Jason Flew into Dar on Saturday afternoon, and from that point on we basically had a non-stop schedule for the whole ten days he was here. On Saturday night, Jason and I went to dinner and then out dancing to live music with Anna (the American Anna who I know through our family friend) and her friends from University of Dodoma. Her friends were off from school for the week and came to visit Anna for a few days, which was great timing because it meant that I actually got to meet them and make some new friends who live in Dodoma (since I’ll be there doing research for another three weeks and have none there!)
On Sunday I gave Jason a bit of a tour of campus, took him through the enjoyment of being hassled majorly buying bus tickets at Ubungo station, and then spent the rest of the day working on organizing our survey questions. The way we want to do the research is through a series of surveys in which we talk to all different people in varying villages about where they get their water from, how clean it is, do they have to pay for it, is there health education in their town, does their borehole/well have a water committee that runs it, etc. We spent the day writing up a new version of our survey and then I translated the whole ten pages of it into Swahili… which was unbelievably long and hard and not really worth it in the end since we had a translator who did it anyways, but oh well. That night was also Eunice’s birthday (Mary’s Tanzanian roommate) so there was a whole party going on upstairs that I missed out on. Although it is obvously sad to miss outon any birthday party haha, the reason that was especially sad was that Mary left this past week, while I was in Dodoma, to go to Uganda for the summer. That meant that Sunday was our last night together and I barely even got to hang out with her. We had a very sad/unreal goodbye in the middle of the party, which wasn't the way I had wanted to leave at all :(
We left Dar on a 7am bus Monday morning, which got us into Dodoma at around 2:30 pm. When we got in, I called one of the main contacts that I had been given (from one of the million people I had to meet with at the Open University of Tanzania while trying to get my approval letter). The contact, Mr. Mihale, was one of the head guys at the government’s Ministry of Water branch in Dodoma. I thought we would just be able to meet with him and get some info, but he ended up coming to pick us up at our hotel, bringing us to his office, and then basically offering to help us do everything for the week. It was honestly too good to be true.
On Tuesday morning, Mr. Mihale and another one of his colleagues from the Ministry of Water , Mr. Hoza, came to pick us up and took us all around town to the different government offices in the area. We went first to the District Officer for Dodoma district to get his approval, and then went on to the District Water Engineer for Dodoma Urban District. Visiting the district directors is really just a formality because you need to inform them of the research, but talking to the water engineer was actually extremely helpful. He gave us the first real insight into what the government does when they built the wells, how they work, how many projects they do, how they get their funding, etc. Next we went to visit the District Director for Chamwino district, which is a much more rural area of Dodoma Region. The water engineer for that district is located a lot further away from town, so I will have to go there at a later time one my own. Having Mr. Mihale and Mr. Hoza there to go around with us was a HUGE help though and made it much easier to get approval from all of the government sectors. Judging by how miserably I failed at doing exactly that on my last trip, I think that would have taken the whole week to get done without their help.
That night, we met up with and went out to dinner with Patrick and is brother Edson. Patrick is one of the friends of G and Dennis (Anna’s friends from University of Dodoma who I met the weekend before going to Dodoma). Patrick lives too far away from Dodoma to go home for the week break, and his brother actually lives and works in Dodoma, so Dennis gave me Patrick’s number before going to Dodoma. It was really nice to actually have some friends there and have someone to show us around the town a bit… especially because Dodoma isn’t really like any other town I’ve been to in Tanzania. Even though it is the capital, EVERYTHING closes at literally 7pm. I honestly don’t know how people in Dodoma eat, there aren’t even restaurants open; it’s really somewhat ridiculous. Jason and I had tried to go out and get some cookies/sodas or something sugary the night before to keep us awake so we could get some work done, but absolutely nothing was open at 7:30pm. They have stores that sell snacks and other random stuff on every single corner in Dar and nothing closes til at least 10pm... so needless to say I was very confused that first night. Anyways, it was nice to meet some people who live there and could tell us where to actually get food and what not haha.
On Wednesday, we went first to meet with the Regional Director of the Open University of Tanzania to discuss with her the plans for our research and inform her what we would be doing (since it was technically under her supervision). She didn’t have too much to tell us, but offered to help in any way possible next time I’m back, so that’s always good. Next, we met up with Patrick in town and went to an internet café so that he could help me fix my translated Kiswahili version of the survey. That was definitely necessary since Mr. Mihale had laughed when he saw it and said people in the villages would probably be confused by what I was saying if I read that… whoops, I tried. Next, we went to meet Mr. Mihale and Mr. Hoza at the Ministry of Water office and then headed out for the first of our village visits. We went to two villages (Mtumba and Ihumwa), which were both fairly close to the main road and not overly rural, but were a good start nonetheless.
On Thursday we started early and made it to three villages (Mahoma Makulu, Mahomanyika, and Nzuguni). We might have been able to make it to more than three, but unfortunately something in the Tanzanian diet didn’t settle well in Jason’s stomach and he wasn’t feeling good at all… which was just about the worst timing ever possible for such a situation to occur. Being sick while driving through rural Tanzania on the sketchiest “roads” of all time and going to multiple interviews in tiny villages with no real toilets = misery. He got better soon after getting back to town/the hotel and flat land though, so no worries. What a trooper.
On Friday, first thing in the morning we went to visit WaterAid, the main NGO in town which has been working in the district for over twenty years. All along we had thought that WaterAid had been doing all of this work separately and only in distant partnership with the local government, so whatever the government said they were doing community development-wise we assumed would at least be better on WaterAid’s projects. Oh boy, were we wrong. So it turns out that WaterAid literally does NOTHING. Al they do is directly fund the government on whatever projects they choose to do in the area. WaterAid has recently started to critique the gov's proposals of where to work and make the local government’s budget a little more equitable between villages in each district (some villages who already have wells get funding while ones with no systems at all continue to get no attention). Nonetheless, they said they almost never go to the villages unless someone specific needs to be convinced of something or talked to, they only have 6 people working in the office and most of them just do paperwork/office work, they say it isn’t their job to check up on the villages who they work with and that is the job of the government and the district water engineer (but the gov doesn’t actually do it), etc. Basically they fund projects and collect some data in the region... THAT’S IT! It’s ridiculous, the regional government has complete control over the entire budget and the entire water system implementation in the region. It’s never good to have the government be the sole provider of a good… there is just too much politics that gets in the way of truly doing what is best for the people. Long story short, our half hour meeting with WaterAid completely reaffirmed my idea that the region needs some serious help in improving its efforts at sustainability and its community development techniques. Good thing we made it to talk to them, because it completely changed all of my perceptions...
After that, we met up with Mr. Mihale and Mr. Hoza and set off to visit 4 more villages. We made it through two of them (Ng’ong’ona and Mapinduzi) when our tire went flat on the way to the third (Chololo). Not only did we get a flat in the middle of nowhere in the semi-desert that is central Tanzania, we also discovered at this time that men from the Ministry of Water are inherently motor vehicle knowledge handicapped. First off, the jack we had wasn’t big enough, so it lifted the car a little but not far enough to take the tire off. Then, they tried to dig out the tire but the ground was too hard so they proceeded to push it into the ditch on the side of the road where the sand was softer. This, however, made it so all of the weight of the whole car was resting right on the flat tire. When I tried to explain that we should put it in neutral and push it into the ditch on the other side so it was put up in the air (like the opposite back tire was at the moment) and we could take it off easily, they completely dismissed us. I could just see the “what does the little white girl know about cars” thought going through their heads haha. At one point, they all disappeared to go collect rocks to put under the jack to make it taller, at which time Jason and I concluded that that was most likely the time they would ditch us in the middle of the desert and we die of thirst or heat stroke. Anyways, after about and hour and a half, the tire being now fully off the rim and having the car resting on the rim alone for a while (which I again tried to explain would break the axel and was a bad call, but was obviously ignored), finally a huge truck passed us and stopped. About 6 Tanzanian guys hopped out of the back of the truck (while the other 30 still in the back stared at us thinking “look at the dumb wazungu!”) and brought a real jack. They fixed the whole thing in five minutes and hopped back in their truck and disappeared without being paid or anything. Gotta love Tanzania. So after all that, we basically were forced to call it a day (Mr. Mihale and Mr. Hoza were sick of us by then, I think). We stopped for one interview in Kikombo on the way back to Dodoma but it was just with a regular woman we found on the street, not with the village leader or anything.
What we found out in the villages: Mainly just talked to the village leaders in each of the towns, which wasn’t exactly the original plan but it ended up being very productive. We had wanted to talk to random people on the streets and just ask them about where they got their water and what not, but turns out the village leaders are really the only ones who know anything about when their wells were built and by who, how they get fixed, how much everything costs, and other such important info. So not what we had intended to do, but it worked out well. Anyways, turns out that almost every village we went to (8 in total) had their wells built in the 1970s during the period of Ujamaa (the socialist policy of Tanzania’s first president, Mwalimu Nyrere). Some of them were broken now and some were still working, all had very different payment schemes and local government set ups, all of the towns had water committees to run the wells systems but those had only existed for about 10 years since the time the gov stopped paying for all of the repairs, almost all had full piping systems to go with the wells (to 6-8 different rural distribution points), and the government only came to check up on them if the village contacted the district water engineer first and said that they had a problem.
On Friday evening, 6 other girls that I’m friends with from the university came to Dodoma for the weekend because they had wanted to see these 30,000 year old rock paintings that are outside of Dodoma. We hung out that night and tried to figure out how to get to them, but it turned out they were 120km away in the middle of nowhere and we would have to stay over the next just to get a bus back to Dodoma at 4am the next morning… so we decided against that plan. Instead, on Saturday morning Patrick took us all to University of Dodoma and gave us a nice tour of the campus. Then he took us to climb the mountain behind the campus to see the beautiful view out of the Dodoma region. We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and just hanging out in town, and then that night we went out dancing to the one club in town with Patrick and his friends.
