Tasmin, who is Arabic but born in Morogoro, and who keeps a shop on the Dodoma road.  Her establishment is 8’ by 8’ and all four walls and 3/4’s of the surface area are stocked to the ceiling with all manner of cooking and household wares.  I tell her what I want, she has a boy scramble up a ladder to fetch what she has to show me, I make my selections and when I am finished she gives me a little discount on the jumla (final bill). Nothing is of very high quality.  Forks bend when you eat, glassware is fragile, plastic fades immediately and becomes brittle, tupperware tops don’t fit.

Josie and Neal, on the other hand, went to Wal-Mart, and IKEA in Dailin.  On their way home they stopped at Starbucks.  They bought exactly the same stuff, dish drainers and waste baskets etc., that you or I would buy in the US.  They are living in a big apartment on the 7^th floor of their building. (Are there still any clay and wattle huts in China? There are certainly no high rise apartment blocks in Morogoro.) In their city there is all manner of American-marketed fast food, and, although I haven’t heard this, I expect that American culture is widely available:  clothes, movies, video games, music.

This is not the case in Tanzania, except maybe for the clothes.

Today, I am sporting a new outfit which I picked up, literally, at the Saba Saba Soko.  Saba means 7, and the Saba Saba is a flea market that operates on Sundays, about a mile from the big downtown soko, the main food market.  Many of the items sold at the Saba Saba are new, but mostly people go for the clothes which are sold from big jumble tables and on the ground.  The stock arrives in huge bales wrapped in plastic sheeting, as big and heavy as cotton bales.  The covering is carefully opened and hundreds of items are dumped all together, ready to be picked over and purchased for as little 20 cents apiece.  The clothes have been fumigated and maybe even washed, most have all their buttons and only once in awhile will you find anything that is too stained or ripped to be worn. A fellow PC vol and I had a fun morning recently standing side-by-side with Tanzanian girls and women, pawing through hundreds of blouses, dresses, skirts and jackets, while we tried to ignor the noisy hawking of a teenager with a battery-powered PA horn, standing on the pile of clothes and calling us ‘My Mother’ or ‘My Sister’ while shouting his wares. You try on the stuff when you get home, and, of course, all sales are final.  My rayon long skirt, made in Indonesia and marketed by Nordstrom, and my black cotton peasant blouse, made in India, cost $1.55.  I had great luck on that shopping trip:  7 tops and 3 skirts for 8,000 shillings, about 5 dollars. And every item was donated by the good folks of North America.

Everyone that I know at school and in town wears either traditional Tanzanian clothes, kanga and kitange, or, in the case of the white collar men and women, Western style clothes, in styles that Ron Burgundy would have approved.  But most of the people struggle for work, and  for money, and wear cast-off clothes.  It is hard to go anywhere without seeing a T-shirt from a major US university, or advertising a North American team, product, or clothing company.  Sometimes the results are arresting:  the beggar wearing a filthy Harvard sweatshirt, the man pulling a 2-wheel cart in a Ralph Lauren Polo T-shirt.

The difference, I guess, with China is that in Tanzania these markers of our culture have no meaning to the Tanzanian.  They are worn innocently. I imagine that, in more ways than one, China and the US are partners in the global dispersion of North American culture.  Tanzania is the end of the line, and doesn’t seem to have much say.

I often ponder the economics of the Saba Saba enterprise. Of course, it helps if the ‘source’ of the goods drops it in the Goodwill box, if you turn back the capital clock to zero, so to speak. But, imagine.  There is a designer in New York or LA.   Her company designs a shirt at a price point Nordstrom or Old Navy can sell, in a color and style that will be popular that year.  The specs are transmitted electronically to a manufacturer in Pakistan, or Guatemala, and the shirt is produced in a factory there, often using fabric from another country.  The manufactured items are inspected, labeled, priced and shipped to America, where the shirt is displayed, advertised, maybe marked down. Sold, it is worn, successfully or not, and eventually discarded.  To be fumigated, sorted, baled and shipped to Africa to be sold yet again for a pittance in a flea market.  Only then, after another life with a boy who sells packets of peanuts for a dime at the dala standi from a woven tray on his head, when it’s in rags and scraps, does that human article pass out of human hands.

