Doug - And - Vanessa - In - Tanzania

2008-06-01T22:33:00.000-07:00

One of our many precision air flights.

boat ride to prison island, off the coast of zanzibar. sketch.

One of the giant tortoises on the island.

Prison island. Former prison for stonetown, then became a quarantine area for the many merchants from Arabia carrying diseases.

2008-05-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

Mount Meru

2008-05-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

2008-05-28T12:28:00.000-07:00

Kwaheri Kahunda

2008-05-20T22:26:00.000-07:00

Class ended. With a bang. I wrapped up the year teaching the students a few last literary devices. It was riveting. We got through archaisms, allusions, and allegories (don’t worry, we weren’t going alphabetically). The allusions (Tanzanian pronunciation: arrusions) was especially amusing. With the classes help we whittled down the definition to “A direct or indirect reference to a well known person, place, thing, or event.” Example: Someone who is wise can be wise as Solomon. Asking the class if everyone followed, and seeing 90 heads nod in the affirmative, I asked them to give it a try. After a few seconds, one of the braver girls in the class tentatively raised a hand and offered: “The mother bore a child, the child was dead.” Hmmmm. Okay, back to the drawing board. “How does that fulfill the requirements of our definition???” No response. Okay, someone else give it a go. Next came one of my best students. He raised his hand and suggested: “Israel is the place where the Jews live” Hmmmm. Strike two. I tried backpedalling to tie “Israel” into an allusion. NOW, do we all understand what allusions are??? Everyone nods their heads: Yes. Okay, someone give me a real allusion. A boy in the back stands up: For God so loved the World he gave us His Son. Alright, well he’s alluding to something, even if this isn’t what I wanted. As I walked back to home I wondered if my students’ comprehension was just an illusion...or irrusion.

Other memorable moments were the simile a student offered me: “This class is as long as my penis” (I was quite proud he made a rather abstract connection between length in time and length in space). The awkwardness of this moment however, was compounded by the fact that I thought he said “My beans” and I asked him to repeat his answer three times. Or there was the student who, giving me an example of onomatopoeia, said, “The lion says Moooo” and another student, “the car goes uuuuu.” Or the student who, trying to give me an example of an archaism, suggested “Gracias” since, he said, “this means ‘thank you’ in the land of the Italians.” Close enough.

In all fairness, I think the last few lessons on creative writing were a bit out of these students’ leagues. In fact, I think some of my friends in Canada couldn’t come up with a Litote or an Archaism if I asked them. But they are still good people.

On one of our last days, Vanessa and I went to the school to take some pictures. When we got there we saw all the students outside between the classrooms. This might be interesting we thought. I was about to take a few pictures when the headmaster came to greet us (again, greeting here is a 5 minute ordeal: how are you? Your home? Your work? Your friends..etc.). I asked if we could take some pictures of the school to show our friends back home and he said, “Of course you are welcome.” (Aside: many Tanzanians say Of Course to emphasize saying Yes, it’s really funny. One student, Titus, is the best at it. I called him Mr. Titus one morning and he replied, “But of course you may call me Mr. Titus”). Anyways, I asked what was going down at the school and why the students were all out of class. He told me that 4 students were being expelled. Two boys had been found using opium and living in the village with some woman of ill-repute and two girls had been found drinking. So we packed up the camera and inched our way backwards. Awkward.

This is just one example of the fact that I never really knew what to expect when I went to the school. One day I went there and it was a national holiday. The other day I went up to teach my Form III students and they were all pouring out of the classroom and heading to the village. I was a bit late, but time here does not really mean what it does back home (e.g. the other teachers can come about 30 to 40 minutes after a class should have began and go for about 50 to 60 minutes after it should have ended). I saw the headmaster with a few teachers following the students and quickened my pace to catch up with the growing mob. The headmaster informed me that last night some students had stolen the school’s plastic lawn chairs and sold them to a man in the village and they were going to raid the village and return them. Mob violence in Tanzania is very real and accepted, just 2 days ago the nightguard at Ikuza (I wrote about him in an earlier blog) had both his sons stoned to death when they were found guilty of stealing and last time we were in Mwanza a man was inches away from being stoned in the street, but a guard with a rifle managed to take him away. Anyways, I was thinking that this might get ugly. Fortunately it didn’t. The chairs were returned, the students expelled, and the man who bought them was fined 300,000 shillings and a cow. Did that make sense? Of course. So the school now has a brand new cow tied up out back.

We said our goodbyes on Friday. The school hosted a big assembly and made a feast of rice, beans, fried beef, meat stew, and tomato salad. Good stuff. Some of the teachers gave speeches imploring us to stay. They offered both of us full time teaching positions and they would construct us a house. We’ll see what happens. At the clinic, Vanessa’s coworkers had dessert and sodas for us. I was surprised at how little English they speak there compared with the school. But that is over and Kahunda is now a collection of memories of unique students and patients, lessons and lesions, beaches, naked bathers, fishermen laughing in the night, struggling with propane stoves and battery operated lighting that never seemed to work, making everything from scratch (more Vanessa than myself) and a whole bunch of smells and tastes and sounds that don’t translate well into words.

Now we are in Mwanza. Tomorrow we fly out to Arusha for our Mountain Climbing adventure. Mwanza is pretty uneventful. We went to a nearby “cafe” for some tea and coffee yesterday morning and were surprised that the price for two cups was only 1500 shillings ($1.20). We were more surprised (or perhaps less) when they came out with a kettle of boiling water and gave Vanessa a tea bag and me a pot of instant coffee grinds. Nasty. We are enjoying the city though. Bob took us to see some of the missionary homes yesterday and the home of the old AIC archbishop. He lives in a large place on a mountain peak overlooking the lake. Quite beautiful. He’s an English M.A. as well, which is interesting. If teaching ever falls through, maybe I could find a job as archbishop somewhere.

2008-05-18T07:57:00.000-07:00

Kahunda Church.

Lunch time at the school. The old dining hall burnt down many years ago and they lack funds to build a new one. Even the cookhouse (which is the building here) is pretty shabby and in need of renovation.

The headmaster, Joseph Kunyume (red shirt), Me, and Yona, the Junior headmaster and English teacher (my Mentor here).

The pride and joy of Kahunda Secondary School. At least my pride and joy. The muram is a treat to play on, you never know which way the ball might bounce.

2008-05-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

On the "Kahunda Road" Two lorries either stuck or washing in the water that collects on the road.

Large Sailboat that past our house.

Small boy that passed our house. (yes..I sit and read outside with a camera on my lap)

This little girl is always playing here by her home when I pass to school and she always smiles and says, "Shikamoo Mzungu". She is my favorite kid in Kahunda.

2008-05-18T07:39:00.000-07:00

Emma (left) and Charles, our house helpers. They were amazing and did everything from lawn cutting to grocery shopping. Our conversations often involved a Swahili-English dictionary.

Kahunda Secondary School Staff photo 2008. One of these things is not like the others....

Clinic Staff.

Going away celebration in the staff room. We had a great feast and some students and teachers gave speeches.

2008-05-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

Vincent challenged me to a one-on-one game on my last day in Kahunda. This was for the King of the Court position. You'll have to ask him who won.

Exhausted. The temperature when we play is around 30-32 degrees. (The tall student you see behind vincent is Kunumbe...he now owns my bball shoes, which he asked for when I left)

Vanessa's office. Maryjane checking out the baby, the baby, checking out me.

Outside the clinic on a busy day. All these mothers are waiting to see Vanessa and MaryJane.

There and Back Again

2008-05-18T03:15:00.000-07:00

Time to break out the defibulators and bring this blog back to life.

We are back from our journey. Finally. It is funny how a two day grocery run to Mwanza evolved into a two week sojourn into Kenya. When we were planning to go in with Andy to top up our supplies in Mwanza – things you can’t get in the bush, like eggs, syrup, lettuce, oil, dish-soap, etc. – we originally planned to be away for two to three days. The morning before we left, however, Margaret called to inform us that Vanessa’s visa application was rejected and we would need to leave the country and re-enter in order to extend it for a month, and we had till May 3 to do so. Since it would cost 50 dollars each to leave, Margaret (the CRWRC head of Tanzania) suggested taking a tour of the CRWRC operations in Nairobi, especially now that the country was somewhat at peace. Our tickets were scheduled to leave on the Wednesday (and not just our tickets, we also) and return the Monday, which was just in time to catch a ride home with Josh who was making a stop in Mwanza before heading to Kahunda. Well, that was the plan and everything seemed to have fallen into place quite perfectly. Unfortunately Josh’s plans changed and he was held up in Nairobi (in fact, he’s still there) and we were on the verge of bussing it back until Bob offered to save us the 8-12 hour ordeal and drive us back to Kahunda. So, here we are. Again.

The trip to Nairobi was great. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking. But where pictures fail, I’ll fill in. It was definitely a badly needed/desired break, even if it turned out to be much longer than we anticipated. I think too much time in a place like Kahunda could lead one to insanity. If anyone has seen the Sean Penn flick Into the Wild (an adaptation of Krakauer’s novel) one will know what I am talking about. The boy’s final epiphany comes as he is reading a short story by Tolstoy and sees that the main ingredient for the good life is (no, not good books) the society of others. Not that there is no society in Kahunda, it is just that we are somewhat excluded from it based on our language, and now that the Andersons and Hamiltons are oot and aboot, Kahunda is down to Vanessa, MaryJane, and myself.

But back to Nairobi. Going to Nairobi was a reverse-culture-shock. Cityscapes and suburbia, highways with traffic, rush hours and the smell of early morning exhaust, street lights and street sweepers, underground sewage and underground parking, coffee shops with Mochas and Japanese restaurants with Sushi, theatres and bowling alleys, museums and art galleries, pubs and bars, life beyond sunset and before sunrise, and everywhere you looked or listened, the sweet music of familiarity: the English language. It wasn’t just reverse-culture-shock, it was cultural relief. We could not believe we were on the same continent. No one stared at us or called out Mzungu. Sweet anonymity. To be able to communicate freely and easily with people on the street, to ask for directions and make plans without pantomiming, and to decipher a large part of the corpus that comprises the unwritten dictionary of the non-verbal communications of head nods, hand gestures, and eyebrow aerobics was exhilarating, albeit short-lived. Our time was spent walking the city parks, enjoying numerous cups of Kenyan coffee and Tea-masala, checking out the Kenya national museum, going on a walking safari, and driving around with John (our taxi driver) and Amy (a CRWRC employee from the Kansas).

After four days, the blur that was Nairobi faded into the dark clouds of the rainy-season as we ascended into the inverted world of airplanes. The flight was pretty spectacular; we flew between the peaks of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru, then headed West over the Ngorongoro Crater and the vast expanse of the Serengeti plains. We were too high up to see, but the biggest wildebeest migration in the world was beginning 20,000 feet below us as thousands of wildebeest begin their trek across the Serengeti grasslands and into Kenya. We landed in Mwanza and later that week had a chance to tour the Bugondo hospital with an American doctor who is doing his residency here through Cornell University. The hospital has 850 beds (which is huge, even for an American hospital, according to our guide) and largely understaffed. We met a whole bunch of interesting missionary families who are constantly flowing into and out of Mwanza. The highlight of my week was eating a large Fillet Steak, my first steak in three months. (Question: why do some Americans pronounce this “fill-it” steak?)

Now we are back in Kahunda. And like I said, it is quiet. I’ve been back to teaching this past week, and I am amazed at how time has sort of slipped by. It feels that I’ve finally been able to get things started up and now it is almost time to wrap up. I jumped ahead in my syllabus and noted that I have only 2 more lessons for the different classes I teach. Unfortunately, with the unexpected Nairobi trip, I’ve had to take off our fiction courses; however, after asking the students every class for the last 2 and a half months how many had even begun to read the play I requested, 0 people had started. Yet after each class, it never fails, two or three students will come and ask me why I don’t start looking at fiction, rather than spend class time learning how to read it (and write it). Frustrating. A similar thing happened with the basketball, so I should not be surprised. Each Tuesday I go to coach a 2 hour session of basketball fundamentals, but the students only want to play games rather than learn basics. So I’ve compromised. I realize that I’m only hear for a short time, there is very little chance they are going to pick up how to run different set offenses; therefore, we spend about 30 minutes doing lay-ups and shooting and 3 man weaves, and then begin a game. It’s fun, and on non-Tuesdays I have been going to the school from 4:30 to 7 just to play pick-up with some of the guys who really like Basketball, and have become quite good. One particular student, his name is Vincent, must have played somewhere before since he is quite a bit better than all the other students. He is hilarious. Every time I come to play he makes sure he is not on my team and gets to guard me. Last week he took the bus to Mwanza and came back with a brand new pair of Air Jordans and a Lebron James jersey. Too bad the Muram court will do a number on them.

Class is interesting though. If the students are not learning all that I hoped they would, at least I am gaining an appreciation of the English language from the “other” side. My recent lessons have turned to creative writing and explaining a list of various literary devices, which has made for some amusing in-class discussions.

Doug: Satire is a mode of writing where one can be critical while also being humorous and witty. (Deciding to scrap his original intentions of explaining the differences between Horatian and Juvenalian Satire).
Student A: What is critical?
Doug: Well in this context it means to expose problems.
Student A: And what is humorous?
Doug: To be funny, or to make jokes.
Student A: What is funny?
Doug: (thinking) To make someone laugh.
Student A: Of course.
Doug: So, for an example, let’s talk about the road from Kahunda to Mwanza. If I were to satirize it I might say, “The road is great; it only takes the bus eight hours to travel 100 kilometres”
Student A: (confused) But sir, how is a road great if it takes a bus such a long time to travel a distance that is so small?”
Doug: (realizing that sarcasm is lost in translation). Well, that is my point...
Student B: No, Mr. Doug means that the road is very long. Great means very big, so the bus takes a long time.
Student A: But 100 kilometers is not a great distance.
Doug: First, great can mean a large size, but I am referring to the road’s quality. It is “great” or very good. So my second sentence undercuts the first one, but it’s subtle (maybe too subtle I’m beginning to regret)
(a moment of silence as the students digest this new information)
Student A: Mr. Doug, you said that Satire has to make someone laugh. Why do you think criticizing the roads in Tanzania is funny? We are poor and the roads are also poor. It is not funny.
Doug: (thinking: why is this getting so tough?) Alright, point taken. But there are different types of Satire, in some instances the writer chooses to laugh at his readers, but in other types he laughs at himself and the readers. (Remembering a grad paper he wrote on the different employments of Satire in Ben Jonson’s drama...) So, depending on the type of Satire, you, as a writer, can be aligned with your audience or alienated from it.

Blank stares ensue....

So that is one of many discussions we get into. The discussion around Litotes, Hyperbole, and Onomatopoeia were also humorous, but too lengthy to get down. Much of the class involves laughter at how these words are pronounced and me trying to draw or enact how they work.

So, two more weeks in Kahunda! The countdown is in earnest. We are trying to continue carping the diem, while we are here, but with the end so near at hand, it is hard. I have just finished writing up the questions for the English end-term examinations; a symbolic full-stop of our work here. This week to come will involve exam review and then as the students write their exams, we pack up and head for Mwanza. This may be the last post for a long while, but hopefully when we get to Dar, I can update you on how our travels from Mwanza to Arusha and to Zanzibar have gone. If you do not know, our original plans were to take our midterm break at the end of our time here rather than in the middle, so we could maximize our time in Kahunda. So we booked a four day hike to the summit of Meru with our friend Geoff (the other volunteer teacher here). This was, of course, pre-visa trouble and pre-Nairobi. Anyways, taking off on the 22nd proves to be quite convenient for both of us since the school will not be running due to exams and the clinic is shut down for meetings.

