Kitanda usicho kilala hujui kunguni wake

America

2009-05-29T13:13:00.000-07:00

I really don't know how to answer the following questions "Is it weird to be back?"; "Are you having culture shock?" and the like. The truth is far too complex to put into words right now. On the one hand, no, it's not weird- I got to hang out with friends in the midwest for the first week and a half, SO good to see you all. And home is home, and I love the food and long evenings before the sun sets, and going running, and laughing harder than I've laughed in a long time with people like Angela and Danielle. And no I'm not having culture shock. I've lived in this country for 20 years of my life, and I knew what I was coming back to, and I've done the Africa-to-America transition before, and it also takes a few months for the real subtle differences to sink in and you start crying. So I'm not sad, I'm not crying, I'm moving forward and excited for what's ahead. But on the other hand- yeah. I'm trying to learn to "be a servant, not a prophet," wise words that Doug Smethurst said years ago that have stuck with me. I mean the grocery store is so FULL of stuff, and so is my room- why do I have so many clothes and just other random THINGS? And the amount of water and electricity I can consume in a day here, and the amount of money I can spend-- it baffles me. More stuff in life complicates life, and I don't just mean it increases my consumption. I mean, it distracts me from the simple things that filled my life in Tanzania and made it so full: prayer, people, food, reading, outdoors, sleep. Those things are enough. But I'm easily distracted here in Laurel, by computers, organizing the too many things I own, random magazines to look at...so it's weird. That's all to be expected, I'm not asking for sympathy. I think it's important to try to understand and reflect on my feelings now. I guess my biggest fear is that all these things that are weird to me now will become normal. I don't want that. For Esther, for Neema, for Antoh and Virginia and the kids in Mathare, for all my Maasai girls, for Mama Rita and Monika and Pauline and Zach and Simon Peter, for Christ, I don't want that.

this is what it means to say goodbye

2009-05-10T04:39:00.000-07:00

been in Tanzania for a week since returning from kenya. seeing all my wonderful people, added an extra trip to iringa to visit liv hoversten and see a new place and the life of a peace corps volunteer (so glad i'm not one ;))- it's been wonderful. thoughts on leaving, which is thursday: my inability to detach heart and mind and voice from this place. from the people. i wake up at 4 am with impossible probably dreams of a future life's work here. i'm so looking forward to the beautiful faces and salads awaiting me in the U.S., but nothing else. especially not looking forward to driving in a car, using a computer every day, neat schedules, sleeping in a bed on my own, using lamplight instead of moonlight to brush my teeth. mostly, just thinking myself the luckiest girl in the world for the small surprises God has given me here each day- and for the frustrations and tears too. feeling i've accomplished nothing externally, everything internally, and that is all that matters. tumaini langu ni kurudi huku Tanzania na kukaa muda mrefu.

Mathare Valley, Kenya

2009-04-24T06:31:00.000-07:00

The desperation of Mathare Valley, a 600,000 person slum, creeps on you slowly. I've been in Nairobi for 2 weeks now, but the first few times I visited the slum I wasn't utterly shocked by it's horrors the way I expected to be. Part of that is that I'm staying out in the burbs of Nairobi with Pastor and MRs. Karau who do work there in Mathare Valley. They live out here because they're raising 21 kids in 2 small foster homes- kids who are orphans and vulnerable children from Mathare. They want these kids, who are ages 3-9, to have love and community and security, so they brought them out here to 2 really nice homes full of comfort and love. It's amazing to see how well they're doing. And then slowly, for the reality of what they're coming from to become real. Like I said, the first day I visited the Mathare church all I could see from the roof of the church was an endless sea of rusted tin, and that's where the people live, that's mathare. And the first day I walked through Mathare I visited the house of a guy who has electricity and a decent house, and I noticed that there's clean water and toilets available these days, so that's good. But then slowly, the deeper brokenness creeps on me by knowing and talking to people here. The fact that yeah, a lot of people these days have food to eat and clean water...but there is no sense of opportunity/ So many of the youth fail to go on to secondary school and there's not a lot of employment here unless you're into selling spinach and making a dollar a day, so a ton of the youth turn to prostitution, theft, making ilegal liquor, gangs, drugs. And then I started to meet all the women living with HIV, and hear about kids who start having sex at age 8 or 10 because they live in only one room with their parents, one bed even, so they see that happening and just are curious...And then I become good friends with Anthony and Virginia, and hear about Anthony losing his parents at age 12 and somehow, only by the grace of God he tells me, continuing on to this day, where he volunteers at the church and studies to become a pastor, living somehow miraculously on no income...And Virginia has such a heart for this slum where she was raised, looking at those street kids and wanting to give them hope and opportunity. So I'm overwhelmed by the lack of hope and opportunity here. Overwhelmed by the orphans left by the river and the women beaten by their husbands and the crime that's so prevalent. And I've only seen a little. But more than that I'm overwhelmed by the love of the people here at Mathare Worship Center. It's not just a church, Pastor KArau and his wife and many others have started a clinic, a daycare, and a primary school, all of which are provided at minimal to no cost to community members. There are support groups for HIV AIDS women, and youth support group, and the Karaus' son and friends have started a small organization to help girls continue in school, and to bring together youth for solidarity and to make music and dance. There's a Saturday club for kids to be encouraged in life lessons and to get food. And most of the people who work in all the different ministries of the church are volunteers or paid a t\iny amount. Ever since I was in Tanzania I was secretly sad at the hearts of so many of my friends, feeling that their goals were to get out of poverty, to get rich, to get to America, to leave behind the simple or insecure lives they had. I was sad that they didn't want to stay and help. And now, here, these people in the poorest place of all that I've been, and not only poorest but most desperate--these Kenyans are awing me with their willingness to love, to live by faith, to serve their community, their desires to stay here and make it a better place. And I'm really humbled by all that they're doing.

thoughts

2009-04-05T04:15:00.000-07:00

Just thinking about missionary life. Because there are a lot of missionaries and volunteers here in Arusha, and I've gotten to know and love quite a few, through a church we go to. I guess it just makes me think about what it means to leave your home and go serve in another country. I think it used to mean a lot of sacrifice in terms of communication with home, living conditions, etc. Today there is internet and really nice houses in third world cities and global trade that brings even Kellog's corn flakes to Tanzania. Also, American dollars go a long way in Tanzania, so if you're being supported from the U.S., you can get some pretty nice houses and cars here. I don't know how I feel about that. I certainly am not trying to criticize people, just thinking. Is it OK to have 2 SUVs and a huge house with a guard and a big screen TV and 2 computers, and eat American food all the time and take hot showers every day? Is sacrifice implicit in missions and service, or did it just used to be there by default? Does it separate the missionaries from the people they're living with and trying to serve? I've also been thinking about myself and how I'd want to live if I were here for a long time. Right now I'm living extremely simply, but if I were long term I'd want at least a modern kitchen so I didn't have to eat ugali every day. And probably electricity and running water just because it seems more sanitary and healthy than kerosene lamps and washing your dishes in standing water. And if I lived here a long time and had a family and kids then wouldn't I want them to be safe? So I might need a gate or a guard. And I don't really want a computer, but then it might be nice to keep in better contact with people I know and love, especially if I'd be here many years. So, I see the slippery slope that leads into having lots of THINGS and I'm scared of it. I think there's a huge value to living simply, and especially to have some kind of connection and solidarity- at least the public bus!- with Tanzanians, if I'm really here to meet and serve and love and receive from them. But I don't know where the line is between health and security and comfort and simplicity.

pray for rain

2009-03-27T06:08:00.000-07:00

the clouds are beautiful at night, glorious these days- gold and pink on the edges when the sun is setting, then parting for some of the most spectacular views of the milky way and the stars once it's dark. but it doesn't rain. and we've heard from friends/relatives in villages that the corn has dried up and the goats are hungry and there's not much food. so please, pray for rain.

makes me sad

2009-03-22T06:43:00.000-07:00

i've said it before, but it makes me sad, how Tanzanians don't believe in themselves. how the life of "Kule kwako" -- "Way over there where you're from" is the good life. and and theirs is the difficult life. i mean, maybe it's true. i hate the inequality, for sure, and if i didn't i wouldn't be here. but most of the people who are telling me this have enough to eat, and what's more they've got a lot of the joy of singing, and laughing late at night with their relatives and friends, and faith in a God who cares about them. i've certainly got way more opportunities and development. more variety and mobility. and i can eat fruit any time i want. but i've felt the joy of living without electicity and water, without lots of things and things and things. and it can be beautiful- not only short term, but i believe long term as well. so i continue to be convinced that it is the curse of being human to want what we don't have. and as long as we are always desiring development, an easier life, etc- we will never find joy. the people who can't find it here maybe couldn't find it in the U.S. with lots of money, either. i don't know. maybe my opinion will change when i spend 3 weeks in one of the worst slums in Nairobi (starting April 11). or maybe everyone in the world thinks their life is lacking, physically, emotionally, whatever. and the only source of worth and joy is in the kingdom of God and knowing Christ. that's what i believe. call me an evangelical, a fundamentalist, whatever. but it rings true. and i feel like crying when we are all 6 of us eating dinner together off the same plate and esther says: "this is bad behavior" and i say "Why!?" loving the community of all eating together, sharing. and she says: "white people don't do this, do they?"

the way we look at money

2009-03-18T06:04:00.000-07:00

I don't know if American culture is known for being thrifty. i mean these days, I sort of think it's probably not because of all the credit crises and whatnot. But I know that most Americans at least understand the concept of saving-when you get a job, you put money in the bank and maybe work towards a car or something. Here, although people don't have much money and don't spend much comparatively, it's been easy to get frustrated with the way they sometimes seem to be irresponsible with their money. I mean, a constant phrase is, "If I get money I will..." Not, if I save it, or after a few years once it's built up a little. "If I get money." And when people have money, they seem to spend all they have. For example, you go to the shop and there's 200 shillings left in change, so you buy some biscuits and candy to bring home to the kids. Or if you have 5000 shillings you go eat roasted meat with your friends even if it's your last money until next month's pay. In a way, it's the same pressure to consme conspicuously that we have- you want to be able to play pool, to wear nice clothes, to be modern. But I think there's also more to it. I was talking to my host mom about saving habits, and she talked about how she used to have a bank account but relatives were always asking her for money. And I realized that giving to relatives and friends is in a way the way of saving here- Tanzania's certainly transitioning to capitalist economy but it's still got a bit of gift economy. You invest by helping out relatives today, maybe they'll help you tomorrow. Or, if you want to save, you don't save cash, you buy some livestock or build your house a little nicer. You start little business. Maybe these are wiser and more productive ways of saving than we have in the U.S.- I don't understand money sitting in a bank, in other people's macro loans and businesses. But I understand buying a couple goats or bailing out your sister on school fees for her kids. I still think Tanzanians spend unnecessarily and sometimes I want to scream at my host family, "WHY DID YOU BUY THAT!?" And I defintiely don't want to feed their habits. But for the most part it's on a much smaller scale that they consume, and I buy a lot more things I don't really need. And they help each other out a lot. So that's cool.

