Yeah, let's go to Tanzania!

Home again, home again

2006-01-22T05:57:00.000-08:00

1. Got into JFK 11:30 Friday night after a 2-hour delay in London due to a smoldering oven in one of the galleys. My mom, waiting for me outside of Customs, was all squinting at me as I walked out. I forget that the hair is something new. In any case, I've been at my parents' house in Baltimore since 5 am Saturday and it's not as weird as I thought it would be. I think partly because I'm still in jetlag fogland and home is home is home, and also at this point I'm used to leaving their house for long periods of time and whatnot. I figure being in Gainesville will feel much stranger. In any case, yesterday was just about perfect. Got up, went to the lab to have bloodwork done (make sure I don't have malaria again or whatever), went to Sam's Pinewood Derby, went to Target with John and Liz (Liz and I got matching track jackets from the children's section because we fit the large/extra-large sizes, mwahaha), came home and sorted through clothes, Antonia came over, bought my first bottle of wine in the US for dinner (which was delicious, pasta and crab cake and GREEN BEANS and RAW SPINACH salad), visited Antonia's parents, came home and fell asleep on the couch with my mom. Ahh today we are having a big family breakfast and then the packing must begin in earnest. David also comes today! Which is crazy. And at some point we're going to have Christmas/my birthday, which will be nice. Tomorrow I have a 9:15 dentist appointment and then we're basically heading straight for Florida so I can start classes Tuesday or Wednesday. Wish I could stay in Baltimore for the week or something but I've already missed 10 days of classes at UF.
2. So that law I wrote about in the last post...turned out it was a rumor going around Dar Es Salaam, probably sparked by a radio talk show during which a Muslim civic leader suggested such a law. However, before I left I heard about 2 separate incidents in which women wearing pants were beaten in the street. Leila saw it happen near her father's house, and Ali only heard about it but he called it on it being just a rumor so I'm going to go ahead and figure his source is good. Either way, it just shows that there are people in Tanzania who would be perfectly supportive of a law like that. Assholes!

Utter nonsense!

2006-01-18T00:38:00.000-08:00

So just a real quick note about how Tanzania's president, Kikwete, has gone nuts. According to Carol and Leila, he has drafted a dress code bill that prohibit women from wearing pants and men from having braids, dreadlocks or earrings. I've been checking the English newspapers and online wire services but striking out which is kind of weird. It goes to vote on January 28. Our Tanzanian friends think it's going to pass. It's not like Kikwete has anything to fear--he won over 80% of the votes. None of the other parties have even the slightest chance. (The lone female candidate received .17%.) If passed THIS WOULD BE A NATIONAL LAW.
- There are middle-aged guys in the English class who are just now receiving the closest thing to formal education they'll ever get. When we learned the words for breakfast, lunch and dinner last week, a lot of their homework sentences the next day were about not being able to afford one or another of those meals because they didn't have enough money.
- Way more than half of their GNP is generated by an underequipped, undereducated agricultural sector with only scattered access to social services and basic infrastructure.
- Inter-city busses don't run after 9 pm because of highway bandits; robbers armed with machetes run around on UDSM campus.
- The HIV/AIDS infection rate is still on the rise (UDSM's rate is actually higher than the national average) and ravaging what should be the most productive age-range of the population.
- The short rains season that is now coming to a close has been crap so even though most of their food supply is donated Tanzania could be in danger of food shortages if the monsoons don't come this spring because irrigation is pretty much nonexistent.
- The tiny percentage of students who do make it to university find, at least at UDSM, not enough housing or books, underpaid and largely uncommitted professors, and burdensome curricula further weighed down by a ridiculous obsession with the English language.
- Female genital mutilation is still widely practiced throughout most of the country.
- Many children are working or begging instead of going to school; some of them are housegirls, teenaged domestic laborers who earn less than $10 a month and, since many of them live with their employers because their own families can't afford to keep them, often must cope with physical and sexual abuse.

My point being, there are plenty of actual problems that Tanzania's government needs to address rather than spouting this puritanical bullshit. Leila says that if it passes people will strike, but I have this terrible feeling that the Tanzanian women will just take it. It's not like they can count on all the men to support them. Leila told me yesterday that at a barbecue this weekend some of the guys were all "Hey you better enjoy wearing those jeans while you can, you're not gonna have much longer, we'd better not see that in a few days."

In other Kikwete-is-an-asshole news, 5 people have been killed since Dar Es Salaam received shoot-to-kill orders this past weekend. It's supposed to target armed robbers and apparently they're generally well-known so innocent civilians have nothing to fear. I guess a bullet is a more humane way to go than the shower of gasoline and a lit match that unlucky petty thieves get from their fellow Tanzanians. Good thing that the University hosted that 2-day Walter Rodney conference yesterday so that various African intellectuals could sit around and get pumped up about helping ordinary people.

More on shoot-to-kill: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4621356.stm
More on Kikwete's approach to "lawlessness" in Tanzania: http://www.nationmedia.com/eastafrican/current/Opinion/opinion160120061.htm

They all said it couldn't be done...

2006-01-12T05:35:00.000-08:00

But I have indeed managed to purchase more than 20 Zanzibar scarves in the past 4 hours I've been in Stonetown. In the meantime, I also checked myself into a hotel (dorm-style room for $10, meaning I'm sleeping with some randos tonight so hopefully they will be either nice or irrelevant), made sure the ferry ticket I didn't use on Tuesday would be good for going back tomorrow (it wil!), had a leisurely lunch, got my friend a t-shirt at the restaurant named after Freddie Mercury (he was born here and lived here until his family moved to India; name at birth: Farookh Bulsara) and stood around sneezing in the junk room of a curio shop while Tonje and Kine, whom I met up with yesterday, picked up and put back down everything in the store. Taking a break at the internet cafe now because I'm sunburned (for only the second time since I've gone to the beach near the equator, a record to be proud of I feel) and all the colors were starting to swim before my eyes. Man when I was here in September scarf prices were much more negotiable but the ladies have collectivized or something because you can't get it below 3000/= ($2.70) to save your life. I walked away, came back, made a scene, flirted with the old Muslim ladies, used ridiculously outdated bargaining lingo, all the tricks I have up my little sleeves and to no avail. I mean, they're still the most beautiful things in the world for less than $3 and it's actually pretty awesome that they've gotten it together to keep themselves from getting screwed, but after 5 months of bargaining I really like getting shit for dirt-cheap.
I got to Zanzibar yesterday by plane, which was neat. On Monday I bought a resident-price ferry ticket (12,000/= as opposed to 40,000/=!) for Tuesday morning, but then I ended up having to stay in Dar until Wednesday. Got up 5 am on Wednesday, taxi driver is there at 5:45 like he said he would be, all is fine and dandy...then we get down to the pier where I discover that my ferry line isn't running because it's by Pakistani Muslims and it's Idd al-Fattr. There was one boat going but it was sold out and the scalper wanted 45,000/=. The plane ticket, tax included, was 36,000/=, so even with the taxi up to the airport it was 1,000/= cheaper than the stupid ferry. (I chose to ignore the money I dropped on the taxi downtown because I pretty certain I would puke on the boat but didn't want to admit that so financial justification was necessary). Either way, I really enjoyed the plane ride. It was one of those tiny planes, I think there were thirteen passengers plus the pilot, who sounded South African. I wanted to sit up front with him but this asshole beat me to it.
I say asshole for several reasons. First of all, he was a middle-aged man smoking menthol cigarettes. Not ok, and I think most people would agree with me. Then he said "No, definitely not" all snotty-like when I asked him if he had a travel guide I could use to find the beach where I met my friends. He and his friend were wazungu wearing khaki shorts and baseball caps with snazzy little fannypack situations happening, what was I supposed to think? Ha and then when I was haggling for a taxi at the airport in Zanzibar I noticed them getting picked up by a tour company. Bastards! Third of all, the wazungu need to start refusing to be ashamed of using guidebooks. Sometimes they suck but they're also the cheapest and easiest way to get fairly reliable maps of remote places and sometimes they have really good tips about scams and whatnot. Finally, he all hopped over to the pilot and kissed some ass for shotgun before I had a chance to.
In any case, there are all these tiny little dots of islands off Tanzania's coast that from the air look like someone dumped a shit-ton of mango trees on a rusting key--the shelf of land submerged in shallow water around the edge of the island looks is the color of oxidized metal because the Indian Ocean is so blue-green. We were low enough that you could actually see how the islands are round underneath like little bowls. It was also cool to see Dar itself from the air. Even the slums were quite beautiful from the air, which is kind of sick. The 6 high-rises in Dar all clumped together in the Indian district were hilarious. And it was really nice to have gotten there in 20 minutes at 8 am instead of 10 or 11, because then it didn't matter when the minivan broke down on the way Jambiani, the beach down on the southeast coast where I met Tonje and Kine. Although I have to say that it was one ofthe more pleasant breakdowns I've had in Tanzania. Even outside of the plentiful shade it wasn't 900 degrees, and lots of ripe mangoes were just laying around. One of the Tanzanian guys in the van sliced one up and offered it around; it was delicious, just the right hint of pine or whatever that sharpness is about really great mangoes. There was an Italian couple and a white South African couple in the minivan too, and they must have read in the guidebook not to ever eat unwashed fruit or whatever because they were foolish enough to pass up the mango.
Got to Jambiani where I found Tonje and Kine at the Rising Sun, the cheapest hotel in the village at 10,000/= per person per night. It was right on the beach and everything was clean with ceiling fans in the room so you can't beat it. I was pretty beat so I'd planned on just passing out in some shade for the rest of the day but then Kine was going snorkeling so I figured I'd go, since when I'd gone my last time in Zanzibar I'd sworn that I'd go again. Another Norweigan (Tonje and Kine are both from Norway, as are lots of the wazungu in Tanzania since they have a fairly intense donor relationship and then there's the socialist connection) whose name I'm not going to even attempt to spell also went. He was very nice, and good company on the long-ass boat trip out to the coral reef. I'd never seen anything like the boat we took. The body itself was like a really deep, narrow canoe, and then there were four huge booms mounted in a square on top of the hull that the "captain" used to lounge on. One more mast at the fore with one huge sail made out of nylon sacks sewn together that was attached to one corner or the other of the square depending on the direction of the wind. The design was pretty much ingenious. I need to make a diagram or something. The only bad thing was there wasn't much shade and like an ass I was wearing a tank top and no sunblock--hence the sunburn. Plus the snorkeling itself wasn't that great, although there were all kinds of starfish, different shapes and colors and whatnot, and a few different kinds of fish that I hadn't seen when I went off the coast of Changuu. By the time we were done I was starving because I'd only had that slice of mango in the 7 or 8 hours I'd been up, but on the trip back the wind was in our favor so we got back for a lunch of nasty nasty tomato sandwich (the bread was sweet or something, and there was no cheese which would have been gross too but I was in the mood for it) and French fries. Took a shower, passed out for a couple of blissful hours, played a few games of bao with one of the guys who took us snorkeling. There was this hilariously smart-assy 12 year old kid hanging out with us who must have been his cousin or something and it was fun until he started telling me how he loved me and this and that, and why can't I do this and that even though I have a boyfriend. The conversation with guys at the beach always comes to that, and of course it's in Swahili so I don't have all the comebacks I need. MEHHH. Then dinner was delicious, went to bed early, woke up in the middle of the night to take a cold shower, and got back to Stonetown this morning, which commenced the scarf-buying.

To change topics completely--the rest of our time in Addis was marvelous. Only two things I would need to bring with me if I wanted to live there: a humidifier, because by the middle of the week my lips were cracking something serious; and David, because I don't think I can do the long-term, long-distance thing again. Like, ever. (Although once we're in the same town again he probably won't send me delightful mix tapes and zines and fun things from Target like glitter pens and whatnot.) At this point we have been together 13 months and 7 of those we have spent living in separate states if not separate countries/continents. But there are pastries and great shopping (gorgeous jewelry and textiles and whatnot, plus lots of good Western-style clothes--I got some really great silver Mary Jane sneakers and you could get Seven jeans for Birr200, which is something like $26, as opposed to $100+ or whatever they are in the US, Lisa help me out here with your area of expertise) and great Italian food and our hotel and all the people who worked there were great and, yeah. Just everything was great.
I really enjoyed traveling with Nikki and Tanisha. Not just because they're just smart and interesting and assertive and sensible, good qualities to have in travel companions, but also because we're all friends with Camille so we all wanted to take things easy after we got the news of her passing. And in some ways it was easier not to travel with any men. Tanisha and Nikki didn't act like I was being weird or paranoid when I was brisk with strangers or didn't want to go certain places, although I felt more comfortable walking around Addis at night than I do in Dar or Baltimore or even Gainesville. Ha and it definitely beat UDSM's campus--not only have there been a few student rapes this semester, but in the past month foreign students have been robbed at machete-point three times while walking back from UDASA. They really need to get some guards or streetlights or something over there. The campus police were of course useless--Kevin didn't even bother to go. One group of people who went to report being robbed were just laughed out of the police station. It was the first place I've gone that I was really sad to leave, and not only because I didn't want to be back in Dar.
In any case, I have a little book that I carry around with me where I've been taking notes. I will write more about Kilwa and Addis and everything else that has happened since I basically stopped keeping this up, but I just haven't been in the mood lately. Besides Camille, a lot of other things have been hectic too and the next week is my last so I figure I'll just wait until all of my friends in Gainesville are sick of hearing about it to spend hours and hours writing everything down. Ahh and the internet will be so fast, I'll get to put up so many pictures. In the words of my friend Ali, "It will be bomba!" (See and that just isn't as funny as when he says it with his wondeful accent, but in any case bomba = awesome).
So yeah, I get on a plane to London in 8 days. Wildness. I just hope that it's a good one so I don't leave with shitty feelings towards Dar Es Salaam, but I don't know. Tomorrow I'll head back to Dar early in the morning so I can straighten out a mishap with my final exam schedule (hopefully people will be in their offices, because that was the main obstacle before I left for Zanzibar). Perhaps at some point the water will come back on; I haven't been able to wash clothes since December 29 and probably haven't put on a truly clean shirt since Saturday; I don't know what I'm going to do about going out for fancy dinner with Alicia and her dad and some other people tonight because I don't think noticeable sweaty-person smells are up to dress code. Then I have exams Saturday, Monday and Wednesday, and in between there will be chemistry homework due to a UF professor via email on Tuesday the 17th, lots of last-minute shopping (I need to ask Njudi, one of the guys in the English class, to carve me a little wildebeest), final visits with friends (pilau with Robie on Sunday, I can't wait!) and my last 5 English classes with the guys. Ah and the packing! Miserable business! I think I'll have to mail some stuff back instead of trying to cram it under the weight limit; for instance Choc-kits, my favorite cookies here, and other light stuff I can do without for a while like my Little Mermaid sheets. If only I wanted to ship literature for the blind, then it would be free!
And then when I get back to the US I'll have to just pack some more, although my mom and sister have been nice enough to start organizing my shit at my parents' house in Baltimore. My clothes are going to be the biggest problem, from a sheerly volume-related point of view. From an email Liz just sent me: "you have about 6 tubs worth of stuff.... no, seriously. how many times have you bought a shirt from goodwill and then cut the sleeves off? about a million." This is true. But after having 7 - 10 shirts at my disposal for the past 5 months, I should be able to handle paring down the t-shirt collection.

Camille

2006-01-01T07:24:00.000-08:00

Called Dar today, Camille passed away yesterday when her parents took her off life support. I feel weird announcing this on here but I figured since I mentioned she was in the hospital. Her poor parents...Camille is their only child. None of this makes any goddamn sense. In any case, we might go back to Dar early, we haven't decided. I don't really want to but for purely selfish reasons so we'll see.