(By the time this is posted, we are now already back in Mwanza and have said our goodbyes. I will update on all the recent adventures of the past 2 weeks, our farewell parties etc. soon)

Nairobi Pics!

2008-04-28T13:35:00.000-07:00

Flight to Nairobi. This is Mount Kilimanjaro rising above the clouds at some 19000 feet. On the other side of the plane is Meru, the second biggest mountain in Tanzania (fifth in Africa) which we are scheduled to climb in a month.

Kili again.

First day in Nairobi we took a safari walking tour. They have all the different Kenyan ecosystems mimicked here.

Albino Zebra dish.

2008-04-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

We got about 2 feet from this leapord thanks to our tour guide.

Forget the name and species of this animal. It lost a horn in a big fight and was, apparently, raised by a lioness after its parents were killed. I never asked if its parents were killed by the lioness, just thought of that now.

Our tour guide thought that his friends in the cheetah department wouldn't mind letting us pet the cheetah. Right before entering I remembered an Oprah episode where people with large tame cats were mauled beyond recognition because - moral of the story - you can't take the wild out of some animals. That is why I look terrified and ready to bolt. I did not enjoy this.

Again, if Oprah is right about most books she could be right about large cats.
p.s. I never got a good look at the cheetah's face till blogging this, but it actually looks like it is drugged. hmmm.

2008-04-28T13:11:00.000-07:00

Colobus Monkeys.

The edge of Nairobi National Park.

This was our tour guide, Stanley. He was good, but kept trying to sneak us past the guards to get good pictures, which involved jumping a fence and going in between the lion and the leopard cages. It was pretty sketch.

The Del Monte store. Around here are pineapple fields as far as you can see. There is a huge Del Monte factory just outside Nairobi.

2008-04-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

Uhuru Park. Nearby is the Serena Hotel where Odinga and Kibaki got together with Kofi for peace talks. This monument is either for Kenyatta or Moi, I'm not sure.

Village Market. An expat Oasis. You can do any and everything here: shop, eat, golf, bowl, watch a movie, etc. The road that brought us here was called Limuru road upon which are the UN offices, US and Canadian Embassies and massive villas of wealthy expats and foreign ambassadors. Only 30 minutes from here, ironically, are the second largest slums in Africa.

Foodcourt at Village market.

The Masaii Market. You can buy all types of African artwork here for a decent price if you are willing to barter for 30 minutes or more per item. A fun and tiring experience.

2008-04-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

Took a trip to the Nairobi National Museum. The exhibits on Masaii "coming of age" rituals was really well done. It sketched the life of a typical Masaii boy who becomes a man and how circumcision and piercing play such a huge role in that. I was fascinated by the sharp line drawn between boys and men and even men and women. In our cultures we don't have such lines (between men and boys or men and women for that matter) nor such roles. The tribal unit is fascinating because everyone seems to work in a tight interdependent community, reciprocating responsibilities and duties with each other.

Outside gardens were beautiful. B/c of political turmoil there were few tourists out.

NAKUMATT! The kenyan wal-mart.

Dormans coffee. Grade AA goodness. I drank more coffee in the last 3 days than I have in the past 3 months.

Elasticity.

2008-04-22T05:46:00.000-07:00

Hey Y'all,

Just a quick update. We are in Mwanza, arrived here on Sunday afternoon with the Andersons. It was a full load. We crammed Margaret, Andy, Mary Jane, Vanessa, Myself, Geoff, the pastor's wife (forget her name), Abigail, Caleb, and Ben (3 anderson children) and one of Abigail's friends into a jeep and drove the five hour trek to Mwanza. It was cozy, especially being crammed into the back with the three Anderson children and Geoff. More than once I was thankful for the inventors of Mp3 players. Yes, they are antisocial, but there is a time for everything.

Apart from one flat tire, the ride was uneventful. We are now enjoying the hospitality of the Jeffers here in their Mwanzan guest house. It is glorious, and we are amazed at the relativity of perception. Going from Canada to Mwanza we were overwhelmed by Mwanza's dinginess and poverty, but coming to Mwanza from Kahunda, we are surprised at the relative luxury and beauty this city enjoys.

Vanessa's visa application was rejected unfortunately, but thankfully we found it out now and not in a few days. Her tourist visa expires in May however since there is a 3 month limit, so, we've been told we have to leave Tanzania and return...or we may never leave, or worse, go to jail. That's probably extreme, but we're not taking chances. We were a bit peeved that we had to pay 50 dollars each just to leave the country and come back, so Margaret suggested that we go and visit the CRWRC headquarters in Nairobi for a few days and make the 100 dollar hit a little softer. We decided to take her up on the offer, so we are going to check out Nairobi starting tomorrow. We fly out at noon and come back Monday. So i'll update the blog with our adventures in Kenya when we return. The whole thing is rather haphazard, but seems to be falling together nicely, especially since there will be someone driving from Mwanza to Kahunda the next day and we can hitch a ride back with him. So, that's that. Off to Kenya...

Take care everyone and hope you enjoy the pics!

Doug and Vaness

2008-04-21T21:28:00.000-07:00

Loading up the boat at Nyamongo.

The clinic. Naomi in the blue dress worked with Vanessa.

Fishing line up. A boat parking lot out on the water.

The archetype of all fishing towns. Notice the cleared spaces for drying Dagaa (tiny fish).

2008-04-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

This chameleon fell out of a nearby tree one morning while we were eating breakfast outside. Our cat and two dogs terrorized this thing until it turned black and almost had a heart attack. He inched his way to this tree and bolted up it.

Nyamongo Island. Thos black clouds in the distance are actually swarms of Lake flies!

cute kids.

Vanessa and Mary Jane.

2008-04-21T05:49:00.000-07:00

Step 1: Cut a hole in that... well, cutting the plywood in half for backboards.

Welding up the poles. I had the hardest time not looking at that bright light...still do.

making the nets square and level, without a square or level.

my baby.

2008-04-20T12:57:00.000-07:00

Almost the finished product!

Painting the poles and making the red square on the backboard. (does anyone know if that has a more technical name, or is it just the red square on the backboard)

The entire male population came saturday morning to carry the nets from our place to the school.

Me, feeling more white than usual...

2008-04-20T12:49:00.000-07:00

Meshing the rims.

The two men working in the background are the Fundis. They worked through pouring rain to get these holes dug (over six feet deep) and then had to mix mortar and stones together for a good 3 hours to get the two nets in the ground. I'm taking pictures...under an umbrella.

Lift. In this one I took cover under the cookhouse roof b/c it was still raining. Thank goodness for zoom lenses.

Panoramic of the brand new Kahunda School Bball facilities.

2008-04-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

Jumpshots 101.

One of the few girls in the school to attempt the jump shot. She was hilarious, and tried to match me shot for shot.

The goals are put in the ground. Hallelujah.

making sure they are somewhat straight using a long crooked stick.

2008-04-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

Another shot of Ikuza from the air. It was an incredibly beautiful island.

Painting one of the clinic rooms.

Vanessa had the lazer level eye and surgeon's hand to paint the kick strip sans tape. I followed behind and filled in.

The Ikuza clinic. Due to open very soon. This is, unfortunately, just before we gave the whole outside a fresh coat of paint.

2008-04-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

Dale's plane getting loaded before take off.

one of the islands from the air.

Dale and I in the cockpit. I tried saying "Alpha Niner Tango" into the mic... too bad the power to my mic was cut...

Ikuza from the air. We worked at the clinic here for a week.

2008-04-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

A thousand splendid sunsets....

2008-04-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

Destination: Big island in the distance. Geoff and I are that speck you see, and the island turned out to be the better part of 5 miles from our home... We eventually turned around and settled for the island you see in the foreground to the right (less than a km away!)

Rowing machines (2 blisters later)

debating which end is most likely the front.

Another view of the island. We did make it to this one, and it was beautiful, home of hundreds of egrets and kingfishers, cormorants and grebes, also some storks and huge monitor lizards.

2008-04-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

our sunset lake tour that turned into a starwatching tour once the boat broke down and we were stranded on the lake for over 3 hours. Special Note: Vanessa looks like a huge nerd in the lifejacket.

one of the perks of lake victoria mission work.

Kahunda in all its glory. That cluster of homes is the downtown. our home, for a point of reference, is to the left on the picture on the same coast.

The Lake from the airstrip.

2008-04-20T09:47:00.000-07:00

rescuing our kittens from the roof. Lily decided to give birth in the thatch in the midst of a thunderstorm.

the Kahunda crew all gathered for a lunch of beans and chapatis for Caleb's 7th birthday.

The side view of our home. We are on a rise that drops off right onto the beaches of Lake Victoria.

The beach in front of our home. This is a rare photo due to lack of fishermen, women doing their laundry and/or naked people bathing.

2008-04-20T06:01:00.000-07:00

our home in Kahunda. This is our first day. Our home is right on the beach, the thatched roof is actually covering a tin roof; it helps keep us cool.

our kitchen. Note the kerosene stove behind vanessa, and how everything must be suspended to keep it away from mice and ants.

hiking to Kahunda rock with the Andersons on our first weekend there.

Kahunda Rock. A drink that goes down smooth everytime. You can see our home and all Kahunda from way up here and hundreds of islands that dot lake victoria.

Vanessa's Blog (It actually happened!)

2008-04-14T10:18:00.002-07:00

Well, we are passed the halfway mark and I am officially writing my own first blog. I have been contributing ideas for the previous blogs but unfortunately my writing skills just aren’t on par with Dougs! (that is why I am a nurse and not an English major!) So I will attempt to write a blog, but I feel as though Doug has set some high standards, so as soon as you are prepared to lower the bar a little (or a lot!) you can continue reading on.

Our time here has been flying by and we are both now into somewhat of a regular routine. I am working alongside Mary Jane who is a nurse midwife, she is a great person and I have really been enjoying working with her. On Mondays and Fridays we go up to the clinic to do baby/child health clinics. We weigh the children, chart their growth, talk to the moms about how the child is feeling and if they are well, and give immunizations. These clinic days are always busy due to the fact that there are ALOT of children living in Kahunda and also due to the fact that Mary Jane’s clinics are free. We had one clinic day where we saw 169 children!
Unfortunately my Swahili isn’t the greatest so that makes communication difficult, I can understand a few simple nursing words (which gets me farther than I thought it would) but when they start speaking long fast sentences I’m usually looking very lost. So Mary Jane does the talking with the moms and then I get the medications that are needed, check the children for anaemia and enlarged spleens and give the immunizations. The children are very cute and seem to like me until I give them their immunizations. Many of the children that we see are treated for malaria and many are malnourished. Mary Jane gives health education to the moms about how to feed their children properly with the resources that are available in Kahunda.

There are a lot of strange beliefs here regarding health and wellness. Many of the moms bring their children to the clinic and expect to get LOTS of medication and they believe that the only way their child will get better is if they are given a needle (doesn’t seem to matter what the needle is for) and if you treat the child with oral medications the moms will either not give it to the child or will take the child to the witch doctor. The witch doctors are a huge problem here, especially on the islands. This has been a widely accepted practice for many years so most of the local people have very little trust in the clinic’s treatment. Many people who see the witch doctor end up coming to the clinic, but by then no one knows what has been done to the person at the witch doctor and it is usually too late to do anything to help so they usually end up dying. Another strange belief here is the idea of children being born with plastic teeth. Many parents believe that if you can see the white under a child’s gums then it means that the child has plastic teeth, so they pull them all out......this makes perfect sense.

On Tuesdays we do an antenatal clinic for the pregnant women. This is also a very busy day. Again because of the language barrier Mary Jane does the talking and I do the practical part of the assessment. So after Mary Jane is finished with her questions then I feel for the baby’s position and based on the size of the baby and position of the uterus I estimate how far along the mother is and then we find the heart beat. This is a very different area of nursing then what I am used to, but I am learning a lot a really enjoying it. A problem here with the pregnant moms is anaemia. Many of the women are very anaemic which puts them at risk during their delivery. We check them for anaemia and treat them, but if they are a big risk they will be told to come to the clinic to have their baby. Most of the women have their baby’s at home, but if they have had any previous bleeding complications, or the baby is not in a good position then they are told to come to the clinic. Unfortunately many don’t listen to the advice and have their baby’s at home and then when they realize that things are going well they rush to the clinic, but by then they have lost too much blood and the baby and/or mom end up dying on the way to the clinic or at the clinic. This is frustrating for Mary Jane to experience because this is exactly what she is trying to prevent, but what can you do when people choose to ignore what we view as common sense advice? It is very difficult to educate people on the whole idea of prevention and planning ahead. Most women don’t come to the clinic because either they don’t have the money to pay the clinic or their husbands won’t give them the money. What they don’t understand is that it would cost them 5000 tshs (which is about $4 CND) to come to the clinic or take a bus to the closest hospital to have their baby, but if they come when there are complications it will then cost them 50 000 tshs (about $45 CND – which is about their whole weeks wages) to transport them to the hospital. It is at times very frustrating for Mary Jane, she does so much educating for these moms and really cares about them, but unfortunately she just isn’t able to convince them all.

On Wednesday and Thursdays we go up to the clinic to do HIV/AIDS testing. These days are very limiting due to the communication barrier, but Mary Jane is very good at utilizing volunteers and she keeps me interested and busy. These clinic days are optional for anyone in the village to come and voluntarily be tested for free. Mary Jane provides a lot of education during these clinics. She starts off by asking the patient about HIV/AIDS to see what they already know. She then goes on to explain how you contract the disease and what it does in your body when you have it. Many of the people have very little education of HIV/AIDS and a common response to what it does in your body is “it eats away at your stomach”.

There are some very strange and scary beliefs about HIV/AIDS here. For example some believe that a woman can get it from a man, but a man cannot get it from a woman. Another belief is that if you get tested three times and everytime you are negative then you will never get it. The scariest belief is that is you sleep with a virgin you will be cured from the disease. The witch doctor is also believed to be able to cure people with the disease; unfortunately what the witch doctor does to treat HIV/AIDS involves cutting. So after they are finished with the HIV positive patient the next patient comes is and is also treated using a cutting procedure using the same knife, so while the doctor has “cured” the HIV patient they have now passed the disease onto this patient. Polygamy is another practise that contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS, along with the fact that many of the men are fishermen and go off to fishing camps where they may live during the week and only come home on the weekend. In many of the fishing camps HIV/AIDS is running rampant. The fishermen are not faithful to their marriages and I was told by one of the other missionary nurses that does HIV/AIDS testing on the islands that in the fishing camps the percentage of HIV positive people is as high as 80%! There are many people who choose not to be tested for fear of being positive. Mary Jane does the HIV/AIDS clinics very well and she has made it possible to allow herself to witness to the people coming to be tested, she has a very interesting way of witnessing to the people. After she has done all of her educating and we are waiting for the test results she asks the patient “Do you know Jesus?” Here are some of the responses:

1) No, but I might recognize him if I see him.
2) Patient: No, but I heard that he is coming
Mary Jane: He has come, and is coming again
Patient: I guess I missed him the first time, hopefully I will see him next time
3) No, should I?
4) Yes.
Mary Jane: Where will you go when you die?
Patient: Heaven
Mary Jane: And why will you go to heaven
Patient: Because I’m a good person and don’t do bad things

These are some of the humorous (and sad) responses, but have given Mary Jane a great opportunity to witness to these people. She then spends time talking with each individual , invites them to church and gives them some reading material and tells them that if they have any questions to come and talk to her or to the local pastor or evangelist. Mary Jane feels that the Lord has really opened up doors for her and is very excited about these opportunities.