So many jobs, so many stops and transactions. And someone is living on  it at every stage.  Literally around the world.  Frankly, my head spins.  Does that make China seem nearer, or farther away?  Hard to say.

 

Follow Up

THINGS ABOUT TANZANIA THAT PISS ME OFF*

1.        People throw trash everywhere, and there are no cans, at all, for waste.

2.       Woman, who appear to have most of the jobs and all of the domestic duties except hard physical labor like ditch digging  (which still leaves plenty of physical labor, believe me),  get no respect from men.

Young pretty ones will get flirted with and catered to, but that is to get them in the sack, and that’s not respect.

3.       Shopkeepers consider that the sidewalk in front of their establishment is theirs for display, customer service, excess inventory, etc.  This leaves the pedestrian in the street, not a safe place to be.  (See next)

4.       There is a hierarchy of being on the street, which goes like this:  Trucks, then buses, then cars, then motorcycles, then bicycles, then hand-pushed carts, then pedestrians. It’s as if there is a caste ststem in which not having wheels makes you an Untouchable.  No crossing, no matter how many pedestrians must use it, is safe for the walker, no consideration or even quarter is given.  To travel down the street is to be constantly shunted aside by  the merest sort of wheeled vehicle, and many times there is no safe place to be shunted aside to.  It does not matter if you are facing oncoming traffic or not, you will still be unseen, ignored,  turned in front of, in constant danger of being run down or side-swiped.

5.       No napkins.  Ever.  At nicer restaurants, they  will bring a few to the table if you ask.  Nevertheless, the country eats like Arabs, with their right hands.  Since services, especially restaurant service,  are universally sub-par, if you choose to do so, you sit with your  dirty hand

 until they bring a wash basin, which may not happen at all. Or there may be a dirty little sink somewhere, with no soap or towel.  Or, you can carry wipes, or a handkerchief, or, as I have seen many times, wipe your dirty fingers on the tablecloth.  Yuck.

6.       No toilet paper. Ever, except in the nicest places.  Not only that, but public pit latrines are gaspingly dirty, and  rarely have running water and soap  I am resigned to using them, but come on, do they have to be filthy?   Don’t these people know ANYTHING about germs, which are no respectors of the right/left hand dictum?   No wonder there’s so much dysentery, cholera, typhoid in the country.

7.       Maybe this shouldn’t piss me off, but people don’t read books.  Therefore there are no bookstores.

8.       No Scotch Tape, and duct tape is so dear as to be unaffordable on a Peace Corps salary.  Come to mention it, school and office supplies generally are just plain crappy, that means pencils, pens, paper, notebooks, greeting cards, and there is no such thing as index cards.  The exception is staplers, which are okay, and in constant use.

9.       No movie theaters except in Dar es Salaam.  This is a deal breaker for me in considering long-term residency.

10.   Boring cooking.  People,  unsalted over-milled hominy mush at every meal is just not appetizing.  Besides ugali, there are about 3 recipes of actual Tanzanian food:  Meat stew made with tomatoes and onions, pan-fried chicken, and greens cooked with onions. Oh, and I am forgetting chapatti. Everything is cooked stove-top with lots of oil. There ARE good and hot peppers, but you have to ask for them.

11.   And yet, they have satellite t.v., everyone has a cell phone, they have Beyonce and JayZ and South African Soap Operas.  They follow English Premier League Football.  Most middle-class people drink water out of plastic bottles, which they then throw in the streets. 

12.   They have something they call the internet.  Teasers.

 

*as opposed to the regular things which go along with Tanzania being a developing Equatorial nation, like heat, humidity multitudinous and/or lethal snakes & bugs, rutted dirt roads mascarading as streets and boulevards, clearly unsafe highways, no books and chalk in the classroom, and too many people living in daub & wattle huts, erected in right of ways.  These do not piss me off, as they are not solvable or unfair.  They do, however, drive me to drink.