a place i hope to one day call home

2009-03-12T07:36:00.001-07:00

Well, who knows what God has in store, all I know is that the raw joy I felt for the past week is unequaled in recent months. I just spent 6 days with a bunch of Lutheran pastors and musicians traveling throughout Maasai land, northwest of Arusha. We went to about 10 different congregations who were dedicating the cornerstones of their churches, and celebrated the opening of those churches. So, as usual for Tanzania, there was a lot of sitting around, and I saw a lot of I guess what you might say institutional inefficiency in the Lutheran church structure, but on the whole, I believe those people are doing really good things, and the openings of these churches is definitely a cause for celebration. There is no sound more beautiful than the sound of Maasai men and women singing their songs under an acacia tree. There is no sight more beautiful than the varied and wild landscape, from dry plains to a volcano (Ol Donyo Lengai, the Maasai mountain of God) to the salty Lake Natron to the view you get looking out over the plain after you climb the Rift Valley Wall. And to think this is the land of the Maasai. This week I was given a lot of joy besides the beauty- for one, I was encouraged by the faith and joy of the Maasai and the Sonjo tribes despite their hard lives and the persecution they sometimes face. The joy these women find in Jesus as their redeemer is one of the things that 2 years ago drew me back into faith after plagues of doubt, and still today encourages me in the truth and relevance of the gospel. The work of the church here is also encouraging-bringing people together not only for worship but also to help build schools and help in times of drought/hunger. Personally, I also felt so welcomed by the group of pastors and musicians. We traveled together for a week, and they became like my family. I was refreshed by my relationships with them--I've loved a lot of Tanzanians this time around but the relationships, while rewarding, are often stressful, I'm not sure what they want from me, financially and emotionally they can be demanding--but these folks accepted me like a relative, and joked around with me, and loved me, and asked nothing in return. And all the more they welcomed me into their choir, and I got to sing with them at a bunch of churches, in a cappella 4-part harmony, and the love of singing which has been dormant for a while was reawakened in me. And I was sad to leave them when the journey was done. Underneath all the beauty, of course, there are concerns- everywhere we went we were treated to great hospitality, SO many goats roasted, SO many sodas and cups of tea drunk. Sometimes we went to 4 churches in a day, which meant 4 different meals of goat and rice...and as I tried to eat to accept their hospitality gratefully, no matter how stuffed I was...I would look back outside and see the kids with barely any clothes and Maasai mamas who were so skinny, and I would wonder how we could eat so well everywhere and wish I could give my food to those kids. Indeed it has been a year of drought. The short rains in November/December were minimal and didn't come everywhere-and so far the long rains have been absent, especially in the middle of Maasailand. We drove home Tuesday through a dry plain-the people at the church in that area begged for help from the Lutheran diocese because it's been a year of such hunger-and as we drove through, we'd see kids herding goats and cows, but there was no grass. It's all dry. And there is no water. Cows were huddled under acacias for respite from the sun, but cows are dying. We handed out bottles of drinking water to kids and if they saw us holding a bottle of water out the car window, they'd come racing from 300 yards away to get that bottle...Lord, bring them rain.

I am now a Kiswahili teacher

2009-02-22T02:54:00.000-08:00

That's right. They decided to promote (demote?) me from English teacher to Swahili teacher. OK, that's a slight perversion of the truth. But here at Emusoi Centre, my new school, they already have 2 teachers who teach all the arts and science subjects, including English, to the girls. So they didn't need me to teach English anymore. However, the problem is that there are about 8 girls who don't know how to read. DON'T KNOW HOW TO READ, even in Swahili. Three of them don't even know the sounds of the alphabet at all. I find it hard to believe that they've supposedly finished 7 years of primary school. They must have been at terrible schools where the teacher never showed up- or they were never able to show up due to sickness (one of the girls has TB) or to their family's lack of support for education. Maybe their father always said, "Go herd cows!" So my task is, teach literacy. And it seems to make the most sense to teach them to read in Swahili, which is a language that actually makes sense in that every word is pronounced according to a pattern. So, the girls are at different levels, but at the most basic, we're working on "a, e, i, o, u" and simple Swahili words that probably even YOU could read and understand- mama, baba, Tanzania. It's a tough job, easy to get frustrated. Hard to believe these girls will ever be able to make it in secondary school. But, that's not my job, to know the whole picture, just to be faithful in the small task given to me: teach these girls to read and write simple words. In Swahili.

things to be thankful for

2009-02-18T03:44:00.000-08:00

because if you can't be thankful in the place where you are, at peace and appreciative of life at any moment, will you ever be at peace anywhere? this is what i've been thinking. and there is so much good here that i couldn't have anywhere else. like taking a cold bucket shower every day, and somedays, when it rains, i get to take an extra cold one- a rainwater bath. or waking up in the same small twin bed under the same trusty mosquito net with my dear friend Esther. or going outside on the porch in the evenings, feeling the breeze and seeing the kids running around in the dust,singing jumprope songs and when i turn around the other direction, there is Mt. Meru, purple against a blue sky, sort of jarring when you're in the middle of the city and there's this vast wild mountain right behind you. or how i come home every evening and 5-year-old Rita tells me, "let's do our exercises!" and we do push ups and sit ups together, and she's so proud because even though i tried to teach others in the family to do push-ups, she's the only one who can do them (sort-of). or going to a waterfall this past weekend with john and a Tanzanian guy, climbing up the rocks and standing under the water and getting a rrreally cold shower. or eating mangos every day. i love this place.

why i spend half my time trying to kill mosquitos

2009-02-04T06:48:00.000-08:00

Malaria is not fun. But thankfully, the medicines they have these days work quickly, and I feel 900 times better today than I did yesterday, and I'm hoping to go back to work tomorrow. Yesterday-felt like fainting, throwing up, had chills, fever, achy all over- and as I was leaving the house to go to the hospital, people asked me for money, and I was so mad, I wanted to say- I feel like I'm about to die, and I'm volunteering in your country without payment, and you're still asking me for money? Of course the truth is even in my malaria-stricken state I'm better off than a lot of them. The hospital was an experience, about as inefficient as most stuff here, which is annoying when you feel like sleeping. But all told, I came out of it really well, people have taken care of me wonderfully, and I'm much better, and very thankful. If you'd like to send mail, I do have another address that'll work through May- Katie Murchison c/o Joyce Msengi P.O. Box 16920 Arusha, Tanzania, East Africa John had a worse experience yesterday- he was visiting me at home since I was sick, and just as he was leaving he went out on my porch and said to 2 year old Peter, "Come, greet me!" But Peter's still afraid of him, and when Neema brought him over to John, he started screaming and crying in terror. Just then, a woman walked by our house and shouted, "Mzungu, give me money!" And he said "I don't have any!" He really thought he didn't, but he reached in his pocket and saw that he had 100 shillings (less than 10 cents) At that point this woman was like "Mzungu, I'm not leaving till you give me money!" So he was thinking, why didn't I just leave 30 seconds ago. And then the woman continued, "Listen, I have kids at home, and no food to feed them, and I'm nursing them, see!" and she whipped a breast out of her shirt to prove it. Hahahahaha. So John said, "I see!", threw the 100 shillings at her, and ran! Well, a pretty funny story, if for nothing else that it captures all the great intricacies of being a white person in Tanzania...

developments

2009-02-02T04:12:00.000-08:00

craziness is going on here. for one, i was able to help my friend esther go to school, only to find that it's a bad school andwe're trying to see if we can change her to another place. apparently there's a lot of people in this country who just want money, so they'll tell you they're going to get you through secondary school, take your money, and then don't teach. unfortunately the education system is ridiculous anyway, so even though her private teacher isn't teaching much, government school might not be much better. meanwhile, there are lots of other things that keep happening in my family- Mama Rita going away for a week, Rita almost getting kicked out of school because of fees. Now she thinks the teacher doesn't like her, she doesn't understand it has nothing to do with her- but seriously, make a kid feel that way bc of money? They should deal with the parents instead. Then,my new volunteer job is to work at Emusoi Center. I'd been teaching all 60 pre-form one girls in one class. Now there are more like 70, but they'resplit into 2 classes bc we have 2 Australian volunteers. After next week, the australians leave, and the official class schedule begins and i'll probably just teach a small group (although it'saround 14 now which is too big!) who need help with basic literacy in Kiswahili, basic stuff. Imagine they can't even read or write, and they passed primary school! But basically every day, Sister Mary (the American Catholic sister who runs the place) tells us some new story about a girl with a terrible background. Pregnancy in which she had no choice, being beat by her father, running away, leaving a baby behind, stealing money to get here, begging for days to be let in to this school, sleeping on the grass outside the gate till they let her in--all these appear frequently in the stories. And the Centre is really short on money esp with the US economy lately, which is where a lot of its donations come from. I don't know how she keeps going. The sum total of everything happening there and at Esther's is totally overwhelming. And yet, i've been peacefully able to welcome that overwhelming-ness, bc somehow it's finally clicked that there's nothing i can do. i mean when things aren't so overwhelming, only a little overwhelming, you can be more frustrated or try to do it on your own strength. but this i just cant, there's no way. there's always something new happening. so i welcome it in the way that it's teaching me a lot and teaching me not to try to be relevant but prayerful. I mean that things are out of my hands and often I can't see good results, but prayer and connection to God is the only way to find peace, to leave it out of my hands, and know that God can show me small places where fruit is growing. This comes from a book by Henri Nouwen and has been, ironically, extremely relevant to me lately! well, you'll all be happy to know (actually i'm pretty sure no one was waiting on the edge of their seat, except me) that i've finally made a definitive decision about when to leave here. i'll stay here in Kwa Mromboo till mid-April, then if it all works out, head to Nairobi for 3 weeks to work with kids and a church in a slum (thanks, Maggie!), and then fly back to Chicago on May 17. At that point I'm hoping to make a grand tour of Minnesota and the greater Chicago area, and then to fly home to the east coast. And then...i'm open to invitations :)

Kwa Mromboo

2009-01-26T04:36:00.001-08:00

A new year, a new neighborhood, a new volunteer job, and no new ideas on what comes next! ;) Things are going great in my new place. I'm in a neighborhood of Arusha called Kwa Mromboo -try that as a tongue twister, living with my friend Esther. To tell you a little about the family- Esther is 18 and in secondary school- she told me her whole story yesterday and apparently she's one of the first girls from her whole village/region to make it to secondary school, barely escaping a couple attempts to marry her off. I try to help her study/speak English in the evenings, which is fun although sometimes tedious, and makes you think a lot about this whole education system. Since they're learning in a language in which they are not fluent, a lot of it is just memorization-are they really learning? We also live with Baba Rita, Esther's older brother, and his wife and 2 kids. Rita is 5 and an amazing singer/dancer. If she were in the U.S. I'd want to send her to music lessons, etc. But of course, she'll probably never have that kind of opportunity, though she can sing in church. Peter just had his 2nd birthday and is the cutest kid ever, though he still calls me Mzungu (white person) instead of Auntie. So I call him Mwafrika (African). Esther's younger sister Neema also moved in with us recently. They're all wonderful, and they want to please me, and they're giving me so much. And I am learning to be happy with the simple things, like rice and beans, and bucket showers, and just sitting, cooking, eating, laughing, singing, praying, crying together- isn't it crazy that despite how different cultures are, we all do these same things? Sometimes it gets monotonous, and I'm learning how much of a luxury space is- having a bigger space can really relax you. But it's good to experience inner silence even when you feel cramped on the outside, and it's good to live in community, even if I'm nervous about how I'm going to be independent on weekends/free time- there's no sense of going somewhere without saying "Karibu" and welcoming others to come along. There's so much I feel they can't understand about me, but maybe whoever "me" is is simpler than all the complicated introspective stories I'd tell about my past, my friends, my intellectual and emotional struggles. And so maybe without me trying to explain myself, they can see in me something more basic about who I am, and maybe I can learn that about myself as well. Actions speak louder...And it is just so simple, learning how we love and give to each other.

culture is hard

2008-12-30T04:22:00.000-08:00

This is something i'm learning to accept. i hate disappointing people, so when culture is hard, i tend to try to swallow it anyway. john says our generation tries to have a machismo attitude toward culture. so, even when something is difficult-like lack of solitude or accepting hospitality or friendship meaning 4 phone calls a day- we try to accept it and adapt. this is good. there is so much i want to learn from Tanzanian culture. but i'm also learning that it's way to stressful if i don't allow myself to reject some things and to make room for my own culture. even if it will disappoint someone, sometimes i'm just going to turn my phone off. sometimes i'm not going to drink a soda even if it offends your hospitality. sometimes i'm going to turn off the TV and request silence. otherwise, i will go mad, and become irritated in a way that doesnt allow me to love or to be generous. i am trying to learn to stand up for myself and to give myself time alone and with other americans, not in a way that will cut me off but in a way that will allow me to love better.i never want to be above riding a dala dala, or eating ugali in someone's home, and i want to learn patience and community. but i also need sanity. on the other hand Christmas in Moshi was beautiful. Moshi is where i want to retire, since the chagga are the nicest people in the world and they also have the best weather. for christmas i was at the home of a grandpa who used to work for the Tanzanian ministry of ag (DANIELLE YOU NEED TO MEET HIM IF YOU ARE LEARNING ABOUT CHAGGA AND FARMING) and had lots of interesting stuff to say. aside from the cow intestines,all the food was great, and we had a relaxing time together. it even hailed a little on christmas day (along with rain) so i guess you could say we had a white christmas. now, i'm finishing up at school (it's going to be so hard to leave). today my students carried water for me from 600 yds up the hill, because wehaven't had water for over a week and my buckets ran out, and my neck just isn't strong enough to carry 20 liter buckets of water on my head. so that was extremely sweet of them. my parents are coming next week! then, i move to arusha, moving in with my friend Ester. final plans yet to come as of how long i'm staying...