I'm in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

2005-12-31T22:49:00.000-08:00

So I hope everyone had/is having (I guess it's only 1:49 am at home) a fun, safe New Year's. I slept through midnight here and at home, which is perfectly acceptable because I'm in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where they use the Julian calendar, so their New Year's was back in September. It's also 7 years behind our calendar, so I'm about to turn 14, which is pretty sweet. But yeah, Addis: in short, I love it. Not only because I am just so glad to be away from Dar but also because..."The weather is cool, the stores are painted all kinds of crazy colors, everything is even cheaper than dar (except sim cards, which is why i don't have an ethiopian phone number yet, possibly not ever), the people are, as a rule, drop-dead gorgeous and also extremely friendly and helpful, the city is all hilly so you get all these amazing views (which i can enjoy without walking too much because we've been living the taxi life for one), the food is delicious (all kinds of italian pastries, i haven't had a decent pastry in goddamn centuries)...." (I was quoting an email I wrote, no point in writing the same crap twice.) On the other hand the city is full of beggars and it's overwhelming. Little kids younger than Sam (my 9-year-old brother) run into traffic to ask us through the taxi window for one birr (12.5 cents American) and then when you run out of one-birr notes you can't give anything, you just look straight ahead, because if you give more than that (and less is the norm, but we've been lean on coins) you'll have a mob of people at your taxi window which is not good. And older people and disabled war vets too, but it's the kids man. The fucking kids. Once I was talking to my friend Innocent (who speaks incredible incredible English, no matter how modest he is about it) and when I used the word "childhood" he had to ask me what that was, and I think he even said there wasn't a word in Kiswahili for it. And that's just not right. 6 year old girls do not need to be running into Addis rush-hour with their baby sister strapped to their back to ask me for money through my fucking taxi window that I can't even roll down (the handle was broken). And then I go and eat a sweet-ass meal at a nice restaurant with live singers and dancers and whatnot (which for Tanish, Nikki and me still only came to Birr115, which is maybe $14 or so, including tax and tip). There's a place we can go in the city where you can buy 8 meal tickets for Birr1 for children so we're going to get a bunch of those, plus go change some paper notes into coins, and I hate talking about this shit because I feel like I'm sort of saying "oh sad for me I have to look at poor people while I'm on vacation" but it just sucks to feel useless. In any case, we are going to try and get on a flight up to Bahar Dar which is kidogo north of Addis so we can check out some stone monasteries out on an island in the middle of Lake Tana and also the Blue Nile Falls (Tanisha and Nikki have gone rafting on the Nile in Jinja but I haven't seen it yet so I'm pretty pumped). And then back to Addis on Wednesday so we can go out for a sweet meal for my 21st birthday, and then shopping on Thursday (we're thinking about renting a car so we can drive ourselves around because they drive on the right side of the road and traffic here is relatively sane unlike Dar--people seem to follow the traffic lights and right of way and use turn signals and whatnot, and Tanish and I figure that if we can drive in Washington, D.C., and New York we'll be fine), and then we fly back to Dar on Friday.
Dar...our friend Camille was in a car accident in the Ngorongoro Crater last Tuesday (5 days ago). Her mom has a broke leg and pelvis, her dad has some back injuries, the cook and guide are basically ok....but Camille (as far as I know, we've been out of touch for a couple of days) is in a coma and it looks really bad. She was airlifted to Nairobi almost immediately but her condition hasn't been stable enough to take her to Johannesburg, which would be the ideal place...The driver is also in critical condition, and as far as we know he hasn't even been taken to Nairobi and I suspect it's because he's Tanzanian and not because he shouldn't be there. Hopefully they've at least taken him to Dar, which I think has better hospitals than Arusha. So if you pray or meditate or think good thoughts with purpose, do that for all of them please. And for her friends and family at home in America; being so far away must be positively hellish. I've been trying but I'm kind of too pissed off for multiple reasons to sustain any kind of positivity in regards to the whole thing. 20-year-olds are not supposed to die going on safari with their parents, that's just ridiculous and fucked up. Especially on roads that lots of us (including me) have driven without any problem at all. Fuck fuck fucking shit. So yeah, that's the biggest of many reasons that I'm glad to be away from Dar for the week and happy to be going home in less than 3 weeks. It's just been a shitty 2 and a half weeks at this point.
So y'all take care, and if any of you are even thinking about drunk driving right now I hope someone has sharp words for you and the sense to lock your stupid ass in a bathroom. Otherwise, Happy New Year's!

Eating-related news

2005-12-16T05:31:00.000-08:00

Well since I have been so negligent, I haven't even put up Thanksgiving pictures yet! Mostly what I need to say about Thanksgiving is that it was awesome. Alex, Tanisha, Mercer, Kevin and I spent the day at our friend's house making a shit-ton of food.

[Tanish, Kevin and Mercer prepping the veggies.]

[Triumphant chefs Alex, Tanisha, Kevin, me and Mercer, after dinner.]

[I just really love this picture. And man growing out the hair is going to be horrendously awkward, huh?]
Using 2 burners, a tiny tiny oven and an electric hot pot, we made enough pasta, arroz con leche, chicken, green beans, sweet potato pie, pumpkin, mashed potatoes and cornbread (some with chocolate frosting, some without) to feed somewhere around 40 people, WITH LEFTOVERS. (Like the pot of arroz con leche that sat stinking on my balcony until the Sunday after...) Man and that day was hot as hell, especially for spending 8 hours in a tiny kitchen, but we took turns at the stovetop and got it done. I was responsible for the mashed potatoes, green beans and pumpkin--which, as it turns out, is quite delicious if you peel it, slice it up, scrape away the seeds and pulp, and then stew it in a little bit of hot water with salt, sugar and black pepper. I was so proud of us. Thanksgiving was kind of a weird holiday to celebrate in a post-colonial country, but everyone enjoyed it and I got to make everyone going around the table and say two things they were grateful for, which was nice.

The other great meal I've had in the past couple of weeks was at Innocent's sister's house two Sundays ago. He is one of the best people I've ever met so I knew his family was going to at least be really nice, but then they were really funny and warm and welcoming too. His nephew, Joseph Jr., is a total ham.

Plus, as if to prove that he is wonderful, Innocent remembered that Tanisha and I love Stoney Tanga Wizi and bought an amply supply for us. And then the food was soooo good. Pilau and chapati, which I'm seriously going to miss when I go home but I think I can handle making them, chicken (which I didn't eat although I'm going to go ahead and slip in a confession to having a little bit of goat the other night) and then these amazing pumpkin leaves cooked in coconut milk with other vegetables. And next time we go, since it won't be our first time there, Innocent's sister Elizabeth will let us help with the cooking, which will be sweaty but fun, and there really isn't any way around sweaty whether you're coooking or not.

2005-12-16T05:28:00.000-08:00

So mostly it has just been really really hot lately. Going into town during the day is especially hellish, between the cramped bus rides and then even though it's right next to the sea you don't feel much of a breeze, and there aren't many trees for shade. Campus is on a big old hill so as long as the wind is blowing from the ocean in the east, you can stand and catch a lick of coolness. From other directions the breeze is mostly a hot breath that may or may not be more unpleasant than the movements when the air is just hot and unmoved. Of course my fan picked right when summer was really kicking in as when it felt like crapping the bed, so the main solution as been siesta in the afternoon and sleeping with the balcony door open at night, which as worked pretty well. I'm getting to the point where when I walk outside I can recognize that it's 900 degrees but it doesn't really feel like it to me anymore, so I don't get that miserable, and the other international students don't mention it nearly as much as they did a couple weeks ago. Although I've noticed that we definitely move a lot more slowly when we're walking around and like to shower multiple times a day if we have water. The Tanzanians think it's hilarious how uncomfortable we are. I mean, they're hot too, but it's just not an issue. I'd like to point out that my roommate Diana still uses a comforter at night. I prefer to sweat myself to sleep, because it doesn't really cool down until 3 or 4 am, when I might pull a sheet up to my waist. Winter, even Florida-style, is going to be a strange thing to come home too.That's another thing I've been thinking about a lot lately--what it's going to be like to come home. 5 weeks from today I'll be on a plane! This sounds like wonderful news on some days, when school is hectic or I'm sitting on a bus being sweated on by 3 different strangers or I'm just plain old homesick. Other days, think about it gives me a profoundly disapointed feeling. Mostly I just think it's going to be weird. Not like Tanzania is my newfound home or anything--I feel like I've been hyperaware of the fact that it's not, just because I've known from the start exactly when I would leave--but because it's been such a vacation from all the entanglements of life at home. I do a lot of work for school, but I know it doesn't really matter how I do because it doesn't affect my GPA and the things I learn ouside of class seem more important anyway. I don't have a job, which hasn't been the case since my senior year of high school. I enjoy the friendships I have here but oldest one is what, 3 months? And David and I have done a mostly great job of staying in touch and keeping up with each other's lives but we're still going to have to get to know each other all over again when I get back. And who knows what that will lead to, although I have a good feeling that we will make it work. Ah, consequences! Although one thing I've gotten more conscientious about is not wasting water and electricity. I have many weird squirrelly habits to show for it, namely that everything that would go down the drain goes into the toilet flush tank (which is pretty much always empty), some of which I want to keep up at home. Especially once it warms up a little, which won't take long in Florida, I want to start line-drying my clothes (the washing machine will be a welcome change) and setting aside time each day that I am awake but not using electricity. Other than that, everything's been pretty much mellow. The regular part of the semester is over in a couple of weeks, so it's just going to be a lot of seminar presentations, projects, papers. I did my first seminar presentation this past Monday--on living in a multi-racial society for Race, Class and Ethnicity. This class has pretty much just been a disaster, especially because the professor is not a fan of Westerners, especially white ones. Ah I wish he would quit being crazy and do his job! Because the 6 or so lectures that we've had (he cancelled the rest of the semester's lectures a couple weeks ago) were really interesting, if a little weird sometimes (he claimed that Vasco de Gama circumnavigated Africa purely out of his sense of adventure...it is especially weird that he's cutting de Gama a break considering how much he used to enjoy standing in front international students and asking questions like, "So, what do you think about your people's role in the underdevelopment of Africa?") but whatever. In any case, I did my part on white privilege, which was simultaneously impossible to fully explain in 4 minutes of simple English and a nerve-wracking topic to address as a white person speaking in front of 30 black people, but I guess those two elements kind of cancelled each other out, because no one brought it up during discussion. In fact most of the Tanzanian students acted bored while we were speaking and then 4 people in a row asked us during the discussion time what the main point of our project was, but Nikki looked interested and the professor was actually nodding along with us through most of it, so we'll see. One thing that will be nice to go home to is anonymity. Although there's definitely an mzungu cycle in which there are peaks and valleys of how much people seem to notice that I'm white, because I can go days without it being an issue, it's still weird to be sitting on a packed Greyhound-sized bus and realize that people are staring at you because every white person there is either you or one of your friends. I've gone shopping at the arts market in Mwenge a couple times in the past few weeks, which is pretty much THE place to go if you want to be referred to as mzungu and feeling noticed for a couple hours just makes me tired. (Then too you get get ripped off like one, which is also exhausting). And I think that because I'm aware that I've been here for a while and feel pretty comfortable with being here, it's all the more surprising when other people point it out that I don't belong. But really the only time it bothers me is when I can tell people are using it to be mean, or when they're talking about me and laughing when I'm standing right there because they think I don't understand. Man that does piss me off--as if "mzungu" wasn't one of the first 5 words that I learned.It's weird how often stuff like that happens on campus, where the Tanzanian students have been seeing us around and in class for a few months now. I get put on the spot during seminars a lot. My Rural Development seminar leader loves to force me into the discussion by saying, "Our sister from the North, what do you think about neo-colonial trade structures" or "Our fair American friend, please explain to us why the agricultural sector in your homeland was able to consolidate and incorporate." These are exact quotes. It's pretty much horrifying. And there's no backing down. Although at least it's only in front of 20 or 30 people. In one of Rob's big lecture classes, the professor used to spend at least a couple minutes each class quizzing "Mr. Florida" on global politics and geography and whatever else. Only once have I been called out during lecture. The professor had just used the phrase "lip service" and this murmur of confusion went through the students so the professor asked me to explain (I'm the only mzungu in the class). So I tried, and then everyone said "No" when the professor asked if they had understood, and then he professor laughed, the students laughed, the lecture when on and the guy sitting next to me said "Nipe tano, mzungu" (Give me five). Not so bad at all. And I feel like I understand a little better how annoyed non-white people at home get when everyone at a meeting or in a classroom looks to them as the representative of their race or ethnicity or whatever. And at least people here are upfront about it.Which reminds me--so yesterday Kevin was feeling achy, which is how he felt last week when he was told he had malaria at a local clinic and then only given 2 pills to take, so I went with him to the nicer hospital downtown to get it checked out. (Partly because he promised me a delicious feast of palak paneer and butter naan and raita afterwards, but also because I am a high-quality friend.) As he's filling out the basic form and under the religion part he puts "Christian" even though that's not true because if you don't put something then you've bought your way into a ridiculously unnecessary conversation with a stranger about why you are neither Christian, Muslim nor heathen, and then he gets to the race question and the options are European, African and Asian, and no "Other ________" option. He is none of those, but he checked off European, again to avoid absurd debate. But what would Tanisha, who is Jamaican-American supposed to check off? Because she's obviously not European or Asian but if she checks off African people here will treat her like she was actually born and raised in Africa, which may or may not work to her advantage but will be at least slightly bewildering either way. On the plus side, the waiting area offered excellent people watching. About half the patients were upper-class black Africans, who generally tend to dress more Western, although it was interesting to see how class and culture intersect--more than one very nicely-dressed African woman who probably could have afforded a baby stroller or whatever (I think a lot of wealthier women go there to have their babies) just had their baby strapped to their back with a khanga like poorer women do. The other half were Indian or Middle Eastern--men dressed mostly in slacks and button-down shirts, but some of the women had beautiful henna all over their arms and ankles and a lot of the babies and toddlers had serious jewelry happening. I played with one little girl, maybe 2 years old, who had silver hoops in her ears, two silver chains around her neck, a silver bracelet on each wrist, and a silver anklet with bells on each ankle. BELLS ON A TODDLER, and she was the busy kind. Her mom was totally hyper too and kept getting her daughter all wound up until the grandma, who was feeding the baby, would shush both of them in this very sweet, funny way. The little girl even had a pink flower scribbled on her hand in immitation of the henna flowers on her mom and grandma's arms.Looking back over what I've just written, I feel kind of weird about it because it's all about race. I guess doing that project put it on my brain, and it'd just be weird if I never thought about it while I was here. But also I need to just get over that. Although not thinking about race is one of the options open to me as a white citizen of a white-dominated country, and not thinking would also let me ignore all the racist bullshit I've got happening in my head, that'd be pretty much just lame. Part of it is feeling like I poke at it too much some ugly shit is going to come out and I'm going to make a fool of myself, especially because I don't feel particularly well-qualified to talk about race, especially with other people who are not white, but oh well. Time to get over that.

Cole Edwards!

2005-11-29T04:49:00.000-08:00

Thanks for writing, it's so good to hear how everything is going. My email is kmullan@ufl.edu. Write me and then I can take this down!

On a roll with the pictures!

2005-11-23T07:01:00.000-08:00

HALLOWEEN!

Left to right: Christopher, as a dork, with teeth made out of orange peels!; me, as my friend Ali (from the waist up--I had a mermaid tail but it fell of the roof); Matt, as something in CCM khangas and ball cap.

Catharina and me. She just wore a dress that she'd gotten made at a tailor's that'd turned out pretty bizarre. Man she is wonderful.

Innocent, as a Tanzanian mama, and me. Innocent was really one of the last people I expected to see in drag, but he played it up, walking around with his butt stuck out and whatnot. We took another picture before this one of our faces, but he wanted one with our sandals in it. HA.

