The photo captures how I feel.
What the heck did I get myself into? Pretty cute!!!
Sondra my new housemate
A market outside of Arusha
Welcome to Arusha
Entering Arusha....lush and very green
I was extremely happy to leave Dar Es Salaam after two days of orientation. There are huts on top of shacks on top of huts. It really looks like an undesirable place to live but there are thousands of people that call it home. Tanzania is a very poor country, filled with seemingly thousands of individuals from organizations of every size, shape and agenda, trying to help, build, cure, teach etc. I think I read somewhere when doing my research, there are 92 org in the country trying to assist with everything from AIDS and HIV to farming, to water, environment, health and education. During my first week, I was trained teaching methods in Health Education and HIV prevention to the locals, even though I work in an orphanage. The more opportunities to spread the knowledge of prevention, this country might stand a fighting chance to reduce its death rate. They teach this to all the local teachers and volunteers. March-May is referred to as the long rains or Masika. It rains a lot at night, in the morning it is either very cloudy or rainy, as the day goes on, it gets nicer and the sun comes out in the afternoon and it gets quite hot for a few hours.
Our journey to Arusha required a 10 hour bus ride - first class ticket $25 and my first bartering experience in Swahili. As luck would have it, I hooked up with Sondra my new housemate and we vaguely understood the instructions about changes buses in Dodma. Our journey had an interesting route from Dar Es Salaam heading southwest to Arusha (Northern Tanzania), on our way we traveled through a national park and I saw my first elephants. They were right there in little herds of 4-5. It was so surreal. I whacked Sondra in my excitement when I saw two giraffes just chilling out. We also saw antelope, it was crazy cause we weren't expecting it and had been riding in the bus since 5am.
We knew we had to change buses, so we departed when a man waved at us to follow him. Turns out he was just trying to con us into buying another ticket to nowhere and we nearly missed the connecting bus to Arusha. Some days you just feel like a total idiot, but in this case only half an idiot cause we didn't give him any money.
My modest accommodations is shared with two other volunteers just outside of Arusha. Kate (27) is from Alberta, Canada, and Sondra (24) from York, UK. We have electricity that goes out every time it rains, and sometimes when it doesn’t, so basically all the time. The infrastructure is weak to non-existent. No running water-to sometimes running water (it's a long story), thank goodness for rain spouts and buckets. No tv, internet, or vehicle. First impression; the girls are great. Sondra and I have already bonded through our orientation in Dar and our bus trip. We’ve been down to a local pub and I've been introduced to several other volunteer transplants. It's really quite a group of do-gooders and I'm told it's a revolving door, they/we are constantly coming and going.
I’m normally an early riser, but I’m struggling a bit, partly because of the unfamiliar night noises, or the torrential rains that keep me awake, both which seem to be amplified due to the lack of insulation and tin roof. Each morning around 5am I can hear the morning prayer blaring from a speaker at the neighborhood mosque. The prayer is beautiful and exotic. This may give you the impression that Tanzania has a high concentration of Muslims. From what I have seen here in Arusha, that is not the case. Most locals appear to be Christian. The island of Zanzibar, however, is 98% Muslim. Tanzania has about a 30-30-30 divide among Christians, Muslims, the remaining 30 percent are non-religious, or indigenous tribal religious groups.
And if the prayer blasting isn't enough for an early morning wake-up call, there's always the village rooster. Back to religion and Christianity, Mama Munisi, the director of Bethlehem Children's Center (my orphanage) is a born-again Christian, and on each wall of her tiny home/orphanage there are little stickers and signs putting the fear of God in you. She seemed a little concerned when I could not tell her which strain of Christianity I follow back home -- since I do not go to church! I could say a little Buddhist monk holding a pair of rosary beads. Faith to me is more important than religion but we won't go there.