On Sunday, we took the bus home from Dodoma and then I ditched Jason at the hotel for the night because I had a whole bunch of work to get done after missing a week of classes. On Monday morning I took Jason and Jessie, this girl who actually goes to University of Florida and is only here for a month doing research, to the Mwenge woodcarvers market to do some shopping. I had a test in Literature in the afternoon so I again ditched Jason for a while… I’m a terrible host. We then spent the rest of the afternoon updating our surveys and working on an outline for our paper. And On Tuesday morning Jason left! The time flew by (as I knew it would), and although we got a lot accomplished it still felt ridiculously short. Now it’s back to work for my last two weeks of classes and trying to fit everything I want to do in Dar into the neaxt week and a half or so!! Ahhh, I can’t believe I leave so soon…
Love you all,
Lisa
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Beaches, Wood Carving, and Frantic Last-minute Planning
(Written May 8th before jason got here, but I just haven't had a chance to post til now...)
Last Tuesday, the day after Adrienne flew out, Ibrah and Ryan came to Dar from Moshi because Ryan was flying home on Wednesday afternoon. Tacy and I went to meet them for dinner at Ibrah’s friends house where they were staying the night, which started off a little disastrous. When we left the university by dala at around 6, I told Ibrah that we were on our way and said that that was fine. I know Ibrah pretty well and know hes bad about being on time sometimes… but what I didn’t know was that right then he was still in downtown Dar, which is at least 45 minutes away from where we were headed even when there isn’t traffic… which there was. Anyways, to make a long story short, Tacy and I had to wait at the bus stop at Kimara Mwisho for over an hour waiting for them to get there to pick us up, most of which was night which made it a little sketchy for two little white girls to be hanging around alone. It was a safe area so it wasn’t a big deal, but still not exactly ideal. Nonetheless, when we finally met up with them we had a really great night. Not to mention that Ibrah happened to know a whole group of 5 girls from Tacy’s tiny little 800 person college in Florida because they had volunteered with CCS a few years ago! I feel like this always happens to me… what a small world.
In the past two weeks school has been a bit hectic because our teachers finally realized that we need some sort of work/graded assignments in order to actually give us grades at the end of the semester. Apparently this whole idea didn’t hit them until very recently, because I now officially have a test, presentation, or essay due in just about every class period that I have for the rest of the semester haha. I had heard that classes here were a joke at the beginning and then everything gets stuffed into the last few weeks… but I guess I didn’t really understand how ridiculous it actually is. In some classes we literally have a midterm (only test) one week and then the final exam the next week haha. It’s so bizarre. Although the projects and tests aren’t really that difficult, I’ve still been busy with school stuff fairly consistently recently, which was a big switch from the first ten weeks or so of the semester.
On top of all the work that we all the sudden have, I have been running all over Dar the past week and a half trying to get stuff organized for Jason to come (my research partner) and trying to get this **** research approval letter. I ended up getting the research clearance letter from the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) through the Vice Chancellor, Tolly Mbwette, who is Prof Senkoro’s relative that has been helping me. Although that did make life easier because I didn’t have to stalk down 15 or so people from the University of Dar es Salaam and instead got it directly approved by Prof Mbwette, it meant that I had to make about 5 trips to OUT (which is over a half hour and two daladalas away) and wait for hours while it got passed through all sorts of different departments. Nonetheless, I think it will be extremely helpful in starting my research so I guess it was worth all the waiting.
On last Friday, all of the remaining girls from the Florida program (me, Tacy, Mary, and Mac) went with a few of our Tanzanian friends to Kipepeo Beach. The beach is the same one we went to at the beginning of the semester which is about a 2 hour dala trip away, but it is absolutely worth the traveling. The beach is beautiful and much cleaner than most of the beaches in Dar. It had been raining on and off all week, but we totally lucked out and the weather was gorgeous all day.
On Saturday during the day, Tacy and I made a trip to Posta (downtown Dar) to go to this bookstore that we wanted to find and to visit the botanical gardens. Bookstore: worth the travel, bought some awesome books written by African authors. Botanical gardens: pathetic… basically just a tiny park that covered maybe one square block and had like ten flowers. At least we had 50% success though haha. At night, we were all invited to go to dinner with Professor Mbwette (the Vice Chancellor of the Open University) at the “Blue Gate Club.” Didn’t really know what that meant at the time, but it turns out to be an outdoor restaurant which sells mainly “kiti moto” (fried pork) and is owned by his family. Prof Mbwette’s son, Kennedy, is actually a first year student at UDSM which I hadn’t known before. Kennedy and two of his friends came to dinner as well, which was fun to meet some more students.
On Sunday, I went to the Mwenge woodcarvers market with Tacy (where I teach during the week) to start learning how to carve. Besti and Lyala, two of the woodcarvers who we are friends with, are teaching us how to carve. Tacy started going to learn a while ago with Adrienne so she’s a lot better than I am, but she’s been helping me out too. I’m carving a pipe right now, because that is apparently what they always teach people how to carve first since it is one of the more simple things you can make. Carving is so so so difficult though…. As with most artwork, I have so much more appreciation for any of the things I am buying after seeing how hard it is to actually do the carving. It’s funny because I probably do 90% of the time spent carving my pipe, yet maybe only 50% of the total work. I spend twenty minutes trying to cut out a small area and carve it into the correct shape, and then Lyala or Besti stops me and finishes the same amount in less than 2 minutes. Makes me feel a tad pathetic haha, but I’m really enjoying it nonetheless.
This week almost all of our classes got cancelled for some reason, the teachers didn’t show up, or we had a test to take in class. So our classes are just as much of a joke as ever, but oh well. It was actually nice to have a break this week because I was running around so hectically trying to get things organized for Jason’s arrival. I did finally get the research letter on Thursday afternoon, which was a bit of a close call before we were planning to leave for Dodoma, but oh well. Oh and one more exciting thing, we went to go eat antelope for lunch on Friday! It was a bit tough and a little bit odd flavored, but not bad on the whole… and definitely worth eating just for the sake of being able to say I ate antelope haha.
Last Tuesday, the day after Adrienne flew out, Ibrah and Ryan came to Dar from Moshi because Ryan was flying home on Wednesday afternoon. Tacy and I went to meet them for dinner at Ibrah’s friends house where they were staying the night, which started off a little disastrous. When we left the university by dala at around 6, I told Ibrah that we were on our way and said that that was fine. I know Ibrah pretty well and know hes bad about being on time sometimes… but what I didn’t know was that right then he was still in downtown Dar, which is at least 45 minutes away from where we were headed even when there isn’t traffic… which there was. Anyways, to make a long story short, Tacy and I had to wait at the bus stop at Kimara Mwisho for over an hour waiting for them to get there to pick us up, most of which was night which made it a little sketchy for two little white girls to be hanging around alone. It was a safe area so it wasn’t a big deal, but still not exactly ideal. Nonetheless, when we finally met up with them we had a really great night. Not to mention that Ibrah happened to know a whole group of 5 girls from Tacy’s tiny little 800 person college in Florida because they had volunteered with CCS a few years ago! I feel like this always happens to me… what a small world.
In the past two weeks school has been a bit hectic because our teachers finally realized that we need some sort of work/graded assignments in order to actually give us grades at the end of the semester. Apparently this whole idea didn’t hit them until very recently, because I now officially have a test, presentation, or essay due in just about every class period that I have for the rest of the semester haha. I had heard that classes here were a joke at the beginning and then everything gets stuffed into the last few weeks… but I guess I didn’t really understand how ridiculous it actually is. In some classes we literally have a midterm (only test) one week and then the final exam the next week haha. It’s so bizarre. Although the projects and tests aren’t really that difficult, I’ve still been busy with school stuff fairly consistently recently, which was a big switch from the first ten weeks or so of the semester.
On top of all the work that we all the sudden have, I have been running all over Dar the past week and a half trying to get stuff organized for Jason to come (my research partner) and trying to get this **** research approval letter. I ended up getting the research clearance letter from the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) through the Vice Chancellor, Tolly Mbwette, who is Prof Senkoro’s relative that has been helping me. Although that did make life easier because I didn’t have to stalk down 15 or so people from the University of Dar es Salaam and instead got it directly approved by Prof Mbwette, it meant that I had to make about 5 trips to OUT (which is over a half hour and two daladalas away) and wait for hours while it got passed through all sorts of different departments. Nonetheless, I think it will be extremely helpful in starting my research so I guess it was worth all the waiting.
On last Friday, all of the remaining girls from the Florida program (me, Tacy, Mary, and Mac) went with a few of our Tanzanian friends to Kipepeo Beach. The beach is the same one we went to at the beginning of the semester which is about a 2 hour dala trip away, but it is absolutely worth the traveling. The beach is beautiful and much cleaner than most of the beaches in Dar. It had been raining on and off all week, but we totally lucked out and the weather was gorgeous all day.
On Saturday during the day, Tacy and I made a trip to Posta (downtown Dar) to go to this bookstore that we wanted to find and to visit the botanical gardens. Bookstore: worth the travel, bought some awesome books written by African authors. Botanical gardens: pathetic… basically just a tiny park that covered maybe one square block and had like ten flowers. At least we had 50% success though haha. At night, we were all invited to go to dinner with Professor Mbwette (the Vice Chancellor of the Open University) at the “Blue Gate Club.” Didn’t really know what that meant at the time, but it turns out to be an outdoor restaurant which sells mainly “kiti moto” (fried pork) and is owned by his family. Prof Mbwette’s son, Kennedy, is actually a first year student at UDSM which I hadn’t known before. Kennedy and two of his friends came to dinner as well, which was fun to meet some more students.
On Sunday, I went to the Mwenge woodcarvers market with Tacy (where I teach during the week) to start learning how to carve. Besti and Lyala, two of the woodcarvers who we are friends with, are teaching us how to carve. Tacy started going to learn a while ago with Adrienne so she’s a lot better than I am, but she’s been helping me out too. I’m carving a pipe right now, because that is apparently what they always teach people how to carve first since it is one of the more simple things you can make. Carving is so so so difficult though…. As with most artwork, I have so much more appreciation for any of the things I am buying after seeing how hard it is to actually do the carving. It’s funny because I probably do 90% of the time spent carving my pipe, yet maybe only 50% of the total work. I spend twenty minutes trying to cut out a small area and carve it into the correct shape, and then Lyala or Besti stops me and finishes the same amount in less than 2 minutes. Makes me feel a tad pathetic haha, but I’m really enjoying it nonetheless.