Another part of the job here is going to the local islands once a month to do these same clinics but for only three days a month. So on Wednesday we will boat the island Nyamongo. Mary Jane tells me that these will be a very busy three days, she said we will work sun up to sun down...I am really looking forward to this experience.

So, that is what I am doing for work during the week. The rest of my time I feel like have spend trying to figure out how to do things here. The cooking has been quite the experience. We have market here once a week where we can get some produce and the meat. They do slaughter a cow once a week (they pick the oldest, skinniest cow in town, which makes for some tough meat!). I have learned that there is no such thing as “whipping up a meal” here. Like for example at home when I feel like making an easy dinner I may choose to make hamburgers (you would think this would be easy!) but then I realized that when you have to ground the beef yourself and make homemade hamburger buns, this may not be the meal to choose if you feel like ”whipping up a meal! I will say though that my loaves of bread are looking better all the time! (my first loaf didn’t rise at all because I killed the yeast with boiling water!) I also realized that I can get quite a work out kneading the bread!

Our power situation has been quite an experience here. I think Doug may have mentioned this, but I feel the need to address it again. It seems to be a pattern, it starts raining and then the solar powered batteries run out so the lights die. Then the generator gets hooked up to charge up the batteries which causes the generator to break, then we run out of water because the generator broke while trying charge up the battery, so now we can’t pump the water. Then we call over our neighbour or a local fundi to fix the generator, the generator gets fixed a couple days (or a week) later, we charge up the batteries and pump the water with the fixed generator, the sun comes out and charges the solar panels, a few days later it clouds over and the cycle repeats. I guess this is what they meant by being flexible!

The other thing that has been causing me some grief is the washing machine. At first I was thankful that we actually had a washing machine, but I think I may have changed my mind. When we first got here, the machine wasn’t working because the generator was broken (surprise, surprise), so Emma (our house help) said he would just do the laundry by hand. Now I feel the need to comment on house help........ it is a different feeling. I am not used to having someone in the house doing things for me and being around all day. I feel bad if I leave dishes and ask him to do something, I mean if I’m not doing anything I could just do it myself. I also feel weird having a man that I don’t really know do my laundry for me. So the first time I gave him some of Doug’s white shirts to wash by hand, let’s just say that when the laundry was done they didn’t really look like clean white shirts! With some bleach and an overnight soak they were back to new, but I still had to figure out how to do the rest of the laundry. After we had run out of clean clothes I decided that I would just do the laundry by hand myself (how hard could it be), so after three baskets of laundry done by hand I realized that it was a lot more work than I thought and I also realized that I had scrubbed the skin right off my knuckles! A few days later the machine was up and running and I was soo excited so I washed our sheets and towels only to discover that the machine while washing spits out oil/grease, so our sheets and towels now have some new designs on them! (I also would like to add that the machine runs a little differently, you have to add buckets of water to the machine before and during the rinse cycle). So I’m still stuck with what to do with the laundry.

So I think that this brings me to the end of my blog. I feel as though I have written alot, maybe even too much! The time here is going very fast, and I am sure that June 3 will be here before we know it. My blog writing routine seems to be to write a blog every 72days so I guess this will be my last blog until we get home!

Musings on April and Aslan...

2008-04-08T02:10:00.000-07:00

"April is the Cruellest month" for a number of reasons.

1.) We are now officially past the halfway point. It is hard to believe we’ve been in Tanzania for over two months already. However, this means that home still feels miles away in space and time when we look into the future, but our time here is going to be but a moment if we look into the past. (I guess I’m just impossible to please).

2.) The lake-flies are back with a vengeance.

3.) I am reminded that it has been two months since I’ve had a good cup of coffee.

4.) We have missed birthdays and anniversaries of friends and family back home.

5.) Today is the final game of the NCAA tournament...and it is the first time in a long while I don’t even know who is in it. The experience is not liberating, it’s depressing.

6.) I realize I have lost all touch with the events taking place in the larger world. Russia could be at war with China for all I know.

7.) It has been two months since I have heard a sermon which I understand.

On a more positive note, April has also brought the rainy season in full force. It is not what one would expect when they hear the term "rainy season." As I write this the sky is blue and the sun is shining and the waves are lapping outside our front door. In fact, it’s more than a week since it has rained here, but the storms, when they come, are awful (in the original sense of the word).

Nothing of great excitement has happened since the last post. Vanessa and I are definitely in the full swing of things though. We realize that this is perhaps the nicest part of going on a longer term short term project like this, we have time (just enough) to settle into a community, make some more permanent friends, and have more of a lasting impact on the people here. Vanessa has been really busy the past week with the clinic with children clinics, pregnant mothers, and HIV/AIDS testing. She has some good stories, but once again, I will let her tell her stories (she has promised to post something sometime!).

Life at the school is interesting. I was a bit worried about how I would like teaching and how the students would respond to a young Mzungu teacher (I explained last blog how they really respect the elderly in this culture...well the unfortunate corollary to that is there is a lot of disrespect for young people). Yet I have been pleasantly surprised at how quickly the students have warmed up to me and are willing to talk with me about the lessons before and after class. Currently I am teaching Form 3 and Form 4 the basics of narrative compositions and am looking forward to reading their first assignment, which was to write a short story about a significant moment in their lives. Not as exciting as Elves, Trolls and the realm of Faerie, but I hope to introduce that soon enough. I’m curious what their imaginations will come up when we turn to creative writing. I’ll keep you posted.

I wish I had Capote-like recall with the many conversations I have had with students and teachers – there are many funny moments of miscommunication – but I will save those (the ones I remember) for when I get back. Today I went up to teach and found that the students were nowhere to be found. Apparently it is a national holiday for "Kulume" (unsure of spelling) who was the first president of Zanzibar. Now our headmasters name is "Kunume" and I could have sworn the student who informed me of the holiday said that today was "Kunume day." Well he didn’t and it wasn’t. It was "Kulume day" not "Kunume day" and boy was my face red when I shook the headmasters hand (in front of all the other teachers no less) and said happy Kunume day. In my defense I thought it was only a coincidence that Josef and the first president of Zanzibar shared a last name, but the teachers believed that I thought the holiday was in honour of Josef, the headmaster. At least that is how I explained their laughter to myself. Apart from school, I’ve decided to help the doctor at the clinic, Makoobi, learn English as well. He’s a great guy and our Thursday afternoon English lessons out on the beach with a bottle of Coka is a nice change of pace from the hectic classroom with 90 students.

Life at home is going well enough. Our generator broke down and the "fundi" (a Swahili term for a Jack of all trades...usually an expert mechanic or builder) tried fixing it, then went A.W.A.L. for a week. As I type this, he has the generator dissembled on our back porch (again) trying to make a diagnosis. Since I understand generators about as much as I understand Richard Simmons (or want to) I am keeping my distance.

Also, we’ve had a bit of a rodent problem. It started when Dutchess, our female dog, killed a 27 inch rat which had been apparently living under the back porch. Then, we had both been waking up at 2 or 3 each morning hearing loud "cheeping" noises. We debated if it was a return of the bat, or maybe something new like crickets or birds, but it turned out to be mice. Apparently kicking Lily the cat out of the house has allowed for somewhat of a resurgence of the rodent plebeians. Emma, our house helper (Male...Emma is short for Emmanuel) set a trap which to date has killed five mice. Some during the evening, but most at an inconvenient hour. The trap doesn’t kill the mouse but pins it against a board where the mouse suffers a long and painful death unless one of us gets out of bed to empty the trap in front of Lily who makes short work of the matter. Last night, Lily was nowhere to be found so I decided to let the mouse out and have the heel of my sandal do the work of the cat. However, the mouse had other plans. As soon as I let him out of the trap he bolted for the beach so I bolted after him armed with my cell-phone flashlight and a brick I picked up, wearing nothing but sandals, a gitch and a smile. Strike that actually, it was a frown, it was midnight and I was losing a race to a maimed mouse. Duke, our male dog, deciding to join the fun and helped me spot the mouse in a clump of grass...or what I thought was a clump of grass. In what I believe was the mouse’s final (and quite noble) attempt to "stick it to the man" it decided to curl up on a piece of Duke’s dung. As I stomped the mouse into eternity I couldn’t help but wonder at this small twist of fate. It was almost like the mouse had flipped me the bird in passing. Instant Karma I guess.

Jeff, Vanessa, and I decided to take the Gilmour’s canoe out the past weekend. We ventured to one of the nearest islands, Easyneezy (that’s how the word sounds...definitely not how it is spelled). The island is not inhabited by people, but had hundreds of interesting birds and huge monitor lizards sitting on the rocks. Jeff and I decided that we would venture to the heart of the island the next day, which we did try, but found the undergrowth was so heavy you could hardly pierce it with a machete...and believe me, Jeff tried. After swinging his machete like a maniac for a few minutes, he carved a 10 foot path and then gave up. After that we just used the machete to cut stuff down, Jeff got a little overzealous though and ended up swinging so hard that he cut a branch straight through, hit a rock, lost his grip, and dropped his machete into the lake. We also attempted to canoe to the next nearest island, which turned out to be not-so-near as we expected. Judging distance on water is, in my mind, next to impossible. After rowing for almost 45 minutes, the island that was "probably 20 minutes away," looked no bigger than it did from our front porch. Yet when we turned around, our front porch was a speck on the horizon. I like to think we entered some time/space warp and were merely paddling on the equivalent of a water treadmill, on some invisible overlapping seam of reality, and since I like to think that, that is the answer I gave to Vanessa when she asked why we had made such pathetic headway to the big island.

Our time here is also bringing us closer to God. There is something humbling about living and working with people you never fully understand and who will never fully understand you. It almost seems that without the alternatives of our friends and family at home we are driven to ask God for protection and health and grace in a way that is hard to articulate. I almost want to say that the temptation at home (at least for myself) is to see God in purely abstract ways – a talking point more than a reality. I’m beginning to see that knowledge of God, his Immutability, Aseity, Eternity, etc. – all interesting points for theological speculation – are utter nonsense if we haven’t first believed in the reality of God. In Aristotle’s Poetics he writes that the two effects good rhetoric should be to arouse pity and fear. In regards to our experience of God, perhaps we can add a third: wonder. The thought of God, something so separate from the creation yet so intimately involved with it should cause us to pity our miserable condition when we understand how far we have gone from the life we were intended for, Fear (and trembling) at the power and terror of a God whose presence in the temple demanded the lives of those who were not permitted in the Holy of Holies, and Wonder at how this God has torn the temple veil and seeks to dwell within us and assume us into the Triune Godhead.

As I type this I am listening to a song by Sufjan Stevens called "Seven Swans" which recalls to my mind an episode with a friend in Ottawa. My friend – a "Sufjan Stevens fan, despite his Christianity" – informed me that this song has one of the most chilling descriptions of God. Sufjan sings: "If you run, He will chase you. If you run, He will catch you. And He takes, and He takes, and He takes. For He is the Lord." I was not surprised that my friend picked out these lines that I had so often heard but glazed over since he is much more musically (and poetically) inclined than I am. I was surprised, however, that being an atheist he found such a description of God "chilling" and not merely comical. Perhaps, I told him, that chill you feel is the God Sufjan is talking of chasing you. To which he laughed. But if God is truly God and He wants you or me, why won’t he chase you? And if he chases you, why wouldn’t he catch you? Perhaps God doesn’t bring anyone into heaven kicking and screaming, but He sure does drag most, if not all, of us to the gate. And this is what is so scary for those outside of Christ. Paul says that the light of the gospel will only be darkness to those outside of Christ, it is an unpleasant aroma, a message of death, but within the fold it is comfort, light, salt, and the smell of incense. I can only find comfort in Sufjan Stevens poetry about a God who takes and takes and takes when I first realize that he has every right to such taking because everything is already His that he gave and gave and gave. And who am I anyways?

God is scary and beautiful and wonderful. He created the cosmos that stretch into an eternity the human mind can’t grasp and who knows how many different dimensions, yet he is involved with the most solipsistic recluse. Again, all of this is hard to explain. Maybe one last attempt will do before I sign out and it has to do with an experience I think most readers of the Narnia series share. I remember a time when I was in grade three or four and I had just finished reading the Narnia series back to back. I happened to finish the series right before the 4:30 afternoon service of Trinity and I remember hearing a particularly dry sermon and I would have, given the right words, agreed with Nietzsche and his crew that "God is dead" – at least God felt dead when compared to the vitality of Aslan. I remember praying fervently during the congregational prayer that God, in the form of lion would rush the church and wake everyone up (including those who were awake...it was a different sleep I was stumblingly thinking of). In fact, when I look back on this moment I almost think I prayed to Aslan. Weird, I know. Of course I was wrong. God was not dead. The term itself is an oxymoron. If God is God he could never die – neither to cease His existence in reality or in our imaginations. What was dead was me, or something in me. And sometimes I think what killed it was Doctrine. Knowledge of God killed my belief in God. I don’t agree with those who see Doctrine as the water of knowledge to the flame of belief. Doctrine is vital to a healthy mature spirit. It is the meat and potatoes. But Meat and Potatoes can choke a child, almost like too much paper on a small flame does more harm than good. Now I am at a point where I can make more sense of my childish impulse to pray to Aslan – God was never a dim shadow or echo of Aslan; it was the exact opposite. Aslan with his ferocity and tenderness is but the refracted light from the source which both He and Lewis, his sub-creator, find their being. Perhaps if I was where I am now, the sermon and the doctrine and the "knowledge" of God I heard that afternoon would hardly be dry. Perhaps not. A dry sermon is a dry sermon (not all our meat and potatoes are cooked to perfection), but nevertheless, Credo ut Intelligum. I believe in order to understand...

So, we are making some tentative plans to go to Mwanza with Andy for a day or two in the near future to stock up on supplies. That means we will most likely be able to post some new pics from Bob and Esther's.

Lost in Translation

2008-03-28T00:34:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone.
There is a greeting here, I have learned, that can get you quite far in this culture. "Shikamu." It means, "I clasp your feet." It’s a remnant of the colonial days (although it has Arabic origins) and the proper response is "Marahaba." You use it to show respect to the "Mzees," the elderly. It’s gold. Funny enough, some of the Western Missionaries don’t like to be "Shikamu-ed" (you can make anything a verb if you try hard enough) since it shows their age.

Words here are different. Since Swahili was a tribal language transcribed by Europeans (the reason it uses the same alphabet) I wonder if the similarities between certain Swahili words with their English homophonic equivalents are of any import. Does Ugali (read previous post) sound like "ugly" or "Oh Golly" for a reason? One taste of the stuff makes me think it does. I’m also still wondering if anything of significance can be deduced from the fact that the words for White man and for God are only differentiated by one letter (Mungu = God, Mzungu = White man). Coincidence? Probably, but allows for an interesting diversion of thought in a Swahili Church service which you hardly understand. I started thinking of the contact narratives I had read over the past year, the accounts of the New World explorers interacting with the indigenous populations (which I guess were not "that" new) and how quickly Europeans moved from a state of complete incomprehension to the assumption they were being given power and authority over their hosts. Interestingly, Mzungu has a few meanings. Apart from being a European or, more generally, a white person, it can also mean an unusual or startling thing, or a face card. I began to wonder if there were any connections between these three dots: White person, the unknown, something of value. In a way, I find it startling how the word "Mzungu" might be revelatory of how this culture has dealt with the alterity of the Occident. They do not denigrate it, they revere it. Do we do that with the unknown? Have we? Perhaps there’s a good reason that the most common tragic flaw in Western Drama, from Aristophanes to Shakespeare to Miller, is hubris.