And please remember, this is my own list of things to be pissed off about.  It's not the Peace Corps list, nor do they endorse it.  They have their own, I'm sure.

TZ 2013, Meet Soviet Russia 1965

Swimming in Africa:

TZ 2013 meets Soviet Russia circ. 1965

Okay, I know I should be telling you about my wonderful safari, full of beautiful scenery, and incredible wild animals.  I should be telling you about various swimming exploits I have enjoyed this fall, thus earning the name of my blog. Perhaps I should even be recounting Adventures in (Not) Teaching English. But first, I want to try to give you a glimpse of what life is really like in this country.  I call this Tanzania 2013 meets Soviet Russia circ. 1965.

Monday, Jan.7, 11:00 am.  April and I are in town.  We have driven in her car, a luxury for me as I don’t have the hour+ trek via foot & dala dala to arrive.  Our mission:  pick up some packages at the post office.  Mine is for Eric Huston (and that’s another story).  April’s is from her boyfriend in Berkeley.  We also have one for our VSO volunteer, Fran.  I have a secondary errand, to replace my ATM card, which I lost on Christmas holiday in the North.

We start off the 1^st errand with Bonus points; April has been once to Customs, and so knows the way.  She tried already to pick up said packages and has been told by the PO that they need to be cleared by Customs.  She couldn’t get the clearance that she needed because there was nobody in authority present in the office to do it.  So this, the second trip, my first, is directly to Customs, and we did not have to start at the Post Office, which is 3 blocks away from Customs.  We arrive in Customs, and after a little wait, are shown to the Revenue Office on the same floor of the building.

There, the young woman we deal with scolds us because the manifests of our packages are not clear enough, they say ‘School Supplies’ and thus are not detailed enough to determine if tax is due.  But with the exception of Fran’s package, which does have a detailed manifest and on which she will owe something, she clears us for Revenue anyway, without tax.  We go back to Customs, and in red pen a woman there writes on our slips of paper that we have cleared.  We walk to the PO and, after a wait for the worker there to appear, we pay the small storage and processing fee and receive our packages.

Time:  Noon.

In the meantime, April checks the SEGA PO box and finds ANOTHER customs/revenue chit, for me.  Uh oh.   I take it, but I am now thinking about my other, more important errand, and April has finished with the PO and wants to continue with her list of errands.  We put everything in the car, and she departs for the phone company and her bank.

I go back to the government building and, feeling informed, go directly to the Revenue Office.  The woman there is obviously annoyed to have to deal with me and my poor Swahili again, but she gets out her calculator, writes on a torn off scrap of paper.  She hands it to me; she has charged me 15,000 TSch on a package which manifests a value of 32,000, almost 50% tax.  When I protest, she reminds me that she cleared the previous boxes (School Supplies) for nothing.  She is clearly in payback mode, and accuses me of being ungrateful.  I have a minor coraje (outburst).  But it’s like punching the Pillsbury Doughboy, not satisfying because they just stare back at me.  Need to learn how to excoriate in Swahili.

Oh well, it’s only $10.00, let’s move forward and get her done.  I am anxious for this late Christmas/early birthday present to come into my hands.  I’ll pay, pick up the package, and go on to the bank.  I walk back to the Customs Office and wait 15 minutes for them to make out a Revenue receipt based on Payback Woman’s jotted note, and they hand me an official document, keeping the PO notice.  I am to go to the bank next door, pay, and bring back a paid receipt which will then result in my PO notice being marked paid/cleared, and then I can take that back to the PO, pay the misc fees there and then be done.   Except for my outburst in Revenue, I am in pretty good spirits.  Thinking about lunch, thinking about maybe going to my fundi to get a new dress made from the kanga I have stashed in the car.

I’d like to be able to say that things went quickly after that.  After all, it’s 12:45, and April will want to go back to School when her errands are done.  I go to the bank downstairs, the CRDB, optimistic.  But the line to the teller is out to the front door, there are at least 50 people in it.  I wait 5 minutes at the Customer Service desk to confirm that yes, I must wait in the long line to visit a teller.  The line hasn’t moved.  There is 1 teller present for all these people.  I panic, and bail.  Time, 1:00 pm.