This week almost all of our classes got cancelled for some reason, the teachers didn’t show up, or we had a test to take in class. So our classes are just as much of a joke as ever, but oh well. It was actually nice to have a break this week because I was running around so hectically trying to get things organized for Jason’s arrival. I did finally get the research letter on Thursday afternoon, which was a bit of a close call before we were planning to leave for Dodoma, but oh well. Oh and one more exciting thing, we went to go eat antelope for lunch on Friday! It was a bit tough and a little bit odd flavored, but not bad on the whole… and definitely worth eating just for the sake of being able to say I ate antelope haha.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Sorryyy
So I'm very sorry I haven't posted in forever... I was writing up a blog at the end of last week but I got interupted by having to pick up Jason, my research partner, at the airport. Anyways, we are in Dodoma now and I don't have any time to write but check up middle of next week after Jason leaves and I promise I'll write a long update on the last few weeks and all of my research this week! It's going great so far!
All my love and apologies for my laziness,
Lisa
All my love and apologies for my laziness,
Lisa
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Adrienne Leaving and Rwandan Genocide Seminar
Since it was Adrienne’s last weekend in the country, we just hung out a lot and did some things that she wanted to do for her last days in the country. On Friday during the day, Adrienne and Tacy went to Kariakoo, the big market downtown, but I decided not to go because it’s like going to the most fun/inexpensive mall you can think of… and by that I mean I am always tempted to (and actually do) buy everything I see and spend money on things I absolutely don’t need. Like when I bought two new vitenge (the African fabrics) to get made into dresses which I don’t need any more of really at all. So anyways, I decided to be good and save myself from the urges by not going… but instead I went to the woodcarvers market and bought lots of gifts haha. I guess I failed at not spending money, but at least I got some great gifts for people! Be excited :)
On Friday night, we went to go see a movie at the mall and we ended up seeing “He’s Just Not That Into You.” It was SOO good! I mean a pretty cliché girly movie, but great nonetheless haha. Then we came back to the room and had dinner all together and helped Adrienne start to get her stuff packed up.
On Saturday morning (which went well into the afternoon as well), I went to a lecture that was hosted by the University to commemorate the 15th Anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide and to honor its victims. There were a lot of opening presentations and the actual speakers didn’t start until almost 2 hours after the planned start time (a usual occurrence at the university). The two speakers were really interesting though, and they talked all about this year’s theme for the anniversary: Fighting Negation and Trivialization of the Genocide. In the middle, there was also a really cool song performed by a few young Tanzanian artists about how to unite as Africans and be proud of your heritage. After the original presentations (made by the Rwandan ambassador, some UDSM professors, and a few people from the UN Human Rights Association) and the speakers, they made the floor open for comments/questions. After the first few questions, however, one guy decided to speak in Swahili instead of English, which then opened the floodgates and everyone started speaking only Swahili. We stayed for the rest of the time and I understood most of what was being said, but it definitely gave me a bit of a headache after an hour of trying to translate haha. There were all sorts of interesting comments being made and people talked a lot about how to stop genocide from occurring in Tanzania, especially considering the recent wave of Albino killings (I don’t know if that is just in local news or if you had any idea that was occurring here… but it is). Also, one professor was talking all about how being an African just means that you care about the issues of Africa, that you want Africa to develop and be peaceful, that you love the people and culture of Africa, etc. Therefore, why do people keep saying that “wazungu” aren’t African? If they love it here and want to live here and care about African issues, then they are truly African regardless of skin color. I liked that… I would like to think of myself as African…
Anyways, overall the presentation was really interesting and fun to hear student perspectives, but I had one HUGE issue with the symposium. In an entire 3 hours or more of discussing the Rwandan genocide and people saying how they need to unite as Africans and “never let this happen again,” NOT ONE person even mentioned Sudan. I wanted to stand up and ask how people can keep saying “Never again, never again” when genocide is happening this very instant in Sudan. Not to mention the fact that the entire theme of this years commemoration was about the issues with denying and/or trivializing genocide, which was EXACTLY what was going on at the seminar by not mentioning/discussing Sudan! I was almost furious by the time we left, but still not daring enough to stand up and say something… not only was it in an auditorium filled with about 800 students/faculty and I’m a little afraid of public speaking, but more importantly I was one of only 3 white people in the entire room. Anyways, I was afraid of being judged by the students and having them think “look, here’s this little white girl who came here to tell us what to do and what to think”… so I ended up not saying anything. I retrospect I wish I had because I really wanted to see people’s reactions, but oh well. In the end it seemed like everyone was saying “unite as Africans” and “we are all the same, we are all Africans,” but they were all still thinking predominantly about Tanzania and its issues. It was definitely a learning experience.
On Saturday night, a bug group of us went out dancing to this bar called “Sweet Eazy” for Adrienne’s last night out (so sad!). We had never been to the place before, but Adrienne wanted to go somewhere with live music and we heard from our Tanzanian friends that that was a nice place. The group was me, Adrienne, Mary, Tacy, and Mac (which was all of the remaining UF program girls… minus the one we never hang out with because she’s crazy haha), Eunice (Mary’s roommate), Eunice’s boyfriend Frank and a few of his friends, Anna (the family friend of a family friend of mine) and some of her friends who are also UDSM students, and two of the woodcarvers from Mwenge who Adrienne is really close with. When we first got there, it turned out to be much fancier than we had expected it to be… and therefore a lot more expensive that we had planned for. Right when we walked in, there was no live music playing and there were just like 10 old white guys sitting at the bar… we all turned to each other and were like “uhhhh, this wasn’t quite what we had wanted.” We were a little bit bummed at the beginning, but the live music started pretty soon after we got there and the bands that played turned out to be awesome. They played a lot of their own music, as well as some covers of famous American songs and covers of popular Bongo Flavor music (the Tanzanian equivalent of pop/hip hop). The boys we were with were all so, so much fun and danced more than half of the girls even did… so different than American boys! We had almost left when we first saw the place, but ended up staying til almost 3 in the morning dancing. It was a great going away night for Adrienne.
On Sunday it rained all day, which ruined our plan to have a Frisbee game at Mwenge with all the woodcarvers. Instead, we basically just hung out inside all day and helped Adrienne get her stuff together. That’s the big problem with rainy season… the rain make you want to do nothing and sit inside all day… but you can’t really do that when it rains every day! Nonetheless, we had a really nice day, and then had a mini party in the dorm Sunday night with some wine and chocolate cake/candy. We intended on watching a movie… but we got wrapped up in talking (and eating haha) and never ended up putting it in.
Adrienne got the last of her stuff organized yesterday morning, we went out to lunch at Hill Park (one of the nicer restaurants on campus), and then said goodbye. She was headed back to the dorm and we had to go to class, so Mary and I had to say goodbye outside in the pouring rain, switching back and forth who would hold the umbrella so the other one could hug Adrienne. It was sad, but didn’t really seem like a real goodbye because of the circumstances…. Last night it really hit us though since her room was empty and all. I can’t believe both her and Laura are already gone… we’re dropping like flies! At least there are a bunch of European girls who moved in recently since the real semester is starting now, so we’re at least a little less outnumbered :)
On Friday night, we went to go see a movie at the mall and we ended up seeing “He’s Just Not That Into You.” It was SOO good! I mean a pretty cliché girly movie, but great nonetheless haha. Then we came back to the room and had dinner all together and helped Adrienne start to get her stuff packed up.
On Saturday morning (which went well into the afternoon as well), I went to a lecture that was hosted by the University to commemorate the 15th Anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide and to honor its victims. There were a lot of opening presentations and the actual speakers didn’t start until almost 2 hours after the planned start time (a usual occurrence at the university). The two speakers were really interesting though, and they talked all about this year’s theme for the anniversary: Fighting Negation and Trivialization of the Genocide. In the middle, there was also a really cool song performed by a few young Tanzanian artists about how to unite as Africans and be proud of your heritage. After the original presentations (made by the Rwandan ambassador, some UDSM professors, and a few people from the UN Human Rights Association) and the speakers, they made the floor open for comments/questions. After the first few questions, however, one guy decided to speak in Swahili instead of English, which then opened the floodgates and everyone started speaking only Swahili. We stayed for the rest of the time and I understood most of what was being said, but it definitely gave me a bit of a headache after an hour of trying to translate haha. There were all sorts of interesting comments being made and people talked a lot about how to stop genocide from occurring in Tanzania, especially considering the recent wave of Albino killings (I don’t know if that is just in local news or if you had any idea that was occurring here… but it is). Also, one professor was talking all about how being an African just means that you care about the issues of Africa, that you want Africa to develop and be peaceful, that you love the people and culture of Africa, etc. Therefore, why do people keep saying that “wazungu” aren’t African? If they love it here and want to live here and care about African issues, then they are truly African regardless of skin color. I liked that… I would like to think of myself as African…
Anyways, overall the presentation was really interesting and fun to hear student perspectives, but I had one HUGE issue with the symposium. In an entire 3 hours or more of discussing the Rwandan genocide and people saying how they need to unite as Africans and “never let this happen again,” NOT ONE person even mentioned Sudan. I wanted to stand up and ask how people can keep saying “Never again, never again” when genocide is happening this very instant in Sudan. Not to mention the fact that the entire theme of this years commemoration was about the issues with denying and/or trivializing genocide, which was EXACTLY what was going on at the seminar by not mentioning/discussing Sudan! I was almost furious by the time we left, but still not daring enough to stand up and say something… not only was it in an auditorium filled with about 800 students/faculty and I’m a little afraid of public speaking, but more importantly I was one of only 3 white people in the entire room. Anyways, I was afraid of being judged by the students and having them think “look, here’s this little white girl who came here to tell us what to do and what to think”… so I ended up not saying anything. I retrospect I wish I had because I really wanted to see people’s reactions, but oh well. In the end it seemed like everyone was saying “unite as Africans” and “we are all the same, we are all Africans,” but they were all still thinking predominantly about Tanzania and its issues. It was definitely a learning experience.
