Meeting

It looks like IVHQ wants to keep me on to assist in some transition efforts between local companies here for the next two weeks, but after that if they don't need anything else I may travel for a bit and then head to NYC possibly in time to do some get out the vote efforts for Obama in nearby swing states. I am longing for political involvement... But you know how it goes, I can't pass up amazing opportunities here so until the return trip is paid for no guarantees. But if McCain wins, how can I live with myself for not having done more??? Ugh!

Keep reading for my post from earlier today if you want in depth insights about my stay thus far.

2 month review

There are reasonably few good things to say about lonelyness and isolation; however, of those few things I think that the reflection and contemplation that they bring are sufficient to justify some occasional suffering. Now that another roommate has left for home I am immersing myself in these thoughtful somewhat boring moments to be constructive. So today I attempt to turn away from the more typical things I do in slow moments (like pushing myself to see how much water I can drink in an hour or counting the number of days that I have been here and counting my malaria tablets to see if they add up correctly and if they don't add up correctly wondering if it is just hot in here or if I have malaria...) and turn towards effectively recollecting my more interesting insights since being in Africa. In short, things here are not always exciting - especially when the other volunteers don't do anything interesting on the weekends (and for some, perhaps in life). But I am learning lots of interesting things and thus I bring you the disorganized hodgepodge that is my 2 month review.

The NGO
Today I met with Aggrey, the director of LIVE (tanz side), to help him fix his orientation packet and everything before the IVHQ director arrives tomorrow. Aggrey isn't the problem specifically, he just happens to have been handed a shit deal post-embezzling asshole. It really doesn't help though that Aggrey's english is not quite there. This results in amazing moments of confusion and miscomunication that never really get resolved. I have been trying to help him though - why not? It is interesting to look inside a failing organization and see what went wrong and in this case most things have. The local staff is unreliable, there is no hierarchy to speak of except for Daniel in NZ and Aggrey in Tanz. When asked to chart out where all the program fees go the answers just lead to more contradiction and confusion. Aggrey's explanation in this instance is actually unlike anything I have ever heard - it is as though you are consumed by a vacuum of negative information. I think this results from poor English skills, the mishandling of money that occurred before he ran the organization, and the fact that he has never met Daniel before. (That is until tomorrow of course). So it will be interesting to see what happens. I meet Daniel tomorrow as well.


The Family
Bibi (grandma) sits alone and just endures life through most days. I feel sad for her. She is really quite nice when we have successful communication. I know she would like to talk to me more, but speaking Swahili can get very tiring so I don't do it enough. Our house girl, Asha, is very sweet. She is only 16 and fasting through Ramadan while she cooks for us every day. Mama is always hasseling her to remember things and do them more correctly. Asha gets yelled at alot. She has trouble remembering because she is illiterate and can't write things down. I got a book to teach her Swahili since Bibi doesn't have anything to do and Asha needs to learn to read/write. I hope that this will make her life easier. Bibi and Asha seem happy with this arrangement.

An interesting note about biases:
It is interesting that Mama would hire a Muslim when she seems to dislike them so much. Perhaps this makes it easier to yell at her. Remember that my host family is very educated and they are far more open-minded than most families here... Mama blames all things about Tanzania that might be considered by a European/American to be uncivilized to be a result of Muslims. She blames pit toilets and lack of toilet paper on the Muslims. It is interesting that she would say this since the church she goes to has pit toilets and no toilet paper as well. Muslim infiltration clearly redid their bathrooms in spite. Most third world countries operate this way regardless of religion probably because running water isn't always prevalent and the cost of toilet paper is more food you can't afford. So why not give yourself a hand... Mama also claims that the only reason people convert to Islam here is because of the pro-Muslim regime in the 1980's in Tanzania. She says that people converted to get government positions and that they burned churches. Some of this is true, but I suspect there is more to the story. The current regime is moderate Christian.

Today she told me a story of 2 Anglicans who converted from Islam right after going on the Hajj. They claim that in the pilgrimage to Mecca they were led into a room with all the other Muslims to pray and they were told to keep their eyes closed and not to look up. These 2 say that they looked up and saw a vision of Jesus and Mary and then converted and confessed all their sins and became Anglican. Mama also cites rumors that she heard when she visited Turkey that the Muslim religion was beginning they were told they had to write their own book to compete with Christianity.