Such were my thoughts during this, the first of SIX Easter services this weekend. Each service is about three hours and they have two each day till Sunday. I’m beginning to see that the worship marathons are a pretty common phenomenon in Tanzania; in fact, for the past three weekends there have been various conferences that have called the congregation to weekend long fellowship of the saints. Each service begins with the call to worship, usually a half an hour past the formal start time. Stragglers seem to mosy into the pews throughout, so it’s not uncommon for the church to be at 10 percent capacity when it begins, and 110 percent when the service ends. Other than taking twice the time of a "normal" service (normal = 1 ½ hours) and being in a foreign language, the service is basically the same. Another difference, perhaps the greatest, is the choir. I cannot get enough of the choirs, although I’ll admit, I’ve had more than enough of their accompaniment. The choir consists of about 25-30 men and women with beautiful voices, which are often (and unfortunately) drowned out by the blaring noise of an electric keyboard hooked up to a large amp powered by a noisy generator. It’s almost amusing to see this technological aberration in a place with no electricity and running water. Priorities. What amuses me the most is that this keyboard is not really played. The "pianist" hits one of the demo selections (reggae, hip hop, jazz, etc. You’ve all seen an electric keyboard). Next, the player hits another button to set the beat. Sometimes it is maracas, other times bongo drums, today was a standard drum-set. Than he/she plays around with the tempo settings (note: they don’t play with the volume, that must be cranked) and finds the right speed and off they go. The singing, despite the 80s rock beats emanating from the keyboard, is beautiful and is combined with painfully intricate choreography. So picture 30 adults moving left, moving right, jumping up, getting down, spinning, clapping, all in concert. It’s quite the spectacle, especially when an up and coming diva takes the microphone and walks to the front and steals the show, serenading the congregation eloquently about Mungu (okay, that’s the only word I get out of it... apart from Yesu Christo the odd time as well). Alongside all this, many of the women get up and dance down the aisles waving congas and handkerchiefs over their heads. I think all the Lammers women would have no problem fitting in. It’s definitely not like Church at home, but no two snowflakes are the same, each sunset here has its own flavour, there are millions of species of insects and I’m beginning to think that if God didn’t love diversity, the heavens might declare that. That is, as long as each is according to its kind; if snowflakes stay snowflakes, sunsets sunsets, and insects insects, diversity is good. Worship must also be worship then. The basic artistic principle of having "the same in the other," probably pleases Gods ear just as it does humans’. We might even say that it pleases the human ear only because it pleased God’s first.
The pipe for the basketball nets has arrived from Mwanza, along with some Red Oxide, special paint for metal. This week I managed to buy an 8X4 foot sheet of plywood, which when cut in half, makes two decent backboards. Buying paint was a bit of an ordeal because of the language barriers.

Doug: Shikamu Mr. Oscar (the Kahunda hardware store owner).
Mr. O: Marahaba. Hujambo?
Doug: Sijambo. ...do you have any paint?
Mr. O: silence
Doug: Paint (a little louder, maybe he speaks English, but is deaf.)
Mr. O: Pent?
Doug: Rengi? (remembering the word for paint because of his time painting in Ikuza)
Mr. O: Rengi!
Doug: (thinks: Nailed it) Yes. I need white paint. Er. I need .... mzungu. (yes, that means white person, but I think he got the gist)
Mr. O: (laughing) Ah, yes. Meupe (the right word for white). No.
Doug: (confused that he has just surrounded the word "white" with an affirmative and a negative) Rengi...Meupe....Ndiyo? (Paint...White....Yes?)
Mr. O: Ah, No. Maybe yesterday. I will get some yesterday.
Doug: (assuming he has his future verb and past tense nouns crossed) Oh, Kesho? (Swahili word for Tomorrow)
Mr. O: Ah yes. Kesho.
Doug: I will be back tomorrow... (debating if he should say: I will be back yesterday, just to make the communication perfectly clear)
(Awkward silence ensues. Both are unsure of their next move. Mr. O is probably wondering if this Mzungu is going to spend some money. Doug is definitely wondering how to leave this gracefully)
Doug: Tutaonano (see you tomorrow...Perfect!)
Mr. O: Hmmm Sawa.
Doug: (not catching that flicker of understanding in Mr. Oscar’s eyes) Okay, bye.

So I came back the next day and sure enough, there was no paint. I think I fell for another common pitfall of communication between Tanzanians and Mzungus. Rather than offend someone, a Tanzanian will say yes, just to save face. A thoughtful gesture, but a little nearsighted. True, for the moment my hopes were up yesterday, when he said the paint would be there tomorrow. But today, when I realize that there is no paint and have just walked all the way to town for nothing, I’m a little annoyed. Of course I had to ask just exactly when will said paint arrive, and of course, he unequivocally responded with : Tomorrow! Sure enough, it wasn’t there again. In the end I got Otheombo (a worker for the Hamiltons) to drive to Katwe, the next closest village, on his motorbike to get a gallon of the skunkiest, oil paint I have ever seen. Once I discarded the top inch of crusty oil, the remainder of the can allowed for two decent coats on the backboards, which are drying in the house right now. I had the junior headmaster over today to take a look at the supplies, which we plan on assembling Monday (We = Andy and myself) and he seems more excited than anyone. We are now even talking of ordering enough cement to cement the entire court. Anyways, Monday will be quite the experience. My CV of handiwork includes a breadboard and toolbox, both made in grade 7 cadets, so this step to two basketball nets may be a bit of a leap, but I’ll let you all know how it goes. For interest sake, I’ve added some diagrams I’ve drawn on a state of the art drafting program some of you may be familiar with: paintbrush.
(ok, as I cut and paste the picture in, I realize that I can't put the picture on the blogsite...my apologies, but just imagine the best CG image of a bball net and you'll be halfway there)

I’m almost finished with my first few English lesson plans. I am starting with Oral reading exercises and comprehension, followed with a dose of classes on various composition techniques before the grand finale of reading a comedy entitled "3 suitors, 1husband" by a Cameroonian writer, Guillaume Oyono Mbili. It’s pretty funny and quite hostile in its dealings with white people. Should be an interesting discussion. As I have been going over the English Standard 3 textbook however, I am dismayed at the low quality of English within it. My first class deals with Crime in Tanzania and I thought of posting an excerpt from the text to show you what I am dealing with, but will save that for another time. All I can say is that the illustration that goes with the passage involves a thief with a tire around his head and the local people pouring kerosene on him and lighting him on fire (Don’t worry, it’s a poor drawing, not a photograph). It is unfortunate my Swahili dictionary has no translation for vigilante.

Also it is now officially the rainy season. The last three days have been cycles of rain, thunder, lightning, sunshine, repeat. Lily, our cat, decided to have her kittens in the middle of a storm, and on the edge of our roof no less. The kittens were precariously close to the edge, so (James Hariot that I am) climbed onto the roof and saved the little felines from imminent peril. There is one pure black one, one white and black one, and one grey and white striped one. That narrows the potential fathers to about 4.3 thousand cats in the area. I have named the black one Scipio, the white and black one is Flannery, and the Grey and White striped one is Whiskers. They are pretty cute, just crawling around blindly for now, mewing away. So with the rains there is "water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink." Although, I did try to drink the local water in Ikuza, but have been paying for it dearly the past week with a stomach bacteria called Bakardia (unsure of spelling). There is also not a drop to swim in because of a parasite in the waters from snails. The parasite hooks into your intestines and tears at them, a common disease among the people here. On another note, the worst has happened. I am out of the reading material I brought for our time here (Bible excluded), and am now scouring the local missionary’s shelves for something...anything to fill the void, but books, books everywhere, but hardly a page to read. There are lots of ornithology books, bible study guides, devotional lit and Christian romance...along with a heavy dose of Clancy, Grisham, and Crichton. The situation is bleak. Your prayers are coveted.

Well it is time for tea and coffee. While the rest of the country fails to recognize punctuality as the fifth cardinal virtue, the missionaries’ coffee breaks at 10 am and 4 pm are one of the few constants in the Tanzanian flux. So as we continue to "measure our lives with coffee spoons," (there you go Mitch) our hope is that all of you are healthy, well, and/or wise.

Ikuza Blues

2008-03-17T08:38:00.000-07:00

So, the Anderson’s are back, which means the internet is back and time to catch up on our blog.

First, the Anderson’s came back from Kenya. Sounds like their trip home was quite eventful. First they were stopped by a road block and accused of a hit and run, something they had no part in. The police here can often be corrupt. In fact, Geoff (the other volunteer teacher here) was held up by a roadblock and asked to show his passport and threatened with deportation. All nonsense, they just wanted a bribe. And just last week, the police made a crackdown on some thieves in a local city by burning one alive as a form of torture in order to get the names of his compadres. The men from the town took the names and went to the village and stole everything from those homes, and then burned down the homes. Good old fashioned street justice. There are numerous stories of cops involved in the black market and bribes, but so are the politicians. It’s just part of life here that most people, missionaries included, seem to adapt to. If you want something done, or done quickly, someone else needs to get paid. To me, such a corrupt bureaucracy seems to make it next to impossible, but back to the story. A quick call to the American Embassy (somewhat of a trump card here) cleared things up quickly and they headed home. The turmoil in Kenya has apparently calmed down, making it possible for them to drive through Nairobi, but the most dangerous part of their trip was not even in Kenya, but only a few kilometres from Kahunda. Apparently they were driving along, around 8 o clock at night, and someone started to open fire at them with a rifle. Andy saw the man standing in the middle of the road shooting, so he stepped on it, drove right at the guy trying to blind him with his brights or run him over and luckily the guy dove for cover into the tall grass. The man only managed to get 5 shots off, one of which hit the front bumper and hit Andy’s winch, but enough to prove their story for the police (who may or may not have been involved). Long story short, they are home, alive, and well.

While they were gone, Vanessa and I got more acquainted with Kahunda. Vanessa is beginning to work miracles with our kerosene oven. Bread, pizza crusts, cinnamon rolls, pancakes, and cookies are all in her cooking repertoire now; we might have to invest in a kerosene oven when we get back. (I threw that semicolon in simply because I miss using semicolons. It is one of the best punctuation marks when used properly). The food situation here is great. We brought tons of meat and produce from Mwanza and the fruit from the village market is heavenly. The bathroom situation is interesting to say the least. Apart from showers heated by a kerosene flame, and flickering white light from our solar powered lights, our toilet also cannot digest toilet paper. So instead of feeding it to the toilet, we feed it to a garbage can, which in turn must be trekked out to the wilderness and thrown into a hole and burned. I suggested drawing straws or playing rock, paper, scissors with Vanessa for this chore, but no luck. The thankless job is mine. P.S. I despise walking out into the jungle-like "bush" surrounding our house. It is beautiful, to be sure, but is filled with lake flies, and spiders, and webs, and vines, and mosquitos. Not to mention the added pleasure of smelling rotting food and, yes, fecal matter.... our fecal matter. But c’est la vie. I keep telling myself I am camping. Which really doesn’t do much to make this place feel better, it only confirms and reconfirms my feelings about camping. Actually though, once living here and for a week at Ikuza (more on that in a moment), camping in Killbear seems like a Five-Star resort.

Ikuza was great. As I mentioned in the previous post, we were thinking of going with Dale Hamilton to Ikuza , a large island with a population of 20,000. AIC (African Inland Church) recently purchased a large clinic that had been started by a Tanzanian businessman who either lost funds or interest, but whatever the case, had given up on it. AIC decided to buy it and has been renovating and restoring it for the better part of 2 years. They have had numerous teams come and chase out the wildlife and revive the place with a semblance of order. It really boggles my mind how quickly nature can take over a building in Africa. Bats had made their homes in the roof, termites in the doorframes and windowsills, Lizards in the ceilings, moths and flies in the windows, and rats and mice in the corners. Not to mention the ants, spiders, and beetles who persistently besiege any and every dwelling here. The clinic plans to open by the beginning of April, so the work was cut out for us. Our job was to paint nine rooms that would eventually become the Lab, pharmacy, wards, etc. We gave them each a coat of prime and than two coats of off-white paint. Next we gave each room a "kick strip" with thick blue oil paint which is easy to clean and hard to get dirty (apparently). However, there was no tape to be found, so we ended up drawing a straight line with a ruler and pencil and slowly going around with a small paintbrush keeping the line straight. Tedious work. Almost as tedious as this story I’m telling.
Anyways, on top of all that, we gave the entire outside of the building a fresh coat of paint, which covered a multitude of sins. While we painted, literally, from sun up to sundown, other people were working on the lights, installing ceilings, building cabinets, etc. Not the work we came here planning to do, but a great way to keep busy for a week while the students in the secondary school wrote their exams.

The reason we worked from sunrise to sunset was because there is really not much else to do in Ikuza, and based on our one foray into the heart of the Ikuzan night life scene, I think many of these people are pretty hard up for entertainment. When the sun goes down there is very little light except where someone has the money for petrol and a generator, but even then, you have to battle the noise of a generator (which most people here do not find a challenge). On Friday night, Dale took Vanessa, myself, and Lucas (one of his Tanzanian workers...a great guy) downtown for a few soda drinks. The first place we went to was a classy establishment with tiled flooring, green lights, and a small television set playing some Swahili version of MTV. Outside the gates about 20 guys hung around trying to watch the TV. Prowling around the entrance were women of "loose" character, trying to catch a fisherman after his long day on the water. Dale shares my fascination for watching people and is a great guy to be a tour guide. Most of the people in Ikuza (and I think many of the islands) know him and he has some type of reputation among many of the locals which makes him the type of person you don’t want to be on the wrong side of. Fine with me. Dale bought us some roasted corn and peanuts from a street vendor and we sat drinking our Cokes and watching people and talking about life on the islands. We hopped around to a few other bars and saw more of the same: people playing pool, people crammed around small television sets with the volume cranked, people selling goods, people selling themselves. An interesting night. Sadly, the plenitude of prostitutes in the islands combined with the peripatetic lifestyles of the fishermen causes this region to be one of the most highly concentrated areas of HIV/AIDS in all of Africa. Chris Hamilton (Dale’s wife) works in the medical field here and is doing a PhD on HIV/AIDS in the region and estimates that almost 80 percent of the island population may be infected. Insane. Four of every five people I met this week may be at risk.

The showers in Ikuza were something else. After a long day of painting, there is nothing like a hot shower. Unfortunately, there was nothing like a hot shower to be had. The "Bafu" or shower room, was the size of a port-o-potty and designed with that concept in mind. The 2 foot by 2 foot room had a concrete floor with a tiny slope towards the back where a small hole had been made to be the drain. A plastic lawn chair had been placed in the tiny room, which when sat on, my knees were already hitting the closed door. When the door was closed, the room was pitch dark, which gave you two options: A) unchange in the dark and try not to mistake your clean shirt for your towel or B) leave the door open a crack and risk having the multitude of children who follow the Muzungus everywhere catch a glimpse of a rare sight, a white ass. I chose option A, and things went well. By each knee is a pail of water and top of the right pail is a pitcher. So you strip down, try to get as many of your clothes to hang onto the nail in the door as possible (the rest of your stuff must be crammed into the little gap between the wall and the ceiling), take a seat on the lawn chair (try not to think of how many other people have used this chair before), and pour a nice, cold pitcherful of water onto yourself (ignoring the tiny hard things that get in your hair, which upon opening the door, you realize are numerous insects who had met their Maker by climbing into the pail). Anyways, one of the more interesting shower experiences I’ve had in my life.