Re-grouping, I decide to see what I can do about my ATM card.  That bank is conveniently close by and I walk there.  It, too, sports a line of dozens waiting to see a teller. (Later, I realize that those who wish to make a deposit, obtain a money order [the only 'checks' in TZ],  or retrieve more than 400,000 schillings [$250.] from their accounts, must do so inside the bank.  The lines inside ANY bank are ALWAYS long and always slowed by fewer than needed tellers.)

At Customer Service, no queue, but the more typical Tanzanian behavior of people waiting.  That is:  people maneuvering, thrusting hands in front of you, shouldering you aside with demands for attention from the single woman representative, who never just attends to the person in front of her, but stops and starts to do the easy things, like handing out balance request forms or deposit slips.  She also occasionally answers her personal cell and has a conversation.  This is, as I have said, typical.  It is all done with civility, that is, nobody shouts or pushes, they just don’t wait their turn, nor or they encouraged to do this by the service provider.

To get a new card, I am told that I must obtain a Police Report.  I try arguing.  I have lost the card, there has been no crime committed.  I lose.  I must go to the Police Station and bring back the required report.  This is their procedure.  

As I am walking out of the bank, April calls.  She is ready to leave.  I quickly change plans again, and arrange to meet her at the grocery store so I can get her to carry some needed food and other items back to school for me.  I will stay in town, returning by dala dala.  I am in siege mode, I will get both chores done.  I abandon the pleasurable thought of a new dress, and lunch.

Police Station:  Report at the desk in front, report again at an office in back. Am given a single Official police report document and told to go to the stationary store across the street, get two copies made, and bring it back.  This is either a money-saving measure on the part of this bureaucracy, or their copier is out of service. Bring back the copies, be sent down the hall to pay a chit for the report, take back the signed receipt for said chit to the 1^st office.  Receive Official report.  (Is this beginning to sound familiar?)

At the Bank, things go more or less smoothly.  I have the required documents for card replacement and, miraculously, the required 2 passport pictures to paste onto my request for issuance of a new card, and change of account to the new card.  I win my first and only argument of the day:  the passport pictures do not have the required Blue Background.  I convince the Bank Officer, another woman, to accept my American passport pictures with white background, by pointing out that my passport, an Official American Document, sports an identical picture of me, with a white background.  I am bucked up by this triumph, and leave the bank with new card and PIN number.  However, I can’t use it until 24 hours have passed.  But I am 90% done with one errand, and it is only 2:30 pm.

At the CRDB Bank, my faint hopes of the line being lessened are dashed.  I get in line, and I wait.  And wait, and wait. No one exhibits any hurry or impatience.  Now, all who know me know how agonizing waiting can be personally for me, and how poorly I can behave.  I really try to stay composed:  I send long texts, I kick myself for not having my I-Pod, or Kindle, or both. I mentally try out schemes to circumvent this line (bribes?  Using my white skin and white hair to demand special service? Fainting?  Bailing yet again and coming back another day when I have more comfortable shoes on?)  I pull out my phone and time the wait, along with service time for individuals, on the Stopwatch App.  I keep trying not to lose it when people, who have saved spots in line, swell the last few places over and over again.

After about 2 hours, my back and feet are aching, but I am before a teller.  The teller is efficient; it takes less than 3 minutes. (By Stopwatch) I am rewarded with one of the 4 copies of the customs requisition, marked paid with an official stamp and initials.  I am asked to sign yet another document for it.

When I finish, the bank is closed.  Although banking hours extend until 5:30, they lock the doors at 4:30 so nobody else can get in line. When no employee appears  to unlock the doors so that I and half a dozen others can escape, I elicit my first laughs of the day by pulling out my phone and declaring  that I have been kidnapped by CRDB, and that I am going to call the police to come and rescue me.  Seriously, folks, this is only my second meltdown of the day, and I did manage to amuse the other customers, not horrify them by my lack of meekness.  Finally, after a couple of minutes, a woman who was on her cell phone at Customer Service saunters out to unlock the door.  I bolt out first.