John as Camille, and Camille herself.

Wachizi! Left to right: Alex, as Celine Dion in Africa; Caroline, Laura and Leila as various supermodels. I have no idea what Matt is doing.

Tanisha! As a "dirty dirty paka"--she gets the prize for hating the stray cats the most.

Kevin, as UDSM's campus; and Ali, as the inappropriate comma in Tanzanian English, and also who I was trying to be!

CAMPUS !

Sunset from the landing in the outdoor stairway on the eighth floor of my building. Actually one of the tamer ones. My building looks like the ones in the top picture. The sun is starting to set later now than it did when it first got here because SUMMER IS COMING. Again. Along with hot hot hot, and rain--I'll miss the real monsoon season though, which is fine with me, because the morning rains we've been getting are enough to get the skeeters going.

The courtyard my balcony looks out on, with laundry out to dry. See how green the grass is? That's because they water it constantly, even when the water is off, until even the SIM tank runs out. Which means you can't even take bucket baths if you haven't planned ahead properly. AH.

2005-11-22T06:18:00.000-08:00

20 NOVEMBER
Ah, so I am this close to being a fully documented Class C resident of Tanzania. On Thursday Alex and I went down to immigration and dropped off our passports with our permits to get the special stamps. The man who took our stuff marked down our information in a big black ledger, added our passports to a big stack of other passports held together by a rubber band, gave me a receipt for both of them and told me to come back the next day to pick up both of them, which is crazy because at home you can’t do shit with someone else’s passport. I couldn’t because Thursday afternoon/night/Friday morning was when I was locked out, but Monday!
Speaking of days of the week, Thursday is Thanksgiving! Something you may have heard of back in the motherland. We are renting one or two research flats at the university for $15 apiece because they have modern kitchens for cooking a luscious feast, not to mention air conditioning and hot water! Alex and I don’t have any class on Thursdays so we plan on spending the whole day there cooking, showering and napping in cool darkness. Hopefully the water and electricity will be on for at least the vast majority of the day. I don’t know exactly what we’re having, although I’ve heard talk of buying one of the live turkeys they have on the side of the road from Mwenge to Posta. But that would entail: killing it, plucking it, preparing it, tending it while it roasted. I just want something with sautéed apples. Also, my friend Robie is coming with her siblings, which will be wonderful.

[I met Robie my first weekend in Tanzania. She works as a secretary for Panasonic. She's pretty much just awesome. About a month ago the workers at Panasonic went on strike against unfair management. Out of the 8 or 9 people who represented the workers during negotiations, Robie was one of two women and the youngest.]
Alex and I went to their house yesterday to make and eat lunch. Cooking took for-goddamn-ever and I sweated so much that I got sort of dehydrated and actually ran out of sweat, which was kind of disturbing, but it was delicious. We made chapatti (Robie uses coconut milk instead of water and also vanilla extract; incredible), lots of vegetables also cooked in coconut, ugali (the first I’ve had that I kind of enjoyed) and local spinach (people are very insistent on it being LOCAL spinach, and not just spinach; whatever).

Then we listened to Boyz II Men and looked at American fashion magazines and goofed around with Julie and Christopher while Robie fended us off from helping her do the dishes.

[Julie and Alex]

[Christopher]

[Robie's youngest brother whose name I'm still not quite sure about. He kept spying on the white girls cooking. Robie has two other younger brothers who were in and out but not around when I was taking pictures after lunch.]

Here's how you make chapatti:
1. Mix wheat flour, warm water/milk/coconut milk, margarine and 2 eggs (optional). (Also optional: cooking mat the colors of the Tanzanian flag.)

2. After kneading the dough, make little balls like these guys.

3. Roll out the little balls into rounds, but not too thin and it doesn't have to be perfect.

4. Drizzle vegetable oil on top of the rounds.

5. Roll up the round and then, holding each end in one end, bounce it up and down while slowly pulling out. (This takes some practice.)

6. Roll it up into a little cinnamon roll-type thing.

7. Roll it out AGAIN. Except this time it has to be perfectly round and fairly thin.

8. Put it in the pan without any oil. When it starts bubbling kidogo, drizzle more oil on it and flip it over. If you're a stud like Robie, do it barehanded. Make sure the coals don't catch fire or you're scorch the hell out of it.

AH they're so delicious, I eat them every morning for breakfast. Which may not be the wisest course of action--one of the international students is a diabetic, and when he eats just one chapatti he has to use four times as much insulin as when he eats a bagel, which is pretty turbo-carb itself. It's best with a little bit of raw sugar and fresh fruit of your choice. Strictly speaking, you're not supposed to use your left hand to eat but the stress of trying not to ruins it for me, so forget that. Mmm, soooo good.
Also good: all day it’s been rainy and overcast and windy and completely unlike an oven. (I think it’s really funny that I spend a good ten minutes each day covering my body in baby powder in order to delay the inevitable swampiness for about as long as the powdering itself took. And yet that ten extra minutes of quasi-dryness is totally worth the effort.) I slept until 11 today, which is by far the latest I’ve ever slept in this country. Got up, went to buy a phone voucher, ran into Matt and Kevin, got breakfast. On the way back from breakfast we came across some children bashing open AA batteries with rocks and told them to stop because poison comes out. And soon I will be seeing a new batch of kittens, because one of the stray (i.e., quasi-feral) cats that lives around our building is so staggeringly pregnant that if she gets the hiccups she’s liable to go into labor. The cats, man. They are just all over the place: in and out of the cafeteria, all around the dorms, always worming around in the trash heaps. Nikki used to have one that she called Shangazi who would come into her room to be petted (only when her roommate Bombo was out, because she was firmly anti-cat and literally kicked Shangazi out of the room once) until she went crazy and bit the hell out of Nikki’s leg. She only has two more rabies shots to go! And now I’m writing this on Kevin’s laptop and sitting on clean sheets, because I bit the neo-imperialist bullet and gave the cleaning lady some of my dirty laundry. Well I don’t really feel like a neo-imperialist, just sort of weird. Although my roommate doesn’t wash any of her own laundry, and I was not going to get up the motivation to just do them in the bucket. And it is just so nice to sleep with grime-free sheets. (Almost as nice as crime-free streets! Ha, rhymes.) Man, our cleaning lady is so nice. Thursday afternoon my roommate locked the door and went to her parents’ for the night while I was upstairs getting something from Tanish, so I ended up locked out of my room with nothing but a single khanga, a pair of flip-flops and a Kiswahili children’s book. (Alex lent me clothes and Tonje’s roommate was gone so I slept in her bed; it all came up roses). ANYWAY, our cleaning lady is nice: I spent Friday morning loafing around the hall, reading while I waited for my roommate to come back and let me in, and when the cleaning lady came to mop the hall I was sitting out on the landing, which is where she usually pushes out all of the water—and since I was sitting out there she pushed the other way! Which is a total pain in the ass for her, but when I stood up to get out of her way she just yelled “Kaa! Kaa!” (Sit! Stay!) So I kaa-ed and felt kind of awkward, but let’s deal with the truth at hand, it was really nice to stay out on the landing. So I need to bring her cookies or something. THAT was the day I finally read bell hooks’ Feminism is for EVERYBODY. I have a few grievances with it. For instance she started out by saying that she wanted to write something extremely accessible, but then she threw out some academicrap like “erotics of being.” A lot of it was criticism of feminist movement history which I don’t think it really has a place in a primer on feminism that hopes to garner new believers. It reminded me of a something C.S. Lewis says in the preface to Mere Christianity about how different Christian sects should keep their conflicts private because it is important to present a united front to non-believers, in part because such squabbling is a turn-off to potential future converts. And while I thought it was good that she covered many facets of feminism and how it affects a person’s life, like religion, sexuality, class relations, and recognize that a thorough analysis of all of these topics would have been impossible and also quite outside her objectives, but it would have been better if she had offered direction in further reading on each topic. All that to say, it was pretty sweet. I thought her simple definition of feminism as anti-sexism, anti-patriarchy was solid and helpful. I liked her vision of feminists going door-to-door like Jehovah’s Witnesses, what she says about not defining sex as penetration, her criticisms of liberal reformist feminism, her call for more radical children’s books and for greater focus on children’s rights and issues in general. I really agree with her stance against different “brands” of feminism. It really doesn’t make any sense for people who are anti-choice or anti-welfare to claim to be feminist. There’s a really great part in the section on feminism outside of the West where she compares female circumcision, treated by many Western feminists as some abhorrent barbaric practice (which I would actually say it is, if for no other reasons than that it is generally performed on girls either unwilling or too young to know what they’re consenting to, in medically appalling conditions—broken CDs are one of the “instruments” used for cutting), to anorexia/bulimia and cosmetic surgery. Which are at best risky and at worst deadly, and, similarly to female circumcision, perpetuated primarily by other women. I also thought her point about how a person’s sex/gender/sexuality has no direct bearing on whether or not he/she has embraced feminism was crucial. Women can be sexist, people of color can be racist, queer people can be homophobic, poor people can be classist, Africans can be imperialist; the more I think about it, the more I recognize things I’ve said and done/say and do are sexist. Which comes back to her emphasis on the importance of consciousness-raising, of realizing that converting to feminism means rejecting this bullshit of all those arbitrary categories receiving dangerously more consequence than they are due. I also read a really great essay the other day about why non-queer people should care about ending homophobia. The author gave anecdotes about “gay-seeming” straight victims of brutal anti-gay violence to talk about how, unlike one’s race or gender, which are generally apparent (although “passing” is common in both regards), one’s sexual orientation is not physically obvious and impossible to prove one way or the other. Witch hunt scenario: if it’s acceptable for that dyke over there to get the shit beaten out of her, then you’d better hope you don’t look like a dyke to someone else, because then it’d be acceptable for them to beat the shit out of you. “Lesbians look like all women and all women look like lesbians.” She talked about something she called “gender betrayal” to describe the way people feel when they perceive other members of their gender as behaving inappropriately—men staying home while their wives work, etc.—as a way people justify homophobia. She specifically referred to the way anti-gay language is against women, straight and gay alike, who make choices outside what is expected of them, as a way to make it clear that, like actual lesbians, they are outside the realm of patriarchal protection offered to straight (and especially to sexist) women, a consequence for lesbians in a patriarchal society that I had not considered. I wish I had read this essay back in middle school (and high school, and university, and every workplace I’ve ever worked in, etc., damnit) when the other kids used “gay” as an insult and I would get pissed and try to say something but just get all sputtery trying to articulate why it was wrong. I could never offer a good concrete reason why the people saying it shouldn’t have, why they were not only hurting gay people but also themselves. On that note, I’ve been awake for less than three hours and have already used the word “gaybies” no less than five times, so that Kevin, who has just accused me of thinking of him as “just a big gay piece of meat,” has sworn to leave the room and take his laptop with him if I say it or any of its cousins again today. Oh lord I have laugh cramps. I’m also not permitted to say “gaycation” or “birthgay party,” or even read this part out loud, though I am definitely enjoying typing them. If you can think of any other words or phrases that can have the word “gay” inserted into them, please notify me of the good news ASAP. Dammit I cannot stop scratching! It’s so weird, I’ve only gotten bitten in the past week or so. My right thigh got eaten alive the other day; how, I do not know. Also, I can’t remember when I last went more than 6 hours without a huge bug bite on my ass, and I don’t really see how that happens either. Well, I have an idea. But it’s gross. Among various verb tenses and sentence constructions we have discussed in the English class lately, last week we also talked about different things one can call one’s wife: honey, baby, babe, sweetheart, etc. I’m glad to report that everyone seems to have taken a special liking to “honey.” On Friday, after old man Mwalimu told the class to applaud Kevin for giving them homework to write sentences in the future tense, which they did, this was old man’s sample: “Honey, will you get me a cup of tea?” Which, as it turns out, is not nearly as hilarious typed out as it was when he said it. Oh well. Mwalimu has given lots of ridiculous sample sentences in his long life, although probably the most famous among the kids who help out is, “Am I, yours? Yes, you are mine. So, thank you.” (Tanzanian English is riddled with inappropriate commas.) There is not a single human being in the world who knows what he meant by that.

21 NOVEMBER
So I just finished up writing the stuff about the safari, which I’ve been doing on Kevin’s laptop on my bed inside the mosquito net—on top of which are crawling a little fan group of those evil creeps. Must be the rain we’ve had the past couple of days, because yesterday and today have been the first times I’ve noticed them up in my room. Ah they make me so angry. At least at home they are kind of noisy and you can feel when they start sucking your blood. Here they are completely stealthy and you don’t even know anything’s happened until you start itching like crazy. Alex said she killed one the other night that was flying around all slow and unsteady that made a huge splat of blood when she got it—it had drank so much of her blood it couldn’t even fly properly. Greedy bastard, gets what it deserves! Sometimes I just can’t handle the bug invasion. Like tonight I looked down and there was a little roach on my leg. And other times when I’ve been sitting in class and realize there’s an ant or two crawling from my arm to the desk. Although the worst by far is a story that Florian told me about a friend of his who was doing in research in Africa. She got a cut on her arm and noticed a little round bubble in it. Went to the doctor, who told her that it was just some pus, don’t worry, blah blah blah. One day soon after that, a worm sticks it head out of the cut, then dives back in before she can do anything about it. And then it’s another two days before it shows its face again so she can pull it out. It was a good three or four inches long. I just hope someone had the decency to tranquilize her for those two days.
My Planning and Public Policy in Development seminar today was actually quite interesting. The discussion came down to what seems to the be the big question in regards to Tanzania’s economic policy: whether to invest more heavily in things like social services and the agricultural sector, which employs somewhere around 70% of the population, or sectors like manufacturing, mining and tourism, which involve fewer people who also tend to be foreigners but which have greater cash-earning potential. Which comes down to whether you think “development” should be about decreasing poverty/increasing quality of life or stimulating macroeconomic growth of things like the GDP. I think the answer is a mixture of the two, especially if they can figure out a way to really minimize foreign ownership of natural resources (which includes things like tourism), because ultimately I think development should be about giving people choices.
But two other things from that discussion: It reminded me of something I read in a development book about a village where a Western NGO had built wells closer to the village so as to save the women time and energy when fetching water. Which was a nice idea, but within that particular culture fetching water was one of the women’s few opportunities to leave their homes and socialize with each other, so they ignored the new wells, which were then used by the men for watering cash crops. It’s really hard to remember that even in situations that seem clearly economic, people don’t always make decisions based on what’s economically sound. And also as I listened to Tanzanian students, many of whom are pretty privileged within this context, pretty consistently argue for the importance of macroeconomic growth—which Tanzania has enjoyed since they started privatizing in the early ‘90s, even as per capita income, literacy, access to basic needs have decreased—it struck me how much people who have gotten screwed are willing to screw over other people.
In other news: “gayground.” As in, “When we went on gaycation I took our gaybies to the gayground for a birthgay party.”

22 NOVEMBER
Went to town to pick up mine and Alex's passports--we're official residents! Good thing I'm leaving in 2 months.

Big safari adventure!