On Saturday night, a bug group of us went out dancing to this bar called “Sweet Eazy” for Adrienne’s last night out (so sad!). We had never been to the place before, but Adrienne wanted to go somewhere with live music and we heard from our Tanzanian friends that that was a nice place. The group was me, Adrienne, Mary, Tacy, and Mac (which was all of the remaining UF program girls… minus the one we never hang out with because she’s crazy haha), Eunice (Mary’s roommate), Eunice’s boyfriend Frank and a few of his friends, Anna (the family friend of a family friend of mine) and some of her friends who are also UDSM students, and two of the woodcarvers from Mwenge who Adrienne is really close with. When we first got there, it turned out to be much fancier than we had expected it to be… and therefore a lot more expensive that we had planned for. Right when we walked in, there was no live music playing and there were just like 10 old white guys sitting at the bar… we all turned to each other and were like “uhhhh, this wasn’t quite what we had wanted.” We were a little bit bummed at the beginning, but the live music started pretty soon after we got there and the bands that played turned out to be awesome. They played a lot of their own music, as well as some covers of famous American songs and covers of popular Bongo Flavor music (the Tanzanian equivalent of pop/hip hop). The boys we were with were all so, so much fun and danced more than half of the girls even did… so different than American boys! We had almost left when we first saw the place, but ended up staying til almost 3 in the morning dancing. It was a great going away night for Adrienne.
On Sunday it rained all day, which ruined our plan to have a Frisbee game at Mwenge with all the woodcarvers. Instead, we basically just hung out inside all day and helped Adrienne get her stuff together. That’s the big problem with rainy season… the rain make you want to do nothing and sit inside all day… but you can’t really do that when it rains every day! Nonetheless, we had a really nice day, and then had a mini party in the dorm Sunday night with some wine and chocolate cake/candy. We intended on watching a movie… but we got wrapped up in talking (and eating haha) and never ended up putting it in.
Adrienne got the last of her stuff organized yesterday morning, we went out to lunch at Hill Park (one of the nicer restaurants on campus), and then said goodbye. She was headed back to the dorm and we had to go to class, so Mary and I had to say goodbye outside in the pouring rain, switching back and forth who would hold the umbrella so the other one could hug Adrienne. It was sad, but didn’t really seem like a real goodbye because of the circumstances…. Last night it really hit us though since her room was empty and all. I can’t believe both her and Laura are already gone… we’re dropping like flies! At least there are a bunch of European girls who moved in recently since the real semester is starting now, so we’re at least a little less outnumbered :)
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Dodoma and Planning My Water Research
First of all, on Thursday night I found out that one of the girls in my program, Laura was leaving to go home to the US on Saturday morning. Because of a whole bunch of health issues, she had to go home to go to a good hospital which meant that she decided to leave extremely quickly. By the time I found out she was leaving though, I had already made my plans to go to Dodoma for the weekend and had bought my bus ticket. It was really sad saying goodbye to her on Thursday night, and I have another goodbye this weekend when Adrienne goes home. It’s so sad that everyone is going home soon! Time has gone by so quickly, I can’t even believe it.
First thing on Friday morning, my friend Ivan and I left to go to Dodoma for the weekend to get my research for the summer figured out a little bit. Ivan is a friend from school who I have been going to the orphan center outside of Dar with the past few weekends, and he has some friends in Dodoma who he wanted to visit anyways so agreed to go with me for the weekend to help out. The bus takes about 6 hours, but it was a fun ride since I have never been out that direction (past Morogoro) so it was all new sights. Oh and I found my dream place along the way. There is one area, about an hour and a half before you get to Dodoma, which I absolutely fell in love with. It is just these beautiful fields/farms that stretch in every direction with mountains in the distance and I looooove it there. Not to mention that in the middle of it there is literally Pride Rock (like you the big rock/mountain from The Lion King!?). No joke, it looks exactly like it... I got very excited haha.
When we finally came into Dodoma, I practically laughed out loud at the central bus station. Dodoma was technically made the capital of Tanzania about 15 years ago and has all of the main parliament buildings, but Dar continues to be the true capital. From plenty of research and from talking to a lot of people about it, I knew that Dodoma was no Dar es Salaam... but I guess I didn't expect it to be quite as pathetic as it was. Don't get me wrong, I ended up really really liking Dodoma, but it's pretty wimpy for a capital city. It is only a little bitbigger than Moshi was, no more developed, and just about the only big/impressive building in the whole town in the Parliament Building. The bus station that we came into was so small and dusty and undeveloped that at first I didn't even believe we were there. Anyways, once I got over a little bit of intial shock, we met up with Ivan's family friend Beatrice and headed directly to the Regional Government office before it closed (it is only open on weekdays). Beatrice is my age but is only in her final year of secondary school (high school) because of the way the schooling system here works. Because students start school later and have more years of schooling before the university level, most people don't start university until they are 20 or 21... which is why every here thinks I'm crazy when I say I am already in my third year of school. Anyways, Beatrice ended up taking care of us the whole weekend: we stayed at her house, she cooked for us, she helped me out with my research, she showed me around town, etc. It was wonderful.
When we got to the Regional Government office it was about to close, but I managed to make it in just in time. I spoke with a guy there and explained to him that I wanted to do research on water access in rural villages in the Dodoma region and was hoping he could give me some information on the area. He ended up being a really big a-hole (excuse my language) and being very rude to me. He said that I needed a letter from the University of Dar es Salaam explaining that I am a student, I am interested in researching water, etc. He kept saying that if I didn’t have a letter “or anything else to offer,” there wasn’t any way he could take me to his boss to talk about getting information. After a while I just gave up since the whole letter thing made sense, but when we left Ivan was really mad and I didn’t really understand. He said that by not having “anything to offer” the guy basically meant “well if you don’t have a letter than you should have at least come with money.” I was so surprised… that thought had never even crossed my mind when I was in the office. I guess that’s how things work here, but I’m not about to get involved in that so I’m working on getting the letter now. After that, we went to the local municipal council to try to find out the information, and they started telling me the same thing about needing a letter; however, after lots of persistence and talking to about 3 bazillion different people (I think the whole building knew and hated me by the time I left haha), I finally got to speak with one guy who helped. He told me the names of the local NGOs (non-governmental organizations) who do work with water, a few villages that have been worked with in the past (which I am assuming means that they have functioning wells now), and a few villages in desperate need of water access. That was enough of a good start for me, so I finally agreed to go back to Beatrice’s house for the night (it was about 5 at this point and we were still carrying all of our luggage from when we got off the bus at 2). Beatrice lives with her family about 20 minutes outside of town in a really nice house, but her parents/aunt/uncle were out of town so they had lots of extra space. We just hung out at the house for the rest of the night and watched some movies, which was a nice break from all of the running around I had been doing the whole week before.
On Saturday morning I went back into town to try to find the water NGOs and any other organizations that may help. I made it to the WaterAid office (a big international NGO) and there was a secretary there to talk to, but the office itself was closed. She told me that the Team Leader for Dodoma was out of town anyways, so she gave me his contact information and I’m still working on emailing him for information. Next, I wandered around town trying to find the other two NGOs, but they either 1. Don’t exist, 2. Don’t do enough work to be well known by the people, or 3. Are hidden in some magical part of town that disappears whenever I walk by it haha. I don’t know where they are but I walked around aimlessly for almost 2 hours asking people where they were and NO ONE knew anything at all. I guess I’ll have to go back to the municipal office next time I’m there (and it is open) to ask where they are located. Walking aimlessly, however, was actually surprisingly productive. First, I made friends with a guy who has perfect English, works at the Central Development Authority in town (not exactly sure what they do but they sound like they could be useful), and did his graduate study research is rainwater catchment systems. Worst case scenario, if I can't find any well experts or anyone else to work with for my research, he seems like a pretty great option for a translator. Also, I found one private drilling company located in town, which will be helpful in getting some price estimates for building/repairing wells in the area. Lastly, I found a few NGOs dealing with rural development initiatives. I figure NGOs like that would at least know info about the towns they have worked with and which ones need water access, have water already, etc. All of the companies were closed since it was Saturday, but it was really helpful to learn what Dodoma has to offer NGO-wise, figure out my way around town, get the phone numbers/contact info for different places, etc.
In the afternoon, Beatrice, Ivan and I went to visit a local orphanage that Beatrice works with a lot. The orphanage has about 35 kids living there, between the ages of 5 and 15. When we got there, the director told us all about the orphanage and the NGO it is run by, which also runs about 5 other community development/youth education programs in the surrounding area. Then we spent an hour or two just hanging out with the kids, playing games with them, and listening to them sing for us. I love the children at orphanages in general, and these kids were even more loving and excited to have us there than the most. They weren’t shy at all either, which made it really fun.
We had a late lunch/early dinner in town and then bought our tickets home at the central bus station. I had originally planned to stay until Monday, but after walking around Saturday I realized that there was really no point since everything would be closed all day Sunday. I considered staying just so that I could spend an hour or two in town on Monday when things would be open, but I didn’t want to waste Sunday not doing anything in Dodoma when I had a lot of work to get done at home as well. Plus, I didn’t really know anyone in Dodoma and Ivan had to go home for class Monday, so I would have been really lonely in town all day Sunday. Anyways, we spent the night relaxing at Beatrice’s house once again and then left to come back to Dar on Sunday morning. As much as I laughed/made fun of Dodoma for being such a pathetic capital at first, I really ended up liking it there. It is completely un-touristy (because there is honestly nothing to see there) and all of the people there are extremely nice. I take that back, all of the people except the ******* who worked at the regional office haha. Nonetheless, I think it’s a great area and I really think I’ll enjoy spending a few weeks there.
It was a good thing that I decided to come back when I did because I ended up getting some sort of stomach bug/food poisoning on Sunday night and was sick all day Monday… which would have sucked even more than it already did if I had been in a hotel alone in Dodoma and/or on a bus back home. So, I’m glad everything worked out as it did.