While Mama blames many things on Muslims, Baba blames many things on West Africans, especially Africa's bad reputation as a dangerous and uncivilized place. He believes that West Africans are just generally a ridiculously rough bunch that cause problems everywhere they go. Mama adds that they also over spice their food.

Masha believes that Kenyans can't be trusted since he has had 3 bad Kenyan employees in the past. I mentioned that my host mother is from Kenya and he deflected this generalization from her since she had the good insight to marry a Tanzanian.

Many Tanzanians feel elevated above Kenyans in the wake of the Kenya election violence in February. I can understand why they would value this differentiation since Kenyans and Ugandans are a great threat to Tanzanian jobs because Kenyans and Ugandans are taught in English only beginning in grade 1. This is a huge advantage and causes somewhat of an inferiority complex among Tanzanians.

So, in short, the bad things about Africa are always someone else's creation.

School
I'm sure I have mentioned before that Masha and Samuel are born again Pentacostals... We watch evangelical music videos during lunch so some of the first Swahili that I learned came from the chorus "Unakwenda wapi?", meaning "Where are you going?" Sometimes in the middle of a conversation or just without prompting Masha will exclaim, "Jesus I praise you" - kind of like he has Turrets Syndrome. Other times he will spontaneously burst into song. One day he asked me if I would like to stop work for 2 hours and pray with him. I offered to watch the office for him. I think he was joking... I have great hatred for personal religious interrogations so I ascribe any difference in personal religious preferences to being a Quaker. I knew that this would be successful when he asked me if a Quaker was Christian - I have kept the rout up quite successfully, but I just know one day they will meet a real Quaker and they will be very confused.

Now, to be fair despite the fact that I find this sort of fanaticism quite off putting, it is part of the reason I trust Masha to do things ethically. Many schools and orphanages are corrupted; they embezzle money and steel food and exploit their cause. Masha is genuine and I believe that he will absolutely do what he says he will do. Other volunteers wire money for school fees for certain students each month and he always sees to it that the money goes to the right place.

Random Notes from Today
On my way to the internet cafe a dog followed me for the entirety of my journey. Several people asked about my dog. On my way home I was offered a chance to hold a chameleon. Chameleons are very odd - shifty eyes, hard to trust 'em. Maybe one of my students will bring me a chameleon....

Misc.
They pour kerosene in entryways to our house to keep out the wadudu (insects). It smells like burning assholes.

The other day I looked longingly at a goat's ripe burgeoning udder and contemplated milking it (this is on of my goals while in Africa). Then I realized that it wasn't an udder at all - just some big fat goat nutts. They were ripe like mangoes.

The power goes out randomly.

The hot water heater burned out in the first week that I was here so we use hot water in buckets to bathe. Not inconvenient, but you get an idea about the repair wait time on things here...


And me...
There are so many things that I want to do! I want to take courses in microfinance, sustainable development, journalism, English, foreign relations, and business. I want to be certified to do AIDS/HIV education and teaching English as a foreign language on top of that. What sort of interdisciplinary program would offer all of that? How many years would it take? Is that...possible?

I am currently reading Dune and I would like to cite Frank Herbert as a great source of inspiration because of his brief profile mentioned in the back of the book: "Frank Herbert was...educated at the University of Washington, Seattle. He worked a wide variety of jobs - including TV cameraman, radio commentator, oyster diver, jungle survival instructor, lay analyst, creative writing teacher, reporter and editor of several West Coast newspapers - before becoming a full-time writer." So I guess there isn't any real rush then...I am only 26 after all and I haven't even worked as a jungle survival instructor.

Ng'ombe!

I am meeting with Daniel Radcliff, Director of IVHQ, on Monday at 2:30. He has insinuated that there may be a job for me. We will see what happens. I want him to pay for me to travel.

Deborah left today for England, so it is back to living alone. I quell this lonelyness by spending far too much money on the internet. I really really need to find a way to get the presidential debates in downloadable form. Please let me know if you know where I can get this. I have about 3 gigs of space on my memory stick and I want put the debates on that and then watch them on my OLPC at home.

