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.