Water – Water is a big deal here. Safe drinking water is hard to find and dry periods are really devastating for the area which dries up quickly and leaves people and animals literally dying from thirst. While in Roche, there was a period of heavy rain for about 5 minutes, then it passed completely. As soon as it had passed, people rushed to grab buckets and surround the edges of the health clinic building with them. As they kept saying, “we can’t allow this good water to go to waste. We will have water for days from this rain!” Later in the day, I was talking with a local about his and his family’s use of a water filter. He was gracious enough to invite me into his hut, and that of several of his wives and even his mother, to show me how each different “family” uses the mosquito nets and water filters distributed by Village Life. It was also eye-opening to see how life in one of the huts is. The last question he asked me was, “do you use this filter in your home in America?” Between water issues (including the non-existence of hot water and the lack of available drinking water) and the almost constant and complete lack of electricity, I’ve come to already really start to appreciate some small things back home that we don’t remember to be grateful for.
Drinking from the River – While still on the topic of water…I didn’t want to say this until I knew the results, but for my first several days here, there was no bottled water available. Despite the constant warnings from pretty much everyone who knew I was coming to Tanzania, I ended up having to drink sink water (which comes from a local river). Perhaps it was luck, perhaps my stomach is better prepared because I was born and grew up in Brazil, perhaps its not as bad as people say; but fortunately, I can now say over a week out, that I haven’t gotten sick at all. Wohoo!
4 days of darkness – Sounds like some biblical plague, but unfortunately I’m referring to my life here in Shirati. This past week was rough when it comes to electricity, seeing 4 full days without it (3 of them in a row) and a combined total of 11-hours of electricity for the other 3 days (meaning, for the week). This made me laptop, cell phone and ipod-less for a few days. It also meant I had to use a whole lot of candles which I’ve now gotten pretty good at using. For some reason, I sometimes struggle in putting the candle out though. I don’t know if these are special-resistant candles, if the breeze coming in through the window makes the fire harder to put out or if putting out candles is just a skill I have not yet mastered (sort of like opening a sleeping bag) but whatever the reason, I’ve had to huff and puff like the big bad wolf to get these things out at bedtime.
The Night Watchman – He and I have become friends as he walks me home to my hostel every evening. He’s a great guy and works horrible hours; 7 pm to 4 am every evening. That’s 9 hours a night, 7 days a week. Meaning he works 63 hours a week and roughly 280 hours a month. I found out that he makes $28 a month. That’s 10 cents an hour.
A cruise in Burere – After meeting with Village Life committee members and tribe leaders in Burere, a second village where I am working this summer, the locals told me that they wanted to express their gratitude to me for coming to work in their community for so long. So they brought me down to the bottom of the city (it has an incredibly spectacular view of Lake Victoria and goes down through the hills all the way to the actual Lake), put me at the head of one of their fishing boats and rowed me around the Lake for about 20 minutes. It was explained to me that this ceremonial welcome is given to those who the elders respect and want to introduce to the community. Apart from the formalities of it (which I was honored by) the boat ride had one of the most spectacular views I’ve seen. After the boat ride, they also gave me a small bag of dried anchovies as another welcoming gesture. Yum, dried anchovies…
My ipod Playlist – Most played songs since I’ve arrived:
1. Circle of Life
2. In the Jungle
3. Waka Waka (sung by Shakira)
“Cause this is Ah-frica!”
Elephant Raid – I am just an hour drive from the Serengeti, which I hope to get to see while I’m here. But no need to wait, the Serengeti can come to me! Last evening a pack of wild elephants left the Serengeti until they reached the neighboring village to mine and then went back. This nighttime elephant raid destroyed several fields of crop and even some huts in the nearby village, injuring a couple people caught in the middle of it all. On the news, a local said that we must avenge for this destruction by going after the elephants. The Tanzanian government has already responded reminding people that they are a protected species and cannot be killed no matter how insensitive their nighttime stroll was to the local population. A debate on the merits of both sides followed on the news. I couldn’t make this up folks.
Our First Ambulance – Coming out of my practicum work at the Clinton School, which was all about trauma care in Arkansas, I felt like Arkansas had a lot to work on when it comes to emergency care. But I guess it’s all about perspective. The District which I am living in just got its first ambulance, donated by a private donor in the United States. The ambulance is essentially a modified pick-up truck with a large cover in the back so that people can sit in it, and it’s all painted white. The district covers about 600 miles of rocky, muddy, non-paved terrain, making the ambulance more of a luxury for my city and its closest neighbors than for the whole district. Issues of maintenance of the vehicle and who will pay for its gas have already started being brought up. Unfortunately, most will probably never benefit from this ambulance, but it will certainly mean the world to those who do.
Adventures with my Future Wife (and other friends) – Partly by luck and partly by need (see later post entitled “Fort Wilson”) I’ve been fortunate in making some local friends here. There are few people good enough (and confident enough) in their English to want to talk to me but two have stood out. One is a 24-year old guy who is from Shirati but went to college in the U.S. so speaks very good English, and the other is a 20-year old girl who is an English teacher at the local primary school (what we’d call Elementary school). We’ve been hanging out a lot, which is awesome as we’ve gotten a chance to talk a lot, discuss cultural differences and similarities, they’ve taken me out on weekend nights, they’ve taken me to hikes, around the city, and introduced me to their friends, quickly multiplying my local friend base here. This is great as I think it’ll be a lot harder to make local friends once other Americans arrive and start populating my hostel. One interesting point though is that the girl I described wants more than a friendship; and I’m not just talking about dating…she wants to marry me. Forget the clear indications that she likes me, she was more direct than that; “Maybe we should get married and be rich together in America”. Ahh, true love.