The food in Ikuza was great. Max, the pastor, and his wife Rebekah, made our stay enjoyable. They put on the works for us every night. Mashed plantains, mchicha, pineapple, fried fish, chicken chunks, ugali, rice, rice, and more rice. It really doesn’t seem like much food in relation to what we eat on a normal basis at home, but all this food had to be cooked over a fire and was proablaby prepared about 3 hours before the 20 minutes it took to inhale it. I mentioned ugali, that might need some explaining. Ugali is a staple of many people in this region. It looks like mashed potatoes, but has the texture and the taste of mortar, and I’m convinced could serve the same function. It is a combination of rice flour and water (yes... the same ingredients used to make the glue for paper mache – thanks for nothing Art Attack) and sometimes Cassava. But people here do not eat for the experience of food or taste (so the people here claim), they eat to fill their bellies. If that is the goal, I guess Ugali does the trick. Unfortunately, Ugali has the nutrional value of, well mortar, also and is a large cause of malnutrition in many of the children.
We met some interesting people in Ikuza as well. To help with the work, Dale hired some of the local people from the Church choir to give a hand painting or whatever else. Now I’ve said it before to Vanessa, but I think I would give my Dad about two days of leading any type of work group here before he suffered a minor aneurism. Of course there are great workers here, and most of the people have great attitudes and desires to work, just no ability to see the work and take initiative. Which, when the job they are given runs out, they stand around, make small talk, and wait for their next orders to be yelled at them. My painting partner for Day One was a young guy by the name of Celestine. After setting up our tarp and having Dale explain to us that the key to painting was a clean work area, Celestine decided to lay the paint-stir-stick right onto the clean tarp. So much for that, especially when, cleaning it up, Celestine stepped in the paint and proceeded to put little paint prints wherever he stepped. In frustration, Dale left us to paint, convinced (I’m sure) that the room would be a mess before the day was through. Well about 10 minutes after Dale left, Celestine stepped on the edge of his paint tray, covering his foot, and a large portion of the floor with white paint. The night guard was another one of those characters I’ll never forget, simply because he asked me to give him everything I owned. He didn’t speak English so it made it quite funny when his sign language dawned on me. He would point to something I owned (my Mp3 player, my sandals, my shoes, my pail of paint that wasn’t really mine to begin with) and then he would point to himself. Then I would say No. Our relationship was complicated. I was not sure when, or if, he slept. He was both the night guard and, I think, the Day guard.

But the highlight to the week was getting to fly in Dale’s float plane. He took me Tuesday to drop off his wife in Bumbili and then fly on to Ikuza. When we dropped off his wife Dale showed me how being a missionary pilot can be incredible. He flew low and harassed the local fishermen, dive-bombed and left us weightless for a few seconds, and weaved in and out of islands sing the Top Gun theme into the microphone. He even gave me some free flight lessons and let me fly the plane for part of the way home on our last day. I like to think I was a natural, but seeing how green Vanessa looked in the back and noticing that we seemed to be constantly going side to side, makes me think otherwise. Either way, one boyhood dream of mine to tick off the list.
This week my goal is to begin the construction of the basketball court – specifically the nets. After getting no straight answer from the headmaster and junior headmaster I’ve decided to take things into my own hands and so far that is working great. I’ve managed to get permission from the Director of Health to take down one rim from behind the clinic here, and managed to get another rim delivered from Nairobi. This week I’m ordering some pipe and angle iron from Mwanza and Andy here will do all the welding, so I’m pretty pumped that we may have two real basketball nets by the end of the week.

i have malaria

2008-03-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I don’t have malaria. Neither does Vanessa. Nothing that exciting...yet. But read on. The rest is anticlimax.
Already two weeks have passed in Kahunda and much has happened. Our neighbours, the Andersons, have been gone for almost 5 days now to Kenya, to visit their children at Rift Valley Academy (RVA), a large boarding school where many missionary parents send their children from ages 8 to 18. So no internet for us, hence, no blog updates. I can’t imagine being 8 years old and shipped miles away from my parents to live in a dormitory with 30 boys in a school of over 500 students. I’m sure it would be scary, overwhelming, and quite fun. Maybe like that new show Kid Nation, or that older book, Lord of the Flies. Still, I can’t imagine it. However, the alternative might be harder to imagine: being sent to one of the local Tanzanian schools, such as the Secondary one I’m teaching at, or the Primary one I visited.
Caleb, the Anderson’s youngest child and my new 6 year old friend, invited me last week to sit in on his first grade class. Like his two older siblings, Caleb will go to the local primary school in the mornings and be homeschooled in the afternoons before going off to RVA. Of course what is on the forefront of a 6 year old’s mind and my mind are completely different. When Monday arrived, or was on the verge of arriving, Caleb was up (according to his mom) at 6 AM asking his mom to cook breakfast and get him ready for school because "Doug is coming." Thankfully Margaret is quite in tune with the disparity between a 6 year-olds frame of mind and a 23 year old’s, so she quickly gave me a call, reminding me of my obligations.

As I lay dreaming of non-instant coffee and non-powdered milk (luxuries in Canada...believe me), my peace was interrupted by the phone call of duty. It was 7 AM, still dark, and Monday morning. But, having nothing really pressing to do that morning I walked over to Caleb’s. We picked up his friend Juvenati (unsure of spelling) and proceeded to hike up the hillside to Caleb’s school, which is actually right behind the secondary school I am teaching at. As we neared the school, we passed groups of little boys in tan shorts, white collared shirts (some ripped, some buttonless, most not too white) and zebra striped knee socks and groups of young girls in green knee-length skirts, white collared shirts and the same zebra striped knee-socks. Behind the students were what I believe are 7th grade shepherds. They wield long switches of bamboo and herd the children towards the school. Stragglers are quickly whipped into shape.
Coming from a small school, I was shocked at the amount of children here. There are, Margaret told me later that day, over 1200 students. And the day I came to visit, there were 4 teachers. Given this ratio, the pandemonium that ensued was relatively mild. The day begins with a run. Each class lines up in four rows and begin a jog around the entire property. When they finish, the classes reassume their position in rows and two of the older boys begin to beat out a rhythm on a large drum in the center of this "Parade" (what we would call an assembly at home). The students start to march on the spot to the beat and kick up red dust. The shepherds, known as monitors Caleb informed me, kept students in line (literally) with their switches. After the students sing the Tanzanian anthem (while marching), they march in rows to their respective classrooms.

The whole time this is going on, I assumed my position as objective, distanced, bystander, the unseen seer. Impossible to do when you are only one of two white people in a crowd of 1200. A little aside, I am (and Vanessa will concur) quite sick of being stared at. I am also quite sick of being referred to as Muzungu and then being stared at. It’s enough to make one crazy. On the streets, in the church, and even on our property, we are followed by intense stares. People will stop what they are doing and just stare and stare and stare. At first I ignored it, then I stared back (which usually did the trick), but now I just say Habari? (what’s up?) and go on my way. Now some people may think I now have an inkling of what it feels like to be a minority. Hardly. I find it annoying enough to be segregated and gawked at when my skin colour is associated with something positive (knowledge, wealth, power.... however far any of these may be from the truth of who I am). I can’t begin to fathom what type of person I would become if all these associations were negative (lazy, corrupt, primitive...however far from the truth that may be of who they are). Both can drive one to a complex, whether it’s one of inferiority or superiority depends on circumstance and the prejudice-du-jour, but either can make one into a devil.
But back on topic. Caleb’s class had no teacher that day, so for the first 20 minutes I sat and watched as ninety 6 year olds wrote on the chalkboard, ran around, screamed, shouted, fought, cried, and (a few) made a mad dash for freedom and a day of hooky. The teacher-to-be in me debated with the amused-spectator-that-is in me about whether to stand up and try and impress some form on this chaotic matter, but my role as the mornings Demiurge was quashed by my desire to see how things would transpire. Sure enough, as I kept my guilty silence, the Kindergarten teacher came in and whipped these students into shape in a way I knew, even if I spoke Swahili with her commanding voice, I couldn’t. The students are old-hands at this game, apparently, and the appointed guard of the day had given the boys ample warning that the teacher was coming. She strolled in and started singing the grade one songs of numbers, letters, days of the week, months of the year, etc. Then she started the math lesson of simple addition by getting the students to count out numbers on their home-made abacuses. She put ten questions on the board and then left the class to their work. Surprisingly though, most of the kids sweated over these sums and you could hear "Kumi...Sita....Moja...Nane..." being murmured throughout as the kids did their work. To supervise the student’s work, the teacher sent a group of older girls as monitors. They have red pens to mark and bamboo canes to hit. The hits are not done with mean spiritedness, but to see a girl repeatedly beat over the head with a stick and have her homework thrown onto the ground because she failed to understand why 6 and 3 makes 9 is a bit much. In tears many of the children left the monitor’s desk. The next lesson was reading, which was quite amusing given that the letter they were learning was "R." See my earlier post concerning most Tanzanians inability to differentiate between R’s and L’s and you’ll see why a group of Ninety prepubescent voices chortling out "La, Le, Li, Lo, Lu" from a board reading "Ra, Re, Ri, Ro, Ru" is comical. The humour wore off after about fifteen minutes of this mind-numbing chorus, but that is what rote learning is....and actually, what I think it does.

Caleb picked up on my boredom and realized that his 6 year old games of stealing chalk and running around the room without a teacher were too advanced for me, so he decided to skip out early, which his teachers let him on account, I think, of being white. I have only been to one class and cannot be the voice of the injustice done at Kahunda Primary School, but I bet Caleb is one of the few children not hit by the monitors, and actually, when I was there, the monitor wrote in every answer to his homework. In the long-run this is probably doing him a disservice, but when you are 6, this is VIP treatment. Anyways, it was hot and sticky, and if the colour of my skin was a get out of jail free card, who was I to complain. Caleb’s real education takes place at home in the capable hands of his mother who is a teacher. Some of the other student’s are fortunate enough to have tutors in the afternoon, but this is maybe 2 or 3 students at most. The rest, well the rest get what this Primary School can give them. Numbers and letters by rote, and soon ideas, theories, and solutions, by rote. Understanding, which some, but not all, students attain in their formative years here, is an unnecessary by-product in this system of education that I think, in some ways, eerily reflects what our education systems in the west is becoming. I recall a discussion with one of my Professors at Ottawa saying how students no longer come to his office asking how to research a certain thesis, they ask him what thesis he would most like to read. Code for "what thesis will you be most likely to give an A grade."
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
-- T.S. Eliot.
As much a prophecy as it is a lament I think.

To date, I have run my first two basketball classes somewhat successfully. I think I was a little misinformed as to how Tuesdays, the Sports Days, are run. I came expecting to see the four different forms involved in various drills and exercises, the classes being used to study muscle tension and healthy diets, but what I found was that Tuesday is more of a holiday for the teachers. Most of the students were hanging out in their dormitories or under trees, some were getting a game of volleyball underway, and others were out swimming in the lake. This is probably why the twenty guys I met on the court Tuesday afternoon, suddenly turned into four when I told them we were going to go over some Basketball jargon in the classroom. Fortunately, one of the students (who is now my favourite student) had some pity on me and used his popularity to get about 20 guys into the classroom. (P.S. I will definitely be one of those awful teachers who has favourites, but any teacher who says they don’t is lying or a robot)
I cut "Basketball Theory 101" short, and discarded my ideas of doing a history of basketball altogether (just joking...I have no books or access to anything that would remotely help me do this anyway) and went straight to the practical stuff. Right and left hand dribbling, crossovers in front and behind and through the legs and with spinning, the concept of a pivot foot and what it means to travel, chest and bounce and lob passes, with the three-man-weave to cap off a good afternoon. As a first time basketball instructor I don’t think I can ask for anything more than 20 guys who are quite naturally agile, quick to pick up drills from someone who speaks about 30 words of Swahili, and passionate to work. Well, maybe I could ask for one or two things. Nets might be nice. They were supposed to be here last week, but still no sign of them. I fear if they are not here soon I may have a mutiny on my hands. Also, the court is quite rugged. Get any notion of concrete or asphalt out of your minds. Since I cannot download pictures anymore I will have to rely on words. The court is a bit smaller than standard size, but it is made up of a clay type soil called "Muram" that bad students have wheel-barrowed from some distant field or other. It is reddish-brown and quite clumpy, but the students have tamped it down with boards attached to logs. Once this gets very wet and then dries, it hardens like a brick, but we have not had the right combination of weather yet to work this out. So basically, we are playing on a basketball court-shaped dust field that is rutted, starting to grow weeds and really slippery.

Some people say necessity is the mother of invention, but they rarely tell you that the father is cash and the lack of a mother, literally and metaphorically, is rarely the source of family problems in Tanzania. I can think of a few nice ways to improve this court, but without money not much will happen. I think this is true on a larger level here as well. People see the state of some African countries and say they lack imagination, but I don’t think that’s the case. They have as much imagination as anyone with the imago Dei. What they do lack is money, which may be, in part, to a lack of entrepreneurial imagination, but I think that imagination is like a plant that must be cultivated in a certain socio-political and religio-philosophic climate. An interesting study would be to look at some of the world’s most influential inventions and try to analyse not only the external context, but also the internal beliefs and driving factors that prompt men to invent. Who knows, such a study probably already exists.

Vanessa is busy working with Mary Jane, the South African midwife here. They are doing clinics with children, pregnant mothers, and HIV aids patients. She has a very interesting means of spreading the gospel through her clinic and is a great woman to know here. But for the details Vanessa will write a blog, or at least I’m trying to make her.

Until then, life keeps on going. This week the students are writing mid-term exams, so I will be going to Ikuza, an island somewhere out on Lake Victoria, with Dale Hamilton to help set up a clinic. We will be painting and putting up a ceiling and building cabinets. I’m pretty pumped because I can stay busy for the next few days while the students are writing tests, and I think this may be a chance to get a ride in Dale’s plane.

Kahunda

2008-03-02T04:42:00.000-08:00

Howdy. Vanessa and I have (finally) made it to Kahunda and, now that we are somewhat settled into our third and (hopefully) final home, I have time to update the blog.

We no longer have internet here, however, because the nerds that be have been unable to put the appropriate software and hardware combination together that is also compatible with Windows Vista. Not a big deal; in fact, not buying this card has saved us 300, 000 Tanzanian shillings (about 280 dollars) and is beginning to wean us from our various internet addictions. But if you’re wondering how this blog is being posted without internet, the answer is that we are using our neighbour’s – the Andersons – internet by putting our cell-phone chip into their g-card and paying as we go, much cheaper and easier. So that’s the skinny.

I am convinced there are no words (expletives included) that could describe the “road” to Kahunda. The drive to Kahunda is about 107 kilometres that took just over five hours to complete. We loaded Bob’s jeep with all our earthly possessions and set out by nine in the AM to catch the 9:30 ferry. Again, personal space means nothing to most Tanzanians and the line up to get onto the ferry was a frustrating ten minutes of pushing, jostling, and touching that ignited (not for the first, and most likely not the last) a longing for our Western understanding of what amount of personal space is appropriate. Nevertheless, the Ferry was loaded with a few jeeps and a giant bus which I still have no clue how it made it through those roads. After thirty minutes on the Ferry and taking in the beauty of Lake Victoria with its many islands and its diversity of bird life, we docked and were greeted by a gathering of Maribu Storks. An appropriate bird of death to signal the start of our drive. I would hardly have been surprised to see the words “Abandon Hope all ye who enter” engraved on a sign ushering us into the heart of our Africa experience.

