Week 5

Halfway There – Today marks the exact halfway point of my trip! Its been quite an adventure thus far and I’m happy that you all have been able to follow it with me. Here’s to my next 5 weeks being as interesting, educational and impactful as the last 5!

The Shirati Diet – In the first half of this trip, I’ve unintentionally and unwillingly lost weight. I must say I’ve recovered some recently though. At the peak of my unwanted weight loss I was down 7 pounds (3 weeks into the trip) but fortunately since starting to frequent the pub, get sambosas and drink Coke’s things have gotten better. I’m happy to say I’m only down 4 pounds as of today. For those of you who ARE looking to lose weight though, forget the South Beach or Atkins diet. Come to Shirati…you won’t even have to try!  

Chipsies – While still on this topic, I can tell you of another thing I’ve found to help with my weight regain. It’s called Chipsies and it’s the only food available at the only pub in town. My first time ordering it, I thought it was French fries. Turns out it is, but its cooked with an egg and melted together. The result is an omelet-looking block of food that you eat with a fork. It tastes pretty good, and is definitely another taste of home (or close enough at least) that I’ve found to wet my taste buds when they need it.   

My Visit to Shirati Hospital – A few weeks ago now I visited Shirati Hospital and got a full tour of it from the hospital administrator. Its something that’s been sitting in my thoughts so I’ve decided to write about my perspective of it. First, let me say that its considered the best hospital in the region. The next best hospital is nearly 5 hours away in Mwanza so people really do come in from hours away to be seen here. Having said that, it’s a hospital that, for American standards, needs A LOT of work done. Beds are wooden. There are no private rooms or even curtains separating patients (just the men’s ward and the women’s ward). The building is old and has extensive roof damage due to bats flying around freely inside. Dogs, cats, chicken, bats and mosquitoes roam through the hospital grounds freely. The delivery room consists of a wooden table that is slanted down (to use gravity in the delivery) with two elevated blocks of wood to hold the women’s legs up. The hospital’s generator can cover the operating room, but its not strong enough to cover the sterilization pod meaning surgeries during blackouts are prepped for with soap and water. The hospital’s water tank is old and decrepit. In fact, structural engineers say that any day now the tank will collapse and the hospital will be left scrambling to replace it. While I’m sure the doctors there are very qualified; from my observations, it seems to be a place that certainly needs a lot of infrastructural help. Being that it’s the best hospital in the region, it makes me very sadly wonder about the other ones.

“Give me a car” – I’m used to having the little kids run and point at me. I’m used to having the little kids stare. I’m even used to having to answer to the rudimentary English that the young kids know which usually involves an exchange like “Hello, how are you? I’m fine. Bye bye.” All said by them in one breath. What I’m not used to is understanding what else they say to me in Swahili after the previously mentioned takes place. Well, in a recent hike I took with two of my soccer teammates they decided to translate what one kid was saying to me. It was a 2-year old child, and after pointing and screaming “mzungu!” at me, he said “mzungu, give me a car! I need a car mzungu! Give me a nice one!” I wondered what a 2-year old would do with a “nice car”, but unfortunately, can’t afford finding out.

Meeting the Sambosa Mother – During the above-mentioned hike with two of my soccer friends, I mentioned my newfound love and appreciation for Sambosas here. They were exuberant as it turns out the lady who makes the sambosas and the only sambosa shop in Shirati is actually the mother of one of the boys in my team. On the way back to my place, I was late for dinner, but the boys still insisted in taking me to see the “Sambosa Mother” to tell her first hand how much I liked her product. She was thrilled to have me over to her house and even happier when I told her the purpose of my visit. She seemed honored to know that what she did was appreciated and I was happy to let her know I’m now her Number 1 fan. She offered to have me over for sambosas anytime I wanted which I was thrilled about. The boys then walked me home and I found I had been too late and missed out on dinner. Without missing a beat, the boys turned me around and we walked back to the Sambosa Mother’s house. Dinner was served, and it was delicious J  

Cows on the Field – While playing soccer in my team’s “stadium” I’m pretty used to getting interrupted mid-game for one reason or another. Sometimes a person cuts through our field while heading to town (mid-match) and we have to play around them. Sometimes little kids who are watching roam onto the field and we have to be careful not to kick the ball at them. A couple times we’ve even had chicken on the field that we also have to circumvent. This past week, however, was a new first. My team was doing well offensively and the ball was on the other team’s side of the field for a good 20-minutes before we finally scored a goal and started running back to our side. That’s when we noticed that our side of the field had been taken over by 4 cows. They sat there eating the little bit of grass that we have on this mainly dirt field. We tried to shoo them away to no avail, so, like other things that interrupt us, we decided to just play around them. That plan didn’t last long. When an airball led a player to run looking up to the ball and not down at what was ahead of him, we ran into some trouble. Normally, the little kids, the chicken and the adult heading downtown know to get out of the way of a kid running at them full speed. Well cows don’t. And so the kid hit the cow and was knocked straight down on the ground with the air taken out of him. For the cow’s part, she didn’t even seem to notice. Practice had to be called off until the next day.