Back next door at Customs, the woman there remonstrates with me because, although her office hours are until 5:00, she has locked away my PO chit and must retrieve keys, and unlock cabinets, to mark it for me and give it to me.  I tell her I was waiting TWO HOURS to pay, and she looks at me mildly, as if to say, ‘what’s the big whoop, only 2 hours?’

The Post Office is Closed.  Their hours are until 5:00, too, but that apparently is advisory only, as it is 20 minutes to. 

Just over 5 ½ hours in town to accomplish 90% of two errands, each requiring an encounter with the government and a bank.

As I make my way home, my thoughts are these, not in exact order.  The intercept between the modern world and the people is clearly taking its toll on the people.  Why do they PUT UP with having their time wasted so egregiously?  What do they do with all that paper?  Every government office I visited was dirty, needed to be painted, and was populated by broken down furniture and superfluous people who appeared to be doing nothing.  With the exception of one policeman who chatted me up in English, I dealt with women, who have clearly cornered the market on customer service white collar jobs here in Tanzania.  While not ever being able to completely understand the Swahili or be spoken to in communicative English, I did not make 1 mistake:  filled out no forms wrong, stood in no wrong lines.  Thank you, April, for getting me started on the right track.

And, I have to go back tomorrow.

Goodnight, America

11:00 AM East Africa Time, 10:00 PM in CA.  Goodnight, good people of America. You have just made Barack Obama President for 4 more years. Obamacare will have a chance to prove itself, and we have shown at least state-wide support for such progressive ideas as recreational pot and gay marriage, not to mention gay Senators.  Some of my friends and family are ready to pack up and move to a different country, (at least one of them is looking on from afar already, shaking her head.)  It was a very close election, and it may be that ultimately we will have a reverse of 2000, when Bush lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College.  In the meantime, we still have heavy decisions to make:  how to prosper our middle class to generate the spirit and capital we need to set our country to rights. Rebuild our bridges and schools. Re-up our opportunities.   We can’t do it with ever higher taxes, but we also can’t do it by ‘starving’ government, and making it the enemy.  That government is inherently bad, (the chestnut upon which Reagan rode into history), that one single idea is, I think, the undoing of the Republican Party in this election.  Because everyone with the energy and wit to register and vote sees the hypocrisy of this position.  How can you say that you want smaller government when you can’t say how you will make it smaller?  Americans don’t want taxes, but we want our social safety net too, and our interstate highways, and our FEMA.  And, how can we say we want smaller government and then campaign for more order and control, as in, of crimes, and of women’s lives, and of making women criminals?   The line was just too narrow for a limited politician like Romney to tread, he who was hamstrung by his history as a moderate, his wealthy lifestyle and his unknowable religion.  (Secret rites, secret rules, and, maybe, secret agendas – I don’t believe that, really, but it was there, in the ether as they used to say, like the color of Obama’s skin).  If there is one outcome I hope for this election, it’s that the Republican party sees that it cannot just hope for another Reagan, the perfect man with the perfect resume’, to get exactly what they want and show us all how wrong headed we have been.  It’s time they came to the table and participated.   The obstructionism of the last 4 years is now what's damaging the country.  It’s obvious that the American people, at least a legal majority, don’t want them to lead.  If they don’t want to follow, they must get out of the way, or change.

Sustainability

Note, many of my dozen or so regular readers know that after the last post, which I find now to embarrassingly gushy, my site was moved from Dindimo Secondary School in Gonga, Pare Hills, Kilimanjaro Region, to SEGA Secondary School, Mikunde, Morogoro.  The reason given was Safe and Secure housing issues. (SEE, Be Safe! In posts, below.)  I was bitterly disappointed and also quite upset about the way it was done.  Actually it WAS done really poorly.  It took me awhile to separate my anger at being treated so shabbily by the Peace Corps over the transfer, and my disappointment at not going to the Pare’s.  In the meantime, I had a great time at the 4-day town party in Dar that is swearing in, and I am proud to say that I survived Training, held up my right hand and swore, and am now a Peace Corps Volunteer.  I miss my PCT buddies like anything. 