The only thing that marks the road from all that is not road is the amount of vegetation upon said road. Fortunately there is less vegetation (but just barely) on the road, but where there is no vegetation there are rocks pushing up through the road, large ruts from the rivers running through the road and herds of goat and cattle on the road. But the last is only during rush hour. The most exciting parts of the trip though are the hillside streams (either flowing or dry) which create inverted speed bumps that can drop the vehicle one inch or three feet. I think Bob’s “Only the drunks drive straight here” says it best. So white knuckled and slightly bruised we made it to Kahunda in one piece.

The drive into Kahunda was incredible. The village was similar to the thirty or so non-descript villages we drove through that morning – tiny markets, kids in matching school uniforms chasing the jeep or running from it, bikes laden with bananas or pineapples or mangos – but Kahunda is right on the shores of Lake Victoria. The AIC compound in Kahunda (apparently the largest in terms of acreage in all Africa) felt like I was driving onto the set of LOST. After emerging through jungle that has been untouched by human hands since creation, the AIC compound is an oasis of human civilization running for about half a kilometre along the coast. The first home you see, nearest to the Kahunda center of town is Dale Hamilton’s, the AIM pilot. His home is nestled right into the jungle with cacti, vines, and ferns in the back and sandy beach in the front. I won’t describe all the homes, since each is a unique combination of function and form that allow its inhabitants to survive life in the bush with as much comfort as possible. At the end of this string of homes lays the Gilmour home, which Vanessa and I are dwelling in for the next three months.

There are a few things in the house we have to get used to. First, we’ve acquired two dogs (Duke and Dutchess) and one cat (Lily) who is pregnant and ornery and quite annoying. Her incessant meowing and desire to rub up against my shins has already had me hatching plans of ways to keep her out of the house, but with all the little holes in the roof and her cat-like ability to climb... I think my attempts will be futile. As I type this, Vanessa has just locked the cat into one of the bedrooms... and now the cat is dropping into the living room from the attic. What the deuce? The dogs are pretty killer. I’ve decided to gain their allegiance with some free food and a liberal amount of head scratching, but the speed with which they have made two absolute strangers into friends has me more than a little concerned in their ability to discern friend from foe and guard this plot of land. Apart from domestic animals, a plethora of wild animals have also seemed to make their dwelling in the Gilmour house that has been without tenants the better part of a year. There are millions of ants which threaten to take over the kitchen countertop every time we turn around, mosquitos and wall spiders a plenty, and a bat. We didn’t encounter the bat till our second night. Vanessa and I were watching a movie on the couch the bat dive-bombed us and hit the curtains behind our heads. Vanessa bolted for the bathroom and locked herself in...and me out. I grabbed a tennis racket and crouched by the TV anticipating its next move. After about ten useless swings, Vanessa and I took cover in the security of our mosquito netted bed. Fifteen-Love for the Bat.

The waterbed is also something to get used to. The first night we were both somewhat seasick with the motion of the bed combined with the noise of waves about twenty feet from our window. The second night we were so fed up with the musty smell of the Gilmour’s sheets which have been in storage for so long that we decided to air them, not thinking that the duvet directly on the waterbed was a way of insulating us from the cold water in the bed. Both of us woke up around two shivering and numb with the cold. This cannot be Equatorial Africa. The third night, however, was a charm.

Among the other things we are still getting used to is having solar power. All our lights are powered by five large car-type batteries/cells that are actually pretty consistent. The Gilmour’s also have a D/C adapter that puts our battery power into Alternating Current so we can use things like our laptop, the TV, radio, and even hair dryer. Although the two times Vanessa has used the hair dryer, it drained the batteries completely and we were without lights for about two hours. Live and learn. Our shower is heated by a gas heater hung on the wall. The Freezer runs on Kerosene as does the stove (Andy explained the physics of it to me, quite interesting). And we have a group of five Tanzanians who are yard keepers/guards which are hard to get used to.

Margaret (the Margaret from Dar) took Vanessa and I to the Secondary School and the Dispensary to get some concrete details as to the work we will be doing here for the next three months. Unfortunately, trying to get someone in this culture not to equivocate is next to impossible. Something very frustrating that we have both been trying to understand since we’ve been here. Despite the disconnect, Joseph and his assistant Yona hammered out a job description for me that I am very excited to start with. I will be teaching the Form 3 and Form 4 students (equivalent of grades 9/10 and 11/12) English language and literature. I have each class for 120 minutes. 80 minutes of lecture and 40 minutes of debate. Should be fun. I had the chance to sit in on a few of their classes already and I can see that language is going to be a serious hurdle to overcome if I’m going to be effective in teaching. Their midterms are next week and then they have a week of midterm break and I begin, so at least two weeks to develop my curriculum with Yona (the head English teacher) and get a bit of a lesson plan together. Currently I’m reading some drama from Ngugi Wa Thion’go (a Kenyan writer I studied in University) and Guillaume Oyono-Mbia (A Cameroonian writer I’ve just encountered) that we will get to look at near the end of May. Unfortunately the school is quite impoverished. Despite having 350 paying students enrolled (tuition is about 300 dollars per term), the buildings are in disrepair, the dorms which have a 50 student capacity are crammed with almost 90 students, and the library has very few books and almost no duplicates, making a class discussion on a shared reading quite difficult. But I will cross that bridge when I get there. Also, they started making an outdoor basketball court and signed me up to begin the basketball course (first ever in Kahunda history) for about 4 hours a week with some of the Form 3 and Form 4 boys who are interested. With one Basketball though, this may be difficult.

Vanessa met with the Director of Care at the Dispensary, a man named Mikobi (sp?) and tried to get her job description. After showing us around the facilities Vanessa had yet to learn what her role there would be. In fact, he claimed to be so busy and so overworked, but asked how many patients he sees every day, he said, on average there are about 15. If that is overworked, I don’t think he’d last too long in the Canadian system. Mary Jane, the nurse from South Africa, arrived last night with the Hamiltons, and to Vanessa’s relief laid out her plan to take Vanessa under her wing and bring her to the various island clinics and see the work they do there with Maternity and HIV/AIDS.

So this, right now, is our life in the little fishing village of Kahunda. Oh, interesting fact: people love to bathe in this lake and right in front of our home. Vanessa and I set up some chairs on the little ledge overlooking the beach to have some tea, only to have the gorgeous view blocked by a large black buttocks. This has really made our walks down the beach interesting since we are constantly averting our eyes from the men, women, and children, who walk the shores wearing nothing but what God gave them. But hey, if you can’t beat em...

Amazing Grace and A Wretch Like Me

2008-02-24T11:51:00.000-08:00

Habari za asubuhi. Good morning. Today marks our third full week away from home. The Kiswahili language continues to amaze and confound us. The structure jars with what our anglicized ears consider normal. Perhaps the biggest stumbling block we have encountered is the fact that this is a “noun class” language. While English verbs only change according to time (past, present, or future) and the singularity or plurality of the subject, Swahili verbs can change simply by what the noun is – if its a person, an animate or inanimate object, abstract idea, or place, the construction of the verb (and the adjectives on the noun) change.

When I first learned that Swahili was not a gendered language – in this way similar to English and unlike French – I thought this might make Swahili easy to learn. Not true. Instead of only worrying about which adjectives need an “E” to show off their Franco-femininity, Swahili requires you to remember a different set of linguistic rules for eight different classes of Nouns. For instance, the M-Wa class (‘m’ for singular and ‘wa’ for plural) consists of nouns which refer to people or living animals (dead animals are in a different class...the ‘n’ class). So when you use a noun from this class the adjective roots and verb roots will require the appropriate beginning. So a child is “mtoto” and falls into this class. So if I were to say the “mischievous child” I would say “mtoto msembufu” since “sembufu” is the adjective root. If I used another noun the same adjective could be (wasembufu, kisembufu, etc.). Confusing. But now throw a verb into the mix...such as Kupendeza (to love – ku is always the infinitive indicator) and you say Mtoto anapendeza, since “a” is the subject prefix, “na” indicates present tense, and “pendeza” is the verb root. Now I could say “alipendeza” for the past tense, and atapendeza for “future tense” not to mention the perfect and imperfect tenses. Now we are only on the 4th class of nouns and have four different rule systems to think through, but already our brains are drowning in a steaming pot of Swahili alphabet soup. Ok, now I have probably bored everyone out there, but bear with me, no more free Swahili lessons.

Our class has increased by one student this week. Ursula, the new student, is a Swiss-German in her late fifties who has signed onto a three year term to be Director of Care at the large Mwanzan hospital, Bugondo. She is hilarious simply because she is quickly enamoured and overwhelmed by the beauty that is Swahili, and even more quickly fed up with how “illogical dis all is. Ya, now zis is just stupit. Enough of dis already. Ven can ve go home!” Her frequent outbursts of annoyance are understandable since she has to translate all the Swahili into English and then into her native Swiss-German to make sense of it. Not to mention our teacher, Gaudence, possesses an inability – one common among Tanzanians apparently – to differentiate between the letter “R” and the letter “L”. We play and give plaise in church, and pray on the prayglound. A sign on our way to school actually reads “Site cleared for the construction of a new Raboritory” and Steve from CRWRC received a letter asking him to “Correct his Collections”. That alone has four possible meanings.

Jane, the receptionist at the language school, invited us to her church. We accepted to go and planned to meet her at 8 o clock at the Saba Saba market, about a 6 kilometer trip from our place. Bob drove us to the meeting point where Jane was waiting for us, we walked for another 10 minutes through the market and beyond to a small “church” that was more a living room with the couches and the chairs pushed against the wall, bright pink plastic flowers adorned a glass cube of a pulpit thrown into the center of the northern wall. Inside the glass pulpit was an arrangement of grasses and wildflowers. Immediately in front of the pulpit was a little table with a wicker collection basket draped in a doilie (unsure of spelling) (that is a lace-like covering for you non-Dutch readers). From the ceiling hung three large fold out ornaments in bright shiny tin-foil. The walls, near the ceiling, were decorated with pictures ranging from Christ on the cross to a picture of a girl and a cow wading in a rice paddy. Bumper stickers with slogans “God is All” and “Christ is King” are plastered in various places on the walls. The wall behind the pulpit is draped in large silk-looking sheets of purple, white, and pink. That is it. All the Christian kitsch you could handle rammed into one room that was stiflingly hot and scented with the liver and onions odour the human body tends to emit in such temperatures, provided the setting for what would be perhaps the strangest, and most definitely the longest worship service in my life to date.

Once inside, Jane invited us to sit on the couch directly opposite the pulpit. A position that would prove to be quite unfortunate since it was next to impossible to avert the gaze of the preacher, thus impossible to take a doze in the sauna like conditions of this church. Once assembled the church began its worship with a time for open prayer to God. At first there was a bit of mumbling as each member laid their petitions before God, but by the twentieth minute, these prayers had reached a frenzied pitch with women sobbing and wailing, wiping the tears from their eyes. Some of the younger men were pacing to and fro in a spiritual delirium while some of the younger girls rocked back and forth on the sofas. Vanessa and I exchanged looks (yes our eyes were open after about the 5th minute of this not-so-silent prayer) and wondered, not for the last time, how much longer would this go on. Turned out it would go on for almost 25 minutes. Next we sang. The singing was beautiful. The leader would sing out a tune and the congregation would chorus it back. Without books or sheet music they wove together an astonishing diversity of rhythms and voices into a pulsating harmony that transcended differences with its beauty and its truth.

Sunday school was led for the whole congregation by an angry-looking woman of formidable size. She was a preacher (distinguished from pastors... only men are considered pastors apparently) who must have assumed the spirit of Jonathan Edwards somehow, because in her presence I just felt like a sinner in the hands of an angry God. She would yell and scream and whisper and cry; she ran the entire gamut of emotions within this Sunday school message that ran the better part of 45 minutes. Ok, that was obviously the sermon, now what?
I like to think that what followed was some type of religious dance party. Two boys started hammering out beats on the bongo drums which worked the small group into a frenzy. The size of the group made it, unfortunately, hard for Vanessa and I to obtain the anonymity we so desperately sought. But in a 10 X 12 room where you are the only two White skinned people with burnt noses, anonymity was not an option. Now I know Self-knowledge/self-awareness are a vital part of any honest student’s life (I think Dooyeweerd even said “Know thyself” should be written on the doorposts of philosophy). I agree. And I’ll concede I’m pretty stiff even for a white guy. I’m not the first one out on the dance floor and I’m usually the first one off. Now after some awkward clapping and shoe shuffling I thought to myself, “Okay, you’re not doing so bad. If you can maintain this semblance of rhythm for another five minutes, I’m sure this will end and if they don’t give me an A for effort, at least I’ll get some sympathetic nods.” Now Vanessa was not helping me out here too much, in fact, she had a sweet position on my right hand side near the corner. As far as staying anonymous goes, she had me beat. Well, five minutes rolled by. I stopped clapping. Another five and I stopped shuffling my feet. Another five (and all this time the beat is getting faster, the drums are getting louder, and the room is ripe with the salty smell of moist skin) and I even start to stop the natural swaying your body does when it senses a beat. Okay, what time is it? I wondered. By the way, I’m wearing black dress pants and a long sleeved dress shirt, so I’m pretty sure I was contributing to that liver-and-onions aroma wafting into my nostrils. Sour Irony.

The dancing provided a spectacle, I’ll admit, neither of us were bored, despite this lasting the better part of an hour. There was jumping, war-cry-like shrieking, clapping, jazz hands, and intermittent shouts of hallelujah! and Amen! Before the end I was roped in by a woman twice my age shouting something in Swahili that got the members to laugh. “Hapanah, Pole. Asante Hapanah” (Trans. No, Sorry. Thank you, NO!) I tried to say, but was taken into the middle of this Soul train. What to do??? The lawnmower was not appropriate, the worm even less, the twist... well that wouldn’t be so bad, but no. To my relief, my dancing partner saw the deer-in-the-headlights look in my eyes and proceeded to escort me back to the edge of the circle where I could observe from a relatively safe distance.

Now we have been going for over two hours. It’s ten O’clock. I’m hungry, tired, and unbearably sweaty. But now it is time for the real sermon. The Sunday school was for the children (just a note: there were two children present) and this was for the adults. The same women spoke but there was a different translator who raced to match her speed and her fire. She really laid into us and I’ll be honest, when she began her sermon with a blood curdling scream I was pretty freaked out. She proceeded to examine the passage of Christ’s transfiguration, but from what I gathered, her message basically reiterated the story about six times. Plus the time spent by the translator reiterating the same story into English, I think that the whole sermon could have been shaved down by about 10 times. Nevertheless, this was another hour long ordeal. So now it is eleven o’clock. Worship is an endurance sport out here, honestly.

Well I’d love to go on in detailed descriptions about the next hour and a half, but you get the gist of it. There were a few more songs, an offering, a time to meet everyone, and then another time of communal praying. When all was said and done it was around 12:30 and began just after eight. I’ll admit, I felt somewhat inferior to these people who could worship so long without tiring; in fact, the church which neighbours with Steve and Jan (they told us this when we visited them later this afternoon) had been worshipping for about 24 hours in a row. It’s almost cliché now, but the African Church is truly on fire for God.

And then I got to thinking. Despite all my negative interpretations and sceptical evaluations, this service in a stuffy one room home in the impoverished countryside outside Mwanza was the closest to a heavenly experience one can get on this side of glory.

