Blog Update: Life on the other side of the world

So I wrote this about 4 days ago speculating I had malaria again and GUESS what? I do. That’s the second time in 3 weeks! I missed a few days of anti-malarial pills so I guess I just have bad luck and/or am really susceptible to it. This time I only had one parasite in my blood…last time I had more (lovely, yes?) but it was still very crappy and I'm just now starting to feel better.

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I’m really tired lately and ready for a bit of an escape (hopefully a weekend trip to Mombasa on the coast in Kenya at the end of the month). It might be because I’ve been a little afraid I’m getting malaria again due to the fact that I’ve been having similar symptoms like pain in my upper abdomen and bad nausea, but the problem with malaria is that it’s similar to a lot of other illnesses and difficult to diagnose without a blood test. It could just be that on top of stomach problems and the unrelenting heat, some days, the kids are totally out of control. It helps when I remember that most of them have been abused and unprotected the majority of their lives. It’s hard to imagine not being able to go to your parents for comfort or guidance or what have you at 4 years old for an indefinite period of time. But still, sometimes the watoto (some of whom have started calling me “mother”) are like a wild uncontrollable pack of monkeys. Their hygiene is not very stellar and they usually have to take de-worming pills every month (fyi worms really terrifies me in every way). This week I’ve been trying to be a little tougher on them to teach them better manners because I can’t take the level of aggressive behavior anymore. It’s very different than being at a regular school here because respect for elders and politeness is extremely important in Tanzanian culture. But especially because I’m not fluent in Swahili, they think they can get away with more.

On top of work, living here it’s sometimes difficult to deal with the disconnect between tourism and reality. I think about traveling through Africa as a tourist, choosing what you want to be exposed to and how much; regulating your cultural exchange. Everything appears more exotic and alluring because it is foreign. But to process the culture for a longer period of time is an entirely different experience. There are the more clear cut disturbing scenes like the amount of beggars who have leprosy or the men I see digging through pits of garbage. More often, the smallest things stick out in my mind, like the music stands that sell tapes instead of cds, the phone stalls that sell phones from 5 or so years ago, the used book stand that sells National Geographic magazines from the 1960s (which is actually pretty wonderful), and the open air markets that sell second hand clothes from wealthier countries. I never know what to make of this. On the one hand, it’s almost calming to see people using resources and reducing waste, and I feel like the U.S. could learn a lot from African cultures. On the other hand, I find it weirdly depressing, like why do poorer countries get material things that rich countries throw away; why do they get all the left over crap? A good example is the dala-dalas. They use these Toyota minivans until they literally fall apart. Literally. I’ve gotten on one where the door fell off when I used it as a support to climb in, and seen doors fall off other ones while they’re moving. In the U.S., I usually get a new phone every few years. At least when it comes to clothes, I appreciate the whole “system” here a lot more. I love picking out the fabric, which is hand-made and dyed, deciding on the design, searching out a tailor and seeing the end product. Even though I’m not constructing any of it, I have to think about the article of clothing a lot more and feel more connected with the end product.

On Friday, the kids at Amani worked on the nearby shamba (field or farm), planting seeds before the rains start. I stayed behind to work on the mural I’ve been painting (it’s pretty slow going but it’s basically different animals and Mt. Kilimanjaro). When I think about it, people really use their bodies more here. My Swahili teacher Mama Semiono laughed, loudly, when I asked if there is pain medicine available to women giving birth. This is a woman who birthed five children. Five! Most days, I see people (usually women) caring small trees on their heads or giant bundles of grasses to feed their cows. Women mop the floor on their hands and knees with rags and carry their babies with them on their backs wherever they go. Laundry is done in a bucket, with your hands, and dried in the sun.

Hand in hand with this is the physical process of getting to work. I am about ready to invest in a bicycle or a little motorized bike (in my dreams) although death is a realistic concern. Everyday, I walk 15 minutes or so up-hill through the trees to the roundabout where I get a dala-dala. Usually people try and make conversation with me questioning me to the umpteenth degree or stare at me like an alien. Sometimes people ask me for a job: “Mzungu, do you have a job for me?” Still haven’t mastered the response to that. Then I take the dala-dala through the country, over the river and get off at Magereza, the village where Amani is, which, by the way, means “prison.” This would be because nearby, there is….a prison. Sometimes I see the prisoners working the fields or fixing the roads. Then I pass a small row of dukas (shops) where people again stare at me and I turn down the country road to walk to work. This walk is usually where kids come up to me asking for candy or money (“Give me my money”), because somewhere out there some idiot tourist is handing out money in dirt-poor villages thinking this is a good idea. One day, two preschoolers came up to me and grabbed my hands and started running, and I thought, “What in the hell?” My bag slipped down my arm and one of the little tykes tried to grab it until a big mama yelled at her. I’m mostly glad she didn’t take it because it’d be really embarrassing to explain I was mugged by a five year old. Once in a while on this road, Maasai men are herding their cattle (which one day I thought was peoples’ legs from far away and it freaked me out). Other times perverts come up to me and ask me for “sexy time” or say they love me and hope that I’ll prostitute myself. After all of this (which adds up to about 45 minutes), I am really tired of commuting to work.

In spite of everything involved in this daily commute, which I do twice thank you very much, there are parts of the road where the vegetable fields are the most amazing color green and the sun shines on the workers’ backs in a way that surpasses even the most beautiful paintings. And with this, I forget for a few minutes about the fact that at times I feel more like a symbol of the disparity of wealth in the world than an actual person with a story and an intent.