 

SEGA stands for Secondary Education for Girls Advancement.  It is a girls boarding school which opened its doors in 2009, and now has 150 students in 4 grades.  In December, 2013 we will graduate the first class of Fourth Formers.  The mission of the school is to serve as an educational institution for girls in poverty who have failed to successfully complete Primary School, but who have the ability and potential to succeed in Secondary School.  In reality, this school receives substantial assistance from donors in the USA, and is able to give the selected students a first class private school education, complete with a preliminary year of remedial English and primary subjects, along with enrichment in the form of art, swimming lessons and computer training.

SEGA School turned out to be a brand new campus about 6 miles from Morogoro Town, and reachable by dala dala.  So, I went from looking at my Peace Corps career as an isolated village bibi to a townie, and I also have a very nice 1-bedroom apartment on campus, so no hardship duty for me.  SEGA is quite lovely, with nicely appointed classrooms and dorms, and the staff have been welcoming and professional.  Last week, another volunteer moved in next door to me, and she is a delightful new friend.  Two more volunteers are expected this fall and then there will be 5 of us on campus.

Still, I have been worrying my thoughts about what this means for my Peace Corps career like a loose tooth.

Sustainability:  The Peace Corps spends a lot of time with PCV’s teaching them how to make sustainable change in the cultures where they are stationed.  It’s not enough, says Peace Corps mission and tradition, to come into a community and institute change. Only by both truly becoming a part of the community and being role models can PCV’s, if they’re successfully doing their job, assist the people they serve to change in ways that will be sustainable.  How well does this work?  I don’t know.  I know that I’ve only heard of it from other PCV’s in the negative, that is, I’ve heard  Peace Corps volunteers say ‘I won’t do it , or I won’t do it that way, because it’s not sustainable’.  I have not seen, or at least I don’t think I’ve seen, ways in which sustainable change is accomplished.   Maybe if it’s truly sustainable, you don’t see it; it’s just there, in the village where most use mosquito nets or the family that sends its first child to University.

Sustainability is also, I think, some sort of meta-concept, incorporating the idea that aid to Africa is worse than useless if it does not result in sustainable change.  The ‘give a man a fish’ concept, only in Africa it’s not that simple.  If you give an African a fish, he will eat for a day.  If you teach the African to fish, pretty soon there will be no fish left in Lake Victoria and he will starve anyway. But that’s for another post.

Does SEGA fit this model?  Well, on the one hand, it is heavily supported by American donations and assistance.  At SEGA, my job is Volunteer, NOT Peace Corps volunteer.  A SEGA volunteer is an American and UK woman or group of women that comes here for a couple of months to a couple of years and volunteers to help out with enrichment and tutoring.  So I am not, as I was trained to be, a Secondary School teacher, with responsibility for a Form or part of a Form.  I am a wealthy American who is helping young women out of poverty.  SEGA is the product of a Philadelphia NGO, and has an American director and an Australian woman who as a VSO volunteer is director of volunteers and curriculum.  The campus was built with a USAID grant.  The girls are on 100% scholarship.   

On the other hand, SEGA is a registered Tanzanian secondary school, which means that the teachers are under the Ministry of Health and Education.  Students take Form II and O level exams, with girls who pass receiving the diplomas that they need to go on to A levels, college, and University. The aim of the school is certainly to continue to stay in business, and to expand.  There is a long-term plan to create businesses on campus, at which the girls will work, to provide income for the school and work experience for the girls who may not go on to higher education.  In that sense, it’s ‘permanent’ and no doubt will make a long-term difference in the lives of the girls who are smart enough and lucky enough to attend.