2005-11-22T05:24:00.000-08:00

AH so much has happened since Arusha two weeks ago. Right after my last post, we headed over to a museum where our friends Tony and Justin showed up with their friend Moses. Moses’ father owns a safari company based out of Arusha and had made Tony and Justin a sweet, sweet offer: three days in Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area and Serengetti National Park for $50 a person per day (for the car, gas [which costs somewhere around $4 per gallon here], food, lodgings, driver/guide), plus park entrance/exit fees (which are on the steepish side for non-citizens). Sketchy, cheap-ass safari tours start at around $80 a day, and that was not even the situation. The car was in good shape, and Samuel, the man in charge and someone I am proud to call “kaka,” was incredibly knowledgeable and good-natured and on top of his game. Rob and Kevin decided to stick to our original plan of going back to Dar on Sunday. Matt and I got in the safari car and went back to the guesthouse to jam our stuff in our backpacks, and then we were on our way.
Just the drive up to Ngorongoro was beautiful. When you drive out of Dar, the transition from urban to rural is fairly gradual, but right outside of Arusha you realize that you’re the only car on a two-lane road through expansive dust, a little grass, a few head of cattle getting pushed around by solemn Maasai children and absolutely nothing else except Mount Meru and the Usambara Mountains in the distance. (A significant difference between home and here: I say the phrase “head of cattle” a lot more often than I used to.) For the first half hour or so, until we got a flat tire, I rode up front next to Samuel, and with an unobstructed view I felt that good kind of smallness all the more—and with the long slow twilight coming down. Oh man.
The thing about the long slow twilight is that there’s not much intermediate darkness. Just all of a sudden you realize that the sky is inky and you can see at least 6023 stars, very few of which really seem familiar (you can’t really see constellations from the southern hemisphere—lots of stars, sure, but not many distinctive groupings, plus I also think it has something to do with ancient Greece having been in the northern hemisphere), and it’s utter darkness. Unless the moon is any kind of respectable size, in which case I have read things by moonlight and walking around campus, treacherous as it is with its huge grappling tree roots and broken sidewalks, is quite manageable even when the electricity is out (which it has been doing for about an hour each evening for the past week). All this to say, every day, at any time of day, I look up at the sky and swoon kidogo. At some point I need to write a poem called “The moon’s just so damn bright.”

[The road from Arusha to Ngorongoro.]

So then it was all quite black out; the only streetlights I’ve seen in Tanzania have been on campus and at major intersections in the city, and those go out when the power does, with the tired humming of the generators and everyone sitting out next to their little stalls and tables and carts with tall white candles burning in soda bottles. We didn’t even see any trucks (the road through Ngorongoro and Serengetti is also the only road that runs through that area of the country, so when we were in Serengetti we saw cargo trucks and semis driving past giraffes and water buffalo feeding lazily) once it got dark. We did drive past a mountain that had a crooked orange line of fire dribbling down its front. It got cold and everyone got quiet and I listened to Bonnie “Prince” Billy.
That night (and Sunday night) we stayed in a village near Ngorongoro that I’ve forgotten the name of. We had dinner (rice and beans, no avocado!, for me) and a few beers, and Tony and I played Justin and Matt at euchre. (Kevin just set me straight on the spelling of this game, thanks to that phenomenon of recognizing a word you’ve only seen written once you hear it out loud.) Turns out I’m a pretty sweet euchre player; Tony and I beat the pants off of Justin and Matt, and then we all went to bed.

[Euchre champions in Serengetti!]
I don’t really remember anything except that I kept waking up in the night—the rooms were a little grubby with basically useless mosquito nets and all night I could hear tense-sounding voices speaking in Kiswahili, and one time when I woke up I thought I saw a big purple bug sitting on my pillow close to my eyes. Which may have been a Lariam dream spilling over into waking, but if I close my eyes now I can picture it sitting there being gross and purple: so who knows. Either way we got up pretty early and went to a different little tavern for chai and chapatti (Tony can eat 3 or 4!) and our lunches for later on. (The only option was chipsi kuku [French fries and chicken] so I ended up with a box of cold soggy chipsi kavu [just French fries], but then they threw in little packets of Nice coconut biscuits and mini Cadbury bars that had melted into a nice chocolate paste by lunchtime so we made cookie sandwiches that were marvelous and got rid of the slick chalky feeling that all the grease and undercooked potato left in my throat.)
So I dozed on our way up to the Crater and then I woke up, looked out the window and it was a different planet. We were driving up along the Rift Valley; on our left was rainforest down into the valley, on our right the Crater. It was mid-morning, nuclear gray sky. As the day warmed up the fog came up gorgeous off the canopy of the forest.

Everything was so thick with green and alive-looking, which of course all trees are but they don’t move so it's easy to forget that.

After a while we stopped at a viewpoint and took ridiculous pictures of ourselves with the big bowl scooped out of the earth behind us.

This is also where we commenced with my favorite genre of safari picture: big old person-head grinning up close on one side, wild animal/stunning landscape/other such natural spectacles in the background on the other side [see further down]. I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon or anything like that, but I imagine the impressiveness factor is similar, though I do feel kind of weird about ogling giant landmass features.
The descent into the Crater was gorgeous. There were little Maasai villages dotting the upper parts of the wall and the men out herding were little dots of red and purple.

They are the reason that the Crater is a Conservation Area and not a National Park. Maasai people used to migrate all over northern Tanzania/southern Kenya, generally complicating the concept of national citizenhood (thank you, Berlin Conference!) as they followed green pasture for their cows, including the area that was designated Serengetti National Park back in the day. When that happened, the Maasai were forbidden to graze there any longer, and many of them who had primarily resided there moved southwards to what was designated Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area back in the ‘50s—and not Ngorongoro Crater National Park, because the Maasai living there refused to relocate. So they live there even today, free to bring their cattle to graze down in the Crater but forbidden to cultivate, which works out well because “traditional” Maasai (and there isn’t really another kind living in the Crater) don’t really practice agriculture. They just live off their cows (the milk, the meat, the blood; sometimes all three together) and the hot buckets of cash they pull in selling all kinds of beaded jewelry, spears and shields, the traditional plaid blankets (shuka), “lion’s” tooth necklaces (comparable to shark-tooth deals at home) and sunglasses to Land Rovers full of Europeans and North Americans.

[Like this one! Left to right: Moses, me, Matt, Justin]
A lot of the guys who crowded around our car wore their own sunglasses, and also wristwatches, which are both pretty significant indicators of wealth in Tanzania.
In any case, what I was getting at is that the Maasai in Ngorongoro have an awesomely symbiotic understanding with their fellow inhabitants of the Crater. For instance, their religious beliefs prohibit the consumption of wild animal meat, and in return the lions and other big old cats that might could eat some cow during the lean seasons turn around and walk away when they see the red plaid of the Maasai herdsmen (or so says Samuel, and I believe him; you do what you will with that, but all I have to say is this: cellular communication, and also the Maasai dudes carry some pretty wicked-looking spears). They don’t really care about accumulating anything but cattle; and although the farts of said cattle are rich in gases that kill the ozone layer, their herds aren’t as big as the ones on American cattle ranches, and they use little to no electricity (little in the shops, none in the homes) and vehicles only rarely. (About the cattle thing: according to Maasai cosmology, the head god created cows especially for his people, the Maasai, and then somehow some of the original herd fell into the hands of others, but they still belong to the Maasai by divine right—in fact all the cows of the world do—which is why they have spent a lot of time raiding the herds of neighboring peoples.) I know that the Maasai have had this weird place in Western/Northern literature as a mythologized people, and they’re also far from perfect, as only recently has the stigma attached to receiving a formal education began to diminish, and then only for men; not to mention they practice female circumcision on young girls and polygamy, although from what I can tell I’d take the latter over the former any day.
But there are a lot of things that I think are really neat about the Maasai. Their language is crazy hard and beautiful, as it’s not only tonal but also with imploded vowel sounds, meaning they make some vowels on the exhale (like we do) and some on the INHALE, which as far as I can tell is in fact impossible to learn past the age of -2. Their “traditional” (I still haven’t fully worked out my thoughts about this word, although I’ve definitely come to terms with “tribe”—if someone who belongs to a tribe calls it a tribe, then it’s a tribe) dress and jewelry is beautiful, and especially striking on young children out herding a dozen head of cattle on their own and on the young men who’ve come to Dar for job opportunities—very odd to realize on the bus that the guy sitting next to you is carrying a tall walking staff and wearing two plaid blankets, a leather belt and a bush knife. They have this beautiful and distinctive way of standing centered about the walking stiff and leaning forward with their top blanket wrapped around their shoulders, looking around wryly. They’ve definitely got their shit together ecologically-speaking without being self-obsessive about it. And their main trade, or craft, or whatever—the thing they’re famous for among urban Tanzanians—is that they do the most amazing hair extensions. If you want anything besides rasta, which is the standard stuff that comes in huge wavy lengths and is then simply braid around the real hair, you have to go to a Maasai—for micro-twists, which are gorgeous and what Diana has, or this other kind that I don’t even know how to describe, except that they kind of look like what the hair on a black Muppet puppet would look like, but that makes it sound ugly and it’s really pretty. My old roommate Rose had it. Who knows. In any case, I’m just glad that for the rest of my life I will associate the Maasai with all of the usual things and then hair extensions, because this “traditional” box that people put them in is kind of belittling—not that it matters so much what outsiders think, except that many of the Maasai themselves have also embraced this image of being one of the last staunchly “traditional” tribes to the point of stifling their own fellow tribesmen. SHOCKING, I know: HOW could they.
So part of this strong, complex pride they are so famous for is a general refusal to learn English, and even Kiswahili at times, which is very unusual in Tanzania, where though it is most people’s second language, it is widely and warmly embraced—and not only as a language, but also as a main factor in Tanzania’s general peacefulness despite its strident poverty. So we couldn’t really talk with anyone beyond bargaining for copper bracelets and whatever, but then this one middle-aged man with gray hair and a purple shuka and the most superbly graceful way of leaning around with his staff walked up to Matt and me and started speaking English with a remarkably American accent. I can’t remember his name, but he was born in 1950 in the Crater (before it was made the Conservation Area) and raised there. In 1967, three American graduate students came to do research in his village—something about the crazy, crazy language, I think? Ah I bet those jerks can implode their vowels—for three years; when they left, he went back with them, and lived in Washington state for a year. He has an adult daughter there with one of the American researchers whom he referred to as “just a girlfriend.” Then of course in the meantime he’s also had eleven more children between his two Maasai wives. All of them attend school and are/will be tri-lingual in Maasai, Kiswahili and English. It’s beyond me to imagine being born a Maasai tribesman in the Ngorongoro Crater, but thinking about this also makes my head explode: you’re living in Washington state, the daughter of an American woman and a Maasai father who has two other wives and eleven other children and lives in the Ngorongoro Crater. I mean, I guess if you want to be a killjoy you can reduce anyone’s life situation to ridiculously basic facts and make it seem bizarre. I just can’t imagine trying to bridge a gap between the two cultures of my parents as wide as one between traditionalist Maasai and mainstream American must be.
[So I have been working on this for a couple hours now, we’re halfway down the fourth page in Times New Roman, point 12, and I haven’t even described what it was like down in the Crater yet. Ridiculous. I’m sorry. I’d say it’s the parenthetical statements that are causing the most hydrodynamic drag but it could also be an atrophied ability to discern interesting from boring. But I’m going to leave it all in, because I’m lazy and haven’t written in my private journal since September, and I will probably want to remember all of this.]
But that was on our way back out of the Crater. First, we drove around that sunuvabitch for half a day. Now apparently one of the rules strictly enforced by the Crater rangers is that you are absolutely not permitted to get out of the safari vehicle except for at very specific rest areas and lunch spots. (This was not really a problem until Tony decided that he really wanted one of the little bones laying around this one area; Samuel did some remarkably tight maneuvering with the Land Rover to pull up next to a four-inch wide bone, then Moses opened up his car door and almost fell out scooping that little baby up.) Which was not where we were when we first got down into the Crater, and yet we all got out of the car and stood around being giddy. There were a ton of zebras (pundamilia in Kiswahili—“striped horse”) hanging out munching on grass. One let me get pretty close to it—within five or six feet I’d say—before it moseyed on.

Also hanging out with the zebras, but stricter about keeping their distance from us, were some wildebeests. I love them so much, they’re always galumphing around. (“Galumphing” passed the automatic spell check, by the way.) Later on in Serengetti I read that older, less zesty wildebeests who get rejected by their herd will get taken in by the zebras. Another grazing animal—topis maybe?—will crash with zebras for similar reasons. And then also the zebras shadow the great wildebeest migration, which is something I really want to see at some point in my life, although there’s a chance that it wouldn’t live up to the IMAX I saw about the Serengetti when I was like 9, because I was nine and also because it had a lot of those sweet low-flying plane shots over the vast herds of rioting animals.
Then we got in the car for a few hours—didn’t really see a ton of animals, although when we drove this beautiful little patch of forest (that made me wish for the umpteenth time that I’d brought the movie “Fern Gully” with me) there were some elephants fairly close to the road, one with a little baby, who nonetheless kept their distance. There were probably six or seven other safari cars full of wazungu sitting in this little patch; someone had seen a leopard in the distance on other side from the elephants.
I would love to see the Crater from the air. All the different safari cars driving around this little bowl of earth must look like hamsters running around a dry swimming pool. There is a company that offers a crazy luxurious hot air balloon safari for somewhere around $400 per person per day. In any case, crossing paths with other cars was definitely one of the weirder things about driving around in the Crater. I mean the whole concept of going on safari is ridiculous—all of these people paying thousands of dollars to get to Tanzania and get in the park and driving these big old cars around trying to look at these animals that have no use for us. And then every time we’d pass another car, there’d be this two-tiered greeting: the Tanzanian drivers and guides talking in Kiswahili down in the front seats, and then we wazungu sticking out of the top would do our “Hey there, fellow mzungu” nod or smile or wave or hello, which doesn’t so much feel genuine or even just like an ordinary bullshit pleasantry but more like everyone is affirming racial alliances. It happens in Dar too, but not as much because not all of the wazungu in Dar are tourists or backpackers (although they—or we rather—are all volunteers or students or just plain old loaded with cash). And I’m going to go ahead and say it is a racial thing and not a class thing or a cultural thing, because there were a couple of cars with Indians and blacks, and if they waved it wasn’t with the same exuberant relief, and it’s not like all of us whities were from the same culture, though when I compare cultural gaps I experience with Europeans with those I experience with Tanzanians and other Africans, the notion of the West as a (huge, gelatinous) nearly-homogenous culture seems more fair. All this to say, I just felt kind of lousy about it.
And this trip is just taking me a ridiculous amount of words to describe. !!! So I’m going to try and move things along with a simple list of all the animals we saw: baboon (a family of them playing and running around one of the kopjes, which was cool because although there is a baboon who lives on campus, her entire family was killed by the university because they were getting aggressive and now she just skulks around the vervets and occasionally steals their babies and tries to suckle them), vervet monkey (which are the equivalents of squirrels on campus), blackbacked jackal (fleetingly), banded mongoose (also a campus-dweller), spotted hyena (they look like ratty teddy bears), cheetah (from afar), lion, rock hyrax (a little woodchucky looking thing that is also the elephant’s closest living relative), elephant, white rhino (also from afar), Grant’s zebra (and also three separate zebra penises, which are pretty hard to miss but also, according to Samuel, seen only rarely so we felt pretty lucky), Grant’s gazelle, Thomson’s gazelle, impala, common reedbuck, warthog (another completely hilarious looking animal), hippos (one right outside our window, and then a group of thirty or forty all wallowing together), giraffe (the little babies are so pretty!), cape buffalo (I maintain that their faces resemble George Washington on the one-dollar bill), wildebeest, topi (almost as bizarre looking as the wildebeest), ostrich (I love their dancer-in-tutu shape), and lots of birds that I can’t remember the name of because they weren’t in the animal part of my Rough Guide, which Matt and I used to keep track of what we saw, but they tended to be gorgeous and fly away as soon as someone tried to take a picture of them.

[Got this little jerk though! In Serengetti.]

[Topi in Serengetti...I just don't like the shiny hairless look.]
I think my favorite birds might be the chicken-shaped honeys that are black with white polka dots and streaks of peacock-green. We had amazing good luck with how frequently we saw different animals, although we were disappointed that we didn’t see anyone get eaten or mating (although when I was having breakfast at DARUSO the other day there was some hot fly-on-fly action on the table next to my plate, and they wouldn’t shoo for the moon or the stars).