Blog Update: Marathon Weekend, etc etc

Work life and as a result, things in general, have gotten easier over the past 2 weeks. Although that one chick I was talking about is still not my favorite person, things have smoothed over a bit and she is keeping her distance. I’m hanging in there because I realized that the kids are worth staying around for. This week I’ve been teaching art classes (and one piano lesson), and started drawing a animal mural on the wall of the dining hall which the kids seem to like. Next week, I'll start painting, which will be a lot more chaotic. A lot of the younger kids have a hard time not drawing without copying photos, so I've been doing a lot more craft projects with them like making lion/simba puppets out of paper bags. Last Friday, the entire staff and all the kids cleaned the school. We each got assigned to a different area (mine was the girls bedroom) and scrubbed the walls and the floor, etc. I thought the kids would be pests about the whole thing but they actually had a great attitude about it. None of them were wearing their shoes and they were all sliding back and forth for fun along the floors, which were slippery from the soap and water. I kind of felt like I was in “Anne,” without the music and all the white people.

In domestic news I bought a (dead) chicken last week….eek. It was way too intimate of a process. My good friend Marilyn who works at the local hospital KCMC has a friend who owns 200 chickens (200! How does she ever sleep?!), so a few of us decided to buy 1 each from her for $5. The chicken came frozen with its neck still attached and the head, feet and organs stuffed inside…um, yea. Marilyn took the reins of reaching inside the chicken’s private area. Oy. So first I had to boil those lovely unwanted parts and then give them to our dog and her friends who lounge around outside…otherwise they would have just rotted in our trash pit in the yard and made the dogs sick. Then I roasted the chicken and pried all the edible meat off of it and broke up the carcass and all of the bones into bits under Marilyn’s instructions and fed them to the dogs. Bleh, gross. Protein other than beans is nice and everything but still…

Dogs are really poorly treated here and also feared incredibly. Most people abuse them terribly and only have them around as guards for their property. Sometimes I get woken up by people screaming in the middle of the night because they see a dog. Because of this, the dog living here Luna has started attracting her other neighborhood pals seeking refuge from abusive humans. So we now have 4 dogs in the yard and I feel like I live at an animal shelter (and one of the dogs is covered in flies and fleas.)

Marilyn was supposed to be here until July, but because the economy is so bad her husband has asked her to come back to Portland, so she’ll be leaving in April now. She is a really wonderful person and I’ll miss her terribly…I was actually already dreading having to say goodbye to her and now it’s come too soon.

There were a lot of foreigners here from all around the world as well as all around Africa (especially Kenya and South Africa) last weekend for the annual Kilimanjaro Marathon, which was a really fun community event. I saw a lot of Tanzanians I knew and some of the Amani kids attended the big party in the stadium at the end. It felt really nice to be a part of everything. Moshi was really bustling, which was kind of a nice change from the slow pace. The day of the marathon my roommates and I ran the 5K race (definitely at different paces!) and it was actually really fun! I had planned to walk it because it’s always so freaking hot here and I haven’t run in months, but it was easy to be swept up in all the camaraderie. We ran thru part of town and there were a few bands playing trumpets and things on the sidelines. I felt pretty smooth drinking water from the pit stops whilst still running. The funny thing was, the kids were all so incredibly fast and the marathon runners were running the opposite direction on the same road. Damiono, a 16 year old who lives at Amani, came in 11th place in the 5K. There was also a guy who ran in a lion suit and many people running to raise awareness about Albino Tanzanians being killed or violently attacked because of witch doctors encouraging people that their bones are magical…very sad and a huge issue here.

Tanzanians and Kenyans all came in top places in the half marathon and marathon, and their bodies are incredible to watch in action. The first male marathon runner finished at the same time as many of the half marathoners. How is this physically possible? Some of the first male finishers I saw (although plenty of women ran too), looked like they were about to fall over from exhaustion. One of the western women who finished the half marathon looked like she was approaching 70. What a badass! There was also a kid who was about 9 or 10 who ran the half marathon. Very cool. I took pictures of my co-worker Petro (a Tanzanian), as he came in from the marathon, and hope to make prints this weekend for him. This was his sixth time running the marathon and his shoes are basically converse. Incredible! They were selling nice running shoes at the stadium where everyone ended up for $25 USD and I really wanted him to buy a pair (although this was all in my head). I’m guessing he makes around $100 a month or less, so spending a quarter of your salary on shoes doesn’t make too much sense.

For the most part, I’m really enjoying living here. That’s not to stay that there aren’t some days where I want to flee the country and go to Europe. It’s difficult to always be looked at as different and constantly be asked for something, whether it’s money or candy or what have you. Sometimes when I’m walking down the long dirt road to work I really want everyone to just stop staring already, but I feel really grateful to be living in such a different part of the world. Most Tanzanians I’ve talked to have never left their own country, and Nairobi is an 8-hour bus ride away. This is definitely due to the cost of bus fare and the price of entering a foreign country.

Now it’s the weekend and I’m very happy to pumzika (relax).

Weekend njema!

Whitney (…people keep calling me Witness. This would be because people here have names here like Happiness, Goodluck, Godslove, Loveness, Wisdom, Gellas…and I met a baby named Talent the other day).