Dar es Salaam

2008-12-23T05:36:00.000-08:00

i've been in dar es salaam, the hottest city on earth (well, i haven't been to sudan yet, probably worse there) for the last few days. it's wonderful to see people, but it's hard. it's hard when you have friends who have so much less than you, and the closer you get to them the more they expect you to bring them to the U.S. someday. and it's interesting because i want to have real friends here so badly, and yet the inequality makes our friendships so different. and to some point i want to help them. like if i could give them education or get them away somehow from their husband who beats them. but i want it to be on my terms. i was thinking how americans love to give away money to help people but only on their terms. so i don't think that it is beneficial for them to come to America. They would either dislike it or be totally dependent on me. and tanzania is beautiful. i want the people of tanzania to want to make their country better, not to want to leave it. plus i feel that the money spend to fly my tanzanian friends to american could be better used. and then it's just a little awkward having these relationships where you're afraid to be too generous or too close because they're asking so much of you. although, in tanzanian culture it's not strange to ask people for money. if a relative has the ability to help you with something that you need, then they help you. so, what makes it so strange in this case is the utter inequality. it hurts so badly when you see someone hurting, and yet you're afraid to really get close and get involved, because you don't want to be responsible. and i'/ve been thinking lately that while i assume sometimes the main way i, as an american, can help the people of tanzania is with money and connections to money, i've seen that maybe that's not the case. love is love, friendship might mean more to some of these people than giving them a bunch of money to buy a TV or whatever they'd do with it. there's so much to think through. dar es salaam is like this. i'm excited to go to moshi tomorrow for christmas. it will be much cooler and hopefully lots of fun. Merry christmas to all. i can't help but think about how Jesus was born in the humblest of places, announced to the humblest of people. maybe i can think more about that this christmas season, without my cookies and christmas lights and millions of gifts. i pray that i will be able to see it in a new way, at least.

Just a Taste

2008-12-10T05:39:00.000-08:00

I've recently been spending lots of time in silence and reflection and writing and prayer, and finally come not only to endure it without loneliness but actually to cherish it (so thanks to all who pointed me in that direction!) and I have been trying to understand better this need of mine to always be active, never wasting time, always doing something meaningful and changing the world. Why can't I see character development and relationship building, if they occur in silence and stillness, as doing something? I've also been trying to understand how to balance pouring all you have into loving people and serving God, and how to justify time for rest and how to justify saying "no, you can't stay at my house for the next 2 weeks and have me teach you english" or "no, i can't give you money" when Jesus says, "give to all who ask of you." But, I think today I started to understand something. I was thinking about how even Jesus didn't heal every person he met. He healed some, and he also spent a good bit of time just hanging out with people, or even in solitude. Why, when his work was so great and he had such great capacity, would he not use every minute to heal and teach and save? But, I think I'm understanding. The point isn't to heal everyone in the world. The point can't be to save the world, or even to get as much work done as possible. It's not really that big a deal whether 5 or 7 of these girls go to university. I mean it is, because each person matters, but we just can't love or save the world on our own. And that's ok. I think part of Jesus ministry of healing was just to be an icon, or a witness, or just a taste, to the great loving capacity of God. To show that God cares about us, and to point to a kingdom of God when every tear will be wiped away. So, I can't save these girls, and that shouldn't be my goal, but rather just to love them in a way that is a symbol of the God who will give them living water. To point to something greater than myself. As I was reading recently, it is said of John the Baptist, "He himself was not the light but he came to testify to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world." So, seen in that way, my work is not in vain. And that is comforting to me.

a new friend

2008-12-10T05:31:00.000-08:00

I have a friend now. I mean, when Tanzanians say friend they mean for serious, they mean spending lots of time together and sleeping at each other's houses. There's almost some level of exclusivity. If you have too many friends you can't really devote time to them. So, through John and his roommate, I made a friend named Ester. I've been to her house twice now. What I love about Tanzanian hospitality is that they just welcome you to what they are normally doing. They're not worried about exactly what you eat or if you're bored or doing something special. They just invite you into their lives. It makes it a lot easier to have someone over. You don't have to clean the house and plan your cooking days in advance. You just say, "Karibu." So, this past weekend at Ester's, we cooked a lot, and fetched water, and washed the dishes, and listened to cassette tapes (she doesn't have electricity but they have a car battery to plug in the radio) and she taught me to dance along to the music, Tanzanian style. Meanwhile her niece and 2-year-old nephew danced along, and all these other neighborhood kids showed up and we just danced for an hour and a half. And we slept in the same bed and read verses from the Swahili Bible before we went to sleep, and talked a lot about America and Tanzania, and I taught her and her sister-in-law to sing Joy to the World and we practiced their English. And it was beautiful. It is the kind of experience of Tanzanian life, Tanzanian women's life especially, that I long for, and I'm lucky to get. This weekend Ester's coming to my place, but I'm really nervous. I mean, I need to learn from Tanzanian hospitality that it doesn't have to be spectacular, but I'm nervous because I don't have a radio and I have all these American gadgets like a fridge and running water and a flush toilet and a shower and an oven and a toaster and on and on....and I know she's going to think it's better than what she's got. And yet I honestly don't think it's better. But, I just have to welcome her to my life as it is, and I'm planning on having a few people over Saturday to bake Christmas cookies. So it should be lots of fun.

Thankful

2008-11-28T00:41:00.001-08:00

I wish you knew how it felt to fall in love with 60 Maasai girls. Why it's taken me till thanksgiving to be truly thankful of all that this experience is, I don't know. I taught them 5 hours yesterday, although my usual is 2, because we've decided that if the other teachers aren't going to teach (we've been having a big problem with the Math teacher not showing up, and the Swahili teacher is on vacation now) then we're going to. I thought I'd be exhausted, but it was the best day yet. I wish you could feel it, when you go into class and they all yell "GOOD MORNING MADAM!" and run to carry your bag. When Lendoya, who's so lost, gives that silly grin of hers, and Theresia, whos' one of the brightest, hides her face because she's embarrassed about her mistake. And Nambayo and Zawadi just sit there with their hoods on because they're cold even though it's 75 degrees out. And after you've taught each section an hour, you walk down together to the chapel, and Naitoi, who looks like a little puppy, her sweatshirt twice as big as she is, says "Teacher, I miss mother." And you tell her you do too, and she cries, "oh, teacher ,I'm sorry!" And then you sing Joy to the World, and Silent Night, and then you work on letters to their sponsors, and they think it's funny when they get to the part about their family, because some of them have 6 "mothers"--or, their fathers have 6 wives. They can't even count the number of kids in their family. And then, you play volleyball for an hour, and come back later to tutor, and in the evening, just when you're getting ready to come play Bingo, the power goes out, so you all just sit in the classroom, in the dark, and sing every song you can think of. And when you're leaving, Naitoi is so worried about you going back all by yourself in the dark, even SLEEPING by yourself? You sleep in YOUR OWN BED? And you just want to cry when you think of leaving them in a month, possibly going to another Maasai girls school in arusha for a few months, but how can you replace these girls,it's like a term ending at camp and getting all new girls, only this time you've been with them 3 months. You can't know what will happen to them, where they will go, who they will marry, how far they'll get in school, how long they'll live, even. You can't know who will drop out and who will get sick and who will one day go to university in the US. You just love them, and are thankful. "We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God [and the English language] but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us" (1 Thessalonians 1:8)

Dependency

2008-11-28T00:26:00.000-08:00

I visited a cool place in Arusha the other day. It's called Shanga House, and it's a sort of grassroots attempt to help out handicapped folks in tanzania, who have virtually no hope and no government or cultural support. A Dutch woman, Saskia, who's lived in Africa all her life, just started this place- the idea is they attract tourists with a nice lunch, and then bring them into their shop, where they sell beads, clothes and various other products all made by handicapped people. She just started up 3 months ago and has already been able to employ 15 people- either deaf, or mute, or disabled from polio...that sort of thing. The workers are really sweet and seem happy, and Saskia is so genuine- she has goals to expand to making their own beads, even allowing street kids and other groups to come in and learn trades, and even to serve as a trading post, at no cost, for products from other disadvantaged groups. It seems great. And yet- I don't know, does it seem still colonial and dependent to rely on tourists for the capital for this endeavor? They have to sell things to tourists, serve lunch to tourists, it's all motivated by a European, albeit a white African who has the best intentions. But I'm afraid of this kind of dependency. Because it breeds this sense that Tanzanians can't help themselves. Like when every Tanzanian I get to know asks me- Now that you've been in Tanzania, what are the problems? What do we need to change in order to develop? And I want to say- Don't ask me, it is your own place and I've only been here 5 months, and we're the ones that brought most of the problems to begin with. Or, it's like when I meet any Tanzanian man on the street, and he wants my number and he wants to learn English and to marry a white person. I mean, they have various good or bad excuses when I tell them "love doesn't know color/race"- they say they want to understand the world beyond their own country, or that it is good to "mix blood." But there's this one guy with a shop right by my school who always says- "I want so much white! I love white!" And I want to tell him he's racist, but how can I? I tell him Tanzanian women are beautiful, I tell him in America we say"black is beautiful." But I'm part of breeding the culture of dependency and quasi-superiority of white people. I want them to believe in themselves.