Did I want to be in a village? Take my place as a teacher and bibi, experiencing it all? Yes.  Is this a village?  No. It is, however, a community, and to my first impression a dedicated and worthy one, and there is work to be done.  But in a way I feel disappointed and perhaps a little underserved by the Peace Corps TZ staff.  I could have come here, as others do and will, to volunteer without having to learn to use a charcoal stove, wash my clothes by hand, or even to speak Kiswahili. (Although I wouldn’t have missed PCT for the world, it was truly a wonderful summer.)  I am proud to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, I was trained for this, and I can’t help wanting to be more integrated in the Tanzanian culture.  I don’t want to be cut off from the experience of Tanzania by American money.  But if I can serve  these girls, isn’t that what I came over here to do? 

Of course I am worried that I’m just obsessing over this village/SEGA thing as a way of avoiding commitment.   As I’ve said, there is work to be done, and these girls have been given a lifeline, not just a helping hand.  Perhaps sustainability shouldn’t be my guiding principle.  I’m reminded of the story of the person who walked along a beach covered with thousands of starfish that had been cast up on the sand by a storm.  As she walked, she bent down and picked up creature after creature, throwing them back into the sea, and safety.  Her friend wondered and asked her, “Why are you doing this?  There are so many starfish, you’ll never be able to throw them all back.”  To which she replied, “No, but for the ones that I do, it will make all the difference in the world.”

I’ve always been impatient, and no good at follow-through.  I need to stay with this until I can see how I can grow and learn from it.  They told us it would not be easy, and it isn’t, just not in the way I thought it wouldn’t be easy.  That isn’t easy.

 

 

 

 

In the Hill Country

Now that I know where I will be living, I can say that it is absolutely beautiful and well worth a trip.  It’s not even THAT far off the beaten track, at least in the sense that two very touristic cities, Moshi and Arusha, are just down the hill and therefore only ½ day away.

I had a grand time visiting my site.  It IS hard to travel in Tanzania:   bad roads, dirty crowded buses, distances made long not by kilometers but by many many small villages that must be traversed slowly, slowly.  If the bus drivers weren’t afraid of running over a walker or bicycler (and sometimes I wonder if they ARE!), then the many wicked speed bumps, some erected ad hoc by village residents to provide selling opportunities, will quite do the trick.  So, it was 7 hours on an uncomfortable bus to go 300 miles from Morogoro to Same (pronounced SAM-aye), then, overnight in a guestie (2 beds, a toilet, plenty of water in buckets and quiet; no fan, no towel = about 6 bucks), then after breakfast the next morning, a small bus up the hill for 4 hours, about 35 miles, over kidney bruising bad roads to Sambweni, where 1 of my 2 PCV hosts live.  I stayed with Autumn for 1 night, then walked with the other PCV, a guy named Jeff, to his house, in Ivugu, about an hour away, and spent 2 nights there. The day before the transfer to Gonga and my school, we walked back to Sambweni, had dinner with the Village Chair, and spent another night. 

The Pare Hills are not that high, topping out at maybe 8 or 9 thousand feet, and Same is probably at 3.  But once you leave the dry and dusty plain, and start ascending the hairpins that lead you farther and farther up and into the hills, the more remarkable they become.  The dirt is red, and the hillsides are terraced from near the top to the bottom of the valleys.  Red, handmade stair steps down and down, each with its planted crop of ginger, maize, beans and bananas. Along the windy road, houses and dukas cling, there are not many naturally flat places and where there are, is a village.  And at every inside fold of the road is a spring.  Water gushes out from broken granite rocks and spills out over the road and then into handmade irrigation channels.  And down and down it goes, and the hillsides and valleys are lush and tropical and green and gardened.

The people are the Mpare, who once lived side-by-side with the fierce Masai as cattle keepers on the plains.  But a long time ago they moved up into the hills (they still don’t have close relations with the tribe that sent them packing generations and generations ago.)  There they became farmers, keeping cattle only occasionally, for milk.  They speak, and prefer, their own language, Kipare.  Do you see the root?  Same, Mpare, and Kipare all spring from the tribal language, which the villagers slip into soon after the customary Swahili greetings.  Nobody speaks more than rudimentary English.  Thank goodness for Jeff’s and Autumn’s accomplished language skills.  I hope I can do as well as they have after 8 months in the Pare’s.