Pickie-Pickie – Motorcycle taxis (pickie-pickies) are the only real way that people have to get around here. No one has vehicles and while most will walk miles and miles to get places daily, some who have the money will take the luxury of using these pickie-pickies which cost about $1.25 for up to 10 miles. Now these things are incredibly unsafe, and are the number one cause of non-illness related deaths in the area. They will pack 4 people on these tiny motorcycles (plus the driver), without a helmet, and take it on the dirt/rock/mud roads of the area that even cars can barely get through. Each person holds on to the one in front of them and hopes for the best. After a long walk to Lake Victoria with my friends (whom I’ve described above), during which we got lost and ended up walking for two hours in the blazing sun instead of the half hour walk we expected, we were all exhausted and decided for better or for worse to take a pickie-pickie back. It was an adventure that led to me, on more than one occasion, thinking I would die. Besides the near death experience, the thing also ran out of gas halfway through the trip and we had to sit at the side of the road for about half an hour as the driver ran it to the nearest filling station and drove back to pick us up.
Nyambogo – Speaking of thinking I would die while on a vehicle; the last of the three villages that I’m working in is Nyambogo, this is by far the most isolated one. Not only is it pretty far away but getting there takes you through the craziest road I’ve ever seen. The road is barely visible, its more a path cut through the woods, and its very very rocky. At times the car would be completely on one side, then the other, I was amazed that it didn’t flip (although I hear that about 2 years ago this very car did flip over in this very road, guess my driver’s being more careful) and at times the road would be completely impassible and we’d have to cut in through the woods for a bit before turning back into the road.
I’m A Celebrity – While driving up to Nyambogo, we stopped by a local primary school to get some materials that were needed. Once the kids saw a mzungu (me) they all ran out of their classrooms and came to do their traditional pointing, staring, and screaming of “mzungu!” as if I didn’t realize that I was a white foreigner myself (or from the 80,000 other reminders I’ve gotten this week from little kids in the streets). As I always do when little kids do this here, I tried to humanize myself so I was not just a “mzungu”, so I told them in Swahili “my name is Fernando” and asked for the first little kid’s name. It took him a while to overcome the fear and shock of me talking directly to him in a crowd of 300 or so little kids. He finally answered and I shook his hand and said “nice to meet you”. The response was incredible. The little kids all wanted to introduce themselves to me and I did the first politician-style massive handshake of my life, shaking about 300 little hands in about one minute. Reminding me that celebrities aren’t always just loved though, about 2 blocks down the road from this school a little kid who clearly had a different feeling (or most likely whose parents had a different feeling) towards mzungus saw my car approaching and spit at me through the open window. He hit me right in the face. While I recognize that these kids don’t actually know me and don’t like or hate me for who I am, but rather for what they’ve been taught about “my kind”, it was still a good lesson for me on how there are two sides to every story.
Euro Final – Saturday night, my friend and I went out to the local bar to watch the European Champions League final matchup between Manchester United and Barcelona. The bar, the only one in the area, normally closes at 9 pm, but that night they stayed open until Midnight (although they were not serving any drinks) so people could watch the game. I was shocked when we got there and found about 1,000 people crammed sardine-style at the bar all looking at a wall projecting the game. Most, including me, were standing trying their best to see. Some had walked miles from their homes carrying chairs so that they could sit somewhere. These weren’t the foldable American chairs either, these were huge, heavy metal chairs they’d carry on their heads. The environment there was electrifying with huge screams, jeers and calls every time a team touched the ball. People would get so excited that they’d bump into the projector which would veer it off course and not allow anyone to see what was happening. Boos and bottles tossed in that direction would be enough to get someone to fix the problem fairly quickly. When a team would score, the place would go insane with people jumping, dancing, doing weird yells, running around and pumping chairs up and down like they were spears in a time of war. Not everyone could afford the 30 cent charge to get into the bar and so over 100 people (mostly kids) stood outside the gates trying to gauge the game from the crowd’s reactions. About 5 minutes after the second half started, the owner had pity and opened the gates making the place become even more packed. 15 minutes into the second half the power went out and we were all left in complete darkness. People booed and cursed the government for allowing something like this to happen at such an important time. People waited and waited but nothing happened. Finally, the owner of the bar came out with a 10-inch battery powered TV and over 1,000 of us crammed around it to watch. When Barcelona scored its 3rd and final goal, the people who were closest to the TV started celebrating, news of who had scored trickled back slowly to nervous fans and it wasn’t until the ball was back in play that I heard the last of the Barcelona fans, who were farthest from the TV, starting to scream, jump and haul. It was an incredible experience!
Fort Wilson – Every evening for almost two weeks now I’ve had to snuggle in to my mosquito net before I can fall asleep in bed. With my flashlight on and the mosquito net around me, the situation reminds me of forts I would make in my bed sheets when I was younger. Inspired by the movie “Castaway” (which is similar to how I feel over here) I’ve decided to name my mosquito net sleeping area “Fort Wilson”. Maybe it’s the isolation, maybe it’s the culture shock, maybe it’s the malaria medication, but I’m hoping that Fort Wilson will be as good a friend to me as that volleyball was to Tom Hanks…
mzuri rafiki. mzuri. sounds like some great experiences. well done.
ReplyDeleteHey Fernando,
ReplyDeleteLookin good in those shades out in the middle of the river!
Miss you - Melissa