happy maasai

2008-11-21T04:28:00.000-08:00

well, now that probably 5 people in various words and capacities have suggested to me that this is a time for me to be silent and patient and grow in a different way, i think it's true. it is quiet at my house, but i can be using it to read and meditate. my problem is that i want to feel useful and meaningful every second. but i was thinking about it, and i realized that sometimes, especially in Tanzania, we just have to be patient and let the beauty and the meaningful things come to us. when i studied in dar es salaam, it wasn't by seeking out volunteer work and cool experiences that the best and most meaningful things happened to me. the best things were adventures which most times my friends suggested-i just went with the flow- and most of all my relationships with people like monika and pauline and zach, most of whom came to me, not the other way around. i was just sitting around my host family's house and that's how i got to know monika. so, i'm trying to have that approach more this time, too. the girls are doing well. one girl got 100% on the quiz today. another one got a 25% and we found out that she's pregnant. it's a tough situation with her family and the father and everything, and she's going to have to leave MGLSS. she can come back again next year if she is able to have someone care for the child. i'[ve also been questioning whether education is really the best thing for every single one of them. the story goes that this school opened when Koko Ruth, a grandmother in the Maasai tribe, went to the elders and begged that they allow their women to be educated, because the Maasai way of life has been distrupted by modernity and national parks and tourism, and the men have been corrupted by money and alcohol, so the women are their only hope for the future of the tribe. it's an inspiring story, coming from within the culture and everything. and they bill often like "we are saving these girls from child marriage and submitting to a husband with 4 other wives for the rest of their life." but my unviersity educated friend Selina has a father with 2 wives, and she says its not a bad system in her view- there is solidarity and friendship between everyone who lives in the boma. she said she grew up as if she had 2 mothers and 10 siblings. and according to abby (my supervising teacher here), there was some happiness poll (how can you do a happiness poll) that put the amish and the maasai as the 2 happiest people groups in the world. so if their traditional way of life is happy, does that include the women? do they like being married and having lots of kids and drinking lots of chai? now that the school has expanded it feels more official, more distant from that original grandmother pleading with the Council of Elders. and yet, when i go to class and see how happy the girls get about the songs i teach them, any game i think of, from the hokey pokey to hangman, and how they get to have all kinds of opportunities here they'll never have again in their lives...it seems exciting, and good, and tragic that naponi has to leave because of pregnancy. or just colonial. i don't know. both. maybe it's the way of the future and we can't turn back, so we jsut have to make the best of it. but i think there's still a place for questioning everything. i love you all

Settling In

2008-11-18T05:17:00.001-08:00

Things are nice these days. I'm almost at home in Monduli. It's beautiful here. I've started to go for sunset runs...I run down the hill just a bit and out into the plain. On the left you can see Mount Meru, and last night it had snow on its top. Plus it's always orange and purple at sunset time. And who knew that one week worth of rain, after days and days of dust, would be enough to make the fields bright green, and for flowers to just pop up and bloom right away. It's phenomenal the change. Before the rains came, if you walked on the road you were just inhaling dust all the time (in addition to the exhaust you inhale on every daladala ride), every step stirred up dust, everything was ridiculously dry. The fields were brown. And then the rains came, but only for a week which is too short, we need more, they say more might be coming, in fact it's funny just as i was typing this it started pouring. And after one week the dust turned to sticky sticky mud, you'd get a snowshoe sized mud on the bottom of your shoes and it smelled like rain all the time. i loved it. it gave a nice feel to class, it seemed like at school we just started to breathe a sigh of relief that the rains were finally here, instead of being anxious, hot, sunny, stressed all the time. In class, when the rain was beating on the tin roof and we were all huddled inside chanting and singing in English, I felt almost like i was at camp, just have a good old communal time with a bunch of girls. I just love my girls these days, they are finally able to udnerstand my classroom instructions and to speak a little bit. The night before the US election, I was at the school in the evening, singing with the girls. When we finished they asked me to stay a little longer and just chat in English. So about 18 of them huddled around me with chairs and asked me questions about America. Night in Tanzania is morning in America? What about Europe? China? Where do they see the light first? Are there aninmals in America? And we talked about the election, because I told them Obama and McCain were running, andt aht Obama's father was from Kenya, and they asked about black people in America, and about why Bush loves war, and they told me if America isn't peaceful then I should come to Tanzania, because it is a coutnry of peace. It was so much fun to just talk, as bad as their sentence construction was, they have the vocabulary now to talk about things. And then, the next morning when I told them Obama won, they were very happy. we sang He's Got the whole World in His HAnds that day, and they asked if we could add a verse: He's got Obama and Kikwete (the pres. of Tanzania) in his hands. So we did, and laughed a lot. I love it when they laugh.

Resources

2008-10-29T05:17:00.001-07:00

We're out of water here at the school. I was lucky to have it for the first month, to have running water and everything. But now, it sounds like they're connecting a new water system, and since I'm connected to the old, I won't have it. This means I have to haul water in buckets from a faucet only a hundred yards from my house (though it's unreliable), which isn't bad. It also means I notice how much water I use, exactly how many buckets a day. I suppose someday when I'm paying utilities bills I'll know how much, but maybe it's different than carrying the buckets myself and seeing how quickly they go down. So, I have to flush the toilet with my dishwater after I finish dishes, and I can take a bath (though washing hair is more difficult) with only a gallon or so. Yeah, even dinosaurs take baths, maybe it doesn't get me that clean, but when have I ever been that concerned about being clean? On a side note, flush toilets are stupid in a water-scarce area, so we're talking about getting a latrine dug behind our house. In general I just have to think more about resource use here. I burn my own trash, so we try to keep that low, and every piece of paper and pen seems valuable when the students never stop asking me for another pen. Sometimes we play Bingo to review vocabulary in class, and the prize is a pencil, and it's amazing how much they get excited about the pencil as a prize, how much they cheat and how competitive they get. Yeah, Maasae girls are wonderful but they're not particularly honest or compassionate (are any of us?). So I think it's good to have to be responsible for your own waste, it makes you more aware. Also, I've been thinking, all the tasks that take me so long- laundry, cooking, dishes, cleaning, etc., would be so much more enjoyable if I didn't live alone. I think this is why Tanzanians all live with their family until they move in with a new family (esp in the village) and part of why they have maids, and part of why living in community is just way better, and how awesome it is to share work together rather than do it all yourself. But, I'm learning a lot about simple living and culture and sanitation and who knows what else.

honesty

2008-10-27T05:48:00.000-07:00

i haven't really been honest with people on that other side of the atlantic, that i'm actually having a hard time. well, when i say i love it here it's 100% true. i love the beauty of monduli, i love spending time with the girls, i love brushing up on my swahili and everything. however, i don't love living alone and being sort of secluded and having only one really close friend here, john, to whom i have been telling EVERYTHING and probably driving him crazy. this is all to be expected, that coming here would be a bit lonely, that i would miss you all a lot, that i would feel sometimes a bit of selfishness and directionlessness. because everything i do is focused on myself. i mean i teach, but then i go back to my house and cook myself food and clean and try to entertain myself so that i don't feel too lonely. and i feel like, as much as i want to give to the girls, i'm giving so little of what i have to give. and whenever i go out in public, sadly, most of my personal interaction seems to be governed by this contradictory principle, that i want to make friends and be in tanzania but i also want to avoid awkward circumstances or people asking me for things i can't/don't want to give them. it's like i'm afraid to get to know people because there is this inequality between us that makes me ever suspectful of what they want, or even if not suspectful, nervous that i will disappoint them. even the people i'm closest to. and all of this is not love. about a week ago, john and i walked past a boy in the streets of arusha, a street kid, probably high on glue, sleeping in the gutter in the late afternoon. it really hit him. he's still talking about it. and i feel sort of put to shame that it didn't affect me, or just that he can hurt so much for someone else when i've been so hung up on my own problems lately. but, i think realizing this has been good and will help me just to continue to look for small ways to reach outside myself. and also to give myself grace for the times when i am selfish, because i'm dealing with culture shock and living alone and being done with college and being in a relationship and all these things that are so new and challenging. so it is good.

Faith

2008-10-16T05:36:00.000-07:00

Whenever I come to Africa, I tend to hear these stories. I mean, we've all heard stories of people being miraculously healed from sickness and blindness and whatnot. But they're just stories. Last year when I was in Tanzania, I met a kid who told of how he'd been totally sick, paralyzed, unable to eat, and Jesus told him to get up and walk. That brought the issue home a little, like now I have to really decide if I believe it or not. Well, this year, I've been confronted with the issue again, in partially detached and sometimes more troubling ways. One is an American missionary, a woman that John knew when he lived in Kenya. She was really sick with a bunch of stuff at that time, arthritis and muscular stuff and unable to eat. She and her husband went home to the US, really discouraged. John remembers her being really sick. But they've come back, and we saw them at this church not too long ago. Her husband told us how one day he another guy were praying for her. At the time he was sick of praying prayers that weren't being answered. He thought she was going to die. And he just felt this peace suddenly, and went home and she was totally fine, didn't need medications anymore, completely healed. It turned their life around, they came back to Africa so much more encouraged and with faith instead of discouragement and since then they have seen blind people see, lame people walk, all this crazy stuff. I heard it from the guy himself. So I've been thinking a lot about all this. And, I believe it, I really do. But I realized that I believe it in a detached way. I say I believe it, but what does that mean? I guess I don't really believe that God would work that directly in my life or the lives of people I know who are sick or hurt or whatever. I mean I believe he could, but I don't have the kind of expectant faith where I'm about ready to pray and see it happen. I'm still detached. Part of me longs for the kind of faith that would really see God come down and be active in our lives. It seems that was a huge part of Jesus' ministry, direct healing and stuff, and also part of what he called his followers to do, to heal the sick, cast out evil, raise the dead. But you have to suspend a lot of reason and also a lot of cultural assumptions in order to really believe it. And while I long for that kind of faith, I'm also terrified of it. It gets more troubling in the Pentecostal church that I went to this past week. I mean, the pastor there does a lot of healing and has tons of crazy stories, but he also has a lot of focus on casting out evil spirits. Which also, I'm starting to believe are possibly real, I mean there are lots of evil and troubling things in the hearts of people. But when I went to the service Sunday, it felt frightening, or sickening, or just weird. It could be culture shock or it could be something very frightening. They prayed for people at the end of the service and lots were crying and women were writhing (that's the other thing, it seems there's a bit of patriarchy in this, the women are 80% of the congregation and always the ones with demons) and I started crying, I just felt scared or like there was badness present. But what struck me the most was I just felt like, why are they focusing so much on the negative, saying to the demon in the name of Jesus, LEAVE! And I found myself praying that these women would be filled not with fear of evil but with the presence of God, with faith that God loves them, with peace and knowledge that they matter, that there is something stronger than the troubling aspects of their lives, hearts, bodies. So maybe I'm just the same as them, we all just want to really believe and have confidence in God and love.

Small Things

2008-09-29T06:24:00.000-07:00

The girls I am teaching- about 45 of them right now, split into 2 classes- are wonderful. I mean they work so hard, and they are so respectful, and when I get them to laugh, we are all so happy. I'm only teaching English 2 hours a day, so I'm trying to find other things to do to really pour into them everything I can- after all I'm only here 3 months, and I want to give it all I've got. So I'm trying to tutor the ones who are struggling, and we also play sports twice a week and do crafts and singing at other times. Plus, it's nice to spend more time with them because otherwise I can start to get lonely in the evenings and afternoons, living alone. It's hard to figure out boundaries, because I'm their English teacher, so I really shouldn't speak to them in Swahili, but I want so badly to get to know them and their English is terrible! So I have to speak Swahili sometimes. But I'm also their teacher, not their confidante, so I can't expect to get to know them the same way I'd get to know girls at camp, for example. Meanwhile, in Monduli, I am starting to make friends, so that is nice. And it is beautiful here, going running up the Monduli mountains for a view of what seems like the whole world, plains and mountains and Maasai with their cattle. And John and I hiked up a hill in Arusha this weekend and looked out across the city and to Mount Meru. It's funny how people always say "Pole" (sorry) when they see you hiking, walking, or running--as if it's a chore and not one of the most beautiful things you could be doing! But then, why would they, who carry water long distances and drive cattle even further, want to go for a run for fun? Silly Americans. And I continue to adjust to life abroad. I'd forgotten how much patience, bearing through the boredom and loneliness and waiting and waiting and waiting, it takes to get to the exciting stuff. You have to wait hours for the daladala (bus) to get into Arusha and get to your friend's place, and then they're late, and the classroom you thought you were going to teach in is locked, and some random student has the key, but wait while this other student goes to fetch them. Similarly, dating in a country that doesn't have a culture of dating has also been a bit of a challenge. But all this just takes patience and the end results have been so worthwhile, and it forces me as always to loosen up and not sweat the small things, and take it slow, and when I do, that's when I see the expansive and beautiful life that is coming so readily to me, and hopefully to a few others, through me. I mean, I want to MATTER so badly, I want for my presence here to not just be for me but for others and for how I can love them, and when I buy street kids lunch or something, it seems like such a small and hopeless gesture, and when I teach these kids, some of whom are so far behind already there's no way they'll make it in secondary school, not even knowing the alphabet...sometimes I feel like I don't matter. But John says, yeah, we probably won't CHANGE things in Tanzania, it won't be any or a whole lot different when we leave, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. So I continue to wait hoping I will find more and more ways to love these girls and this place and God in them.