[One of the baboons up on the kopje!]

[Baboons grooming each other]
The lions get their own paragraph though. On our way into Serengetti late Saturday afternoon, Justin noticed three or four lions in the distance coming towards the road, so we stopped and waited. We were the only car in sight, which was cool because maneuvering around other cars can be annoying. They kept coming closer and closer until we could see that one of them had on a tracking collar, which Samuel said they put on the mother lionesses. And they just kept on getting closer, it was nuts. They crossed the road right in front of the car and sat down on an embankment about 20 feet from us. And just hung out for a damn long time.

After a little while papa lion came too, which apparently is extremely rare, because they generally keep to themselves, but he came and sat with them.

[The dazed, sunburned look only adds to the mzungu-ness of particular big head, distant animal shot. I also get extra points for the Zanzibar scarf.]
By then about three other cars had showed up, but the lion family stuck around at least until we finally had to get going to figure out where were going to stay. The other lion we saw was on our way out Sunday afternoon, along the same stretch of road where we saw the family. There was a kopje probably 500 feet from the road where we could see a lion was standing out on a rock, so Samuel drove us out to it so that we were about 15 feet away. Turns out it’s a pregnant lioness preparing to give birth. She was making this exasperated half-bark, half-roar sound, so at first we thought she might be sick, but then she turned to the side—you can see how her belly hangs down in the picture.

Samuel told us that the particular kopje where she was hanging out is where the lions go to give birth alone, and then the other adult females will come and help her carry the babies to different kopje where they all take it easy for a while. I could have stayed and watched her for a long time but we were racing to get out of the parks by 6, so we took off after a little bit.
In any case, Saturday night was fun. We went and had dinner at a little pub in Serengetti where we met one of Samuel’s old friends who also works as a guide and actually lives in the park. He kept yelling at his kids who were running all over the place. After dinner I did a crappy job of playing pool with some guys who were hanging out and nice enough to tell me good job, very nice, nzuri sana, every time I picked up the cue stick. I pretty much got slaughtered. I think everyone was relieved when I couldn’t stay to play another game. We ended up staying at the adult hostel; there was also a student one, dorm-style. I was kind of glad we stayed at the adult one, because I was too tired to deal with the squat toilet I’m sure they would have at the student place, and they might not have had mosquito nets either. Although when Matt and I walked into our room the floor and one of the beds was covered in those creepy little bugs with the detachable wings, blech—someone had left the window open and the light on. We closed the window, turned off the light and walked back out; when we came back in, they were gone. I just realized—where the hell did they go if we closed the window and shut the door? Gross. But they were gone when we went back in.
Next morning Samuel and Moses were late picking us up (I’d wanted to get up for sunrise but Samuel shot that down, which was the only time I got annoyed with him), then breakfast and fueling up (we’d been leaking gas in Serengetti! Ah!) took forever, so it was about 9 by the time we got going. Right off the bat though, we saw a shit-ton of giraffes right next to the road, and had pretty good luck for the rest of the day. The hippo right outside the window was the closest we got to anything; I could have reached out and touched it, which would have been a terrible idea because they are one of the most dangerous animals in the world.

We ran into Samuel’s friend again with a car full of people. All they’d seen was a couple of buffalo or something, so we felt pretty lucky. Although I think my favorite part was later in the afternoon when we were just driving out in the middle of nowhere.

There were all these little mountains plateaus around, and the only animal we would see were these solitary ostriches running in the distance.

[More of Serengetti being gorgeous. The clouds here! !!!]
So we spent the day driving around. Saw the pregnant lioness. Even when we weren’t seeing stuff it was fun to just stand up with my head sticking out of the roof looking at everything go by. Our visibility was so great you could see where it was raining far away; there would be wide swaths of dark blue gray falling from big heavy clouds down to the ground with the lighter gray of the sky to either side. (Got a picture but it's on Matt's camera.) On our way out of Serengetti we stopped at the little canteen. I bought a “I <3 warthogs” sticker, and Justin bought a can of cold beans, a can of cold peas, a box of crackers and a couple of beers for us to split for lunch. Matt bought a bottle of Konyagi, this nasty clear “whiskey” made in Tanzania that has flames on the label and a bit about being “the spirit of the nation,” and a couple cans of Fanta, which everyone except Samuel and me swigged from, on the bumpy road out of the parks.

[In front of a big-ass baobab tree on our way out of Serengetti. Left to right: me, Justin, Matt, Tony, Moses. If you ever run out of ways to wear your Masai blanket, just ask Moses, cuz he's wearing it differently in just about every picture from this trip.]
We ended up getting to the gate around 6:45. Samuel did a little sweet-talking—they are students, they don’t have any more money (not a lie by that point), please please please—and they let us through no problem, which was really cool because otherwise we would have been sleeping in the car.
Samuel told us about one time when he was stranded with a car out in the middle of Serengetti for 11 days. He’d been driving around with a couple on their honeymoon and suddenly the car broke down. They all spent one night in the car together, and then the next day another car came along and picked up the couple and promised to send help. The day after that, some rangers came with food and Samuel told them what part to get from town—he couldn’t leave his car out in the middle of the park, I don’t know why. Ends up taking a week for the part to come in, which Samuel spends eating, sleeping and dancing to the car radio. I would have killed someone for a couple of long, long books. When they finally get the part, the car still doesn’t work, so he ends up getting towed all the way back to Arusha. I think I would have quit being a safari guide after that, but he said it’s something they prepare you for in guide school.
He did quite a lot of training to become a guide. First there’s guide school, which is all about the animals and how to handle emergency situations (it’s also possible to camp out in most of the parks), which I think lasts half a year although it might be longer than that. Then maybe another half a year just learning his way around the different parks—he does Ngorongoro, Serengetti, Lake Manyara, Tarangire, and just Ngorongoro and Serengett together are 23,051 square kilometers; not all of that is accessible by road, but a pretty sizeable amount of it is. Then he did an English course and a French course, four months each—his English is incredible, partly because he’s spent a lot of time watching American movies over and over again, and then he’s also fluent in French—he’d written all the French names in his bird and animal field guides. Then a year in automotive school learning how to take care of the car, and another year after that working in a garage after that.
That night we stayed in the same village; I already said that. In a little tavern that had tables and chairs out front in the lawn and on the porch, and then the front door opened into a big common room with a bar back in one corner and a TV bolted up in the other corner, hospital waiting room-style. Just to the left of the door were a couch and a couple big chairs set up around a coffee table where we ate dinner. It took a while for the food to come so I took a little nap on the couches while the others played pool in the adjacent room. I love sleeping in dimly lit places with music playing and people talking. I wasn’t in the mood to play pool or drink beers so I went to bed pretty early, as did Moses, Tony and Justin. Matt stayed up drinking with Samuel, who knew a lot of the people there. A prostitute hanging out with Matt passed him a note: “No money necessary. I love you so much.” He told her “labda kesho,” maybe tomorrow. She told him that she was 20 or something, but Samuel said he thought she was 15 or 16.
Monday morning we got up early to drive back to Arusha. It’s such a nice trip to make, the road is in great shape and you can see far-off mountains the whole way. We stopped at a few arts and crafts souvenir shops on the way out, places where whenever Samuel brings people, his name gets entered in a lottery. He said he would split the pot with us if he won. I got a bracelet made out of giraffe tail (it’s just occurring to me now that if it really is giraffe tail, then someone is probably pretty unhappy about that) and some red Masai beads that are pretty tame so I can wear them all the time, but I want to go back and get some wilder stuff. At the last place we went to they had porcupine quills; I tried to find one narrow enough to put in my nose but the smallest was still a kidogo scary prospect. Everyone who worked at the stores were pretty nice, especially once we started speaking our crummy Kiswahili. It’s going to be weird to come home and not be able to bargain, because here you can even in stores, unless the price is marked, and even then sometimes. Tony was very proud when one of the people told him not to be so cheap next time, which I understand because it’s nice to be at the point where you have some kind of idea about reasonable prices. I mean you’re always going to get a little ripped off if you’re mzungu, but still.
First stop in Arusha was to drop me off at Western Union, where I had a harrowing twenty minutes but emerged triumphant. It was weird to be that white girl getting money wired by her parents. We met Moses’s mom, who owns a little shop, and she gave us seats behind the counter and fed us peanuts because by then we hadn’t eaten in six or seven hours. So Moses took us to his favorite restaurant. It was in a Tanzanian version of a strip mall. We sat outside and the specialty was goat leg, which they roasted whole on the bone and then slice up into a big bowl of meat cubes with a side of chipsi. They were out of fish so Samuel went to a restaurant down the street and ordered me some. Turns out goat meat is delicious. I had just a bite because I figured I had to seize the opportunity and then it was so tasty I stole a few more after that. I don’t know if I could eat a whole leg, but I bet Moses knows a good place in Dar and I’m gonna ask him to take me sometime again before I leave. Then we went up the street so I could have my fish. It was enormous, and the kind with the head, eyeballs, bones, fins, everything, which I am still adjusting to, and also delicious—cooked in some kind of coconut, tomato and ginger sauce with mchicha and rice that almost tasted like jasmine. That place was super nice, with a full-size pool table (the one I played on was slightly smaller than usual) and a really clean bathroom. Shots of Jose Cuervo Classico were 1000/= ($.90) apiece so I bought a round for everyone to celebrate; Moses and Samuel passed. Around ten Matt and I decided to go back to the guesthouse and have some pizza and more beer at Pizzarusha, a.k.a. Pizza Hut, which claims to have “the best damn pizza in all of Africa.” Which as far as I’m concerned is true. By midnight Matt was passed out. I stayed up for a couple hours after that reading one of the many trashy crime novels his parents keep sending him. That shit is truly underrated. Nothing better for long bus rides.
Ours on that Tuesday was pretty much just boring. The Chakula House, which had been so delicious on the previous Friday, had the nerve to stay closed until eight, which in Tanzania is kind of like Dunkin’ Donuts not opening until eleven. In any case, we got seats up near the front again, which was nice, and for the most part we all just dozed the whole way back to Dar. Every time we came to a checkpoint/weigh station type of place, the driver’s right-hand man would come over and tell us and the other people in the first few rows to go back and squeeze in with everybody else. I’m still not quite sure what the logic was. The inn where we stopped for lunch was oddly gentile-looking, with a big wooden front porch and lots of wooden furniture and cream-colored pillow everywhere. But it didn’t have a Western toilet, which surprised me. It’s weird where they do and don’t pop up, and toilet paper's the same way.
And once again, the bus’s chicken population was limited to a single bizarre case. When we were passing through a little village a man waved over the bus—even inter-city buses here will let you off pretty much anywhere and can also be waved over if you want to hop on—like he wanted to get on, but instead he just ran up to the driver’s window, handed him a box tied up with twine (sisal, I’m guessing in retrospect, since northern Tanzania is crawling with it) and shouted a name. Of course there was a chicken in the box. With big old air holes and everything. The driver turned around and handed it to the guy sitting behind him, who stuck the chicken under his seat, where he/she remained in silence for the rest of the trip. I only know it was a chicken because I could see its feathers through the holes. I think that is the only time I’ve ever known a non-human animal to take a solo trip on public transportation.
This particular chicken rode all the way back to Dar with us. Getting off the bus was the typically (horribly) overwhelming, kind of embarrassing experience of being surrounded by ten guys going, “Hello my friend, yes, taxi, sister I am here.” I had little more than an hour before I was supposed to take a sociology test, so we took the sucker’s way home in a taxi instead of by daladala. I really hate admitting to a taxi driver that I do in fact need a ride, because in my head I’ve built up this weird antagonism between them and myself, which is absolutely inappropriate because they’re just trying to make a buck and it’d be ridiculous to pretend that I don’t have enough money to take a cab or that no one else can make an educated guess that I might have that money.
When I got back to my hall all I wanted to do was hop in the shower (last one had been in Serengetti on Saturday, and that had been with a faucet sticking out of the wall at waist-level), but that was day 2 of the week without water so I made do with a couple of baby wipes, which I’m really glad I brought. Okay enough of this nonsense, it’s getting boring now.

Arusha!

2005-11-04T00:54:00.000-08:00

So I am writing this from Arusha! Which is a biggish town/smallish city up north smack in the middle of the Northern Safari Circuit (Serengetti, Tarangire, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater, Olduvai Gorge...i.e., the cradle of humanity) that traveling wazungu use as a launching point. It was a 10-hour bus ride from Dar, which actually wasn't that terrible because we left at 6 a.m., so I at least dozed for a good piece of it. Also, we were early to the bus station and the guy taking tickets took pity on us and sat us up in the very first row, where it is less sketchy and there is significantly more leg room. There wasn't even a live chicken until the last hour or so! And even then it was an extremely calm (I'm thinking drugged) rooster wearing a blue plastic bag and sitting in a basket; usually they just sit on their owner's lap. We even stopped halfway at a rest stop-type place for snacks and whatnot, where I talked the lady into letting me take my Stoney to go (usually you have to leave the bottles there, or pay for them) and overpaid for a couple of oranges.
The funny thing about bus trips in Tanzania is that I want them to be over but I hate getting off the bus, because it's such a hubbub when we get off, especially because I've never traveled with less than 3 other wazungu. Instantly a million dudes are saying "Tax, you need tax, I am here sister," and here in Arusha they were all about the safaris and whatnot too. One guy named David walked with us to Pizzarusha (where we had the closest thing I've seen to pizza in Tanzania), waited for us to finish eating, showed us a book where tourists from different countries had written long messages of praise in various languages regarding the quality of his guided tours. My favorite one went, "Hi dear," followed by an entire page of Japanese, then "Love, Julia" at the bottom.
We took a while in the pizza place and by the time we walked out he was gone, so on our own we got some rooms at a guesthouse next door. Kevin and I are paying $2.50 per person per night for the communal bathroom; Matt and Rob are paying $5 per person per night for a self-contained bathroom with Western-style toilet. Both have hot water, which is amazing, but I cheated this morning and used Matt and Rob's bathroom, because the communal squat toilet isn't set low enough in the ground, hence splashback. Within 10 minutes of sitting on our surprisingly large and clean beds, there was a knock on our door for "Bwana Kevin" (who speaks the best Kiswahili and is therefore the default ambassador when we travel together) from David, who left us a very sweet note describing the tours he gave that started with "Dear here is my phone number."
Took the customary nap-upon-arrival which I found impossible to wake up from--apparently Kevin told me he had a headache and asked if I had any tylenol; I said no and rolled around groaning some more, only to offer everyone some tylenol on our way to the restaurant (still sore from running on Wednesday!) with no memory of the headache conversation. Went to a really neat place I read about in Rough Guide called Via Via Cultural Cafe that's owned by some Belgians. Beers were only 1000/= ($.90) though, and you could get a huge plate of food, including SALAD that wasn't iceberg and asparagus that wasn't cooked in meat juice (which is the typical preparation of vegetables in Tanzania), for 5000/= ($4.50), which would have been an even better deal if we'd split 2 plates between the 4 of us, because none of us finished what we took. There was also a live jazz band that was pretty much awful but the Europeans were doing the shoulder-bopping-while-seated dance, and there were some Tanzanian guys getting rowdy by the bar who were fun to talk to. We all pooped out pretty early--I switched to Tanga Wizi 3 sips into my first beer cuz I could feel myself falling asleep at the table--but when we got home, Kevin and I suddenly had a shit-ton of energy and stayed up til midnight just bullshitting around.
Didn't sleep that well, although it was nice and cool, which was wonderful. I even had to use a blanket! So I'm kind of out of it today but whatev. Had breakfast up the street at the Chakula House (Food House), which had the least greasy chapati I've seen since I've been here, and they undercharged us too for some reason. Then we walked to the other side of town to check out the War Crimes Tribunal, but it's adjourned today due to Idd al-Fatr, so we did a loop around the market, where we paid kidogo too much for some khangas. Matt and Kevin got a Nyerere one that I'm going to wait to get in Dar, and I got a sweet red and green one with the Muslim Star and Crescent with IDDI written where the proverbs usually are. Next on the agenda is the Arusha Declaration Museum, which is all about the last 45 years of independence from Britain, and at some point we'll meet up with Tony, who's from Canada and has a Tanzanian friend whose family owns some kind of safari company, so hopefully we can do one of the national parks tomorrow on the cheap. We were talking about going for the gold at Serengetti, but more likely we'll do Tarangire, which is closer and more manageable, but still pretty exciting because my friend was camping there earlier this week and saw 5 lions eating the shit out of a zebra.