While I was there, I attended a funeral, which seemed familiar with food, visiting relatives, and quiet reminiscences.  I also went to a wedding, at which there were gifts, dancing, drinking and lots of flirting between the segregated boys and girls.  So pretty typical, although there was no burial at the funeral and no bride and groom at the wedding.

As you can surmise from this itinerary, there was a ton of walking, and none on sidewalks and little on roads, and always either up or down.  The paths that run between gardens are frequently traversed by irrigation channels, so that you jump over streams from rock to rock, up and down.  I am actually quite proud of my knees, and that I didn’t break an ankle.  And the views were worth it.  We could see to Kenya in the north, and we could see Lushoto, in Tanga, to the east.  The stars and full moon were incredible. 

On Thursday, the 6^th day of my trip, Jeff arranged for us to have, ahem, unauthorized transportation from Sambweni to Gonga, where my school is.  Piki piki’s (1-passenger motorcycle taxies) are strictly forbidden by the Peace Corps, on account of how dangerous they are on the rocky, slippery roads.  But our alternative was to spend twice as much money, with chancy outcome, trying to hire a Land Rover taxi, or taking a bus back down to Same, spending the night, and then riding another bus up into the hills on another road the next day.  I would have walked to avoid that alternative.  The trip was uneventful until the very end, and we arrived shaken but not stirred at my school late Thursday morning.  I may have a small scar on my leg, as a souvenir.

Gonga faces a little north of where Sambweni and Ivuga are, and is a little drier, and not as extensively farmed.  Still, it boasts a big hospital (50 beds and an operating theater), and a thriving village, bigger than either of Jeff’s or Autumn’s.  Dindimo Secondary School is out of town about a 30 minute walk, and has a flat enough spot on campus to make a football field, and a beautiful spring-fed creek.  The school is well established but has low enrollment, only about 185 students.  I will teach all four forms of English and perhaps some lower form Math and Biology.  They have a full science lab, although it seems to not have much equipment, and a computer lab with 8 or 9 working computers.

My first impression was that it was quiet.  After the barking dogs and loud speaker muezzin and Christian prayer meetings of Moro, this country living seemed peaceful.  My house is much too large for me and I will try to explain that a little better when I move in.  Jeff and I went to a faculty meeting and ate lunch (chai and lunch are provided on campus for teachers and students alike, something I’m happy about.)  Then I walked to town and met a nurse at the hospital, and walked back.  We went out to dinner with the Headmaster (another hour of walking) and went to bed early, as a Land Rover taxi would pick us up at 2:45 in the morning Friday to take us back to Same, down to the highway where we would catch a bus to Moshi.  Land Rovers in these hills and on these routes operate very similar to dala dala's.  When we arrived at Same, there were 12 people and their stuff in the 5-passenger vehicle.

Then it a town party, touristic and fun, with lots of area PCV's and all 10 of the members of my class who will be assigned in the area.  But I was tired.  My feet were blistered, and all I wanted to do was shower and be clean.  Still, Moshi will be my Banking Town while I teach in Gonga, which means I can go there to get money, receive packages etc., and not be charged with a day off against my PC leave.  So I was happy to see that it is walkable and has a huge American-style supermarket, full of exotic things like cheese, packaged pasta and canned sardines.  And wine.  I had a delicious Indian dinner, savored my first espresso drink in 2 months, and got glimpses of Mt. Killimanjaro, which towers over Moshi from 70 miles away.  I also met a Tinga Tinga artist whose work showed me, for the first time, how exciting those paintings can be.  I had always thought them a little naïve and they are, but incredibly entertaining, too, when I finally really looked at a good one.

Then, on Sunday bright and early, it was back on the bus.  As we rode east by south past the Pare Hills on our way back to Morogoro, I looked up and saw them, really.  How beautiful they are.  How lucky I am to be here.