My morning routine is hazy, in my grogginess I forget to heat the water that's been collected, if I want a 'warm' shower. I stumble into the kitchen and manage to get some granola and yogurt into a bowl and always a surplus of fruit, shuffle to the living room and plunk down in a big overstuffed velour chair and try to wake up from my comatose. Making coffee or tea is too much work and takes too much time, so I’ve given up the morning caffeine ritual until I get to the placement. My bed is comfortable, and the mozzie nets are necessities, even though you may get woken up by the high pitch whine of an incoming mozzie looking for a feed, you know that at a point only a few feet from your head that it will meet with an impenetrable barrier and you go back off to sleep thinking - too bad sucker!! The two room bathroom makes us feel pretty upscale,however it does present an awareness of cultural differences. For instance, I've been showering with a bucket and cold water for the last week and a half. The first time I did it I couldn't stop laughing to myself but now it feels more normal. It reminds me of camping and how you would always have intentions of getting to the bath houses super early so your odds of having hot water would be good. Well, I sorta have the same intentions now, the planning is there, it’s the execution that I’m not able to get down. Laziness takes hold, and then I curse myself when that cold water hits my body… Yeow!! It’s a good replacement for the lack of caffeine. Another luxury I’m without is a flushing toilet, not to mention there's not even a toilet to sit on, does that go against some principle or are they afraid people are going to spend to much time in the john?
On Monday, all of us "newbie" volunteers had an orientation which started with a Swahili lesson. At this point I must tell you about one of the other volunteers, Mike (22). He is such a character, and the sort of person you want along on a trip just to see what he does or says. For example, he asked during our lesson how to say "it's raining in my armpits" because as we all know this would be very useful for communicating with the locals. Nelly (one of the volunteer coordinators) then took us all on a dala dala and we headed into town for a quick tour. Nelly is awesome. She is beautiful, savvy, funny and basically everyone in our group is in love with her. She also helped me track down my checked luggage that they claim had never shown up. We went to the KLM office where she got a few phone numbers to sort things out. Turns out the bag showed up the following day and when it was taken from the airport to the KLM office in town, they wouldn't hold it there (why, I don't know). So, the man who happened to be transferring my bag took it home with him! So KLM gave Nelly his phone number, she got his address, and had our driver Eric go to his home to pick up my bag.
The first day we were each taken to our "placement" (I will be using this term to refer to my job at the orphanage from here forward). When Alex, the placement director, took us into the very poor neighborhood where our orphanage is located, and we were stepping over dead cats and walking between mud hut homes and murky puddles, he turned to us and said with a big smile, This Is Africa. Speaking of my placement: it is a very small orphanage named Bethlehem Children's Center. It is in an area named Kijengue Juu and I actually quite like the little neighborhood. It leans into a hill towards Mt. Meru (I think it's around 10K ft?) and just feels like the sort of Africa I came to help. There are 29 children at the orphanage, a Mama (the head mother), two Dadas (sister is the direct translation, they do the wash, cleaning, and cooking), and then there are currently four of us volunteers. Two of the volunteers, Evelyn and Stephanie, have been there for a month. Myself and Sondra are the newbies from our house. I think we make a good pair for this program, and even discovered the other night that our birthdays are just days apart! She comes from a very different type of upbringing from me but that doesn't seem to affect us. I feel like a big sister to her.
The orphanage itself is in a small home with a narrow outdoor area to do laundry and where the children play. These kids are so precious. There are a handful that we "teach" in the morning -- go over some simple reading, do sing-alongs, and throw dirty little tennis balls around. There is a lot of just separating the kids from each other and teaching them to share. A universal theme. :-)
Five of the children there go to government school in the morning and come back at noon in time to have lunch which is fed to them by Dada. At that time we take a chai break and are served lunch by Mama. She's a brilliant cook, which I understand is pretty lucky because several other volunteers have found themselves in situations where they are forced to eat dishes they would not otherwise because they do not want to insult their host. The first meal was actually funny - we were served a local dish named Ugali is a pasty, stiff dough made of maize. You are meant to form it into a ball with your hand and stick it in the veggies or sauce accompanying it. It's utterly flavorless on its own, but soaks up the flavor of whatever you put with it. I had read that it is offensive to use your left hand, so you can imagine how I looked trying to form these balls with my right hand. It was pretty messy! I noticed Mama eating it with her fork so from that day forward I have done the same (and am using my left hand). Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday we get rice with beans, peas, or meat and Tuesday, Thursday is ugali with a sauce. We’ve only been served meat once in the last week. There was a Rift Valley Fever outbreak when I got here, so everything was vegetarian. I thought I would be happy to see meat, but they use EVERY PART OF THE COW. It’s also quite tough and stringy sometimes. I’m not a fan. Vegetarian is ok with me, and when I feel the need for protein I’ll find a substitute, or at least have some floss handy. BTW, I have to tell you all, I’ve cleaned my first chicken, and lucky for me I didn’t have to chop it’s head off. This will sound extremely insensitive, but it’s crazy the way the bird dances around headless.