School is going well, I am working on beating tenses into them so they stop saying things like, "I am go to work" and "I going to school". I need to find some posterboard to make charts in the classroom because we only have one blackboard per class and they are small. Really, I am going to teach them this if it kills me. Dave's mom has sent us books that will arrive sometime in mid October so I am looking forward to that.

My students frequently bring a "photographer" in off the streets to take pictures with me to show their friends. Bibi (grandma) apparently is amazed by the Mzungu (white people) that she is living with. She was shocked to know that we eat the same things that she eats and that we will actually take our dishes into the kitchen when done eating. My Swahili has gotten much better. I am capable of actual conversations. For instance, "Me sheba koma ng'ombe" means "I am full like a cow".

The great thing about having your hair in braids is that you don't have to wash your hair really ever. This might just be a great thing about Africa though.

I do miss home and I covet political involvement. If this job falls through, I might be back in time for the election and in that case I will probably drop stuff off somewhere in NYC and then head to the nearest swing state. I have a sense of political obligation, but if this job looks promising I may have to take it because payment for travel is a great incentive....

Safari and Worms...

The safari was incredible. An elephant wandered through our campsite Saturday night. It was amazing. i was actually really sad to come back. I could go camp on safari forever. Not all Tse Tse flies carry sleeping sickness...hooray! because one bit me. Pictures will be forthcoming...(of the safari, not the fly).

On another note, it is possible that I have intestinal worms and don't know it yet. This was brought to my attention when today Masha mentioned that he had them. He then declared that "all people have worms all over the world" - I looked horrified. I explained that NO....NO ALL PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE WORMS. But this doesnt change the fact that I have lunch with him all the time as it would be inhospitable to refuse the brick shaped corn product of doom that visitors all hate so very much. I like to quell my fears with the knowledge that worms don't live in concrete.

Thanks to all who wished me a happy birthday!

Conversation today

Today I had a conversation with our house girl that went like this:
Asha: ".....kazi?" (which i believe meant, why aren't you at work?"
me: "Hapana kazi leo....uh....schulini mama (hmmm can't say died in swahili) anakwenda Mungu HIV/AIDS. Pole. Schulini leo hapana, lakini Wednesday sawa." (no work today....school mother...went to God. Aids. Sorry (sad?). School today no, but wednesday ok.

Prostitutes, special names, and Zimbabwe

I suppose that the things you never really think about when you depart upon an adventure in a foreign land are the mundane, boring, and routine. There is a lot of that here. I mean what can you really do after 6pm if it is dangerous to go out alone and a lot of the other volunteers are lame?

Today I asked the class what they wanted to debate about and they said prostitution. Prostitution comes up alot here. I don't know how prevalent it really is in Arusha, but my students really fixate on it as a great mystery. The topic they wanted to debate was "Why would someone want to be a prostitute?" I deemed this too simple since I believe that the one word of "poverty" generally sums it up. So we debated, "The government should legalize and regulate prostitution to enforce regular testing of prostitutes and reduce STDs". (yes, this was my own invention) I believe my favorite student response was "One time last month while my neighbor was at nightly prayer his daughter was taken by a lustful man. We had to search all over for her. If prostitution were legal this might not have happened." (This is quite a paraphrase as the original statement took about 10 minutes to convey while I stared at my student dumbfoundedly trying to figure out how prayerhouse and whorehouse could sound so similar, what this had to do with prostitution, and (from the original misinterpretation) why people who went to prayerhouses also went to whorehouses in one long night.

Many of my students have interesting names. Godlisten is the name of one of my male students and while I am sure that this was somehow derived from the most extreme Christian devotion, I can't help but wonder when he came out of the womb if his mother was asking "Why didn't God listen?!", stating "God listened!", or simply hoping that maybe next time God will listen and maybe this will really be here last child. (Sometimes we have talks about how prayer and birth control are very different things). I also have students named Lightness and Chastity, but none really compare with Godlisten. I should also note that Masha's 1 year old son's name is Philanthropy. They call him Philan for short. The intention is nice, but it really does make you groan.