Yesterday I had a history essay/presentation AND a history test on the same day (I’m the unlucky one who got stuck with my presentation on that date), so I was busy all day Tuesday working on that. Both went well, and I’m glad to have them over with so I can get started planning more for my research. The trip to Dodoma was really successful in the sense that now I have a long list of preparation stuff that I need to get done which I didn’t know about before. Jason, the kid from Lehigh who I worked with this water project on from the very beginning and who I won the grant with, is coming to Tanzania May 8th-19th help out with the beginning of the research. I’ll have to skip classes for a week then, which isn’t exactly great, but it was the only week he can come so oh well. Anyways, I have soooo much to get figured out before he comes… and it’s only a few weeks away! Ah!
Now I stressed myself out thinking about it all and need to get back to work haha. First step is figuring out how to get the Vice Chancellor of the University of Dar es Salaam to sign off on my research in less than three weeks (mind you that NOTHING in this country happens in less than three weeks… I’ve been here three and a half months and still don’t have an ID card from the university…). Wish me luck! Miss you all
Love,
Lisa
First thing on Friday morning, my friend Ivan and I left to go to Dodoma for the weekend to get my research for the summer figured out a little bit. Ivan is a friend from school who I have been going to the orphan center outside of Dar with the past few weekends, and he has some friends in Dodoma who he wanted to visit anyways so agreed to go with me for the weekend to help out. The bus takes about 6 hours, but it was a fun ride since I have never been out that direction (past Morogoro) so it was all new sights. Oh and I found my dream place along the way. There is one area, about an hour and a half before you get to Dodoma, which I absolutely fell in love with. It is just these beautiful fields/farms that stretch in every direction with mountains in the distance and I looooove it there. Not to mention that in the middle of it there is literally Pride Rock (like you the big rock/mountain from The Lion King!?). No joke, it looks exactly like it... I got very excited haha.
When we finally came into Dodoma, I practically laughed out loud at the central bus station. Dodoma was technically made the capital of Tanzania about 15 years ago and has all of the main parliament buildings, but Dar continues to be the true capital. From plenty of research and from talking to a lot of people about it, I knew that Dodoma was no Dar es Salaam... but I guess I didn't expect it to be quite as pathetic as it was. Don't get me wrong, I ended up really really liking Dodoma, but it's pretty wimpy for a capital city. It is only a little bitbigger than Moshi was, no more developed, and just about the only big/impressive building in the whole town in the Parliament Building. The bus station that we came into was so small and dusty and undeveloped that at first I didn't even believe we were there. Anyways, once I got over a little bit of intial shock, we met up with Ivan's family friend Beatrice and headed directly to the Regional Government office before it closed (it is only open on weekdays). Beatrice is my age but is only in her final year of secondary school (high school) because of the way the schooling system here works. Because students start school later and have more years of schooling before the university level, most people don't start university until they are 20 or 21... which is why every here thinks I'm crazy when I say I am already in my third year of school. Anyways, Beatrice ended up taking care of us the whole weekend: we stayed at her house, she cooked for us, she helped me out with my research, she showed me around town, etc. It was wonderful.
When we got to the Regional Government office it was about to close, but I managed to make it in just in time. I spoke with a guy there and explained to him that I wanted to do research on water access in rural villages in the Dodoma region and was hoping he could give me some information on the area. He ended up being a really big a-hole (excuse my language) and being very rude to me. He said that I needed a letter from the University of Dar es Salaam explaining that I am a student, I am interested in researching water, etc. He kept saying that if I didn’t have a letter “or anything else to offer,” there wasn’t any way he could take me to his boss to talk about getting information. After a while I just gave up since the whole letter thing made sense, but when we left Ivan was really mad and I didn’t really understand. He said that by not having “anything to offer” the guy basically meant “well if you don’t have a letter than you should have at least come with money.” I was so surprised… that thought had never even crossed my mind when I was in the office. I guess that’s how things work here, but I’m not about to get involved in that so I’m working on getting the letter now. After that, we went to the local municipal council to try to find out the information, and they started telling me the same thing about needing a letter; however, after lots of persistence and talking to about 3 bazillion different people (I think the whole building knew and hated me by the time I left haha), I finally got to speak with one guy who helped. He told me the names of the local NGOs (non-governmental organizations) who do work with water, a few villages that have been worked with in the past (which I am assuming means that they have functioning wells now), and a few villages in desperate need of water access. That was enough of a good start for me, so I finally agreed to go back to Beatrice’s house for the night (it was about 5 at this point and we were still carrying all of our luggage from when we got off the bus at 2). Beatrice lives with her family about 20 minutes outside of town in a really nice house, but her parents/aunt/uncle were out of town so they had lots of extra space. We just hung out at the house for the rest of the night and watched some movies, which was a nice break from all of the running around I had been doing the whole week before.
On Saturday morning I went back into town to try to find the water NGOs and any other organizations that may help. I made it to the WaterAid office (a big international NGO) and there was a secretary there to talk to, but the office itself was closed. She told me that the Team Leader for Dodoma was out of town anyways, so she gave me his contact information and I’m still working on emailing him for information. Next, I wandered around town trying to find the other two NGOs, but they either 1. Don’t exist, 2. Don’t do enough work to be well known by the people, or 3. Are hidden in some magical part of town that disappears whenever I walk by it haha. I don’t know where they are but I walked around aimlessly for almost 2 hours asking people where they were and NO ONE knew anything at all. I guess I’ll have to go back to the municipal office next time I’m there (and it is open) to ask where they are located. Walking aimlessly, however, was actually surprisingly productive. First, I made friends with a guy who has perfect English, works at the Central Development Authority in town (not exactly sure what they do but they sound like they could be useful), and did his graduate study research is rainwater catchment systems. Worst case scenario, if I can't find any well experts or anyone else to work with for my research, he seems like a pretty great option for a translator. Also, I found one private drilling company located in town, which will be helpful in getting some price estimates for building/repairing wells in the area. Lastly, I found a few NGOs dealing with rural development initiatives. I figure NGOs like that would at least know info about the towns they have worked with and which ones need water access, have water already, etc. All of the companies were closed since it was Saturday, but it was really helpful to learn what Dodoma has to offer NGO-wise, figure out my way around town, get the phone numbers/contact info for different places, etc.
In the afternoon, Beatrice, Ivan and I went to visit a local orphanage that Beatrice works with a lot. The orphanage has about 35 kids living there, between the ages of 5 and 15. When we got there, the director told us all about the orphanage and the NGO it is run by, which also runs about 5 other community development/youth education programs in the surrounding area. Then we spent an hour or two just hanging out with the kids, playing games with them, and listening to them sing for us. I love the children at orphanages in general, and these kids were even more loving and excited to have us there than the most. They weren’t shy at all either, which made it really fun.
We had a late lunch/early dinner in town and then bought our tickets home at the central bus station. I had originally planned to stay until Monday, but after walking around Saturday I realized that there was really no point since everything would be closed all day Sunday. I considered staying just so that I could spend an hour or two in town on Monday when things would be open, but I didn’t want to waste Sunday not doing anything in Dodoma when I had a lot of work to get done at home as well. Plus, I didn’t really know anyone in Dodoma and Ivan had to go home for class Monday, so I would have been really lonely in town all day Sunday. Anyways, we spent the night relaxing at Beatrice’s house once again and then left to come back to Dar on Sunday morning. As much as I laughed/made fun of Dodoma for being such a pathetic capital at first, I really ended up liking it there. It is completely un-touristy (because there is honestly nothing to see there) and all of the people there are extremely nice. I take that back, all of the people except the ******* who worked at the regional office haha. Nonetheless, I think it’s a great area and I really think I’ll enjoy spending a few weeks there.
It was a good thing that I decided to come back when I did because I ended up getting some sort of stomach bug/food poisoning on Sunday night and was sick all day Monday… which would have sucked even more than it already did if I had been in a hotel alone in Dodoma and/or on a bus back home. So, I’m glad everything worked out as it did.
Yesterday I had a history essay/presentation AND a history test on the same day (I’m the unlucky one who got stuck with my presentation on that date), so I was busy all day Tuesday working on that. Both went well, and I’m glad to have them over with so I can get started planning more for my research. The trip to Dodoma was really successful in the sense that now I have a long list of preparation stuff that I need to get done which I didn’t know about before. Jason, the kid from Lehigh who I worked with this water project on from the very beginning and who I won the grant with, is coming to Tanzania May 8th-19th help out with the beginning of the research. I’ll have to skip classes for a week then, which isn’t exactly great, but it was the only week he can come so oh well. Anyways, I have soooo much to get figured out before he comes… and it’s only a few weeks away! Ah!
Now I stressed myself out thinking about it all and need to get back to work haha. First step is figuring out how to get the Vice Chancellor of the University of Dar es Salaam to sign off on my research in less than three weeks (mind you that NOTHING in this country happens in less than three weeks… I’ve been here three and a half months and still don’t have an ID card from the university…). Wish me luck! Miss you all
Love,
Lisa
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Life in Dar, Moshi Again, and Mwalimu Nyrere Week
The last week or so was fairly uneventful, but here are a few highlights before I get to my trip to Moshi: The students finished their final exams from last semester and were on vacation from school last week, so the campus was pretty dead. The night when they finished (last Thursday), we had a little party in our dorm to celebrate them being finally done. Later, I ended up going to this local club with two of my Tanzanian friends (all of the other UF girls were tired and being party poopers), where I was absolutely the only mzungu there. Not sure the last time any mzungu ever went there, but they didn’t play one American rap song (like they usually do at the clubs here) and everything was in Kiswahili. I must say I was a little nervous at first, but Eunice and Maggie took care of me and I ended up having a blast.
That Saturday, Tacy, Adrienne, Mary, a European friend of ours Yaanita, and I went to a big party at Anna’s volunteer house. Not sure if I’ve explained this before, but Anna and Tacy grew up together in the US and the Anna moved backed to Finland where she is from, but they stayed in touch and decided to study abroad together. Anna just moved into the dorm a few days ago because she will start classes on the new UDSM class schedule, but before that she was living at a volunteer house about 30 minutes away by daladala. Anyways, we went to her volunteer house for a big music festival/party. I ended up having a dance off with a random Tanzanian guy… and I won. It was hilarious to say the least haha.