Maasae Girls Lutheran Secondary School

2008-09-22T06:14:00.000-07:00

AKA heaven. I've finally arrived in the place I'm going to be living for the next 3.5 months, and 3.5 months just doesn't seem long enough. Monduli is about 45 minutes to an hour outside of Arusha, in the middle of a Maasai plain surrounded by mountains. It's beautiful, not TOO hot (yet), and the small-town feel is a welcome refuge from Arusha, which isn't all that big but which is full of people expecting that if you're white you're a stupid tourist. Today I got a tour of Monduli town and went to the market to buy veggies- so cheap and delicious. I'm excited to cook tonight. It sounds like for buying meat, I'll either have to slaughter my own chickens or go to Arusha to a supermarket. For now I think I'll opt for the second, but we'll see down the road... The school is great. I live in a house that\'s a duplex and I'm on one side. The family next door (from Washington state) is the ideal next door neighbors. Abby is the head teacher for the program I'm teaching, and her husband Eric showed us around town today, and their 5 and 6 year old daughters are going to be lots of fun. The place is really nice, I think the proper balance of conveniences (running water, electricity- most of the time- and refrigerator) and simplicity (no TV, i'll have to do my own laundry and dishes by hand). And most of all, today was the first day of classes. We have 60 girls who speak very little English, and I think what we're going to do is split them into 2 groups. Abby will do formal lessons with them and I'll do reinforcing games, drama, practice, songs, etc. Today I had help from 2 other women, so that was nice. And we managed all right. I am going to learn a lot about life, about teaching, about having a sort-of job. And most of all I already love the girls so much and can't wait to really get to know them. They are all Maasai and range from 12-18 (entering 8th grade, basically). Some of their parents are totally against their education and if they ever go home they'll probably be married off. Others are so excited that women have the chance to be educated. I can't wait to hear their stories and see them grow. If their laughter today is any sign of what's to come, Tanzania will continue to bring me much joy and meaning.

Visiting Monika's village in Moshi

2008-09-19T00:45:00.001-07:00

Well, I got the chance for the last 2 days to experience Tanzanian hospitality at its finest. On my way from Dar es Salaam to Arusha, where I'll be teaching, I stopped in Moshi, which is in the foothills of mount Kilimanjaro. I stayed way up in the mountain village with my dear friend Monika, who was the maid at my homestay last year. I slept in a bed with Monika and her adorable 5 year old son Loshi, in a mud and stick house where her mother lives (Monika still lives in the city but was visiting). I learned some Kichagga, the local langauge, became instantaneous best friends with her whole family, and walked around a lot looking at the beautiful views. They kept apologizing that it was so cold (maybe 60 at night?) and I had to explain to them that in America it is as cold as the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. I also had to explain a lot that there are black people in America, most of the farms are big and there aren't a lot of farmers, and that I had to take 2 planes to get here. They killed a chicken and a goat the day I got there, and I felt so honored and so terrible at the same time. But I think they're doing ok, I think they were killing lots of animals anyway because they were excited Monika and her brother had come back to visit. And eating the intestines of a goat was just not something I could do but it sure was lovely up there anyway. My mom was saying it's awesome I'm getting on the inside of culture, but in a way, although I'm so thankful to stay with these people and only speak sWahili for days and see their homes and lives, I still am on the outside, I'm the guest, they'll take me and show me where they fetch water but won't even let me try to carry it, and certainly not do the dishes or help cook. Meanwhile, everything I've ever thought is being turned upside down. My ideas abvout poverty, about simplicity. Even the things I thought I knew about Monika and maids in Tanzania and my host family. I wrote a non-fiction piece about that issue, of domestic help, which some of you read. And I thought I had it figured out, in a complicated, not-really-figured-out kind of way. But now Monika has left the family, now I've learned a few new details, now I've seen different sides of Monika and of Mama and of the other maid. And I just feel like I have to throw out that whole piece I wrote. It's far too much about my perceptions and not really the reality. I just can't know the reality yet. I'm still too much on the outside. But Tanzanian hospitality is amazing. And I'm in Arusha now, staying with my Tanzanian american friend Joyce, and she is so welcoming and wonderful, and Sunday I move into my school and I cannot wait to meet those girls. I'm so unequipped to teach, but it's going to be awesome.

The real question

2008-09-19T00:45:00.000-07:00

But all that last post was not meant to be negative, and I know it was more self centered than it should be. The real question, once I get past this what is guess we call culture shock, is How can I respond in love to these people? How can I make my time here not for me?

A new view

2008-09-13T04:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I've returned to Tanzania. And in a way, nothing has changed. I was afraid the magic, the people I loved, all this would have changed a bit, but it hasn't really. It's still beautiful as ever (though drier? bad year?), the stars are to die for, and my Swahili is coming back and i love the people i've been missing. But I'm also seeing things in a new way. I'm realizing how weak I am, how much I was privileged last time I was here, and how lovely it is to have the escape hatch. The past 2 nights I stayed with 2 different women who are my friends. Their homes are not quite the same as my host family from the university with satellite TV and a real shower. It was hard, I was always hungry and then full because the food is basically just starch and grease. As soon as I started eating I would be so full but when I was done, a bit later, I'd be so hungry. The sanitation at times made me feel disgusted, although I've gotten used to the squatter toilets, and I was so tired. I saw what a hard life Tanzanian women have. My one friend, she basically cooked and cleaned and washed her baby and carried her baby around at the market all day until late at night. And then the next morning she got up so early. And when I left she told me her husband beats her. For the first time I realized how much I take for granted. I always thought environmentally and simplicity wise its better not to have washing machines and dishwashers and stuff. But it's weird to see how much easier my friend's life would be if she had only one of those things. A real stove, or a dishwasher. No wonder they love TV and music so much, it's something to enjoy without thought, something to rest. I don't know what to think anymore. For sure though, it was better at my other friend's (Monika). They lived out almost in a village outside of dar. And they were helping each other, so it wasn't like Monika had to do everything herself. Even the kids helped. But again, the food and the simplicity got to me...it was too much to handle. And I was so tired of only speaking Swahili for so long, that I just wanted to come back to the mall by the university. And I felt so ashamed for wanting that, for having the capacity of an escape, for wanting to pee in a toilet with toilet paper and be in air conditioning. I feel so weak. But I am learning and seeing a lot of new things, and I think it will be good. So I am so glad John is here with me, I don't know how I'd do this alone. I asked God to challenge me and I've already begun to see that Tanzania this time, as much as I love the people and the hospitality and everything and as much as I know this will be wonderful and I will love it, especially once I go to Arusha and get settled in my own plac,e will be quite a challenge. I love and miss you all.

Kwaheri, Tanzania

2007-06-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

Saying goodbye came too quickly. With my family, it was sort of typical--Baba said goodbye to us on the phone because we never see him, and Mama drove Mara and I to our director's house to get a bus to the airport, and so when Mama and Mara and I were walking out the door Monika our maid started crying because she was about our best friend ever (I will miss her so much) and Aika started crying but that was because Mama was leaving for 5 minutes. Oh Aika, what a difficult child but also beautiful and fun and SO intelligent. I miss her. Goodbye in general was hard for me just because I didn't know, I think, how to have the right balance of attachment and detachment. First of all, traveling is so hard because it spreads me out and I love people in so many different places and want to be with all of them. I realized about a week before we left, also, that I have this tendency when I leave a place to try to detach myself too early. I start looking ahead, making distance between me and the place I'm in, thinking to the next thing and trying to convince myself I just want to get out of here and move on to the next. I did that before going to college, I do that almost every summer and every spring. It's easier to pretend I don't want to stay where I am. If I have to move on, might as well be ready. But I think this tendency prevents me from loving fully the place where I am and giving all I can. I think it falsely convinces me I'm detached when really I'm more attached than ever and will miss everyone and everything so much. I think it is a way of seeking in the new place what is missing because I'm leaving the old, or seeking in the new place what is simply always missing and has always been missing, the incompleteness of it because we are incomplete. But there is also joy. I realized, that incompleteness I found was part of my joy. In the last few weeks of Tanzania I thought about the way C.S. Lewis describes joy in "Surprised by Joy": as an expression not of completeness or happiness but instead of an awakening to beauty that leaves us more longing, more incomplete, but awakened and pointed in the right direction. That's how I feel about Tanzania, and that's beautiful. Tanzania has awakened me to many beautiful people, has loosened me up in terms of worrying and planning, starts to make me love and trust more, be more patient. But it is still sad to say goodbye. Nevertheless, the day I finally took off from Kilimanjaro airport after a safari with my godparents imitated that beauty and longing symbolically. We were facing north as we took off at 6pm, and Mt. Kilimanjaro was on our right and Mt. Meru on our left, and it was clear enough to see the snow-capped Kili and then on the left the sun was just directly behind the point of Meru, so that it wasn't setting yet but it was blocked from view by the mountain, and then they rays of it were all coming around the sides of the mountain, lighting up the coffee farms and banana trees on the green landscape. It was almost too perfect, like I'm just making it up to seem cliche and poetic. But it was a wonderful way to leave Tanzania, loving the beauty of it, and just wanting more, wanting to stay or come back someday.

Placing the blame

2007-06-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

My last few weeks in Tanzania were beautiful, I'm realizing how much I love my host family. Mama is really an amazing woman. She started her own business and works so hard, and she really believes Africa has something to offer people, which is why she advocated so hard for Aika (her 3 year old niece) to stay at our house coming from Britain, to learn to speak Swahili and be African instead of spoiled Brit. And one day I came downstairs and Mama was crying because she was watching a TV special on homeless people in America, and she didn't realize there were so many poor people in America (though she lived there for4 years). She said why is America sending so much money to Africa when they can't even take care of their own people? And it was a good point. Not that we shouldn't try to help Africa, I think, but that sometimes Africa is a fad and we ignore our own slums and gross inequalities. And it was interesting, both Mama and a co-worker from Envirocare, Jane, said they think Tanzania has so many resources but the people are too lazy to take advantage of them, that's why they're so poor. So here are Mama and Jane, empowered women in Tanzania who see the men stopping work in the afternoon to go to a bar for a few hours, who also have worked hard and been successful themselves, blaming the tanzanians for not rising out of poverty. If we weren't so lazy, we'd reap the benefits of our own mines, our own tourism sector, our own companies--but instead it's foreigners who own everything. Meanwhile, me as the American coming in likes to blame myself and the West. Isn't that not ultimately the fault of Tanzanians but the Westerners who've exploited them? They would work harder if they'd been taught that their work would pay off, but it hasn't because they were colonized and they're colonized now. What needs to happen isn't just to empower the Tanzanians to work harder but to raise the awareness of Westerners in how they debilitate the working ability of Tanzanians. And so maybe ultimately both parts are true. Jane wants to work to empower the Tanzanians from within, to get them to work harder and care about their families and their country. And I want to get Americans to realize how their actions affect the whole world, how the systems they're involved in have far reaching ramifications and how doing nothing is being a parasite because those systems are already in place. Maybe we need to have people working on both sides. And maybe we also need to have organizations like Envirocare, the small grassroots Tanzanian NGO I worked with, which was such a wonderful experience and so hard to say goodbye. Because Envirocare is trying to empower farmers from the grassroots, to have a conversation with them instead of just teaching them, to work together to share farming methods that will be good both for the environment and for poverty alleviation. And meanwhile Envirocare is trying to put forth publications to spread awareness. It was so neat to see that while the organization was really limited in terms of resources and scope, in small ways it could help farmers. It's just that if people really want to address poverty, sanitation, health, hunger, inequality, all those issues we love to talk about, I think it will take a lot of work and the dedication of people's entire lives, and sacrifices.