________
When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise,
Then when we first begun.
_________

2008-02-22T20:59:00.000-08:00

road to the language school.

our back gate.

reading in the bonda.

dining room.

Ancient African Wisdom

2008-02-21T06:51:00.000-08:00

...all about me, heaven and earth and all that they contain proclaim that I should love you, and their message never ceases to sound in the ears of all mankind, so that there is no excuse for any not to love you. But what do I love when I love my God? Not material beauty or beauty of a temporal order; not the brilliance of earthly light, so welcom to our eyes; not the sweet melody of harmony and song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these that I love when I love my God. And yet, when I love him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace; but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self, when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space; when it listens to sound that never dies away; when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind; when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating; when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfilment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God.

But what is my God? I put my question to the earth. It answered, "I am not God", and all things on earth declared the same. I asked the sea and the chasms of the deep and the living things that creep in them, but they answered, "We are not your God. Seek what is above us." I spoke to the winds that blow, and the whole air and all that lives in it replied, "Anaximenes is wrong. I am not God." I asked the sky, the sun, the moon, and the stars, but they told me, "Neither are we the God whom you seek." I spoke to all the things that are about me, all that can be admitted by the door of the senses, and I said, "Since you are not my God, tell me about him. Tell me something of my God."

Clear and loud they answered, "God is he who made us." I asked these things questions simply by gazing at these things, and their beauty was all the answer they gave.

Saint Augustine. Confessions. X.ix

I am because YOU are.

2008-02-17T03:44:00.001-08:00

Hello all. Since the last post, much has happened here although time seems to have slowed down. Right now we are staying on the Africa Inland Church (AIC) Compound in the guest house of Bob and Esther Jeffers, a missionary couple who have served in Tanzania for 30 years and are full of interesting stories about life in the wild. Apparently Tanzania has modernized quite a bit even in the last ten years, and at its worst (the late 80s/early 90s) the socialist government of Tanzania had even shut off its borders to trade and it was impossible to buy anything (except locally grown fruits and vegetables) in the stores. Bob and Esther have been incredibly hospitable and have opened their home to us and have shared many of their stories and insights into what we can expect when we get to Kahunda and begin our work.

Now life in Mwanza is interesting. Like Dar there are frequent power outages, but unlike Dar there are also frequent water outages. In fact, in our first six days here we’ve had running water twice, both of which times we managed to nab a cold shower. But when it is about 30 degrees plus every day, two showers in a week is not enough. To drink water here is also an event. First the water has to be boiled for 20 minutes, then run through a triple layered filter system, than shocked with a sterilizing fluid. Because this process takes such a large part of everyone’s day, no one was impressed with me on the first day that the water stopped working when I used a full cooler of the drinking water to flush the toilet. In my defence, they may have been even less impressed if I had not, but live and learn.

The guest house here is nice. We have our own room with a little kitchenette and dining room, shower and bathroom. Small but “gezelic” (spelling?). There are a few downsides to this place though. First, the neighbour’s cows, which seem to be in perpetual labour, are about 20 yards from our window and let out blood curdling moos every 20 minutes. Then there are Bob’s demon-possessed dogs which are right outside our window. Now these would not be so bad if it were not for a homeless man and his Dog who decided to put together a makeshift home of plastic bags and logs right outside our window on the other side of the wall around Bob and Esther’s property. As I type this, these dogs are already going at it. On top of all of this, there is the Muslim call to prayer over the mosque loudspeakers that reverberate off the rocky hillsides and lake water with stunning clarity. The noise is an unbearable cross of Bollywood and Machiavelli.

Ok, but enough whining. Things are looking up. Mwanza, as I said earlier, has a much more provincial feel than Dar Es Salaam and Vanessa and I have felt much more secure in traveling outside of the gated communities of CRWRC and into the city. We walk each morning for our Swahili lessons – a good 20 minute walk into town – with incredible views of Lake Victoria and its many islands and Granite hillsides. (Not to mention the plethora of Birds to see on the way – see pictures.) Despite this being the rainy season, we’ve only had a few brief showers and mostly sun for which we are thankful – especially because the rains can really make the roads quite bad, and in some places inaccessible.

Learning Swahili is fun because there is only Vanessa to laugh at me brutalize words like Nne...pronounced “NN – Nay” (means ‘four’). Our teacher is Mr. Gaudence. Actually it may just be Gaudence, but we’re both still unsure if that’s his real name. It, apparently, means happy, which is fitting for this guy because he laughs a lot, and usually for no apparent reason. We both laugh with him with that “I-have-no-idea-what-is-so-funny” look in our eyes, which just gets him to laugh harder, with his nostrils flared and this almost nervous look in his eyes. I hope to get to the bottom of this soon.

There are many things that are interesting about Swahili, from the little bit we’ve learned to date. First, where English has separate subject and verbs, the Swahili combines them to form a single word and, depending on which of the eight noun classes it is in, will follow a different set of rules for how to make the word. So, par exempla, when we say “It was” we separate the subject “It” from the verb “to be” and change the verb to “was” to indicate a past tense. The Swahili make all of this one word. “Kuwa” is the infinitive form of “to be” and “i” is the Swahili subject form of “it”. In order to make the verb tense past they add “li” as an infix. (Suffixes go after, Prefixes go before, and the Infix goes – you guessed it). So to say “It was” you’d say “Ilikuwa”. This comes in handy in many of the simple dialogues since KUWA, like our “to be,” is the most used verb form in the language.

Another interesting aspect of the Swahili language is the length that formal greetings take place.
Typical conversation:
Person A: Hodi! Hodi! (Knock! Knock!... Can I come in)
Person B: Karibu! (Welcome!)
A: Hujambo? (Jambo = the news or issues, u = subject form of you, H = negative indicator.... So, there is no news or issues with you?)
B: Sijambo. Na Wewe? (Sijambo = yes, there is no new news/concerns with me. Na Wewe = And you?)
A: Sijambo. Mama Hajambo?
B: Hajambo. Na wewe, wtotos hawajambo?
A: Hawajambo. Na wewe...
(now I think this can go on indefinitely, but what they do is ask about the issues or concerns with each other’s mother, brother, sister, grandparent, cousins, nephews, roommates... ad infinitum)
B: Habari za hapa? (loosely translated: How is here? How is your place?)
A: Nzuri Sana. Na Wewe, Habari za huko? (How is there?)

(This proceeds into asking each other how their home is, how their work is, how their morning is..etc. and responses range from Nzuri = good to salama = peacefull with kabisa or sana added to mean “very’ or tu added to mean “just”)

Quite interesting, and, Gaudence says, the reason that many Tanzanians are usually late for meetings and events is that they spend 30 to 40 minutes of their walk to work engaging in these dialogues. But things are changing.

One morning on our way home from class two small girls in matching school uniforms followed behind us, whispering and giggling. Getting the feeling we were being followed, Vaness and I turned around and tried to strike up a conversation with our newly acquired Swahili. “Hujambo?” we tentatively asked. “Sijambo” they giggled, along with a string of bouncing noises we didn’t comprehend. Then in English, “Do you have cents sir? Cents? Money?” Later in the week, we drove with Steve to buy some new laying hens for his place and were swarmed by a group of young boys asking for money. In Swahili, Steve berated them for asking us for money before they had even properly greeted us. The traditional forms of greeting are an important custom of tribal life and reveal the interdependence of social networks that make up the identity of most Tanzanians. A common phrase among the Tanzanians which highlights this is “I am, because you are.” Yet such disregard for custom is becoming the recent trend among the Tanzanian youth and is indicative of a turning away from the importance that community and social networks have played in tribal Tanzanian life and a move towards (what is typically viewed as Western, especially American) form of individualism. Of course, such a division into either/or arguments is an inaccurate simplification; in fact, the money that they are asking for is (if obtained) used to support the individual’s network of friends and extended family.

I can sympathize partially with the youth, especially after living in a culture where you really only greet those on the street you know, and even then a curt nod and simple “hello” does the trick. It’s fast, efficient, and wards off any unwanted small talk. But perhaps this breakdown in communication has become such a normalized part of my world that it no longer is the problem it perhaps once was. In fact, if I think about the recurring topic of discussion concerning the damaging consequences surrounding Internet communication technologies, I wonder if all the worry and concern will be laughable in ten or twenty years time. This isn’t to say that the breakdown isn’t serious. It is in Canada (and the larger West) as it is here in Tanzania.

Both experiences with the begging children brought to my mind a letter written by Julian Barnes in his “Letters to London”. Barnes writes that he remembers how at each Christmas, carollers would come singing down the London streets, stopping door to door in order to spread the Christmas cheer. However, by the late 80’s he noticed a subtle, but important, change in this Christmas ritual. The carollers no longer sang for the sake of singing, but would come to the door, palm extended, waiting to be paid for the goods they were delivering. Carolling had become a business transaction of sorts. Make of Barne’s account what you will, but the turn to capitalism comes at a cost. In “Choruses from the Rock,” T.S. Eliot gets at this when he writes:

When the Stranger says: ‘What is the meaning of this city’?
What will you answer? ‘We all dwell together
To make money from each other’? or ‘This is a community.’

Barnes’ letters were written as a running commentary on what he perceived to be the negative social repercussions that supply side taxation and trickledown economics had had in England. In Barnes’ book, he claims that the rich got richer while the poor got poorer. But is that the case?

I am no economist, but perhaps – as the clichés go – the sacrifice that capitalism makes is a loss, or rupture, in the social fabric into which man was created to live. It places primacy in the individual and self-interest over genuine altruism. When this becomes a structure for a moral code, as is the case with Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, almost anything an individual wishes to do is permissible.

But don’t get me wrong; when the ideas behind socialism and the ideas behind capitalism gain legs, the race is not even a contest.

Here is a fascinating excerpt from an interview Thatcher gave with the magazine, Woman’s Own that begins to explain how what is commonly (at least from the Academics I studied under) believed to be the endemic problems of the Capitalist agenda:

There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no Government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then to look after our neighbour

Unfortunately this is often where Thatcher is most misrepresented, but I think what she means here is that in order to look after our neighbours we first have to make sure we have looked after ourselves; in other words, the best (and only) way that one can truly look after their neighbour is if they are looked after themselves. As far as that goes, it makes sense. Here in Tanzania, according to the stories of missionaries who have been here the better part of 30 years, people feel obligated to look after their neighbours to the point where they will do so even if it means they do not know where the money for their next meal will be. This is the tribal system of social economics: If Joe gets paid Friday and Lucy and Alice know this, they can ask for money and he is obligated to give it to them, even if he knows the likelihood of seeing that money again is nil. If someone in the community is industrious and makes some money, he is perceived to owe his larger community. This is why it is hard to get ahead, because once you do you are quickly taken back down to the common denominator. Also, people simply do not live for tomorrow. They live for today. If they have a debt that must be paid Sunday but their brother asks for money Saturday, they will give the money without hesitation. Now in part this may be a strong application of the passage about looking to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, but one of the many things separating us from the animal and plant kingdoms is the ability to have a savings account.

This whole way of thinking seems to me unfortunate and frustrating to say the least.

Change is slow. Partly because Tanzanians who grow up in Tanzania do not know any other culture and resist change and partly because the few who go to the States, Canada, or Europe to study rarely return. Another part of the problem, I think, is the confusion Western missionaries face in regards to offering solutions. The top-down approach of missions has been abandoned for something more symbiotic, but this shift seems to have created some ambiguity as to where, when, and how someone from the West can make suggestions about another culture’s problems without being patronizing? Even before this can be done, though, a problem has to be identified and labelled as such? Is the problem even a problem, or is it merely an aberration from what we consider normative?

Here is a passage from Cannery Row, a book given to me by a friend before leaving. At first I was a bit annoyed with Steinbeck’s style, by the end I was more than annoyed with his rather dark vision of life that is whitewashed with his turn to the basic relationships that unite people in a community. Despite my cynicism of his overall worldview, I think he takes up the debate I’ve been thinking about the past week (but in the American context) with incredible insight:
“It has always seemed strange to me,” said Doc. “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we that we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”

Is Steinbeck right? Is self-centredness implicit in a system that places a lot of stock in individual production and consumption of goods? Are these two visions mutually exclusive? They may be now, but they weren’t always.

Can things improve? Can we use words such as “better” to compare cultures or must we be trapped in the relativistic vocabulary of “difference” only? Personally I think both need attention, and the problem is not either/or but a question of when. When do we draw a line and say this practice is problematic and here is a possible solution? When do we embrace the difference of another culture and celebrate the diversity of God’s kingdom? In the aforementioned poem by Eliot he goes on to provide an image in which individuals and, by extension, cultures can grow and change. They must, like the Jews under Nehemiah, build with the sword in one hand and the trowel in another - constantly uplifting that which is good while warding off the evil from within and without. But again, this puts us in the categories of Black and White, categories that demand a universal or normative standard. An unsavoury concept to many.

Ok, so that’s a tangent, but one that has flavoured the conversations we have had over the past two weeks. If any readers have thoughts, questions, concerns, or insights, I am all ears. Type away.

Oh, and this Saturday Steve, from CRWRC took Vanessa and I to the Serengeti. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Day Trip to Serengeti National Park.

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Monitor Lizard.

Shade is a hot commodity on the Savannah.

Don't remember the name of this bird, but had an amazing amount of colours on its wings.

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Sick. Eagle was just taking off as we drove up.

Asante Sana.

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Reticulated Giraffes. They run in slow mo. but (according to Dave) they can kill a lion with one well placed kick.

A Dikdik. These tiny Bambi-looking creatures are very rare...and look like a Rump Roast on legs. Bottom of the food chain??

Maybe (definitely) lower than the Dikdik on the food chain is the Maribu stork.

Crikey.

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These lions were lying quite a ways off the main road in some long grass. There were about 6 females and 2 males.

The silver backed Jackal. Supposedly rare, but we saw seven running alongside the main roadway early in the morning.

The Kate Waterbuffalo. Enormous and ornery.

hiphopotamuses.

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The Gold Crested Cranes doing what they do.

Zedbras.

We just happened to look back at this tree alongside the road and noticed a Marshall Eagle sitting right at the top.

An elephant emerging from the Thistle trees.

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Inspecting some animal Dung. Tasted like Zebra.

Tilapia Fish from Lake Victoria.

Stampede of Wildebeests...almost.

The Secretary bird.

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Mama and Baby Baboon.

Shotgun Simba room. SWEEET!

Gerrit, Henry, and Isaac collecting weaver nests (which are incredible). Henry is such a scrooge.

The glorious Western edge of the Serengeti Park.

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Black Storks making their nests.

Granite boulders.

The road up into the hills. (About a 15 minute walk from our place).

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A kingfisher out our window.

An Ibis on the wires. I've suddenly taken an interest in birdwatching since I've been here.

This rock collection was named the Bismark by the Germans. It marks the beginning of the Mwanzan port.

Mom, we were standing right here when you called us the other day.

in mwanza

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skyrocket in flight.

rooster.

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I love these birds.

our home in the A.I.M. compound.

The view from our house of the rocky Mwanzan hillside.

Trip to the Indian ocean.

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The fishing harbour. Vanessa and I walked there from the beach we went to.

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We visited Pastor Charles and his wife one day. They bought this plot of land 5 years ago and it was covered in bush, but they have managed to clear it, build a church, dig a well (although they have no pump yet), build a house, and two other small buildings where they run a school.

one of the tribal homes we visited. Made for uber short people.

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The View of Dar es Salaam from our rooftop.