On Tuesday we didn’t have class because it was a Tanzanian holiday, Karume Day. That was the day when the first president of Zanzibar, Karume, was assassinated. Kinda depressing holiday… but we got off from classes so I’m not complaining haha. I went to Kariakoo for most of the day (the big market in town) with Ivan, my Tanzanian friend who took me to the orphan center a few times, and Mary and Tacy.
On Wednesday night I got sick with a fever, headaches, aching bones, etc… the sure signs of malaria. I went to the clinic first thing in the morning on Thursday (instead of going to class), and got tested for malaria. I did have it after all, so I got the medicine, started it right away, and felt almost completely better by the end of the day. Honestly, malaria isn’t that bad! I don’t know what all the fuss is about… as long as you catch it early and take the meds it’s completely fine. I’m just becoming truly African and building up my immunity to it, that’s all.
On Thursday I took the bus to Moshi for the weekend, regardless of my (minor) health issues. I actually almost got left at the rest stop in the middle of the trip since I wasn’t paying attention to the time and was chatting with a friend I made… but after freaking out and boarding 3 other wrong buses in search of mine, someone finally yelled “mzungu” (meaning “white person” if you forget) and pointed out to the exit of the stop. The bus was waiting for me on the road and the attendant was outside with her hands on her hips looking angry…. Oops haha. At least there was one Tanzanian girl who was even later than me, so that made me feel a little less stupid.
When I got into town in the evening, we all had dinner at Ibrah’s house and then Ryan and I went out to this bar in town. The bar is a fairly expensive, all wazungu bar (for the most part), which isn’t really my cup of tea but it was where Ryan wanted to go to meet his friends so I agreed. There I met four of the CCS volunteers that Ryan knows who are living right now in the house that I lived in this past summer. After talking for a little, I came to find out that me and one of the four volunteers, this girl Kate, are literally the same person. First we figured out that she lives right near me in Jersey and she knows a lot of people who went to private schools around Summit and others who now go to Lehigh. Then, I find out that she also has a lake house at the northern end of Lake George!! For those of you who know, she lives in Hague and is working at the Firehouse this summer and knows EVERYONE from the Hague crowd. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a tiny area in the middle of nowhere and everyone knows everyone and it’s such a bizarre coincidence. Then I find out she is also in DG (my sorority) AND wants to go into NGO work for clean water access in Africa. We are the same person. It’s ridiculous. Anyways, I had a great time just talking to Kate and we kind of hid in the corner half the night haha, but it was exciting. What a small world.
On Friday morning I went into town to meet up with Nie, the head of TAFCOM (the HIV/AIDS group that I sponsor a family through). Unfortunately, Asia and her children (the ones who I support) were out of town again so I didn’t get to see them… but that is kind of my fault for not planning my trip enough ahead of time and asking Nie if they were there. Nonetheless, I had a great lunch in town with Nie and got to hear all about the new children’s center that TAFCOM just opened. After lunch, I caught the daladala out of town to visit Kilimahewa, the school that I had taught at when I was in Moshi. The students weren’t around because it was Good Friday (all of the school are on break until the 20th or so), but Mussawe (the head teacher) and his wife Susan and all of their kids were around. They were so excited to see me, it was wonderful! Not only were they excited that I could now actually speak with them in Kiswahili, but they kept saying how rarely volunteers actually come back after they leave. They took out the log book of volunteers they have and looked up when I had signed it last year, took me to meet Mussawe’s older brother and his family, and spent the whole afternoon chatting with me. It was so exciting to see them again, Mussawe is a wonderful man (he basically runs the whole school out of his pocket and doesn’t charge the children anything since most are very poor and/or are orphans). After finally heading back to Ibrah’s house, I got changed quickly and met Ryan and all of the CCS people that I had met the night before for dinner at El Rancho, a nice Indian restaurant in town (yea I know, “El Rancho” should be Mexican… but people here are weird, I don’t know).
On Saturday morning I walked from Ibrah’s house to the CCS house where I lived last year. Being back at the house was a really fun blast from the past, and even better since everyone on the staff remembered me! All of the lady’s who clean and help cook, the head cook, Mama Fatuma (one of the heads of the program)… they all recognized me immediately. It was great to catch up with all of them, and especially Peter who had been the driver who took me around last time. We got to talk for a while, so that was great. I spent some more time hanging out with the CCS people that I had met the two days before, and then left them to finish packing because it was the last day in the country for most of them! So sad… I remember balling my eyes out on the day I left… I completely knew what they were going through. After leaving CCS, I just hung out in downtown Moshi for a while and did some shopping before heading back to Ibrah’s for the night.
Sunday was Easter… but I did nothing remotely Easter related. In the morning I went to town to buy my bus ticket for the next day, and when I was in town I got to visit and catch up with Reagan, one of my friends who sells art downtown, for a while. The rest of the afternoon I just hung out at the house with Ryan and Ibrah, and helped Ibrah out a lot on making the brochure for his new volunteer company, AfriShare Solutions.
On Monday I took the bus home from Moshi… very long and painful as always. Got into town at around 5 and then, after quickly throwing my stuff back in the dorm, went straight to the woodcarvers to teach; however, since it was Easter Monday, there was no one there! The market was basically empty and only about 5 carvers who I’m friends with were left there, so instead of teaching Mary and I just hung out with the guys and helped them inventory their shop.
This week is actually the first annual Julius Nyrere Intellectual Festival Week at the university, which is in honor of “Mwalimu Nyrere” (mwalimu means teacher) who was the first president of Tanzania and completely united the country. He’s a national hero and did a lot of great things for the country, so everyone is pretty excited about the week. There are speakers all week and most classes are cancelled because everyone is attending the special ceremonies. Yesterday, I went to the second part of a talk on New Imperialism by the week’s keynote speaker, Wole Soyinka (this crazy old guy who looks exactly like a black version of Einstein… he literally has crazy white hair that sticks up everywhere… google it if you doubt me haha). Then last night we went to see a really great documentary on Nyrere’s life and all of his work before and after being president. It had interviews with other previous president’s of Tanzania, his wife, his children, and some other amazing people… it was a pretty impressive compilation. Oh and just a fun fact: Mwalimu Nyrere’s father had 22 wives. 22!!!! They showed a family photo with all the wives and children, it was nuts.
Yesterday I also went out lunch with this girl Anna who is a family friend of a family friend (a different Anna than the Finnish one who is Tacy’s friend). Anyways, our family friend randomly put us in contact since we are both in Tanzania and she didn’t know where either of us was geographically… but it turns out that she literally lives less than five minutes outside of the university. Plus, now she’ll be coming to the university all the time to take Kiswahili lessons from a friend, so we’ll be able to meet up fairly often. Yet again, it really is a small world.
That’s all for now, but hope all is well at home. I’m headed to Dodoma this weekend to do some preliminary research for what I’ll be doing this summer (aka visit the town council, some private drilling companies, etc). I’ll write again next week with either stories of success from the weekend, or nervous twitches about where the hell to go next haha… so let’s hope for the latter. Love you all
-Lisa
That Saturday, Tacy, Adrienne, Mary, a European friend of ours Yaanita, and I went to a big party at Anna’s volunteer house. Not sure if I’ve explained this before, but Anna and Tacy grew up together in the US and the Anna moved backed to Finland where she is from, but they stayed in touch and decided to study abroad together. Anna just moved into the dorm a few days ago because she will start classes on the new UDSM class schedule, but before that she was living at a volunteer house about 30 minutes away by daladala. Anyways, we went to her volunteer house for a big music festival/party. I ended up having a dance off with a random Tanzanian guy… and I won. It was hilarious to say the least haha.
On Tuesday we didn’t have class because it was a Tanzanian holiday, Karume Day. That was the day when the first president of Zanzibar, Karume, was assassinated. Kinda depressing holiday… but we got off from classes so I’m not complaining haha. I went to Kariakoo for most of the day (the big market in town) with Ivan, my Tanzanian friend who took me to the orphan center a few times, and Mary and Tacy.
On Wednesday night I got sick with a fever, headaches, aching bones, etc… the sure signs of malaria. I went to the clinic first thing in the morning on Thursday (instead of going to class), and got tested for malaria. I did have it after all, so I got the medicine, started it right away, and felt almost completely better by the end of the day. Honestly, malaria isn’t that bad! I don’t know what all the fuss is about… as long as you catch it early and take the meds it’s completely fine. I’m just becoming truly African and building up my immunity to it, that’s all.
On Thursday I took the bus to Moshi for the weekend, regardless of my (minor) health issues. I actually almost got left at the rest stop in the middle of the trip since I wasn’t paying attention to the time and was chatting with a friend I made… but after freaking out and boarding 3 other wrong buses in search of mine, someone finally yelled “mzungu” (meaning “white person” if you forget) and pointed out to the exit of the stop. The bus was waiting for me on the road and the attendant was outside with her hands on her hips looking angry…. Oops haha. At least there was one Tanzanian girl who was even later than me, so that made me feel a little less stupid.
When I got into town in the evening, we all had dinner at Ibrah’s house and then Ryan and I went out to this bar in town. The bar is a fairly expensive, all wazungu bar (for the most part), which isn’t really my cup of tea but it was where Ryan wanted to go to meet his friends so I agreed. There I met four of the CCS volunteers that Ryan knows who are living right now in the house that I lived in this past summer. After talking for a little, I came to find out that me and one of the four volunteers, this girl Kate, are literally the same person. First we figured out that she lives right near me in Jersey and she knows a lot of people who went to private schools around Summit and others who now go to Lehigh. Then, I find out that she also has a lake house at the northern end of Lake George!! For those of you who know, she lives in Hague and is working at the Firehouse this summer and knows EVERYONE from the Hague crowd. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a tiny area in the middle of nowhere and everyone knows everyone and it’s such a bizarre coincidence. Then I find out she is also in DG (my sorority) AND wants to go into NGO work for clean water access in Africa. We are the same person. It’s ridiculous. Anyways, I had a great time just talking to Kate and we kind of hid in the corner half the night haha, but it was exciting. What a small world.