Wrote this on Wednesday...

2005-11-04T00:42:00.000-08:00

Had a wonderful Lariam dream one afternoon last week in which I ate the best pizza of my life—onion, zucchini, pesto, jeez it hurts to write about it—at a bowling alley, and then wrote a poem that I think was pretty good but all I can remember is one line: “your laugh like a strike in bowling,” which is nice but I have a hunch there were better parts. In any case, I'm just glad the mefloquine hasn't made me go all crazy-like which is what happened to another American girl who's here.

Our Halloween party was a wild success! Never in my most wonderful dreams did I ever to see 3 Tanzanian men in drag all at once. The Tanzanians and Europeans definitely got more into their costumes than did the Americans, which was awesome—pictures soon! I dressed up as my friend Ali, who has a mustache, from the waist up, and a mermaid from the waist down, though I lost my posterboard tail pretty quickly; yesterday I definitely woke up with a vaguely gray shadow happening on my chin and upper lip (washable marker, my ass!), which clinched my decision to cut class and hide out with Matt and Mercer all day. I also bought a shit-ton of candies for the dudes at the English class I help with, but class was cancelled on Halloween due to a blackout at the market, so they’ll get the sweets tonight I guess. As much fun as it was, it didn’t quite feel like the real thing—maybe because at 11 pm it was still warm enough to break a sweat walking up stairs. (And it’s not even the really hot season yet, which is also going to be the rainy season! Starts in December, though it doesn’t really get bad until Marchish, so I’ll miss out on all the monsoon fun.) The one disappointing thing—Tanisha and Alex caught Justin, who is American AND 26 YEARS OLD, taking pictures from afar of our Tanzanian girlfriends’ butts and stuff—which made Leila and Caroline and Laura pretty uncomfortable. Tanisha and Alex called him on it and he stopped, but the blissful oblivion of some of our international male friends is just lousy. Apparently Tanisha said something about setting an example for Tanzanian men, which sounds condescending, but I really feel like Western ideals (if not behaviors) regarding gender relations are better than the way we women have been treated by the majority of the Tanzanian men we’ve met.

Decided yesterday to go on a trip with Matt and Rob and Kevin this weekend up to Arusha, which is the main city up country, very close to Mount Kilimanjaro, which we plan on visiting (but not hiking, because that shit costs $500—some other time maybe). No school tomorrow and Friday for Idd al-Fajir (I don’t think the Fajir part is quite right), the end of Raamadan—I’d wanted to go to Zanzibar because it’s supposed to be really fun there during Idd, but right now there is rioting because CCM stole the election there (the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba joined mainland Tanganikya in 1964 to form the Republic of Tanzania, so they have their own president and stuff who is sort of sovereign and sort of has to kowtow to the mainland government, and it is also the stronghold of the one viable opposition party; see #5 for a fairly crappy explanation of CCM), plus Ali said, “Dada Kate do not go, it will worry me,” and I love Ali and trust his judgment, especially because his family lives on Zanzibar. ANYWAY, the bus leaves at 8:45 tomorrow morning and we’ll get there around dinnertime—only $15 for an 8-hour bus ride! Wildness! I look forward to a day of reading books, eating oranges and cashews and suffering general physical discomfiture. Friday we’ll sit in on the Rwandan genocide tribunal for a bit, because this week one of the architects of the slaughter is on trial—and then who knows! Friday afternoon I kind of want to do one of the cultural tourism programs with the Masai, which is kind of nerdy but also pretty sweet because it’s a viable alternative for people who want to stay independent of the mainstream economy, where their best option would probably be mindless labor. I also want to try to go to Tarangire National Park—a friend just came back from camping there and saw lions eating a zebra and all kinds of crazy shit—which since you go at like 3 in the morning doesn’t actually eat up your whole day, so we could go to Kilimanjaro in the afternoon. We can always sleep on the bus ride home! But really it doesn’t matter what we do, because they’re all great traveling companions, and not a single one of them will try to talk me into going to church.

Had a sweet 2-hour conversation with David last night, courtesy of Skype’s Global Calling Rate of 2 cents per minute! It’s very strange to try and have any kind of personal conversation in a crowded computer lab, but it’s so nice not to feel rushed by how much it costs, although we did get caught a big unawares by the sudden closure of the lab at TEN O’CLOCK (you know, because all the dudes who look at porn in the computer lab need to get to bed early. Or something), because it relieved some of the pressure to say Important Things and we could just joke around some. Ah I miss him!

Ended a long string of broken promises and finally went running early this morning with Alex and Caroline, who runs in water shoes. We were a parade of fools three times around the track, and then various calisthenics that we kicked off with more jumping jacks than was necessary, some of which I’m pretty sure Caroline invented. I’d been meaning to go with them for the past week, but they usually go at 5:30 in the morning, which is just out of the question because THE SUN HASN’T RISEN YET AT 5:30. So neither should I, especially because I’ve been exceptionally lucky to have roommates who don’t wake up in the wee hours and start blasting gospel music, which is the fate suffered by most of the international students. But today they went at 6 am, which was somewhat manageable, and I can definitely feel it in my poor thigh muscles as I hike around this dang mountainous campus, but also glad that I did it, which is always the way it works with exercise I guess.

Today is Day 2 of weird watery fluid leaking from my nose. I’ve had a cold/sinus infection the past couple weeks so I’d been drowning in snot, but this substance is definitely lacking all mucus-like qualities and was also tinged with blood this morning. Also, when I say leaking, I mean it very literally drips out of my nose at totally random times that I cannot control. As its companion there has also arrived a curiously delicate crust that looks like orange-flavored rock candy. I’m thinking I’ve either sprung a brain juice leak or caught some stealthy tropical disease that has gone straight to the cerebral stages. Or else it’s just the swansong of said sinus infection, but still just a touch worrisome.

So last night I had my first real conversation with my new roommate Diane! Last week I’d thought she was kind of—well, not snotty, but kidogo snotty—turns out she’s hilarious and good-natured and quietly irreverent. Yesterday morning we’d had a fairly awkward encounter regarding my unmade bed (she pretty much insisted that she make it because she’d do a much better job, which is true) and my laundry (tried to talk me into the paying the cleaning lady to do it for me, which is what she does because she hates doing laundry, and I’m thinking I might go ahead and get my sheets done because—MOM DON’T READ THE NEXT 15 WORDS—the last time they were washed was in Baltimore; I sleep in my own filth.) And before that it was just similarly clumsy exchanges about nothing in particular. BUT LAST NIGHT, she was on a roll man. First she asked how I found Swahili (she uses the sentence structures “How did you find ___” and “I found ___ to be ___” a lot), and when I said it was hard, SHE AGREED WITH ME. This is a radical departure from the standard response along the lines of Swahili is incredibly easy, it’s English that’s so hard (and never mind that English is my mother tongue and I’ve only been learning Swahili for 2 months compared the years and years most people here spend studying English!) Turns out she went to English-medium boarding schools since Standard One or whatever it is they call first grade; I’m still balled up all the Standards and Forms and A-Levels and O-Levels, etc.—primary school in Arusha and then secondary school in Uganda, where everyone speaks English all the time. Swahili was her first language so she feels more comfortable speaking it, but she prefers writing in English because that’s what all her schoolwork has been in. Then she started telling me about her eldest sister (Diane’s the fifth of six children), who works as an advocate (lawyer?) and is single, which “everyone finds very weird,” because she’s “already 28.” Apparently she’s just very busy with her work all the time and very uptight (doesn’t like to share things, which is very rude in Tanzania) and perpetually scaring away potential boyfriends so that everyone thinks, “ ‘Ah, that one, [clucking sounds], she has bad luck, she’ll never marry.’” Which has her father in a agitated state of despair, because all of his five daughters seem completely disinterested or at least unmotivated in regards to getting married, and he was hoping to get at least 20 but maybe up to 40 head of CATTLE for each of them as bride price. BRIDE PRICE! !!!!!!! Not quite as bizarre as the whole shangazi thing, but still pretty weird considering that Diane’s family is from Dar; I don’t think she even speaks a tribal language, which is unusual, even among my wealthy classmates. Her mother is a secretary at the United Nations headquarters in Dar, and her father was a pilot for CCM (which is THE political party—it’s sponsored every president since Tanzania’s independence in 1961; there are 8 other parties technically in the running for this year’s election, but of those only 3 are actually functional, and none are relevant, because everyone already knows that CCM is going to beat the pants off of everyone [except on Zanzibar, where Civic United Front has support from the significantly-Muslim population]—to the point that it may as well be a one-party democracy, although perhaps one day that will change. IN ANY CASE, Diane is not a big fan of CCM, but that’s not really something you can publicly admit to, especially because she wants to practice law—you only have to do a 4-year undergraduate program, if I understood her correctly, to work as a lawyer. Diane also doesn’t want to get married herself, which is a pretty outlandish stance to take here (although at home too I guess), because she finds married life very boring and doesn’t want to do laundry and all that—although neither does her sister, who thinks the solution to that problem is to just marry a white man! HA. In fact, this sister, whose name is Liz (just like my sister!), who has never visited Diane at university even though she still lives in Dar with her parents, wants to come visit Diane now just because she has a white roommate and she loves white people. AH. Diane promises that I’ll hate her because she’ll be all over me, but I think more than anything it’ll be a mixture of kinda funny and extremely depressing. (I know Tanisha has had a hard time with being a black American, because she isn’t accepted as a local, I think especially because her parents are Jamaican and she doesn’t look Tanzanian like Alicia has been told she does, but nor does she get quite the same preferential treatment that whites do in certain situations, and she regularly has to insist that she is in fact American and then explain the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.) Diane does have a boyfriend, a 28-year-old lawyer living in Botswana, who is a big secret from her parents! They’ve been dating a year, and she hasn’t slept with him because “African love is fake” and all men want is sex, “to eat you up all for themselves” (growly snarfing noises). !!!!! Rose and Hellen, my old roommates, were super nice and I’m sorry they got evicted (for sharing a bed, and I don’t think selling phone minute vouchers out of the room helped their case), but it was kind of hard to make friends with them because they’ve known each other since boarding school. I think Diane and I will be buddies though, and I’m excited!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PICSSSSS

2005-10-28T06:14:00.000-07:00

So there is a ridiculously long list of topics I would like to write about in my little journal, but today is not that day. No, it is a day for pictures.

Least ridiculous picture taken of me since I cut off all my hair.

The road from Mwenge to city center from the ritzy poolside bar that I retreat to when there is no Stoney Tanga Wizi on campus and I don't feel like doing the 40-minute bus ride to town. Dusk is so spectacular here.

Kipepao, the beach where I go camping.

One of the quasi-stray dogs at Kipepao...they are mostly harmless except one time when my friend Mercer was camping there, one peed on a pile of all the clothes she had with her.

My friend Alex and a pink, sweaty me at a reservoir we hiked to at Pugu Hills, a tiny tiny rainforest reserve 25 km southwest of the city. It was so good to just muck around in the woods.

View from the resort at Pugu Hills where we started out from. Getting there took forever because my Rough Guide's bus instructions were utter crap. Once we got to the village, we paid a dude who was hanging out to take us up to the resort, where we awkwardly waited around for the owner of the resort to come and give us ridiculous directions to the reservoir. He was crazy--a Dutch guy who's been here since the mid-seventies, built the resort from the ground up with his wife--it was beautiful. Had floppy blonde hair and that wind- and sunburnt Robert Redford deal kind of face. He wore red short and an army green mesh tank top and calf-high hiking socks with sandals. I'd really love to know how you get to be that crazy Dutch guy on the side of a hill in Tanzania wearing a mesh tank top.

Mostly because I want to be that crazy American woman farming honey on the side of this hill at Morogoro (from Sydney's camera). With the kids who took us up the hill--the building on the left is their primary school.

From Mikumi--I just really love the way this picture looks (from Alex's camera).

One of the sad, sad crocodiles at the snake park in Mikumi, getting whacked so he'll snap his jaws for us (from Alicia's camera).

My little corner of the world. Can't see my sexy pink bucket, which is a shame because it pretty much gets me through the day, especially this week since the water's been out every single time I've had time to take a shower.

During our program's 3-week Swahili crash course, 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. everyday (except towards the end, as it got easier and easier to talk Elizabeth into letting us out at 10:30 or 11.) (from Sydney's camera)

Stonetown, Zanzibar, from the ferry. (from Sydney's camera)

At the fish market in Stonetown where we ate our first dinner on Zanzibar. We bought our fried/grilled seafood from the guys in the bottom picture, who delighted in trying to teach me how to say "ng'ombe" ("cow") for a good 10 minutes. "Ng' " is a sound that doesn't happen much in english--it's kind of like the "ng" in "singing," if you say the first "g" fully and feel the buzzing in your throat. 6 weeks later, I still can't do it most of the time, but it's coming along. (from Sydney's camera)

Saidi, the guy who took us out to Changuu Island from Stonetown, and also went snorkeling with Alicia and me. In a Speedo. Holding our hands. Hahahaha. (from Alicia's camera)

In front of our hotel in Stonetown. From left to right, Rob, Elizabeth, Matt, Alex, me, Sydney (from Alicia's camera).

In Stonetown, from left to right: Elizabeth, Alex, Alicia, me, Mutembei (from Sydney's camera).

The monument at the Anglican Church in Stonetown, built on the original site of the slave market. One of the most bizarre things about being in Tanzania is how often the black Americans here have to insist that they are actually from America and then explain the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, even at the university. (from Alicia's camera)

The color of the sky, every goddamn day, sometimes even when it's raining.

15 things I love about Tanzania

2005-10-11T04:10:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling kind of burnt out on Dar Es Salaam and its people the past few days for various reasons, which stinks, so rather than go into why I'm bummed, I've made this list instead.