School is canceled tomorrow. The woman who owned the school building Masha rents died of AIDS over the weekend. The funeral is tomorrow in Moshi and the other teachers have to go. Her husband died in 2005 of the same. He cheated on her and brought it back. It is fortunate that she made it so long because one of the 3 children is old enough to take over so they don't have to worry about orphanages or other family having to take them. Most of the AIDS problem seems to come from men going outside of relationships for sex. Women tend to blame this problem on themselves for not satisfying there men sufficiently in a variety of ways. I have to say, the gender issues are beginning to bother me. At first, I was able to sort of suspend my role in the debates and argue both sides better, but I am having difficulty with it now - especially Friday when we debated, "men should discipline their wives like their children." I tell myself that there is no greater progress than improving their ability to talk about these things, but it is hard to watch.

Today the Zimbabwe peace agreement was brokered. I saw Mugabe talking about it on the news. It is amazing to hear him speak and to see how good he sounds when you don't think about what he is actually saying in relation to the immense damage he has done. The best part was when he blamed everything on colonialism. He is still riding that card from the 70's I see. Anything to avoid responsibility.

a delayed post from thursday

Life here is certainly full of its ups and downs. I suspect my roommate is dealing with these more than I am though since there isn't too much optimism in doing medical work here. School is going well for me still. Tuesday I felt like my lesson was quite over their heads, but I think today's lesson compensated for that. They have alot of difficulty dealing with gerunds. Sentences like "I like to listening music" are really common and I am determined to beat these into them. Today's 2 hour class consisted of me teaching them a brief clarifying lesson on gerunds, infinitives, and the usage of to as a preposition followed by an entire hour of me giving them verbs to make sentences with orally while I wrote them on the board and corrected them. I think this method was pretty successful. Learning Swahili helps me teach them English because I am learning the differences in grammatical structure.

I met with Aggrey yesterday after work (the local coordinator of my program) and told him all the problems in his program. There are many. At my suggestion all of the volunteers will meet on Thursday to discuss problems in their placements, host families, etc... I have been really lucky, but there are a lot of problems with the way things are run here. Aggrey found my advice helpful and has said that I can live in the volunteer quarters for free when the program that I have paid for effectively ends on October 1. This means that I can keep teaching for free and stay longer. I will be here when the IVHQ coordinator from New Zealand comes...perhaps they would like to hire me. I also was told about a program in Iringa, Tanzania that I may visit in October for a few days.

Perhaps I say this alot, but since I don't take time to review my writing you will have to deal with repetition and scatteredness. The things I miss most about America are: being able to walk safely at night, being able to control what/how much I am eating, regular exercise. Dear god, what I wouldn't give to never eat Ugali again. I feel my insides being paved with corn-cement. Hopefully, when my placement officially ends and I move to separate volunteer housing I will have more control over these things.

On an unrelated note, my host family mentioned that it has now been 7 years since 9/11. It has been 7 years since my first year of college as well.
My birthday is on the 19th. I will be on safari then petting hippos.

Eleven hours of hair

Deborah and I got our hair braided yesterday. We expected for this to take about 4 hours; however, they started on my hair at about 11:30 and this continued until 10:30 at night. I contemplated running out and chopping my hair off in response to the oppressive boredom which battered my mind. But patience prevailed and now I have the remarkable collection of what is probably the equivalent of three other people's fake heads of hair braided into mine. i think that the woman who braided my hair was previously being disciplined in the corner for hurting people by pulling too hard since until she worked on me it appeared that she was only working on wigs and I must say she treated my hair with little empathy. Eleven hours at a salon is really a prime example of the sort of thing that happens in Africa. Nothing is to be rushed for and this is often take to ridiculous and absurd levels. I have to say while it was unbearable while it was going on, I guess I can't say that I regret it because where else would you pay 10$ to get a pound of fake hair intertwined with your own? It is worthwhile to note that the hairdressers complained that there is no way it would take this long to braid african hair and I suspect that by around 8 pm they were regretting this tedious task at least as much as we were. We were all quite mystified by the horror and agony of the process by the time that it was done. Oh yes, and we were also STARVING since we hadn't eaten since breakfast. There is also one more component of this story which I will try not to elaborate on too deeply, but this hair braiding travail occurred at the exact same time as my period decided to spontaneously splurt forth with remarkable force. This unexpected combination of events left me with deep concern for the ladies' pillow I was sitting upon and left me in dyer agony as blood was beginning to trickle down my leg. Thank god my jeans were absorbent because nothing could make me move as that might possibly prolong this astoundingly lengthy tedious hairpulling hell. Anyway, that is how I spent my Saturday....

update

Things are still going well, Dave's mom is helping out my school by sending books and maps. This is very exciting since many of the classes are conducted without materials at all. Many classes teach things ineffectively or incorrectly. As a visitor, I just have to bite my tongue alot. I am very excited about the arrival of books.