On Friday morning I went into town to meet up with Nie, the head of TAFCOM (the HIV/AIDS group that I sponsor a family through). Unfortunately, Asia and her children (the ones who I support) were out of town again so I didn’t get to see them… but that is kind of my fault for not planning my trip enough ahead of time and asking Nie if they were there. Nonetheless, I had a great lunch in town with Nie and got to hear all about the new children’s center that TAFCOM just opened. After lunch, I caught the daladala out of town to visit Kilimahewa, the school that I had taught at when I was in Moshi. The students weren’t around because it was Good Friday (all of the school are on break until the 20th or so), but Mussawe (the head teacher) and his wife Susan and all of their kids were around. They were so excited to see me, it was wonderful! Not only were they excited that I could now actually speak with them in Kiswahili, but they kept saying how rarely volunteers actually come back after they leave. They took out the log book of volunteers they have and looked up when I had signed it last year, took me to meet Mussawe’s older brother and his family, and spent the whole afternoon chatting with me. It was so exciting to see them again, Mussawe is a wonderful man (he basically runs the whole school out of his pocket and doesn’t charge the children anything since most are very poor and/or are orphans). After finally heading back to Ibrah’s house, I got changed quickly and met Ryan and all of the CCS people that I had met the night before for dinner at El Rancho, a nice Indian restaurant in town (yea I know, “El Rancho” should be Mexican… but people here are weird, I don’t know).
On Saturday morning I walked from Ibrah’s house to the CCS house where I lived last year. Being back at the house was a really fun blast from the past, and even better since everyone on the staff remembered me! All of the lady’s who clean and help cook, the head cook, Mama Fatuma (one of the heads of the program)… they all recognized me immediately. It was great to catch up with all of them, and especially Peter who had been the driver who took me around last time. We got to talk for a while, so that was great. I spent some more time hanging out with the CCS people that I had met the two days before, and then left them to finish packing because it was the last day in the country for most of them! So sad… I remember balling my eyes out on the day I left… I completely knew what they were going through. After leaving CCS, I just hung out in downtown Moshi for a while and did some shopping before heading back to Ibrah’s for the night.
Sunday was Easter… but I did nothing remotely Easter related. In the morning I went to town to buy my bus ticket for the next day, and when I was in town I got to visit and catch up with Reagan, one of my friends who sells art downtown, for a while. The rest of the afternoon I just hung out at the house with Ryan and Ibrah, and helped Ibrah out a lot on making the brochure for his new volunteer company, AfriShare Solutions.
On Monday I took the bus home from Moshi… very long and painful as always. Got into town at around 5 and then, after quickly throwing my stuff back in the dorm, went straight to the woodcarvers to teach; however, since it was Easter Monday, there was no one there! The market was basically empty and only about 5 carvers who I’m friends with were left there, so instead of teaching Mary and I just hung out with the guys and helped them inventory their shop.
This week is actually the first annual Julius Nyrere Intellectual Festival Week at the university, which is in honor of “Mwalimu Nyrere” (mwalimu means teacher) who was the first president of Tanzania and completely united the country. He’s a national hero and did a lot of great things for the country, so everyone is pretty excited about the week. There are speakers all week and most classes are cancelled because everyone is attending the special ceremonies. Yesterday, I went to the second part of a talk on New Imperialism by the week’s keynote speaker, Wole Soyinka (this crazy old guy who looks exactly like a black version of Einstein… he literally has crazy white hair that sticks up everywhere… google it if you doubt me haha). Then last night we went to see a really great documentary on Nyrere’s life and all of his work before and after being president. It had interviews with other previous president’s of Tanzania, his wife, his children, and some other amazing people… it was a pretty impressive compilation. Oh and just a fun fact: Mwalimu Nyrere’s father had 22 wives. 22!!!! They showed a family photo with all the wives and children, it was nuts.
Yesterday I also went out lunch with this girl Anna who is a family friend of a family friend (a different Anna than the Finnish one who is Tacy’s friend). Anyways, our family friend randomly put us in contact since we are both in Tanzania and she didn’t know where either of us was geographically… but it turns out that she literally lives less than five minutes outside of the university. Plus, now she’ll be coming to the university all the time to take Kiswahili lessons from a friend, so we’ll be able to meet up fairly often. Yet again, it really is a small world.
That’s all for now, but hope all is well at home. I’m headed to Dodoma this weekend to do some preliminary research for what I’ll be doing this summer (aka visit the town council, some private drilling companies, etc). I’ll write again next week with either stories of success from the weekend, or nervous twitches about where the hell to go next haha… so let’s hope for the latter. Love you all
-Lisa
Monday, March 30, 2009
Back in Dar
First off, I apologize for not writing in a while… everything has been a bit hectic and busy since I got back home from Moshi. Here’s an update on how things are going back in Dar es Salaam:
Classes: Finally in full swing, but still ridiculously unorganized and nonchalant. We are supposed to have our classes in three hour blocks once a week, but only one of our teachers ever actually has three hours of class. Of course, that one class that does fill up the time is History of East Africa, the most boring class of all time with the most boring/miserable professor that has ever lived. Go figure. African Politics is the other fairly serious class, but that one’s great so I don’t mind it being serious. So far it has mainly been a lot of debating on development theories and other such IR based ideas… right up my alley. African Literature is a joke, we usually have one hour or less of class a week and have had no required reading thus far (kind of ironic for a literature class). Plus, the professor speaks fairly terrible English (also ironic because the literature we are supposed to focus on is all in English), so that makes the class pretty ridiculous and almost comical. He spends half of the class time spelling out English words because we can’t actually understand what he is saying… it’s interesting. Gender and Development is basically just a discussion class where the readings are “suggested but not required,” and is usually only an hour and a half or so per week. This past week it was cancelled because the professor had to give an exam (the other students are having their first semester final exams right now), and I doubt we will ever make that time up. Swahili has become close to that big of a joke too. This past week was the first time we have actually met since the intensive section ended, but I think it will get more serious again soon because we all want it to be more intense so we get better at speaking.
Woodcarvers: Still teaching a few times a week. A few of the other girls have stopped going so often it ends up with just one teacher there (meaning it’s impossible to split the group up into beginners and advanced). On those days, we have started doing debates where we divide the advanced and beginners into two even groups and have them argue with one another on certain topics while we (the teachers) usually play devil’s advocate for both sides. One of the best ones we did was on whether foreigners coming to Tanzania is good or bad… so we talked about everyone from NGO workers to students to tourists to UN/government groups (specifically WTO and World Bank), etc. Everyone got really heated up over it; it was a lot of fun.
Research planning for this summer: Met with the head of the Water Institute that is located right next to (but isn’t actually part of) the University of Dar. The institute educates people one how to survey land to build wells, how to drill the wells, water purification techniques, sanitation, etc. If it’s related to water, they teach/research it. Anyways, my meeting with the head of it went extremely well and he told me a whole lot about where to go from here in planning my summer research. Also, he said that all of the students at the institute have to do 10 weeks of field work each year and that some of the students should be doing their fieldwork in the Dodoma area in June and would very likely be able to help me out. That would be amazing if it does work out: a translator and well expert all in one? Bingo.
Last weekend: On Friday morning when I had no class I had to go to immigration to finally get my Temporary Residence Permit, which is basically just a scam for you to pay the government more money because technically my visa should last a full year. The immigration office is Tanzania at its worst: unorganized, inefficient, and lacking technology. You wait in one line for an hour just to be told to wait in another one, they lost my file multiple times while I was there, everything is written in notebooks, there is not one computer in the entire center, most people don’t speak English even though it is an office mainly for foreigners to go to, and when you pay they force you to write by hand the serial numbers of every American bill that you pay with into a notebook. Only in Africa.
Friday night, a few of the girls in my program, some Tanzania friends of ours, and I went to a live “bongo Flavor” concert of an artist called Juma Nature in downtown Dar. “Bongo flavor” is the Tanzanian (Kiswahili) equivalent of pop/hip hop music with some reggae thrown in there. The concert was awesome minus a few factors: the crowd was about 97% Tanzanian men, so being girls (especially wazungu girls) mean that we got hit on/talked to the whole time. The other problem was that Juma Nature didn’t actually come on stage until 3am! There were at least ten opening acts and by the time he finally came on we were so exhausted that we listened to about three songs and then headed home. On the whole the music was great though, so I’m glad we went.
Saturday during the day, Tacy and I went to a huge market downtown called Kariakoo, which really resembles China Town or Canal Street more than the average African market. We bought a lot of cheap, gorgeous fabric to get made into dresses/skirts/shirts/bags, so that was exciting. On Saturday night we went to a Tanzanian night club, which was enjoyable as always. While we were there though, the power actually went out for a half hour or so, so there was no light or music inside during that time. To my surprise, instead of leaving everyone just stayed and waited until it came on again because they're used to that kind of thing. Again… only in Africa.
One night during the week, all of the girls in my program went to Prof Senkoro's house for a nice homemade dinner since Laura's mom was here visiting. One of our Kiswahili TA's came along and so did another Kiswahili professor who had come with us to Morogoro. The power actually went out that night also, but thankfully the food was finished cooking by that time so we just had a nice dinner outside by candle light. You just get used to that kind of thing, it's no big deal (no electricity, no water, etc.). Laura and her mom has just gotten back from a 6 day safari and were headed out a day or two later to go to Zanzibar together. Her being here definitely made all of the rest of us very jealous... I wish my parents could come visit too :(
This past weekend: On Friday during the day I went to visit my friend George at Mabibo Hostel, a hostel for UDSM students which is about 20 minutes away from campus. I was expecting a dorm or two, but boy was I wrong. Mabibo is hugeee! It fits almost six thousand students, has its own market place and cafeteria, and is practically a quarter of the size of the main campus (which is massive because there is a lot of open land). Minus the fact that you have to take a dala dala just to get to campus for classes, it is a pretty awesome place to live; I kind wish we lived there instead of in Hall 3. On Friday night we went to see a Japanese film at a local theater as the final night of a week long Asian Film Festival. The film was called “Death Note” and was apparently based off of a popular anime series (Tacy knew because she had actually watched it before… we all made fun of her a lot for that haha). It actually ended up being an awesome movie though, much better than I had expected.