FIFTEEN THINGS I LOVE ABOUT TANZANIA, in no particular order:
1. There is no literal translation of "to have" in Kiswahili. Instead, one says "kuwa na"--"to be with." ("ku-"=infinitive "to", "-w-"=be, "-a"=Bantu suffix for indicating verbs; "na"=and, with") There are lots of neat things about Kiswahili. It's completely phonetic, so if you can say it you can spell it. Not only are there prefixes and suffixes like there are in Latinate languages, there are also INfixes for things like object pronouns and and mood markers. "He" and "she" both translate as "wewe" (way-way). A man who has a sugar mama is called a "serengetti boy." There are no articles ("a" and "the"). "Kuvaa samaki" = to catch fish, "kuvaa nguo" = to strip off one's clothes. The word for God is "mungu," which is pronounced something like "moon goo." "Moon" and "month" are both translated as "mwezi," which coincidentally is in the noun class usually called the "tree" class ("mti" = "tree"). Because vowels always make the same sound and the Kiswahili "a" is like the one in father, my name is generally pronounced as "Ke-ti" (rhymes with Betty, but with a starker delineation between the two syllables). Eating "Kitanzania" (the Tanzanian way) means eating with your hands.
2. While it is considered tacky in most places and even rude or offensive in more Muslim areas for lovers to hold hands, friends of the same sex (and, more rarely, opposite sexes) hold hands all the time. Everywhere you look on campus, grown men walk around holding hands; women tend to hold each other's wrists, although they also engage in palm-to-palm contact.
3. Kevin's roommate Abraham calls men and women alike "Bwana" (Mister) and also let me pick out the "carpet" (linoleum flooring) for their room. Matt's roommate Daniel is 33 because he was in seminary for 7 years and 6 months away from becoming a priest when the higher-ups said, "Maybe you should do something else"; the entry for Sunday on his weekly schedule: 8:00 - 16: 00, "Enjoy the Lord's Day"; 20:00 - 22:00, "Movies."
4. Babies are everywhere, all the time, especially on the daladalas. More than once a mother getting on a crowded bus has untied her infant from her back and handed him/her to me to hold while she finagles a seat (I generally sit on the ass-broiler behind the driver's seat, a prime baby-handling location). Women also breastfeed anywhere, anytime, and no one says anything or looks twice or, as far as I can tell, notices it at all, which is a nice change from in the US where everyone has an opinion, positive or negative, and feels pretty good about sharing it in various ways.
5. "Shangazi" is the word for your father's sister(s). She also has the special duty of accompanying her newly wed nephew and his bride into the consummation hut with the purpose of coaching, cheering, making sure the bride is a virgin (if that was everyone's understanding beforehand) and generally helping everything to go smoothly. If the couple consummate the marriage successfully, she emerges triumphantly to spread the good news to the family members and friends waiting outside; if not, she offers proverbs of reassurance. And this isn't some archaic practice; we're pretty sure (sometimes things get lost in translation) that when my tutor Elizabeth gets married next summer, her husband's shangazi will be there to help them out.
6. The canteen at DARUSO, the student union, sells this amazing strawberry ice cream that tastes like the color pink and kind of makes your tongue feel funny. It's awesome. There is also an ice cream place in the Indian district downtown with all-natural strawberry ice cream that tastes like the ice cream waved her magic wand over a Georgia strawberry patch at peak season.
7. The prices listed in the food commodity index in "The Citizen," the leading English-language newspaper in Tanzania, are gathered at the food market at Kariakoo.
8. The sunsets are always spectacular, and always at 6:30 pm. The best place to watch it on campus is on the roof of Hall 4, because the view is unobstructed and also the international students who live there are less careful about their trash, so there always plenty of monkeys running around, and they get especially rowdy around dusk.
9. The markets are absolutely gorgeous at night. There are no streetlights, so everyone puts out kerosene lamps to cut the darkness. People also start fires in the trash ditches along the side of the road, which smells awful but looks almost welcoming. Also, when you approach a market in the bus during the day, you can see all the chaos; when you drive up at night, everything looks almost peaceful, so it's all the more startling when you get off the bus and into the noise and people scrambling around. There's always a ton of people just standing alongside of the road, not really doing anything, and I always wonder what the hell they do with themselves all day and night--how they make money, where they sleep, what exactly they do with all the hours in a day.
10. The predominant themes in the decor of most of my female friend's rooms is "carpet" (linoleum flooring) in all kinds of garish colors and patterns, and lace. The lace is particularly ridiculous. My friend Nikki woke up one morning and thought she was in the wrong room because her roommate had gotten up early to swathe everything in lace. She can't even push in her chair at her desk because the lace draped like a tablecloth over the top of the desk gets in the way.
11. I can go to a beautiful beach, have a great dinner, drink a few beers, camp out for the night and get home again the next day for less than $15. There's not much else to say about that, except that I got a bigger tent and camped with one or two more people, it'd be even cheaper than that.
12. Things I can buy while sitting in traffic: soap, sugarcane, cashews, fiber optic monstrocities, 'zine-style English/Swahili phrasebooks, newspapers in English and Swahili, cigarettes (the funniest brand being *sm, i.e. sweet menthol), all kinds of fruit, telephones, socks, men's briefs with "cowboy" and marijuana leaves on the waistband, hot water kettles, various beverages (including a 500 mL plastic bag of water for the equivalent of 5 cents). Last week I watched a man run alongside a woman's car as she bought badminton racquets from him.
13. Every introductory conversation I have with a Tanzanian ends with him/her saying, "Karibu," which means "Welcome" (and also "near" and "soon"), even if they've asked how long I've been here and I've told them 6 weeks.
14. The other day I was trying to take a nap and couldn't fall asleep until I pulled my mosquito net down around the bed like I do at night (during the day I twist it up out of the way).
15. The vast majority of my underwear has nearly doubled in size since I've been here due to handwashing/line-drying.

oh but then there's this

2005-10-09T08:07:00.000-07:00

So my friend Innocent told me about this boy who works on his mother's farm. Originally he had a bunch of brothers and sisters and 2 parents, but now it's just his older brother and him because of AIDS. His older brother is a sketchy character who has blew through all the money from the sale of their family's house, which is why the boy ended up on Innocent's mother's farm. When the boy passed the exams to qualify for secondary school, his brother sold his spot, so now he's stuck. Innocent thinks he's a good kid and promised to pay his school fees, but, because the university has privatized, he can't afford it. It's the equivalent of $150 for the year. I'm giving him $100 and some of the other kids in my program are going to give money too. Innocent's going to get copies of the boy's report cards and everything, which I can forward to whoever wants to help out. I'm kind of planning on seeing the boy all the way through secondary school. If anyone else wants to help out, let me know. Thanks!

more pictures from the Haven of Peace!

2005-10-09T07:51:00.000-07:00

So all this crazy stuff has been happening here that I want to write about but I've been working hard on the pictures and I only have a few minutes left so I figured today pictures, tomorrow stories. Haya!

View of Dar Es Salaam from the dorm room I stayed in the first couple weeks.

Sunset over the open market on Zanzibar.

My program group, from left to right: Alex, Matt, me, Alicia, Sydney, our tutor Elizabeth and Rob; on Zanzibar.

Same sunset in Zanzibar, with dhows, the fishing boats they use on the Indian Ocean, going out for the night.

175-year-old giant tortoise on Changuu (Prison) Island, off of Zanzibar.

Me! With crazy hair, in Zanzibar scarves, at the open market.

Zanzibar fishermen coming in, kids playing soccer on the beach.

A silly ad on the back of a bus, on the way out of Mikumi National Park.

FINALLY

2005-10-06T04:48:00.000-07:00

So let me just say I'm pumped that I got my act together about these pictures, especially because I almost got pickpocketed on the bus ride over to this Gucci internet cafe, except this wonderful lady scolded the kid in Swahili and then told me to watch out for my bag. Also, please note the hilariously pervasive tilt that makes it look like my head is permanently cocked to the right. Haya, picture time! (Well, sort of, because I had problems getting a lot of them to load and also they are way huge, but I promise it will get fixed!)

View from the hotel room in Stonetown, Zanzibar.

Crazy psychadelic daladala we took on safari through Mikumi National Park.

Sunrise over Mikumi.

Elephants! On the left, a baby and parent. It's hard to get good pictures of them because they stay far from the road.

Giraffes, impalas.

The Uluguru Mountains, from the campus at the agricultural university in Morogoro.

2005-10-04T04:28:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AUNT VICKI! I know this is belated and I'm sorry but the internet situation has been a little hectic lately.

In other news, it is Tuesday afternoon of the second week of classes but tomorrow will be the first day I attend a lecture, in part because of a student strike that just ended today. More about that when reliable internet access once again becomes part of my life!

Also met my roommate last week--her name is Rose, she's a 3rd year student in law studies. She's sharing a bed and her half of the room with her friend Ellen--this is the first year of "double intake," which means that there are a shitton of students who want housing and not nearly enough rooms for all of them, so pretty much every Tanzanian with a dorm room on campus is sharing his/her bed with a friend. She's nice and quiet and reads the Bible each morning right after she wakes up but before she turns on music videos super loud. We might have to chat about that at some point but not yet.

Best news of all: I think I've figured out a way to put up pictures! So that should happen this week.

"Mzungu, mzungu!" "What, Mafrika, what do you want?"

2005-09-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

Snapped at someone in the market for the first time today, not a lot but enough to notice it and think. Alex and I went to Kariakoo, which is this enormous, dense, hellish market district somewhere downtown where you're supposed to put your phone on vibrate and stick it and your money in your bra because there are pickpockets everywhere. (Regarding pickpockets--in Tanzania don't ever yell "thief" at someone who steals something from you, because a mob will form and, if they catch him/her, beat the hell out of him, sometimes until death. If someone is risking his/her life for $20, they probably need it more than you do.) In any case, it was hot as hell, and unlike Mwenge, the market close to campus where there is a lot of carvings, paintings, jewelry, etc. for sale, I think the people who work at Kariakoo there don't see white people very often, which is why everyone who saw us yelled "MZUNGU, MZUNGU" ("honky, honky!") at us, and grabbed us, and tried to put stuff in our hands. Which is generally fine, I just say, "Mafrika!" ("African!"), and then we all chuckle or some shit like that, but I was not in the mood today. What I was in the mood for was Target, and a laundromat, and my automotive whale, and some cable internet. I mean, not desperately, but none of those things would hurt my feelings right now, because the stiff underwear thing just sucks no matter how you dice it.

On the other hand, I also had an extremely awesome weekend as a direct result of being in Tanzania. Friday night, the other kids in my program and I all went over to our Kiswahili tutor Elizabeth's house to have dinner with her and her fiancee. (They live together in secret from Elizabeth's parents.) Elizabeth is simply awesome--such a good attitude, never makes us feel dumb, and really fun and smart apart from being a great teacher--and Tuma, her fiancee, was a pretty sweet dude himself. We had pilau (spiced rice), banana stew (there are 60 kinds of bananas here; the ones they use for stew are kind of like potatoes), chipati (Indian tortillas), and warm cabbage salad (no uncooked produce you can't peel!). It was extremely delicious, and I can't wait for them to get married next summer, because they are so pumped about being together--I mean, it's pretty much a technicality, because she helps take care of his children (2, from a previous relationship) and of course they live together, but it'll still be pretty sweet.

Then on Saturday we got up and took a bus to Morogoro, a biggish town a couple hours west of Dar Es Salaam in a valley among the Uluguru Mountains. It was funny how when I looked away from the town and up towards the little houses I felt like I was in western Maryland, and not even that much hotter because Tanzania is still in early "spring." We stayed at the agricultural university there, which had a nice little restaurant where you can get a glass of really great red wine for 1500/= (about $1.45). Sunday morning we got up at 4:30 to go to Mikumi National Park, the fourth largest national park in Tanzania (which also has the greatest percentage of land dedicated to parks in the world). It was gorgeous--saw elephants, giraffes, hippos, wildebeests (cuter than they look in pictures), water buffalo, zebras, and one singularly sly-looking crocodile. Went to a snake park, which at $10 a pop was probably the worst investment any of us have made here--it was just sad, with all these sad-looking snakes and scared little mice behind glass, and a bunch of penned-in crocodiles that were just fat and miserable. (Crocodiles, by the way, don't have tongues, which only makes them all the more less likeable than alligators.)

The cage with black mambas was particularly pathetic--there were probably about 6 snakes, most of them napping all entwined together in front of the window, and 6 or 7 mice, which looked wet and were shaking. Four of them banded together in a corner, another one hid under the snake's water dish, a couple others were just hanging out by themselves. Only one snake showed any interest in them, but I don't think he actually wanted to eat, because you could still see a lump where the last little mouse dude was getting digested. Of course the mice didn't know that, and it kept slithering around them, flicking its tongue around their scared little ears. I thought the mouse under the water dish was going to have a heart attack before it got eaten--the mamba would literally slither against him, and he just sat there shaking with his paws up by his face. Once the mamba went for the little pile of 4 mice, and one of them jumped way up in the air and sprinted down to the far corner, but other than that they were all just frozen and blind-looking. Of course snakes have to eat too, and what they eat is mice, but I wasn't disappointed that nobody had gotten eaten by the time we left.

Went back to Morogoro and started up a hill. Parked and waited in the car while Elizabeth hired Tony, who looked like he was 9 years old at most, to guide us up the hill for 1000/= ($.90). (If it seems like I'm obsessive about prices--I mean, probably, but c'mon, C.R.E.A.M.) It was pretty steep and pretty beautiful. A bunch of Tony's friends tagged along too; I think they were probably good kids but I can't get much beyond greetings and "do you like to play soccer?" Went up to see their primary school, which was actually pretty nice and also had one of the more amazing views I've ever seen. Saw bee boxes in a tree on the way up, so the Uluguru Mountains is definitely a candidate for where I retire to be a honey-farming hermit in my cranky old age. Right by the school was a little graveyard, with gravestones of sun-baked clay; a lot of the dates were for little babies. Two of the little boys had followed me up there and we all felt weird about it so I was trying to make small talk and asked them, "Mnapenda kukaa hapa?" By which I mean, "Do you all like living here?" but which they took to mean "Do you all want to stay right here?" In the graveyard. For babies. They said no.

DAY 12

2005-09-14T10:33:00.001-07:00

Still haven’t completely thought through the weekend we spent in Zanzibar, but the island itself was gorgeous and sad and just felt very, very new. We stayed in Stonetown, the main city on the island, Friday and Sunday night, and then went up to Nungwi, a little resort paradise on the northern shore, on Saturday night; WE HAD HOT WATER ALL WEEKEND. We also visited Changuu Island (a.k.a. Prison Island—similar history to Alcatrez, Riker’s, etc.), which might have been my favorite part. We bought wilted greens to feed to giant tortoises—kobe in Kiswahili—that they keep in a little enclosure. They used to run (or walk very slowly and deliberately, rather) freely on the island but people kept stealing them (how, I don’t know, because those motherfuckers are big), so now they are imprisoned for their own good. (!) The oldest one was 175 years old. He was ginormous, with a big gap on the top of his shell—I guess he just outgrew it and forgot to go shopping? (Why would I quit with the cheesy jokes just because I’m in Africa?) Then this guy named Saidi took Alicia and me snorkeling at a coral reef right off the shore. He was very much into holding hands with the both of us while we kicked around looking at all the little fishies and whatnot—she and I need to sit down at a computer and figure out exactly what we saw. The craziest part, though, was definitely looking over to the deep part and seeing just thick, pure blue-ness. Nungwi was cushy and tropical. We stayed in some sweet beachfront resort bungalow nonsense that I swear I’ve seen in a cheesy airplane magazine. The manager somehow sold us on chartering a boat to go out and snorkel near a “whale shark” that we figured out was just a whale the next morning, said it was completely safe, we could touch it and all that. In fact he even told me yes when I asked if I could ride it. The next morning we get out there with these dudes who are like “The current is bad, it’s sort of safe, blah blah blah”; it’s pretty sweet when something goes from completely safe—rideable even—to sort of dangerous when you’re about to take off your pants and jump into it. So the other 3 kids who were going to snorkel decide not to, but Sydney and I figure it’s all right and get ready, spitting in our masks and all of that. We jump in, we swim around a little—Rob says we were only in there a few minutes though it felt more like ten. Couldn’t really see anything but some big shadows (there was a baby whale too!) moving around beneath us. Then I take my head out of the water and look at the boat, where everyone is yelling and motioning for us to come back, ASAP! So I haul over to the boat and start climbing up, but apparently I wasn’t moving fast enough because people just started yanking me over the railing. Turns out that the beach boys got nervous when they couldn’t see the whale for a while, because they like to come up under the boats to scratch their backs, which of course capsizes everything. Which is a problem not because the whale is gonna eat you, but because all the little fish that swim behind the whale eating its shit have teeth. Or something to that effect, the logic didn’t translate all that well from Kiswahili to English. Either way, it was sort of neat to know I was swimming within yards of a whale, though I couldn’t see it clearly, or ride it even. Then we headed back down the island towards Stonetown again, and stopped at a little family spice farm (shamba la viungo—viungo also means “body parts”) on the way. Zanzibar is famous for their cloves, but all kinds of stuff grows there—henna, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, turmeric, cardamom, star fruit, rice, papaya, mango, vanilla, lemongrass, peppercorn. Which they cook altogether (minus the fruits and henna) in pilau, which is delicious. They have this neat tree that bears little We walked around the compound eating and smelling everything with the guidance of some local high school boys who split the tour fee with the family who owns the shamba. Without going into it too much, because I just haven’t thought about it enough, with all the poverty I have seen in Dar and on Zanzibar, it seems that the only thing that really makes it bad is not the lack of conveniences themselves but rather that people don’t have a choice about whether they shower with hot water, use a toilet instead of a hole in the ground, etc. Because all these things are not that big a deal in and of themselves, unless the same lack of resources that lead to their absence also means your kids have to drop out of school to work, or you die of malaria (which for all the worry it causes Americans, is really not much worse than the flu if you catch it early enough) because you can’t afford a mosquito net or don’t go to the doctor until it’s too late.
AH TIME’S UP