I am also excited by the fact that my parents are sending me on a safari for my birthday. I WILL SEE BEASTS!

Not much internet time.... here is a brief review;

Friday we debated whether female cirumcision should be legal. The best quote that I can offer is,"So what if I go and buy a clean razor before i circumcise you?"

I went to a wedding last night. They served a whole goat sitting down on a platter with grass clenched in its mouth. It was barbecued.

I am meeting with the program coordinator of LIVE today to try to explain to him why his program is failing. LIVE is the Tanzania branch of IVHQ. Incompetence does indeed have a face.

Two Month Review

There are reasonably few good things to say about lonelyness and isolation; however, of those few things I think that the reflection and contemplation that they bring are sufficient to justify some occasional suffering. Now that another roommate has left for home I am immersing myself in these thoughtful somewhat boring moments to be constructive. So today I attempt to turn away from the more typical things I do in slow moments (like pushing myself to see how much water I can drink in an hour or counting the number of days that I have been here and counting my malaria tablets to see if they add up correctly and if they don't add up correctly wondering if it is just hot in here or if I have malaria...) and turn towards effectively recollecting my more interesting insights since being in Africa. In short, things here are not always exciting - especially when the other volunteers don't do anything interesting on the weekends (and for some, perhaps in life). But I am learning lots of interesting things and thus I bring you the disorganized hodgepodge that is my 2 month review.

The NGO
Today I met with Aggrey, the director of LIVE (tanz side), to help him fix his orientation packet and everything before Daniel Radcliffe arrives tomorrow. Aggrey isn't the problem specifically, he just happens to have been handed a shit deal post-embezzling asshole. It really doesn't help though that Aggrey's english is not quite there. This results in amazing moments of confusion and miscomunication that never really get resolved. I have been trying to help him though - why not? It is interesting to look inside a failing organization and see what went wrong and in this case most things have. The local staff is unreliable, there is no hierarchy to speak of except for Daniel in NZ and Aggrey in Tanz. When asked to chart out where all the program fees go the answers just lead to more contradiction and confusion. Aggrey's explanation in this instance is actually unlike anything I have ever heard - it is as though you are consumed by a vacuum of negative information. I think this results from poor English skills, the mishandling of money that occurred before he ran the organization, and the fact that he has never met Daniel before. (That is until tomorrow of course). So it will be interesting to see what happens. I meet Daniel tomorrow as well.

Misc.
They pour kerosene in entryways to our house to keep out the wadudu (insects). It smells like burning assholes.

The other day I looked longingly at a goat's ripe burgeoning udder and contemplated milking it (this is on of my goals while in Africa). Then I realized that it wasn't an udder at all - just some big fat goat nutts. They were ripe like mangoes.

The power goes out randomly.

The hot water heater burned out in the first week that I was here so we use hot water in buckets to bathe. Not inconvenient, but you get an idea about the repair wait time on things here...

The Family
Bibi (grandma) sits alone and just endures life through most days. I feel sad for her. She is really quite nice when we have successful communication. I know she would like to talk to me more, but speaking Swahili can get very tiring so I don't do it enough. Our house girl, Asha, is very sweet. She is only 16 and fasting through Ramadan while she cooks for us every day. Mama is always hasseling her to remember things and do them more correctly. Asha gets yelled at alot. She has trouble remembering because she is illiterate and can't write things down. I got a book to teach her Swahili since Bibi doesn't have anything to do and Asha needs to learn to read/write. I hope that this will make her life easier. Bibi and Asha seem happy with this arrangement.