Ee Mungu nipe uvumilivu

2007-04-26T07:54:00.000-07:00

This is what my kanga says--kangas are the wraps the Tanzanian women wear--and it means, "God give me patience." Going along with haraka haraka haina baraka (hurry hurry has no blessings) I think it's really the biggest thing I've been learning this semester. My research in the village in Moshi was great, talking to farmers in a beautiful highland village who grow coffee. I wanted to talk to the ones who switched to organic farming, for better health and better soil and maybe better prices, and see how difficult it was and what went into this decision and if it's a good option for the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. And essentially, yet again I'm faced with the reality that it just takes patience. Organic farming is better in the long run, for the soil and maybe in the context of the international market, but it gives lower yields at first--there will certainly be a time of loss. They just need to be patient, said a woman at envirocare, the NGO I've been volunteering at. But patience is hard when you don't have a lot of extra resources or security. And I mean for the most part these farmers are doing all right, they have enough food (eat bananas day and night) and their houses are well-constructed and they have water access. But then there are still things that are hard, like sending their kids to school, getting health care, and whatever other small amenities they want. But they need to have patience. And even then, probably not much is going to change. A few of them may still die of cancer from chemicals. The international coffee market is showing a lot of promise for the future, and smallholder farmers don't get much of a share of the prices we pay for coffee. So patience. It's hard, but maybe that's just what you do. You keep living your life and caring for the people around you. Meanwhile, I've been learning to be patient with the future and the things I want out of life and the places I'm always missing. And when I'm patient, that's when I go to my random friend Pauline's in town and she teaches me to cook ugali and dagaa, a typical Tanzanian meal. I guess we never really reach the point where we feel like we're not being patient about something or lacking something. But while we're waiting thats where the baraka are. I'll probably keep learning this over and over again. And I only have 3 weeks left here, so then I'll enter a new arena in which to learn patience. But don't worry, usijali, as they say. And according to one of my favorite Bongo Flava (Tanzanian hip hop) songs, "Acha kulia, shida za dunia, ebu tulia, Mungu anakujaribia": "Stop crying for the problems of the world. Calm down, God is trying for you."

Revolution is for the changes

2007-04-20T05:09:00.000-07:00

That is the song of the students on campus, at the University of Dar es Salaam. On Monday and Tuesday of this week (I'm jealous, I missed it, I was in Moshi doing research) they held a strike, to protest the government's new policy with student loans. The government until recently was paying for students to go to university, and they could get loans for the full amount of tuition. But now, partly because of World Bank cost sharing and budget pressure, they've changed the policy so that students must pay 40% of tuition on their own, and can get 60% loans. This is extremely difficult, almost impossible for most students. Until this week they were still allowed to go to class even if they couldn't pay, they just wouldn't be able to get their degree until they pay. But now, on Monday and Tuesday they protested, blocked the road, held conferences and demonstrations on campus. Apparently it got pretty ridiculous, like they were forcing students out of the library to march with them, forcing students out of buses and their dorms to join the strike. On Tuesday, the university administration posted that everyone had to leave by 6, at least the Tanzanian students. So now they're all gone, they can't get credit for this semester (they're trying to work something out at least for the students who are supposed to graduate this year), they can't come back until they pay. The university is really empty except for some exchange students and a few people who've been hanging out, and most cafeterias and buildings are closed. My program isn't affected because we're just doing independent research now. But it's crazy; something is really happening here. And one of my friends is doing his independent research project on this whole student loan business--what can be done? The students can't afford to pay, the government can't really either. What about people who aren't in university, do they think the students should have to pay for themselves so that government money can go elsewhere? That's an independent research project that's extremely relevant. There are so many interesting things about this turn of events--the chaos of the protests, the ability of students to influence the government, the fact that this is keeping a lot of students from getting credit for their courses and being able to finish their degrees...they can't come back until they pay. "Revolution is for changes. If we don't fight for ourselves, where would we study?"

Loliondo and Arusha

2007-04-18T02:09:00.000-07:00

What a few weeks it has been. Over spring break I had the incredible opportunity to travel with a friend to a village way up north of

Tanzania

, in the middle of Maasai land, to stay for a few days. We stayed with a missionary from

Germany

and the Tanzanian family she lives with, who were some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met. And Easter was absolutely beautiful. We went to a church service with the Maasai. Now the Maasai are an African herding tribe that sort of have the reputation of being the only traditional unmodernized Africans left in

Tanzania

. They herd cows, ceremonially cut their ears, wear plaid shukas and beaded jewelry, and carry wooden sticks to fight off aninals. Stereotypically, “real Africans.” But really, they are beautiful, and wonderful, and hospitable, and on Sunday their church service was one of the most joyful things I’ve ever seen; when they started singing and dancing, and we were under a tree and looking around at the hills and landscape which is absolutely stunning out here, there was a moment I just felt like I couldn’t contain my emotion inside, my gratitude for this all. And then we went down to the river for baptisms, and 14 people were baptized, which is incredible for the Maasai because they can’t swim and they’re so afraid of water and the water was dirty. And one of the people baptized was Cipironi, who is 13 and lives with the family we were staying with. His story is incredible, about how he was sick last year and really was miraculously healed; he said he heard Jesus telling him to stand up after so many doctors and traditional healers had tried to give him treatment unsuccessfully. And he stood up and was fine, and slowly was also healed from fear and sadness about the abuse he had suffered at home. And I believe it. All of this is real. That’s the biggest gift

Tanzania

and the Maasai have given me. If I’d have heard any of these stories or heard about missionaries in the remote tribes of

Tanzania

last year, I would have thought it was ridiculous. I would have been so sceptical. I still am, in some ways, hesitant about missionaries and know that Christianity can be patronizing, and we have to be careful. But now I’ve seen life that doesn’t have to be explained by Nietzche and Freud and reason. I’ve seen joy in God that is real, and it’s become real to me again. I have been given so many blessings.

The sad part is that, after going on this excursion to Loliondo, I returned to Arusha, where we saw a trial of the International Tribunal Court for the Rwanda genocide, and just had to think about the horror of the genocide and crimes that humans could do, and realize it's not all joy. And one of my friends pointed out that all the joy of this experience in Tanzania is in some way not REAL, it's a dream, in the sense that we're just touring, it's not a sustainable way of life. It's just a treat we've gotten to experience for a few months. Then we have to return to reality and make lives and deal with the horrible facts of human life too. At first I was really upset by this, because what if it means that my growth isn't real or sustainable either, or that when I return all the people and places I've grown to love will fade forever? But we talked more and I realized there's a distinction between this experience being a dream, and being an illusion. I can't let it be an illusion, if I think that it has shown me real life, or that my growth is only about myself. But if it's a dream, if it's a time when I can love many people and learn to imagine a life that is full of the joy I have been given, a life not just for myself but for all the Maasai and all the university students, then it's good. So, it was good for me to realize that there's something wrong with imagination if it's only for myself and my own joy. But if I can imagine a better world--that is what I am called to do, to imagine a kingdom of justice and joy, and to pray and work to create that world in my own life. So I hope Tanzania and the growth I've experienced here will be sustainable, will be a vision for me to pursue, will really change me.

friends

2007-03-30T00:52:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving tomorrow to travel in the north of Tanzania, first with the group for a bit, then a few friends, then to stay near Mt. Kilimanjaro and talk to coffee farmers in the villages for about a week, about organic farming and rural livelihoods. It's really exciting. But it's also making me realize how much the time in the next few months is going to fly--I'll be gone for 3 weeks, then I'll be back for three weeks, then I'm out of here, moving forward always. It's sad. Because there's so many people I'm just beginning to really treasure, so many things I'm going to miss. I've made this friend Jane at my work at Envirocare, and been to her house and her kids (4 and 5)are CRAZY and try to speak English with me. I will miss them. I've gotten pretty close to this guy Zach I'm teaching piano to, and we just play music a lot, he plays the drums and we have traditions, songs that we do everytime, and he's just really fun to hang out with and to talk to about all his opinions for Tanzania. And my family, most of all my family. I love Aika even if she's crazy sometimes. I love Mama even if I don't see her that often. And most of all I love Monika and Mwasiti, the maids. I am just starting to really talk to Monika, to hear her story. And it's tough, because you realize that what seemed like an OK life--at least certainly not the destitute poverty some people think of when they think of Africa--still has so many things lacking and so many challenges. It's harder, in a way, to face poverty and hopelessness when they're coming from someone who never seemed all that different from myself. Students who are educated and will probably find some job, but it just might take a while and they may never have confidence and security. Monika, who has a nice place to live and enough to eat, but has so many struggles in family and relationships and her past. When the sad things come out, it's bittersweet becuase I know I'm really getting to build relationships with these people (in another language, it's exciting) but I also know there's not all that much I can do for her without undermining Mama, and there's not all that much longer I have to just spend time with her and love her. But I do. Love these people a lot. And this time it's not just an idea, like "I must love the people of Tanzania." It's real people I care about and laugh with and will ache to leave. And the more I travel, the more I will always ache to be away from people, like I do for many of you. And yet maybe this is stretching me to love more and across distances, and maybe it is reinforcing in me something i believe about the brokenness of this world and how it is incomplete, how we'll always be lacking some pieces of our community and our love, and how i don't think that will be fulfilled ever on earth. And thus how I long for God, the way he means something in this culture and in mine and for all the people I love, how he could someday restore the separations and make me whole. Sorry, I know this got a little cliche...what can i say. Meanwhile I'm just waiting, laughing, coughing, the normal things I do. Loving the rainy season and the people I'm with right now and climbing trees. Sometimes that's enough.