Saturday morning I went with a friend of mine from school, Ivan, to Bunju, a small rural village about 45 minutes north of here. Ivan goes there every Saturday to work at a center for orphans that him and an older friend of his, Innocent (the one who drove us there), opened themselves. The orphans who go there (usually 30-50 of them) are children of all ages that live with foster parents and come to the center just to spend time with one another and actually be happy. The center is less than a year old and is not even finished being built, so right now they only meet on Saturdays. Eventually, however, Ivan and Innocent intend to make it more of a full time school. While there, Ivan and I taught them theater/acting and singing for about two hours, which was great. The kids are so sweet, and you can tell they really love being there. On Saturday night, Adrienne, Tacy, a European girl who is here doing an internship nearby, and I went out to dinner at a nice Indian restaurant. The food was spectacular… half because it was actually that good and half because I haven’t had anything but rice and meat/peas/beans/whatever other yucky stuff is in the cafeteria in farrrrrr too long. It was a nice treat.
On Sunday morning I agreed to go to church with Ivan assuming that I would be going to a fun African church like most of the ones here. Well, it wasn’t that at all and it was miserable (sorry Grandma and Grandaddy and anyone else very religious who is going to read this). For some reason he goes to church not only in English (I enjoy it much more in Swahili because I don’t fully understand what they are saying), but with basically all southern wazungu (white people)! The church (a Baptist church) was about 90% wazungu and had maybe 10 Tanzanians there… and the pastor was from Alabama!! There wasn’t even any fun African gospel like you get at all of the churches here. It was a disaster. When I asked him afterward why he goes to that church and not to one in Kiswahili with other Tanzanians, he kind of got offended and asked me if I didn’t like his church, so I just said that wasn’t what I had meant and dropped the question. It just hadn’t been at all what I had expected, so the whole situation caught me off guard. Soon after though, I met up with Adrienne and Tacy at the mall to see “Revolutionary Road,” the extremely depressing but very good Leonardo DiCaprio/Kate Winslet movie. Seeing a good movie and eating some amazing caramel popcorn definitely did the trick to cheer me up!
Ok, sorry, this is long (again) so I’ll finish up. In general everything is very good and I finally feel like I’m on an at least a somewhat organized schedule, so that’s nice. Should be doing some more traveling in the next few weeks (to Dodoma and back to Moshi), so that should be fun as well. Love and miss you all.
Classes: Finally in full swing, but still ridiculously unorganized and nonchalant. We are supposed to have our classes in three hour blocks once a week, but only one of our teachers ever actually has three hours of class. Of course, that one class that does fill up the time is History of East Africa, the most boring class of all time with the most boring/miserable professor that has ever lived. Go figure. African Politics is the other fairly serious class, but that one’s great so I don’t mind it being serious. So far it has mainly been a lot of debating on development theories and other such IR based ideas… right up my alley. African Literature is a joke, we usually have one hour or less of class a week and have had no required reading thus far (kind of ironic for a literature class). Plus, the professor speaks fairly terrible English (also ironic because the literature we are supposed to focus on is all in English), so that makes the class pretty ridiculous and almost comical. He spends half of the class time spelling out English words because we can’t actually understand what he is saying… it’s interesting. Gender and Development is basically just a discussion class where the readings are “suggested but not required,” and is usually only an hour and a half or so per week. This past week it was cancelled because the professor had to give an exam (the other students are having their first semester final exams right now), and I doubt we will ever make that time up. Swahili has become close to that big of a joke too. This past week was the first time we have actually met since the intensive section ended, but I think it will get more serious again soon because we all want it to be more intense so we get better at speaking.
Woodcarvers: Still teaching a few times a week. A few of the other girls have stopped going so often it ends up with just one teacher there (meaning it’s impossible to split the group up into beginners and advanced). On those days, we have started doing debates where we divide the advanced and beginners into two even groups and have them argue with one another on certain topics while we (the teachers) usually play devil’s advocate for both sides. One of the best ones we did was on whether foreigners coming to Tanzania is good or bad… so we talked about everyone from NGO workers to students to tourists to UN/government groups (specifically WTO and World Bank), etc. Everyone got really heated up over it; it was a lot of fun.
Research planning for this summer: Met with the head of the Water Institute that is located right next to (but isn’t actually part of) the University of Dar. The institute educates people one how to survey land to build wells, how to drill the wells, water purification techniques, sanitation, etc. If it’s related to water, they teach/research it. Anyways, my meeting with the head of it went extremely well and he told me a whole lot about where to go from here in planning my summer research. Also, he said that all of the students at the institute have to do 10 weeks of field work each year and that some of the students should be doing their fieldwork in the Dodoma area in June and would very likely be able to help me out. That would be amazing if it does work out: a translator and well expert all in one? Bingo.
Last weekend: On Friday morning when I had no class I had to go to immigration to finally get my Temporary Residence Permit, which is basically just a scam for you to pay the government more money because technically my visa should last a full year. The immigration office is Tanzania at its worst: unorganized, inefficient, and lacking technology. You wait in one line for an hour just to be told to wait in another one, they lost my file multiple times while I was there, everything is written in notebooks, there is not one computer in the entire center, most people don’t speak English even though it is an office mainly for foreigners to go to, and when you pay they force you to write by hand the serial numbers of every American bill that you pay with into a notebook. Only in Africa.
Friday night, a few of the girls in my program, some Tanzania friends of ours, and I went to a live “bongo Flavor” concert of an artist called Juma Nature in downtown Dar. “Bongo flavor” is the Tanzanian (Kiswahili) equivalent of pop/hip hop music with some reggae thrown in there. The concert was awesome minus a few factors: the crowd was about 97% Tanzanian men, so being girls (especially wazungu girls) mean that we got hit on/talked to the whole time. The other problem was that Juma Nature didn’t actually come on stage until 3am! There were at least ten opening acts and by the time he finally came on we were so exhausted that we listened to about three songs and then headed home. On the whole the music was great though, so I’m glad we went.
Saturday during the day, Tacy and I went to a huge market downtown called Kariakoo, which really resembles China Town or Canal Street more than the average African market. We bought a lot of cheap, gorgeous fabric to get made into dresses/skirts/shirts/bags, so that was exciting. On Saturday night we went to a Tanzanian night club, which was enjoyable as always. While we were there though, the power actually went out for a half hour or so, so there was no light or music inside during that time. To my surprise, instead of leaving everyone just stayed and waited until it came on again because they're used to that kind of thing. Again… only in Africa.
One night during the week, all of the girls in my program went to Prof Senkoro's house for a nice homemade dinner since Laura's mom was here visiting. One of our Kiswahili TA's came along and so did another Kiswahili professor who had come with us to Morogoro. The power actually went out that night also, but thankfully the food was finished cooking by that time so we just had a nice dinner outside by candle light. You just get used to that kind of thing, it's no big deal (no electricity, no water, etc.). Laura and her mom has just gotten back from a 6 day safari and were headed out a day or two later to go to Zanzibar together. Her being here definitely made all of the rest of us very jealous... I wish my parents could come visit too :(
This past weekend: On Friday during the day I went to visit my friend George at Mabibo Hostel, a hostel for UDSM students which is about 20 minutes away from campus. I was expecting a dorm or two, but boy was I wrong. Mabibo is hugeee! It fits almost six thousand students, has its own market place and cafeteria, and is practically a quarter of the size of the main campus (which is massive because there is a lot of open land). Minus the fact that you have to take a dala dala just to get to campus for classes, it is a pretty awesome place to live; I kind wish we lived there instead of in Hall 3. On Friday night we went to see a Japanese film at a local theater as the final night of a week long Asian Film Festival. The film was called “Death Note” and was apparently based off of a popular anime series (Tacy knew because she had actually watched it before… we all made fun of her a lot for that haha). It actually ended up being an awesome movie though, much better than I had expected.
Saturday morning I went with a friend of mine from school, Ivan, to Bunju, a small rural village about 45 minutes north of here. Ivan goes there every Saturday to work at a center for orphans that him and an older friend of his, Innocent (the one who drove us there), opened themselves. The orphans who go there (usually 30-50 of them) are children of all ages that live with foster parents and come to the center just to spend time with one another and actually be happy. The center is less than a year old and is not even finished being built, so right now they only meet on Saturdays. Eventually, however, Ivan and Innocent intend to make it more of a full time school. While there, Ivan and I taught them theater/acting and singing for about two hours, which was great. The kids are so sweet, and you can tell they really love being there. On Saturday night, Adrienne, Tacy, a European girl who is here doing an internship nearby, and I went out to dinner at a nice Indian restaurant. The food was spectacular… half because it was actually that good and half because I haven’t had anything but rice and meat/peas/beans/whatever other yucky stuff is in the cafeteria in farrrrrr too long. It was a nice treat.
On Sunday morning I agreed to go to church with Ivan assuming that I would be going to a fun African church like most of the ones here. Well, it wasn’t that at all and it was miserable (sorry Grandma and Grandaddy and anyone else very religious who is going to read this). For some reason he goes to church not only in English (I enjoy it much more in Swahili because I don’t fully understand what they are saying), but with basically all southern wazungu (white people)! The church (a Baptist church) was about 90% wazungu and had maybe 10 Tanzanians there… and the pastor was from Alabama!! There wasn’t even any fun African gospel like you get at all of the churches here. It was a disaster. When I asked him afterward why he goes to that church and not to one in Kiswahili with other Tanzanians, he kind of got offended and asked me if I didn’t like his church, so I just said that wasn’t what I had meant and dropped the question. It just hadn’t been at all what I had expected, so the whole situation caught me off guard. Soon after though, I met up with Adrienne and Tacy at the mall to see “Revolutionary Road,” the extremely depressing but very good Leonardo DiCaprio/Kate Winslet movie. Seeing a good movie and eating some amazing caramel popcorn definitely did the trick to cheer me up!
Ok, sorry, this is long (again) so I’ll finish up. In general everything is very good and I finally feel like I’m on an at least a somewhat organized schedule, so that’s nice. Should be doing some more traveling in the next few weeks (to Dodoma and back to Moshi), so that should be fun as well. Love and miss you all.
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