An interesting note about biases:
It is interesting that Mama would hire a Muslim when she seems to dislike them so much. Perhaps this makes it easier to yell at her. Remember that my host family is very educated and they are far more open-minded than most families here... Mama blames all things about Tanzania that might be considered by a European/American to be uncivilized to be a result of Muslims. She blames pit toilets and lack of toilet paper on the Muslims. It is interesting that she would say this since the church she goes to has pit toilets and no toilet paper as well. Muslim infiltration clearly redid their bathrooms in spite. Most third world countries operate this way regardless of religion probably because running water isn't always prevalent and the cost of toilet paper is more food you can't afford. So why not give yourself a hand... Mama also claims that the only reason people convert to Islam here is because of the pro-Muslim regime in the 1980's in Tanzania. She says that people converted to get government positions and that they burned churches. Some of this is true, but I suspect there is more to the story. The current regime is moderate Christian.

Today she told me a story of 2 Anglicans who converted from Islam right after going on the Hajj. They claim that in the pilgrimage to Mecca they were led into a room with all the other Muslims to pray and they were told to keep their eyes closed and not to look up. These 2 say that they looked up and saw a vision of Jesus and Mary and then converted and confessed all their sins and became Anglican. Mama also cites rumors that she heard when she visited Turkey that the Muslim religion was beginning they were told they had to write their own book to compete with Christianity.

While Mama blames many things on Muslims, Baba blames many things on West Africans, especially Africa's bad reputation as a dangerous and uncivilized place. He believes that West Africans are just generally a ridiculously rough bunch that cause problems everywhere they go. Mama adds that they also over spice their food.

Masha believes that Kenyans can't be trusted since he has had 3 bad Kenyan employees in the past. I mentioned that my host mother is from Kenya and he deflected this generalization from her since she had the good insight to marry a Tanzanian.

Many Tanzanians feel elevated above Kenyans in the wake of the Kenya election violence in February. I can understand why they would value this differentiation since Kenyans and Ugandans are a great threat to Tanzanian jobs because Kenyans and Ugandans are taught in English only beginning in grade 1. This is a huge advantage and causes somewhat of an inferiority complex among Tanzanians.

So, in short, the bad things about Africa are always someone else's creation.

School
I'm sure I have mentioned before that Masha and Samuel are born again Pentacostals... We watch evangelical music videos during lunch so some of the first Swahili that I learned came from the chorus "Unakwenda wapi?", meaning "Where are you going?" Sometimes in the middle of a conversation or just without prompting Masha will exclaim, "Jesus I praise you" - kind of like he has Turrets Syndrome. Other times he will spontaneously burst into song. One day he asked me if I would like to stop work for 2 hours and pray with him. I offered to watch the office for him. I think he was joking... I have great hatred for personal religious interrogations so I ascribe any difference in personal religious preferences to being a Quaker. I knew that this would be successful when he asked me if a Quaker was Christian - I have kept the rout up quite successfully, but I just know one day they will meet a real Quaker and they will be very confused.

Now, to be fair despite the fact that I find this sort of fanaticism quite off putting, it is part of the reason I trust Masha to do things ethically. Many schools and orphanages are corrupted; they embezzle money and steel food and exploit their cause. Masha is genuine and I believe that he will absolutely do what he says he will do. Other volunteers wire money for school fees for certain students each month and he always sees to it that the money goes to the right place.

Random Notes from Today
On my way to the internet cafe a dog followed me for the entirety of my journey. Several people asked about my dog. On my way home I was offered a chance to hold a chameleon. Chameleons are very odd - shifty eyes, hard to trust 'em. Maybe one of my students will bring me a chameleon....

And me...
There are so many things that I want to do! I want to take courses in microfinance, sustainable development, journalism, English, foreign relations, and business. I want to be certified to do AIDS/HIV education and teaching English as a foreign language on top of that. What sort of interdisciplinary program would offer all of that? How many years would it take? Is that...possible?

I am currently reading Dune and I would like to cite Frank Herbert as a great source of inspiration because of his brief profile mentioned in the back of the book: "Frank Herbert was...educated at the University of Washington, Seattle. He worked a wide variety of jobs - including TV cameraman, radio commentator, oyster diver, jungle survival instructor, lay analyst, creative writing teacher, reporter and editor of several West Coast newspapers - before becoming a full-time writer." So I guess there isn't any real rush then...I am only 26 after all and I haven't even worked as a jungle survival instructor.

One Month....