My adventure buddies

2007-03-26T03:39:00.000-07:00

I have two friends here, John and Emily, and they are fantastic. We like to go on a lot of adventures. And we always have the greatest things happen to us. This weekend, for example, we went to Zanzibar again, for a relaxing time wandering around Stone Town, the historic port city, and a night at the beach on the east coast. There are some things that are really great about trips with John and Emily. For one, we're really spontaneous and laugh a lot even if things don't work out--so when we went to buy our boat tickets to Zanzibar Thursday and got mobbed by a million people trying to sell us tickets, some probably trying to scam us, we felt completely overwhelmed and hassled, and then there was a moment where we all three just looked at each other and started laughing hysterically. Another great thing we have going is this system we call "communism," which seems to work well in a nation that used to be socialist and in which we take political science from the best gentlest Marxist professor ever. What this means is that someone pays for the hotel, someone pays for lunch, and we don't really stress about the exact amount we spend. It's communism. Everybody's happy. And then, best of all is just that we always seem to get ourselves into crazy and amazing situations. Like a few weeks ago we went to this fishing village Gezauloloe and ended up having some kid lead us past cattle fields and huts to this tiny hole-in-the-wall local place to eat local food: chipsi mayai, or basically french fries fried with eggs. And then, this weekend in Zanzibar we were looking for another similarly cheap place to eat in the beach village we stayed at, and some kids ended up inviting us into their home to eat, and while their mom was cooking some of the best ugali and fish I've had yet, all the kids braided Emily and my hair. And then Sunday morning Emily and I watched the sunrise. And we had so much great conversation and feeling the breeze and seeing the stars, all three of us, and the best part about it is that this week we have finals! Best finals week ever. I wondered about a few things while in Zanzibar, though. One was just if my understanding of nature is a little skewed some way. I mean, I love it, I love the beauty of the ocean and the stars and the beach and trees and farms and fields. But I also am not directly dependent on it for my survival. I think for the fishermen in Zanzibar, or the farmers, there would be a different experience. Not that they'd appreciate or love nature less, but they'd be more connected to it somehow, and that connection would include both love and gratitude but also some sort of tension, struggle, fight with the land to provide food and with the sea to provide fish and with the sky to provide good weather. The other thing was just tourism. It's crazy there, so many tourists, and we get frustrated when people use tourist Swahili with us like we don't know anything, or when they hassle us to buy stuff all the time. But really we are tourists. And I don't know if that's good or bad, if they need the income or if they are hampered by the cultural pollution and the dependence on some seemingly artificial mode of income. So Zanzibar, you're beautiful but I can't idealize you, because I don't really experience life there.

It just keeps getting better.

2007-03-19T03:09:00.000-07:00

If that were possible! This weekend was just out of control, and though there's no real way to describe it, maybe I'll just mention that it included riding on a dhow with a random fisherman off the coast, exploring an ancient graveyard of a sharif (both of these 2 were on Msasani Village, which is really interesting because it's this old fishing village that's been there forever, where people are still fishing in little boats and selling their fish at the market like their grandfathers did, and where there's a graveyard that's 200 years old, and all this in the midst of a now modernized city, just adjacent to the rich white area, the yacht club and the expatriate community), celebrating St. Patrick's day at an irish pub, watching the stars on the roof of our kiswahili building, going to a CRAZY charismatic church sunday with a tanzanian friend, and going to a family celebration where a goat was sacrificed for a new baby. I can't describe the fullness of emotions I've felt, the richness of life and culture and nature here, the beauty. Meanwhile I don't know how to process everything--culture and religion and society and poverty. and my thoughts are just racing now, unable to figure anything out, but maybe that's really what this trip is about in the long run, complicating my (already complicated) thoughts so that I will understand only that there is complexity and that i cannot understand. I can only keep seeking to learn and love people.

Aika

2007-03-10T00:31:00.000-08:00

Sorry if I write too much; you can ignore me droning on...but when my email isn't working and I already payed for the full hour, I can only go on facebook for so long... One of the most difficult cultural issues that Mara (my roommate) and I have experienced has been having Aika with us. Aika is my mama's niece; she lives in England with her mother (mama's sister) and they came to visit for a few weeks. Aika is 3 and she is a bit spoiled. She only likes people who speak English and when she first went to a preschool here she said it wasn't a real school because they spoke Swahili and there were only Africans. That being said, mama and Aika's mama want her to learn to be African, so she is staying with us for a while while her mom goes back to England. It's tough because she is really attached to her mom. Her mom left yesterday and I still think she doesn't realize she's not coming back for a while. But even before she left, there was one really difficult night. Aika's mom was gone and she left without saying goodbye-Aika screamed and refused to eat. Mara was trying to comfort her while the maid, Mwasiti, who has a very different understanding of child rearing, was trying to discipline her. There was this one point where Aika was screaming in Mara's arms, Mwasiti was threatening her with a wooden spoon and calling her a bad child, and I was holding the food. Mara said, don't feed her, she'll choke on her tears, and Mwasiti said, give her food, and I felt I was just caught in between two opinions, two cultures somehow. Babies here don't get as much individual attention and soothing, they're just sort of passed around and expected to behave. Of course they are loved too. But it was just a tough situation, and I know Mara and I will continue to have to try to understand the way Mwasiti wants to treat Aika, and together we'll have to learn how to take care of this child who is also somewhere in the middle of two cultures.

Internship and Independent Study

2007-03-09T23:42:00.000-08:00

The time is coming where we're almost done with classes and ready to travel for a bit and then do our independent studies! It's crazy how fast time is going. I recently started volunteering at an NGO called Envirocare that works with environmental sustainability in Tanzania in a holistic way, incorporating poverty, human rights, gender and AIDS issues as well. It's a really neat place; they do a lot of research and awareness raising, and especially are doing a lot with organic farming. So I've been helping out with writing and editing for some stuff, and it's so neat to see that I can actually be really useful (their English writing definitely needs editing...) and simultaneously learn about agriculture and the environment in Tanzania. It looks like for my independent study I'll be working with Envirocare as well as other groups and local farmers in Moshi (near Mt. Kilimanjaro) to look at the organic farming on coffee plantations there, and the motivations, and how it relates to the social structure, and what is the future for organic farming and sustainable agriculture there. I guess it wasn't my first choice for a project, but I'm pretty excited that I'll get to be in a rural area, witnessing rural people and rural poverty and interacting with villagers! There's still a lot to get set up. Meanwhile, I love what I'm doing, I love especially the other people who work at Envirocare; they are so much fun and they're helping me with my Swahili while I help them with their English! This is really a wonderful opportunity. And sometimes, lately, I've been a bit reminiscent and missing home and school and lots of people, but not in a desperate way, just in a way that makes me appreciate you all and be excited to see you again, soon or later.

Mikumi National Park and the Udzungwa Mountains

2007-03-05T01:56:00.000-08:00

I think I may have just experienced the most beautiful weekend of my life. There's not really much to say, because words and pictures could never explain it, but just know that mountains are beautiful, trees are majestic, and I've seen miles of driving through the mountains, blue and hazy against the sky, and then through the game park with giraffes and my favorite animals of all the elephants, and buffalo and zebras and unfortunately no lions this time, and I've hiked up a mountain through rainforest to swim under a waterfall. And I had trouble reminding myself that all this was actually happening. Of course, the thing about being in nature, especially while driving on a bus, was that it made me think way too much, trying to have profound thoughts about this country and myself and my personality and all the issues I'm grappling with. And we all know what happens when I think too much. So then, at last there finally came a point where the beauty of it all just overwhelmed my thoughts and I just had to be still and enjoy it. And it was beautiful.

To travel or reflect

2007-02-28T07:41:00.000-08:00

Recently, I've felt a sort of pull between travelling and spending time with Tanzanians, and just taking time out for myself to reflect. Of course, I'm here now and I want to suck everything I can out of this experience. I've seen some great places. Last weekend on my birthday (best birthday EVER!) I went to the Pugu Hills southwest of Dar es Salaam and went camping with a few friends. It was beautiful, we hiked to a cow market through a village and through some forest and I drank only a sip of beer on my birthday and we talked about community versus the individual and cooked vegetables in a fire. Saturday I got to spend some time with my new friend Happy, who comes from near Mt. Kilimanjaro, and she took me out for meat and beer, which is what Tanzanians order when they go out. I'm so excited that I'm making friends, because I also met another Tanzanian girl on the bus the other day, and I feel like I'm finally starting to make some headway into this culture. And this weekend we are going to a game park and hiking in some mountains with waterfalls. And it's great, adventuring about the city, to the botannical gardens or to Kariakoo, the huge central market with so many people and so many shops. But then, sometimes I know that for myself, I'm not going to get as much out of this experience if I don't take time to slow down and breathe. Because it's already a little bit difficult for a semi-introverted person like myself to be in a culture where there isn't a huge concept of personal space. For example, right now we have my mama's sister and daughter staying at our home, and the daughter is in our room all the time--a beautiful child and a ton of fun, but sometimes I need rest. It's funny how it's the good things about the culture, the hospitality and friendliness, that are starting to get to me sometimes, when I'm tired. I can only take care of Aika so much. I can only go out with Happy so much, and it's not really culturally acceptable to just tell someone you're to tired to go out with them, you're too busy. You should never be too busy for people here. It's great, it's a beautiful value of the culture, people over work. But then, I just have to make sure I'm taking time for myself. Time for rest.

Modernization

2007-02-28T07:27:00.000-08:00

If this won't be a loaded post, I don't know what is. Starting classes in Tanzanian Politics and Tanzanian Social Structure has given me a lot to think about, especially when that coincides with meeting new Tanzanian friends who have opinions about development and poverty and the economy and what we should do with this broken earth. Essentially, I am baffled. Because when I went to Bangladesh, I studied agricultural modernization, which had greatly increased food production in the region through new crop varieties, irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides, and mechanized plowing. But this modernization in my opinion had also made everyone dependent on the few who controlled access to technology--the fertilizer dealer, the guy who owned the tractor or the irrigation pump. Modernization of agriculture is bad. In Tanzania, it's completely different. Based on socialist policies at the time of independence and a different sort of soil, it has not been penetrated by agricultural modernization at all. Almost everyone has access to land and farms for subsistence. Holdings are fairly equal and soil isn't being degraded by a lot of fertilizers. Almost everything is done by hand plow and organically. And yet, there still isn't enough food. 38% of children have stunted growth from malnutrition. so what is wrong? There are different theories. A lot of the Tanzanians i've talked to think they really need more foreign investment and capital to get better technology. They want to modernize, to become efficient, to end this socialist remnant of their economy and get into the global system. Me on the other hand, I'm so wary of that. I like that when I walk through the villages there is little electricity. I don't mind not having air conditioning and I like the communal feel to everything. And I don't know if it is possible to modernize agriculture and industrialize without losing some of the communal feel, without losing some of the simplicity. Of course I know this is an idealized view. It's easy for me to say that life is better without electricity and running water when I can go back to it at any time. And it's easy to hypothesize that communal agriculture could be developed, that they could get rid of some of the cash crop production and focus on food and everything would be OK, when I'm still getting enough to eat everyday (and drinking tea and coffee, the cash crops!). Maybe Tanzania really does need to be integrated into the international market or be starved. But what's the balance between that and becoming dependent on foreigners? And part of me just wonders if this isn't a case of the grass is always greener. I, who have grown up with the blessings of material and efficient economy and availability of capital, want to back away from it and just have a community that will care for each other no matter how much they have. I want equality. And Zach, my Tanzanian friend, and other villagers, who have seen the hard times that this life in the village brings--these people want money, materials to make life better, capital, for their nation not to have one of the lowest GDPs in the world...maybe we're both a little bit right and a little bit lacking. So I'll listen to these people and maybe someday be able to work towards development for their nation, and respect their not-reedy wishes for money and modernization. But I'm still holding out for something more than that, even though I'm just an abstractly-thinking star-gazing English major who can't figure out exactly what it is I think we should be aiming for.