Wazungos Invade – When the Village Life group first arrived in Shirati, I offered for anyone who was interested to join in on one of my soccer team’s practices. I knew that the team would love to meet so many mzungus (especially the mzungo women, or as my team refers to them “our American wives”) and I thought it’d be a good opportunity for the visitors to meet and befriend some locals through the universal language of soccer. I didn’t expect 15 of the 20 students to come out to our practice in one day. It was awesome! We had a shirts and skins game that had half locals, half mzungus in each team. I think there’s no better or quicker way for people to bond. By the end of the scrimmage, everyone seemed to be good friends. People were taking pictures together, they were hugging and they made promises to each other to stay in touch. It was a great sight to see. The motto of the Clinton School is “building bridges” and is used in the context of uniting people of different cultures, different needs and different backgrounds. I was proud of my role in the bridge that was built through the wazungo invasion of our game and even better, I had a blast because of it!

Malaria – Some really good news has emerged from the work that I’m doing. After 2 weeks of surveying, I’ve found strong indications that a recent government program to spray every household against mosquitoes and give every family mosquito nets has been hugely successful. People have been reporting to me that malaria has been all but eradicated in their families. This is huge news in what is currently considered to be one of the worst malaria regions in the world. To corroborate the data I’m hearing, I’ve gone to some local hospitals and health clinics and asked for their data. Turns out preliminary analysis shows that for the past 3-month period, as compared to the 5-year average of the same 3-month period, malaria is down by about 75%! More surveying remains to be done and more data will be collected and analyzed by these clinics and hospitals on my request, but this is great news and great information for many folks to have about malaria in the Shirati region!  

Holding Hands, but only with Boys – A true sign of friendship amongst boys here is the holding of hands. If you are friends with whomever you’re with, you better be holding their hand as you walk down the street or you could be disrespecting them. As such, many of my local friends (and others who randomly approach me to talk in the streets) love to hold my hand. Not only does it establish our friendship, but it does so publicly. People are in awe of seeing them have a mzungu friend who is close enough to hold hands with them while walking around the city. For my part, I go along with it for cultural sensitivity’s sake, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t still pretty uncomfortable every time it happens…and it happens a lot!

“I’m Old” – Another week of going hut-to-hut in the 3 villages I’m working in. One thing I try to do to those who would like, is offering to take a picture of them. Most people love this offer and are completely flabbergasted by me being able to show them the picture immediately after I take it. One guy I recently surveyed was 93 years old! He was very excited to have his picture taken and (like about 90% of others) asked for me to join in and be in the picture too. After I took the picture, I showed it to him and he got this concerned look on his face. “Is that me?” he asked. After affirming it was in fact him, he started laughing; “Wow, I’m old!”   

Meeting Barack Obama – In another one of the huts I visited I went through my standard set of questions. When I got to the listing of the family members part, the young lady proudly told me that she only had one son. He was two years old. I asked for his name and she told me “Barack Obama”. I laughingly asked if I could have the honor of meeting Barack Obama. She called him in for me and I shook his hand. After that I saluted him and received an unexpected response…Barack cried and ran away. Who would’ve thought that the first time I got to meet Barack Obama, it would end with him crying and running away from me?

“Tanzania is better than America” – Those were the words that one of my soccer teammates said to me as we grabbed a Coke after practice. It came out of nowhere and I thought it was a bit odd for him to say, so I inquired as to why he was saying that. He said “well, its pretty logical. I know of 2 Tanzanians who have gone to America, but every year a ton of Americans come to Tanzania. Things must be better here than there.”

Taking Measurements – In my family, I’m kind of the black sheep. My father, mother, uncles, and grandfathers are all engineers. Meanwhile I have no interest in engineering; I’m more into the social sciences. Well during the June Brigade’s visit, I got to make my family proud. Some engineering students are working on building a new school in Burere and one day they needed one extra person to volunteer to help them out with measurements and soil samples. I immediately jumped at the opportunity of learning more fist-hand about what it is that my family does. It was fun. I used a gigantic tape to measure each existing structure, measure the distance between structures and even measure the trees and rocks in the area. I made a map detailing it all (which no one but me can decipher). I also had to help out with soil samples which they needed of many different depths, going down as far as 10 meters underground. Our shovel had been lost, so we had to be creative in how we could get down that deep. Turns out there was an abandoned pit latrine (if you don’t know what that is, look it up) behind an condemned house next to the school. Well, in the name of science folks have to do some crazy things. Going 10 meters into a pit latrine head first can now be listed as one of those crazy things. Anyone still wonder why I chose social sciences over engineering?

Safari Jema – Which translates to “Safe Journey”. That’s what everyone was wishing me at the end of this past week as I left Shirati on Friday along with the Village Life June Brigade on a 3-day safari through the Serengeti (Tanzania) and Masai Mara (Kenya). I got in to Nairobi on Sunday and will be here until Wednesday when I return to Shirati. I’ll write more about these experiences in next week’s post. Until then, wish me Safari Jema for my travels back.