Margaret and Doug looking into the Indian Ocean.

Welcome to Tanzania

2008-02-10T00:33:00.000-08:00

Jambo Mazungus. As you can see, my Swahili vocabulary has already more than doubled. Translation: Hello Whites (what the locals often say to us, not very PC, but fortunately the PC movement has not reached this country yet). Tomorrow will start the beginning of our official Swahili language training here in Mwanza, so expect some more Swahili jargon in future blogs. But I’m already getting ahead of myself, since our journey from Dar to Mwanza needs some transcription.

Well if you have been following the news regarding Tanzania back home you may have heard that there was a corruption scandal in the upper echelons of Tanzanian government. A story many African countries are finding to be annoyingly redundant. In any case, the Prime Minister tendered his resignation and provided some news fodder for the media, pubs, and dinner tables across the country. Our dinner conversation was no exception. That night, the Italian owner of our hostel was throwing a dinner party for members of some local NGO’s on the rooftop/terrace and the conversation soon turned over to the day’s proceedings. The group consisted of a couple from the Netherlands, a priest from Italy and a handful of other Italians, and an elderly man from the UK. The conversation was not heated – perhaps because there were no actual Tanzanians present – in fact, the tone ranged from good-natured joviality to some light cynicism. In short, each one in a different way seemed to suggest that such a scandal was not surprising, to some it seemed almost inevitable. What struck me most though was the disconnect most of these Europeans felt from a country that, to some of them, has become their home. “Here comes another Kenya,” suggested the Dutch man nonchalantly. “No, that will never happen here,” said the Italian priest. “Well, at least the Kenyan situation will improve Tanzania’s tourist industry” laughed our host. So far the priest has been right. Let’s hope it stays that way.

The following night was already our last in Dar and was spent at Margaret’s. She prepared us a traditional African meal of rice, chapattis, beans cooked in coconut milk, cabbage and carrots, and some mangos and bananas for desert. Now Margaret has a peculiar habit of making a noise to show she is not happy with something. It goes like this.

Driving down the road and someone is blocking traffic: “Aww, these drivers are just...Dzzzzzz”
Noticing the days humidity: “Oh this sun is just so hot. I always sweat...Dzzzzzz”
Talking about the recent turmoil in Kenya: “Yes, my home needs a lot of the blood of Christ. The people there are just...Dzzzzzz”

To me making the noise of a mosquito to articulate that which is (apparently) incommunicable is a quirky trait limited (at least in my experience) to Margaret. But I’m trying to expand it: “Vanessa, I like the chappatis...but honestly, the cabbage and carrots...Dzzzzzz.” “Romney dropped out of the race and its looking like a McCain victory...Dzzzz” Ok, maybe this won’t catch on, but I’m passing the torch on to you blog readers.

So where was I... oh yes, Margaret’s. As the dinner was being prepared she took us on to her rooftop balcony which overlooked her garden and the CRWRC offices and suddenly it got dark. Now the sun had already set for quite a while, but this darkness was the darkness of Algonquin Park at night – no electrical light. It is somewhat disconcerting to see an entire city (not to mention the capital city of a country) lose its power. This again brought up the current political situation since the corruption of the Prime Minister had been that he had siphoned the funds which were to go to stabilizing the countries electrical power into a separate account for him and his friends. “Well,” Margaret said as we ate dinner around a candle, “Welcome to Tanzania.”

The next morning we left for Mwanza around six in the morning. I was somewhat tired and completely cranky (I’ve never been nor will be one who gets up before the sun does) and when a lady at the airport asked to carry my bags to the line-up (a grand total of 20 yards) I (perhaps not-so-politely) refused. I can understand if my tone was lost in translation (and I honestly hope it was) but I didn’t think the message was. No means no means no. It’s universal right? Well she took our bags for us and stood in line and I looked at Vanessa and said, “Is she expecting money?” Well, turns out she was. As our bags proceeded through the check in and out the door and onto the plane, she approached us. Perhaps it was the early morning or the fact that deep down in our Dutch DNA we are wired to be cheap/frugal (poe-tay-toe, poe-taw-toe), but we persisted to resist as she persisted to persist. The game was on. It probably lasted less than two minutes, but for what felt like, at least two and a half minutes, I was locked in a battle. I’ll admit, there was a point – around the minute mark – where I almost caved in. I wondered, I’m refusing to give 30 000 shillings (the equivalent of three dollars). Do I really want to be this guy? But I held to my principles and she left, to both our dismays out the door where our luggage had gone. So Vanessa and I, weary from this tournament of willpowers, headed onto our plane without (or so we expected with good cause) our luggage.

The plane ride was a short one but we had two little Indian boys who decided to make it nice and long. The first boy was sick and proceeded to cry (and by cry I mean scream and gasp at the top of his lungs) for the first 30 minutes. When he finally stopped his brother (as if tag-teamed) decided that now it was time to turn around and bug the passengers behind him, which turned out to be us. First he played some hide and seek or peek-a-boo with Vanessa and started laughing. Somewhat `cute` I guess. Then he tried to imitate everything we were doing. Vanessa stuck out her tongue, he stuck out his tongue, Vanessa blinked, he blinked, Vanessa winked, he blinked (he couldn`t wink. Also somewhat `cute` I guess. Then, thinking this was perhaps an amusing way to pass the time, I thought...hmm I`ll join in. So I whistled a little tune, and he... well he couldn`t whistle, but he tried. And pinching his lips together, blowing as hard as he could, spit all into my face. But that`s not the end. Trying to save face, I wiped my face, hid my annoyance, stopped the whistle game and snapped my fingers. Maybe he could do that. Well he couldn`t. And instead of snapping he decided that he wanted to punch me. So he started swinging his little fists at my hands (oh, and I should mention that Vanessa is faking to sleep this whole time so she can remain safely out of this). Well it got ugly, I tried to ignore him and read some Steinbeck...which he swiped out of my hands every time I tried to take in a word. Alright `Stop`I finally said in as much annoyance as is polite on a plane and his mother, finally getting the gist that her son was a scorpion child, intervened and relieved me. I`d like to say that was the end of this boys exploits, but to put the exclamation point on this trip from Hades, the little boy decided to puke as the plane landed, but not only puke on the floor, he saved some for my shoes as well. Well that day was... Dzzzzz.

At the airport we were picked up by Steve and two of his three boys. The city of Mwanza has a much more provincial feel and is beautifully nestled in the granite mountains on the coast of Lake Victoria. Steve lives on an acre (or so) lot on one of the hillsides with a beautiful home and array of chickens, goats, and dogs. When we arrived at his place he informed us that today he was going to slaughter two roosters and eat one for dinner, but first we have to catch them. Now I`m thinking, this could be fun and maybe a good way to prove myself...break the ice, whatever. How hard can it be to catch a rooster? Plan A, corner the chicken along the walls and pick up the huddled chicken. No sooner are we within five yards of the surrounded rooster than he makes a bolt for the gap between me and Max (an English teacher at the local school from the UK). As I pondered if now was my chance to make a dive for the chickens legs and risk becoming the hero or looking like an idiot, the chicken was already well past me and onto another part of the lawn. We made eight or nine valiant efforts at Plan A, but when the chicken finally decided not to run past all of us, it then decided to fly up and over the wall, not without taking a few victory struts and clucks at us below. I`ll be honest, this chicken was putting up a huge fight, but with what was at steak, I hardly blame him. Plan B involved each of us having long pieces of bamboo in order to make our human wall a little more impenetrable. Steve also gave us licence to kill since that was the fate of the chicken anyways. With this new strategy we walked around the wall and onto the street where the chicken (who by now must be on the verge of a heart attack) sat pecking away at the roadside grass. Well as soon as this chicken caught sight of us it made for the protection of a large thistle hedge surrounding one of the neighbours walls. Now I`m not an animal expert, but just based on the size of the chicken`s head, his brain cannot be that large. Yet believe it or not, this chicken refused to cluck as it lay hidden in the thistles while we poked and jabbed through it with our bamboo shoots. After almost thirty minutes of this, Steve decided to call it a day, but with one last jab by Max, the chicken jumped from the thistles and made a dash for the roadside and started to head up the mountain. The hunt was on. By now a large crowd of the locals were gathering on the surrounding hillsides to watch three crazy muzungus chasing one rooster around and I realized we must have looked quite ridiculous. Nevertheless, the chicken, who probably thought he was miles away from home, deciding to bid us farewell and jump the closest wall he could find and be forever rid of us. Unfortunately for the chicken (fortunately for us), we had only been running around the wall of Steve`s property and the chicken had jumped right back into the yard. Now to make a long story shorter, Steve`s wife, while we had given up for the moment and were taking a drink, went out to the yard and managed to corner the rooster in a clump of banana trees and catch it. Of course, we had tired it out. That night the chicken we ate was probably the freshest chicken I will ever eat. I can just see Steve hanging it up on the tree upside down, cutting off the head, and as the blood dripped onto the earth and over the closed eyes of the severed chicken head (so at peace now) Steve looked up at Vanessa and I and said, ``Welcome to Tanzania``

That afternoon we went for a drive of the surrounding hillside. Up and down the mountains with breathtaking views of Lake Victoria and her many islands, we saw old German fortresses, Sikh and Buddhist temples, Islamic Mosques and Catholic churches. We saw garbage dumps being picked through by large white storks, and an array of Kites and Mice bird crossing our paths. At the top of one hill we decided to get out of the jeep and get some air, but were confronted by a little boy of eight or nine, who had been running after the jeep. The boy asked for money from Steve, than Vanessa, than myself. Steve offered him 2000 shillings, but he said he needed 5000. He was wearing trackpants that were about 3 inches too short and an old and dirty osh kosh shirt I couldn`t help but wonder if it had not been a product of some red cross donations years ago since it was also quite small. There was obviously more than money on this boys mind, in fact, he looked downright scared. His pleas for money soon became nervous sobs and he sniffed and cried and jumped onto his heels, almost shaking with the urgency for money. Steve tried to console the boy, but finally told us to get back in the car and we headed home. As we drove away Steve told us that the boy was sent there every day by his parents to beg. They did not send him to school, but forced him to bring home a certain amount every day or he gets beaten. Most likely, even with the amount he will get beaten. And I`ll admit it broke my heart that we had driven away without giving him the 5000 shillings. That is five dollars. Most of us work less than 30 minutes for that at home. That was the first time I`ve ever encountered anything like that, and I`m sure in the next few months it won`t be the last. Welcome to Tanzania.

Jambo

2008-02-08T11:10:00.000-08:00

Karibu (welcome). Greetings family, friends, and others to our blog, Vanessa and I hope to keep this site up to date Lord and Internet willing. This whole week we have spent in a hostel owned by an Italian Catholic organization called CEFA in downtown Dar-es-Salaam (capital of Tanzania) and have had a somewhat stable wireless connection in the main lobby, but once we leave the city on Saturday morning and head to Mwanza, the situation might be different. But until then... let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

I won’t bore you with a lengthy anecdote of the flight, it was actually a quite uneventful 24 hours with only one minor outburst from a disgruntled Kenyan, who our Tanzanian seat partner claimed (repeatedly) was crazy or drunk, as he (our Tanzanian seat partner) downed what had to be his 12th Heineken. Either way, if you’ve traveled on a plane before it is basically – landing and take off excluded – a glorified bus with wings. Not to deny flying is not a thrill. Flying at 900 (or more) km/hour, in – 50 (or less) degrees Celsius at 10 kilometres above the earth’s surface while eating a steaming hot three course meal in front of your choice of television shows, movies and video games with the odd window check to see if the Sahara is still sandy – yep, it is – is hard for one to wrap their head around. This is modern travel. Dr. Livingstone would roll in his grave. I presume.

But we made it. Coming into the Tanzanian airport was overwhelming on the senses. We immediately felt the stickiness of the equatorial humidex and each cruel degree of the 30 plus Celsius reminding me that my body – only a few days prior working outdoors in – 10 - was in no way ready for this. I heard what in my anglicized ears was the gibberish of a non Romantic language. (Interesting aside – I’ve heard that the word Barbarian originated out of such auditory confusion when early Romans claimed that the tribes outside the Empire, those tribes who communicated by saying “Bar-Bar”, were barbaric. This also may be a myth, but interesting nonetheless.) The smell was a mix of hot asphalt, body odour, smoke, summer days, and custom line-ups. The taste was...well that wasn’t Tanzania really, just 24 hours of airplane meals and HALLS. And the sights...well, the sights are a confusing pastiche of conflicting images.

Our first sights of Dar es Salaam were in the Dark, which helped to enhance our other senses in making sense of this city. However, the next morning we woke up and realized that the sun had illuminated an Edenic world that we, literally over the course of a day, had been placed in. I should state that the aforementioned hostel we are staying in has an incredible view of the city – from the rooftop you can see the tropical vegetation that consumes the hillsides which protect the city to the West, the coastlines which flank the City to the North and South, and the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean to the East which is specked with tiny islands, ocean barges and fishing boats. The city itself is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before . Unlike the current trend of strip-mallifying our expanding urban spaces with Box stores, Dar es Salaam seems to be a city that does not clear away the vegetation but grows in concert with it. Yes, I’m aware how cliché and naive and patronizing (yada yada yada) such edenic/primitive portraits of the third world can be, but as I stood on the roof late one hazy afternoon and I swept over the country with a panoramic gaze, I was struck that this cityscape was not dominated or overtaken by high-rise buildings, but by palm, ashtaka, coconut, mango, banana, and tamarind trees. (see picture) Not to say there are no high rises, nor to say that the Tanzanians do not want to do without more high-rises, in fact, as the country begins to shake off the chains of 35 years of self-destructive socialism and begins to adapt to a free market system, it will be interesting to see how the country and city begin to change.

According to Margaret, things will get much better, although there are parts of the socialist legacy that have been positive. For one, they created a spirit of unity among Tanzanians that celebrated the diversity of the tribes (an unbelievable 142 tribes exist in the country) while establishing a unity in being ‘Tanzanian’. Secondly, the socialist government took control of the countries natural resources and avoided the violent tribal warfare over such riches that has ravaged countries like Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast.

I should explain that our unofficial tour guide for the week has been Margaret Njugu from CRWRC. She is a Kenyan lady who studied at Calvin and became involved with the CRWRC in Nairobi and has moved with the organization into Mwanza and then into Dar where she is now. There is much more to her story than what she has given us, but from what we know she is quite a courageous and strong woman. (As I prepare to publish this blog we have just returned from a very interesting dinner in her home, but more in a future blog).

There is more to tell than I have time to get into this blog. We went to the Tanzanian national museum where they have houses and artefacts from some of the many tribes. Each tribe that is represented comes to the museum and builds a house from their native materials and you can go through each one. My personal favourite was the Masai home, built low to the ground and covered in Dung. The Masai tribesmen are everywhere in the city and are hired as body/security guards and their wives sell herbal medicines at the roadside. They have completely refused to adopt to contemporary life and walk the city in bright red and deep purple robes, with large swords hidden in their waste bands. Frame of reference: they are the Tanzanian Amish.

Alright, we fly out tomorrow morning at 6 am for Lake Victoria. There is much more to talk about concerning this week and I am already unbelievably behind on the blog. I will try to post blogs alongside pictures to avoid this becoming a glorified photo album, but that is all for now. Till then, keep us in your prayers as we continue to keep you in ours.
Doug and Vanessa Sikkema

p.s. (re: Blog title: The Sukumas are the most dominant tribe in Tanzania and live mainly in the Lake Victoria region we will be heading to tomorrow).