Zanzibar

2007-02-20T07:18:00.000-08:00

Zanzibar is an island off the coast of Tanzania, which was once a part of the Omani empire, later colonized by the British, and always very important to Indian Ocean trading networks. It's also one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. I went there this weekend, and we toured the old Omani buildings, the sultan's palace and the old slave markets (somehow being here has made the reality of slavery's brutality more clear to me...you learn to say how horrific it is starting in 2nd grade, but then maybe it's seeing the place where the slaves were kept, 50 of them to a room in these tiny underground caverns until they were sold, hearing about the slave master TipoTipo who would shoot his slaves to see if his gun was working, looking around and knowing these people around me are just the kind of people who were sold and owned and abused and stripped of all freedom...and they are such beautiful and free people), the fish markets along the beach where they cook you fantastic fresh kalamari and swordfish, the spice farms where the Omanis established a network of growing nutmeg and ginger and tea...oh it's all so beautiful. We took a boat to get there; we ate all kinds of fresh fruit and drank spiced tea after the spice tour, and there were guys following us around on the spice tour giving us necklaces made out of grasses and spices and baskets of the flowers. Of course sometimes the number of teenagers and young men asking for my phone number gets to me, but it's one of those things you just have to deal with in this culture. The best part of Zanzibar, I think, was lying on the beach until 2:30 on Saturday night, looking at the incredible stars like none I've ever seen before. I'm telling you, the southern hemisphere has really got it. The strange part of that experience was when a drunk man came up to us to tell us his life story, and said that we come here thinking it's a paradise with stars and ocean, but the people here can't enjoy it because they are so poor. And so then you have to wonder, because there really are so many tourists there, and it's such a dichotomy between the Europeans on the beach swimming and looking at the stars, and the inland parts where the kids have to quit school because they can't afford shoes. But is it really true they can't enjoy it? This guy's story was tempered by the fact that he was drunk and his plan is to marry a European woman to get away from here. But you can never get away from the poverty and the begging for something more. You always have to wonder what the balance is, between the loveliness of this place and how it is insufficient to keep the people fed and healthy...

Politics and Religion

2007-02-07T09:42:00.000-08:00

Everyone has strong opinions here, and there is a lot to talk about, which makes it fun. I know there are people from all political and religious backgrounds potentially reading this blog, so I'm a little nervous to write my thoughts, but here goes. Of course, in terms of politics the Tanzanians are pretty uniform, at least in terms of what they think of the US. The war in Iraq is horrible, Bush is horrible, Bush loves war. Tanzanians are peaceful people who have only fought one real war, and it was to defend their country against Ugandan invasion. Then, the interesting thing is that most of them while completely disagreeing with the war are also staunchly against homosexuality. So that's politics. But I've really had a lot more conversations about religion, because it is so interesting to me, because I have so many questions to ask, and there have been lots of great conversations and experiences. Here the population is about half and half Muslim and Christian. And they live in peace. There is really no extremism here. I have found it really beautiful to walk past the church and the mosque on campus and smile at people in both places, I've loved hearing the Muslim call to prayer which always evokes in me something quite emotional, something that feels the genuine cry for mercy in it even though I can't understand the words, and meanwhile I've loved singing in the church choir this past Sunday, singing about the kingdom of God in Swahili, and how all will see it. And in my host family, my Baba comes from a Muslim family and my Mama from a Christian, and one maid is Christian and one Muslim ( I LOVE MY MAIDS SO MUCH THEY ARE THE BEST FRIENDS EVER AND SO MUCH FUN TO TALK TO!) And I have had many conversations, mostly with Americans so far, about missionaries, about tolerance. There is a lot to think about and my time is out now so I guess I'll continue to think about this later!

Nzuri

2007-02-07T03:12:00.000-08:00

There's really only one possible response when someone here asks you how you're doing: Nzuri. It's the Swahili word for good, well, beautiful, and most other postive attributes. How are you? You always respond nzuri, even if you were dying, according to my professor you'd say, "nzuri, but i'm dying." I guess it's not all that different than the way most people answer how are you in America...although it seems more defined. The thing is, I've realized, most of the time when I answer nzuri (99% of the time?) it's really true. I'm good. I have found so much joy here in this country, for the little things I love: the way my head bounces on the bumpy road to where I live, the children in my neighborhood who everyday play this game where they ball up some plastic bags and throw them at each other, taking a shower from a bucket, the perpetual sweat while I know it's 100 degrees colder in Minnesota, having 10 friends over to our house to watch the Super Bowl at 2:30am, eating by lantern when the power goes out, monkeys all over campus. And I'm not even beginning to capture it. And there are bigger things, the new joys of conversing and building relationships in a new language (slowly!), and of having time to sit and think and sort things out, of teaching a Tanzanian student piano and making a friend through that, and of finding how much joy is returning to me, how big the world can be and all it's possibilities. So for me, it is almost always true that I am nzuri sana. But then I wonder, what's probably more important, are the people I'm meeting just as truthful? Are they really doing well? I've started to see a few children and thin people, sick people--it's still occasional but I pass by them sometimes. And I know the smiles I see on the surface aren't the whole picture. So when they say nzuri sana, is it real? Good, but I'm hungry? Good, but I'm sick? Are they still happy, because no matter if they're hungry they still have this amazing sense of family and community that transcends the physical? Or are they unhappy if they're sick or poor? Or is it even as simple as classifying them that way, sick or poor. This is what I want to know while I am here. I know Tanzania is beautiful and kind and refreshing for me. I want to know if it is the same to its people. I want to know if they want our help for anything, or if they think things need to change in any way. What is there that I can learn from them so that more often in American I can honestly say i am "nzuri," and what, if anything, can I give them so that they can say that just as honestly?

haraka haraka haina baraka

2007-01-26T09:12:00.000-08:00

this is a kiswahili proverb which means "hurry hurry has no blessings." This is what I have been learning. i mean, in the little things like that it's nice to walk in a leisurely way sometimes (antonia knows i walk too fast!) on the way to school. and also in the bigger things, like that i can be patient with getting involved in volunteering or getting close in relationships or learning the language or just figuring everything out. i realized that my impulse at first was- "I'm in tanzania, i have to make sure i find something extra tanzanian to do, like something to do with slums and poverty. and i have to make sure i process everything culturally and socially and personally and figure it all out NOW!" but, haraka haraka haina baraka. and now that i'm slowing down, i'm learning. i've made some friends, just by meeting people on campus when i walk slowly, or when i go swimming. and today, i just went into the market at Mwenge (a market with crafts, cafes, shops, bus station) for lunch with 2 friends. and we were just sitting having our own lunch not seeking out a huge cultural experience, when one of the most interesting things yet happened to me. a homeless man who was well-educated and spoke english really well walked up to us, wanting money. well, we ended up inviting him to join us for lunch, and what a story he told. i didn't quite catch it all, and it's going to take me several years to process, but it involved being the black sheep of the family and being disowned and betrayed by his mother and his brothers. he compared this to the Bible story of Joseph. then he also talked a lot about religion. i guess he used to study the Bible and now he said he had some revelation one day, when he was homeless in the bushes, that there is something lacking in christianity and Islam and all the other religions, something that isn't adequate to explain the almighty God or the world. and he said maybe sometime, Jesus will come again, or some other prophet will come and fulfill whatever is lacking in all human religions. i still can't put together all that he said. that's not it. there were things about suffering and being betrayed by God and man. there were things about how we are all the same soul. about how we should never turn down a person in need. about how we should believe what we want to believe, but he has had this revelation and doesn't believe in what he used to. it was all overwhelming and yet lovely. and we laughed too, and he said he was so happy to share his life with us, who come all the way from america. i don't know. i don't know. all i know is that haraka haraka haina baraka. i can't rush processing this either. and now is just my time to listen, to all that i am slowly learning and seeing. the children, the buses, the kiswahili, and about myself and my own callings and needs and emptinesses. and the silence, the waiting before i understand it all, is pretty exhilarating and beautiful.

My host family

2007-01-22T05:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I moved in with my host family, with my American roommate Mara. We have the best family ever. Mama is so nice and she cooks amazing food: spiced rice, salads, chapatis and other baked goods. In fact she used to live in California and she was a chef there! Baba (my dad) is a lot of fun too. He is a professor at the university, and an avid football fan. I found myself already getting into the Manchester United vs. Arsenal game last night, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to be a huge fan, and it is fun to hang out with the Baba. He also showed me all the other TV channels, including animal planet which we watched for a few minutes (that's right, Maggie). I think it's interesting to consider the effect the media will have on Tanzanian culture. Because right now Tanzanaians are still really family-oriented and socially conservative, at least in terms of sexuality and clothing. But as the American media and music videos are becoming more widespread, I wonder how long it will take until these things come into Tanzanian culture. I hope a while. There's globalization for you. Back to my family. I have 3 sisters but they are all away right now at boarding school. But, we have a maid, Monica, who is pretty much my new sister. And she only speaks Kiswahili. So we talked for a while yesterday, and it is so helpful to practice with her. She is a great girl and I can't wait to keep talking to her more. She showed me pictures of her family and talked about them and I tried to do the same. She likes to laugh at how bad my Swahili is. But I'm improving so much. Last thing, though this has nothing to do with my host family. church Sunday again. I understood a lot more this week, and the music was even more lively and beautiful. And there was something incredible about when I could pick up a few words and sing simply-- "Hakuna Mungu kama wewe": there is no God like you. That's all I could say, but it takes being pretentious and deep and profound out of religion. It makes it so much more simple, united, and the joy was still there completely. And we sang, "Salaama yooni mwangu": it is well with my soul. same thing. Oh, Tanzania is doing incredible things in my heart and even though occasionally I have homesickness or loneliness or fear that I'm not capitalizing on all my time here, I know that this semester is one of the best decisions I could ever make.

In Africa

2007-01-22T05:25:00.000-08:00

It's hot here. In my opinion, that's why everything moves slowly and is late. People are just a little too tired to make it to the appointed place on time. It's casual and nice though. For example, during our first week of class, the whole group was late to class 3 days. One day, the dala dala (minibus) didn't pick us up, so we ended up hitching a ride in this guy's pick-up truck. Riding down the bumpy road in a pick-up or even in a dala dala is one of the more enjoyable experiences. Meanwhile, some bad things have been happening in our group--several people got food poisoning, I got stung by a jellyfish, one girl had money stolen. But I don't want to tell you all that stuff. Because it will perpetuate the vision of Africa as the dark and scary continent. It's not, let me tell you all that now. It's not. It's beautiful, there is nothing scary about it except that I don't speak the language, but I am getting so much better, and the people are friendly so friendly, they just want to invite you to their house and tell you to make Tanzania your home and stop and talk whenever (another reason they might be late). So you should all come to Africa.

Karibuni Tanzania

2007-01-15T06:36:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Tanzania! I haven't had much internet access yet which is why I haven't been in touch, not because I hate you. Jet lag was rough- I woke up at 1:30 am one of the first few days--it was a long day. But I love Tanzania; it is wonderful. The other students on my program are the best possible people I could have hoped for. We enjoyed 95 degree weather and swimming in the Indian Ocean while you all were probably sledding. We ride in the dala dala buses which are crowded and hot and smell fantastic. It's frustrating not to know swahili yet, but everyone's really motivated to work on it so it's getting better. Sunday, I went to a Swahili Catholic church service. It was incredible-though I couldn't understand but a few words, there was so much joy and beauty in it. The music was beautiful, and while everyone was harmonizing some of the older women would trill really high, this sort of joyous or emotional call that seemed to bring in their cultural traditions to the music. The priest was so respected for his age-that is one beautiful thing about Tanzanian culture, people respect and actually listen to the older people.

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go

2007-01-06T22:24:00.000-08:00

I don't really believe it's two days away that I leave. It's not as scary this time, because from Bangladesh I know that malaria mosquitos and contaminated water and beggars are something that lots of people deal with every day, and they're not really that scary if you're careful. It would be offensive to go into Africa assuming everything is inferior. I'm expecting it to be beautiful. What I'm scared of is the first few weeks before I have good friends, or that my expectations are too high. I want so much out of this trip. But part of me is so ready. Done with the shopping and the packing and the goodbyes and ready to climb Mt. Meru! Ready for a safari. Excited about the possibilities. I'd really like to get into a Christian community over there, and I've contacted some people and found out about a church that meets on campus. I'm thinking about doing my independent research on the role of faith based organizations and churches in social issues, pros and cons, and I have some potential contacts for that. It's going to be a long time, but a good time. Though it's not easy to pull up my roots and leave a lot of wonderful people behind for several months.