In the afternoons, while the youngsters nap, we go over a few lessons with the older kids for an hour. Let me just say it gets really hot in the little schoolroom in the afternoon. The roof is tin and you can literally feel a heatwave emanating from it! After lessons we sing and play games, we taught them Duck Duck Goose, Red Rover, Simon Says. They catch on so quickly and love it. What a great place to be.
On Friday we went to an event called The Widows Project. A group of widows in a nearby village have co-oped to raise money to survive by creating a small petting zoo and having children and a Maasai group perform for locals or foreigners. It cost 3000 shillings to get in (about $2) and we had a blast watching the children and Maasai dance all afternoon. At one point near the end, Mike, a young volunteer who constantly makes me laugh, joined in as the locals were dancing around their drummers in a circle. I then joined in, and then so did a few other volunteers. The locals went mad with laughter and clapping and cheering, and then the widows also jumped in with us. It was so much fun!!!
Yesterday nine of us went on an all-day hike/adventure at the Mt. Kilimanjaro National Park. The hike was gorgeous. I had not expected to find Africa so lush, fragrant, and tropical. You could smell the jasmine, citrus flowers, eucalyptus, and hiked through thousands of banana trees and maize fields for a few hours. We had lunch at a waterfall and we all got to swim. As we continued our hike, children constantly popped out of nowhere to attack us with their knowledge of English, "good morning" and "what's your name?" and were so excited to have their pictures taken.
I’ve become a pro and slipping and sliding on the muddy road to where I can catch a daladala (public transportation – really a minibus that should only hold about 14 people, but up to 25 are often crammed in – more if there are kids). I get off the daladala about 8 city blocks from where I work. I like walking for a bit in the mornings. I go down a path through a beautiful green space and try to ignore the trash and occasional guy taking a pee. If I’ve timed it right everyone else is just leaving the daily morning prayer or mass so I don’t have to walk past the chapel window while everyone else is inside watching my heathen self saunter in (that Catholic upbringing sure instills guilt, I’m desperately trying to shake it).
I usually leave the placement around 4pm, sometimes I would like to stay later to finish something, but it not safe to travel after dark at that comes around 6-6:30. The heavy rains are usually at night, so by afternoon the day is usually very nice. I walk home. It takes about 35-40 minutes and it’s usually a very nice walk. Anything that I do outside of the house has to be done during daylight – it is not safe to walk around at night. If I don’t have to stop at the market or run any other errands, I get home around 5pm. Sometimes I go for a walk or a jog. We cook outside on our gas tank with a burner attached. Both roommates are (have become) vegetarians, so we really only eat meat if someone is feeling a lack of protein. A plethora of fruits and vegetables are available and among the three of us, we have a lot of cooking ideas. Never using a microwave is growing on me. Internet connections are mainly dial up from what I’ve found, pay as you go cafes for connections, which forces a person to write a bunch of shit in a short amount of time. I’ll go home and wish I had told you about this or that….maybe I’ll mail a letter like the olden days with a stamp. In closing, I think one of the hardest parts is not speaking the language. I am learning Swahili slowly, but I still don’t understand most of what is being said! Thank goodness I’m very good with facial expressions and sign language.
I gotta admit, I'm out of my element, and kinda scared. There's at least 10 times a day where I habitually reach for my laptop to "Google" something or pull something up on Wikipedia. I also miss reading the New York Times and my daily news feeds. Diet coke is easier to come by than H20. Definitely on the miss list: basic utilities; running water, a flushing toilet, electricity, and communication. I'll leave medicine off the list for now while I'm healthy. And last, daily calls with my sistah Merrit, (I wonder who will be getting all her free advice in my place, kidding Mer). Miss u all mon ami's--truly wish u were here!
RAIN....has a whole new meaning. No anticipation involved with watching a storm brew up and rumbles off in the distance, none of that, the sky's just let loose and it rains and rains. At night it keep me awake rain.
I have so many more stories and observances but my time here at the internet cafe has run out after logging in for two hours! All in all I can't be happier to be here. I feel so stimulated, inspired and fortunate for this experience.
Ninakupenda (I Love You), Ali