DAY 11

2005-09-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

Tanga wizi! Ginger ale! They don’t have it many places (though I noticed it was much more available in Stonetown, Zanzibar, than it has been in Dar) but oh my goodness. As much as I like American ginger ale, tanga wizi is wayyyy better. All of the sodas here are less sugary than they are at home, but with tanga wizi you can actually taste the ginger as strongly as with pickled ginger at Japanese restaurants. Lord it’s good, and the going rate for soda is 500 /=, i.e. 45 cents. I think I have touched on this before, but it really strikes me as funny the way my diet has gotten so much unhealthier since I’ve been here. Most of the time when people go to poor countries they think their eating habits will get healthier. Which is not so much true in Tanzania, where everything is fried and served with soda or beer. I mean, you can get bottled water instead, but people think that’s kind of weird. And of course there is fresh-squeezed juice, but usually only in the morning.
Maybe this will change when the semester starts and cafeterias are open, but right now it’s chapatti for breakfast, chipsi majai (French fries and fried egg whites) or samosas for lunch, wali mbogamboga (a shit ton of rice and a mouthful of overcooked vegetables) for dinner. With drinks, whatever, this comes to about $3 a day. I mean sometimes we go to Posta for Indian food or whatever, and I could be more ambitious about buying fruit for breakfast and stuff, or decide to embrace ugali, which is this fried white mass of cornmeal (I think?) that in my experience has been very similar to hot white Play-Dough. All I know is, when Alex pulled out her secret jar of Jif peanut butter last night, I was pretty fucking excited. (Not that peanut butter is completely healthy, but man preservatives can be sweeeeet.) I’m also pretty sure that eating salad as often as possible will be a top priority when I get back to the States.
Speaking of getting back to the States—well first of all, I never thought I would be one of those annoying people who refers to the U.S. as “the States,” but there you go, I think there’s some kind of neuron that gets switched on during international flights or something. But really what I meant to talk about was how for all the cultural, material, social, infrastructural differences that exist between Dar es Salaam and anywhere I’ve lived in America, it really feels like just another place to me. I mean, not when I was on Zanzibar, but then that was Heaven and really has nothing to do with Dar. I live in a sort of shitty, sort of nice place, I ride buses, I go to classes, I go shopping, sometimes when I smile at strangers they smile back and sometimes they don’t. Does that just sound stupid and bratty?

DAY 10

2005-09-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

Just got back from our weekend excursion to Zanzibar, a little island off the coast of Tanzania. I have now gone swimming in three oceans!!!! Actually that is far from the most important thing that happened this weekend but time is little, thoughts are many, general tiredness pretty sufficient as well. I need to start covering the windows in our room; I think it’s just the morning intrusion of light that interrupts my sleep. That and the fucking call to prayer, though since Nikki from the Brown program lent me these sweetass ear plugs I haven’t really heard it. (None of this has anything to do with Zanzibar, but that was an epic and I’ve only got a little longer before Kiswahili class.)
Ah, Nikki from the Brown program—she’s the first person to tell any of us that for at least one American/European student has been raped in the past couple of years. By a Tanzanian student. On campus. Where we all live. (I think there have been more than one, but I only recall this one because Nikki knew the girl, knew that the girl had been raped and beaten near a main road and left for dead in a ditch.) And we find this out after we’ve already been here a week. Granted, they told us not to walk around alone at night, etc., and we all know that rapes happen everywhere, etc., but it’s also true that we are a visible minority on this campus, living under a legal and social culture that we are not familiar with, hardly fluent in the language, and completely removed from whatever support systems we had depended on before a week ago. Bahhhh.
Time for Kiswahili class!

DAY 5

2005-09-14T10:31:00.001-07:00

Last night was the first time I have looked in a mirror since I’ve been here, and in my face it was extremely apparent that every single morning since I have been here I have been woken up at 5 am by the call to prayer from the mosque next door. Sometimes it’s the guy who yells like a little kid jumping off the diving board; sometimes it's the guy who sounds like he's standing on your bed singing in some crazy Muslim opera with his mouth down close to your sleeping ear. YOUR EAR THAT JUST REALLY STARTED SLEEPING HARD even though you've been in bed since at least 2 if not 12 or 1 but since at 12 it's only 5 pm two bazillion miles away, OF COURSE YOU CAN'T SLEEP. Ah yes, so as I was saying, this is the best part of the day, because from there it only goes downhill, and when I wake up I am still exhausted and fed up and in no mood. Mm mhmm.
On the subject of time, they count the hours completely differently here--not just here, but throughout the vast majority of Africa, especially the equatorial regions (my current latitude is something like 8 degrees south), where each day promises 12 hours of sunlight and each night likewise 12 hours of dark, real darkness as there are no streetlights, and generally only we wazungu (literallly, "ghosts"--white people--"mzungu" in the singular) carry little flashlights so as not to kill ourselves on the rocks and roots and potholes and ditches. THE POINT IS, they count the light, they count the dark--the sun rises around 6 a.m. (Western time), so that is saa kumi na mbili (12:00), and likewise 6 p.m. 7:00 Western time is saa moja (1:00), 8:00 is saa mbili (2:00), etc. So tonight when I meet my friend Innocent for chakula za jioni (dinner) at saa kumi na mbili (12:00), the sun will be setting here...and not quite overhead back home. But though the clocks say otherwise we are in fact all occupying the same moment in the history of the world. WEIRD.
So we have started official Kiswahili lessons, using the Peace Corps' official language training guide. According to various sources it is "rife with errors" so that should be sweet, but whatever, because I think the Tanzanians are right when they say that Kiswahili is easy to learn, though there are no Latin-derived cognates like there are in Spanish, etc., to help you along, because the sounds of the words just make sense. And the smooth up-and-down rhythm is good for remembering key phrases like "Habari za asabuhi" (Good morning), "Naomba chapati tafadhali" (I'd like one chapati please), "Ninakwenda nbuyani sasa, ninahataji kulala" (I am going home now, I need to sleep), "Hapana asante sana" (No, thank you very much). Hapana hapana hapana--no no no--we say that a lot in the markets. It is weird to be the big walking, talking shilingi. I think it makes some of the kids kind of mad--dehumanizing they would say if we were in a classroom--but it just makes me tired, and sad.
And wanting a bia (beer). So far I have tried Kilimanjaro (sort of like PBR), Castle lager (more of a bite than Kilimanjaro) and Tusker (very similar to Bud Lite, and with a black and yellow label with an elephant, so how can I not love it? But really how can I not love any of them, because they are all decent and about 80 cents for a bottle bigger than a longneck, so I can drink just the right amount for about $1.60.) Last night I sat at a campus restaurant with some people from my program for a couple hours—until about 10:30—and when we decided to go we felt like it was 4 a.m. and we’d been at a 3-keg rager since 12, and that’s kind of how time goes here. Either that, or we’ll leave the bweni (dorm) after lunch, go downtown, go to a few stores, get back on the dalladalla and then it’s 5:30 and how did that happen? Piga ua, sifahamu. Beat me until I die, I do not know.

DAY 3

2005-09-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

Poa kama maji: cool as water. Poa kama ndizi: cool as a banana (cool as a cucumber!) A rasta man in the market yesterday told us that this is what you say back to "Mambo?" or "Mambo vipi?" (How are things?). And also that "rasta food" is marijuana. "Poa..." is good to use especially if it is a shopkeeper and you want a fairer price. I still feel a little awkward haggling, especially for handicrafts, though Sydney has no problem slashing and burning through people's prices. I also think I have been going about it the wrong way--usually when I am interested in something I say "Ni bei gani?" (How much does it cost?), whereas Jim says he always just throws out a ridiculously low offer right off the bat and that seems to work better for him. I almost feel guilty in a way, because 150 schillings is breakfast here and 15 cents is nothing at home, but it is basically a respect issue. Plus, it kind of freaks people out when you don't haggle.
In any case, yesterday we got cell phones for 80,000 Tsch each and then 20,000 Tsch calling cards--I'm not sure exactly how much local calls cost, but calling to America works out to be about $2/minute. IF by any chance anyone wants to call me here, get an international calling card and my number is 011 255 744 919 694. I think I can also get text messages. I don't know my mailing address yet, but soon I think.
And a general question: pretty much as soon as I lay down at night I feel a weird nippy prickling sensation in my skin. I'm thinking bedbugs and who knows what else. Any ideas on how to kill these fuckers without saturating my bed in toxic shit?
Hope all is well at home. The coverage of Katrina has been extremely gruesome here. Likewise there?

DAY 2

2005-09-14T10:29:00.000-07:00

JAMBOOOOOOOOO
By the way, it seems that most people pronounce jambo as yambo. You can also say Mambo (literally, things—that is, how are things?) and then the other person says Poa (Cool). If greeting an elder, you say SHICKAMOO, with the stress on MOO.
For some reason my head is very loosey-goosey and the words are just floating around so I will try to lasso the right ones but I can’t offer any guarantees as to my success.
Where to start—at the beginning, the spatial not temporal beginning. I am rooming with Sydney, my friend from history class last term, for the next few weeks. We live in Hall 4, which is where all the foreign students are living for the time being; I think the majority of us indicated that we’d prefer to live with a local student. The room is divided nicely front and back with 2 twin beds with foam mattresses in opposite corners, 2 simple but large wooden desks with one drawer each across from the beds, and 2 armoires against the wall separating one’s desk from the other’s bed. Above each desk is a single light bulb mounted on the wall, and on the side of each armoire facing the desk is a small bookshelf. Very cosy, especially the Little Mermaid sheets I brought from my parents’ house. A large window with a wire screen takes up most of the back wall—the whole width and then from waist-high up to the ceiling. The campus is mlimani—on a hill—and from our window on the third floor we can see the city in the distance, our reward for climbing those windy stairs. At night downtown presents itself as a series of orange and white dots of light near the horizon; at day the cities are white and the sky is tall and blue.
There is a similar window in the front wall that looks onto the hallway. Yesterday at the market called Mwenge, Sydney and I went in together on a ktenga, which is a long printed sheet, for 3,500 Tanzanian schillings (a little less than $3.50—just move the decimal point to the left three places) which we made into curtains for the hallway window by cutting it in half into two twin-sized sheets and draping them side-by-side on a string running along the top of the window. Mwenge actually has 2 parts, one for arts and crafts—jewelry, carvings, paintings, fabrics (ktenga, etc)—and one for more mundane items. In the artisans’ part, which this American kid Toby said was the largest of its kind in Tanzania if not all of East Africa, Toby and another American kid Jim are taking carving lessons, and Jim is also learning how to paint. (Both the carvings and the painting has special names but I don’t remember what they are.) In the other part, where we bought the ktenga for our room, we also got large plastic buckets with lids for washing clothes and also for storing water in our room; both the electricity and running water go out not infrequently, and though there are large plastic tanks of reserve water outside of each hall for such times, they can run out too.
Mwenge also functions as a hub for the daladalas, which are private buses that take you short distances for 150 or 200 Tsch; to get anywhere from campus (chuo kikuu), you take the Mwenge/Ubungo (another marktet) daladala to either market, then catch one heading for Posta (downtown). We took one last night to a shopping complex and shopped in a very Gucci grocery managed by an Indian man (shopkeeper is the traditional role for an Indian in Africa), where we got toilet paper (which you need to carry with you if you want to use it), laundry soap (powder for soaking, bar for scrubbing), wooden clothespins (there are lines for drying hanging in the landing of each floor), candles (for blackouts), Maryland chocolate chip cookies (!!!). I also got a large bar of Geisha soap for 350 Tsch and a bottle of excellent shiraz from South Africa for 8,000 Tsch. They had all sorts of luxury things—Western brand skincare products, dishes and flatware, fresh meat and produce, lots of bottled water (as far as I can tell only the poorest drink the tap water).
As we were leaving, the manager gave a bar of Cadbury chocolate to Sydney and to me but not to Nikki, another girl in our program, who is black, or to the two other white Americans who brought us there. I think it was a combination of being white, spending a relatively large amount of money (14,300 Tsch was my total), and being obviously unpracticed at the language (Naseme polepole—Do you mind speaking more slowly—Sijui—I don’t understand—Semahani—I’m sorry—Asante sana—thank you very much—I say these things a lot) and currency (I mistook a 1,000 Tsch note for a 10,000 when I was counting my money, and had to borrow from Sydney at the last moment).
There is a definite gap between the way black Tanzanians treat white and black Americans. With me and Sydney, black Tanzanians are much more willing to help us with learning Kiswahili (we all speak Kiingereza—ki- is the prefix for language-related nouns), more likely to give us a fairer price when we haggle in the market, and just be generally nicer. I don’t quite understand the logic at work, but as Nikki put it last night, she won’t get treated like a local—that is, with genuine friendliness and camaraderie), but she also won’t get treated as well as us whites—that is, with a bemused deference that doesn’t feel too great either—and that puts her at the bottom of the totem pole.
Nikki, dude, that girl says she’s ready to go home. She had her bags packed last night. I don’t know what to say about all of that. We hadn’t been here a full 24 hours when she decided that! She is extremely high-maintenance—SHE HAD 5 SUITCASES, the transport of which has largely fallen to Sydney and me, who each had one larger suitcase and another bag. And by transport I mean loading and unloading in and out of cars, dragging through airports, carrying up three flights of winding stairs. And by fallen I mean the girl ain’t said thanks yet. Last night when we got back from town—after shopping we had dinner at Steers, which is like a Gucci McDonalds, and dessert at a super fancy hotel with a gorgeous poolside bar and one of the nicest bathrooms I’ve ever seen—after Sydney and I set up our own room (which went gorgeously, because we are geniuses and figured out how to accomplish anything with hair ties and string can), we put up Nikki’s mosquito net and ktenga curtain and said good night (she wanted to stay in her room and write), and went back to our room to drink the shiraz and eat the cookies with Jim, the mzungu (white devil, roughly—there was a stall in Mwenge selling a t-shirt that just said Mzungu) carver.
Around 1 am Jim ducked out to go to bed and we figured we’d do the same, so Syd went down to check in on Nikki. Half an hour and a full bladder later I had drunkenly tried to pick the lock, given up, and was yelling her name out the hallway window (there is only one key—they use old-fashioned skeleton keys here, so one can actually spy things through a keyhole!—to the room, and Syd had locked me in in case I fell asleep while she was gone). She retrieved me and we went back to Nikki’s room, where Syd had been trying to sweet-talk and bully Nikki into staying at least for a semester (she’d planned to stay the year). I don’t remember much of the conversation, but I talked some trash and Syd talked some sense and Nikki said she’d sleep on it. And again this morning she’s intent on going home. I just don’t even know but we are late to meet Alison to go downtown (cell phones today!) so BEDAI (sp?)—that is, see you later.