August 30th, 2008

Rosie, the 18 year old daughter of my host family is home for the next 2 weeks from boarding school. Today we went to see "Don't Mess with Zohan" because it was better than the other movie that was playing. I have to say, it was actually pretty funny. But this might just be coming from my previous experiences with Israeli men from when I worked at the kiosk. Today, Rosie and I also went to the market and bought some clothes. I needed a new sweater since I only brought one and it is cold every night and morning. The end result is that I never wash my only sweater and now it smells like dog.

Earlier in the week when I was walking home with Irene, one of my students, some men called out something to me. I typically just say "nzuri" if I don't know what was said (this means good and it is most often the right response). After responding, "Nzuri" to the men who I assumed to be friendly I was told by Irene that one of the men had said to the other men that I was his fiance. I think they get quite a good laugh out of this regularly as this exact process happens almost daily. I am very good entertainment.

Yesterday I was proposed to on the street. A man saw me in my kanga and asked me if I was learning Swahili. I said yes and he proceeded to ask me to marry him. He was actually fairly serious. I have learned that the proper response here is not ''I'm a lesbian" because that is a word that few Tanzanians know. I told him that I was married and this solved my problem.

Today I went to a different church service with my host mother, I expected for it to be an hour long or so, but it turned out to include a wedding and be 4 hours long. I took this time as an opportunity to collect my thoughts, and then it lasted for 2 more hours and I was out of thoughts. This service had a good bit of singing and dancing. The wedding was between a man from Michigan to a Tanzanian woman - missionaries, I think. There was also possibly the ordination of a faith healer. I like to think of this service as preparation for the next level: the pentacostal church that I have been invited to go to with Masha from work. Given the Christian dance videos that we watch during lunch when we aren't watching people be healed on Dvd, I may really need to prepare myself. I have found that it is easiest to tell people that I am a Quaker.

I have come to think of living in a country like this as an act of submission. I have gone into a very different culture, bowed down, and said, "I am your student, teach me about your ways.'" It requires a lot of openness to do this. and a great willingness to compromise (which I am usually not too good at), but I think that this is necessary to really learn. A lot of what I have learned is about myself. I don't find myself asking if I "can" do things here. I just assume that I can and I will, I just need to figure out how. This is how I have approached teaching, learning Swahili, and also educating myself about NGO's and volunteer work in Tanzania. In some ways learning like this is difficult, but it is also liberating because you are free to take your time and experiment because no one really tells you how to do things here - you just have to be flexible.

I received a very nice compliment today. I was told that wherever I go I will always be welcomed because I am willing to live by the ways of the people. Shitting in holes doesn't bother me and neither do frequent inexplicable power outages or bucket baths. I haven't found anything here that I find horrible or unmanageable yet. The only things that I find a bit trying at times are the restrictions on nighttime activities due to security and the burning of trash. They burn trash everywhere at all times of the day and it smells horrible. They are burning some next door now.

I really like teaching adults. I am increasingly interested in learning basic microfinance, getting certified to teach English as a foreign language, and getting certified to do AIDS education. I think that if I either received certifications in these things or found a masters degree that achieved these goals that I could really help people.


Oh yes...and in case you were wondering, here is a little blurb on how medicine in Tanzania is:

I had an eye infection last week and amazingly I was able to go to a pharmacist and get antibiotic drops hassle free for 5 dollars. It was awesome. That said, you really have to watch it if you have to go to the hospital. I talked with a girl in the hospital program last week and she had seen some interesting things. Apparently, the hospitals make more money if you get a C-section instead of a normal pregnancy so they do a lot of unnecessary C-sections. Sara also saw a doctor remove part of a man's testicle due to an infection. The doctor proceeded to remove the offending nut and put something else in to replace it while the man was unconscious. The doctor did this saying that the man would never know the difference and since he wasn't going to be told about the removal. That way he would continue to feel like a man. This doctor (at the best hospital here by the way) also asked the medical students, "so why wouldn't a woman want to be circumcised?" In general, anasthetics are a convenience. At one of the rural hospitals one girl saw a leg in a bucket in a hallway. Respectable doctors believe that condoms just don't work. I have come to see that the key difference between peaceful first and third world countries is medical care quality. Just so you know, if I went to rural Tanzania and offered to help out in hospitals I could do surgeries.

My new room mate is in the medical program, more stories shortly anticipated. I want to spend at least a day in the hospital (volunteering). It sounds horrifying, but the stories are awesome.