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Monday, February 21, 2011

Saturday February 19, 2011 5:37pm

I’ve had a lot of tired days recently. Missing home. Pushing to try to get projects done, wishing I had the ability to do more, and wishing even more I had even one single day to rest.

In these days since I last wrote I received the ok for an additional grant to complete my rainwater catchment tank project – which is fantastic and very unusual. I am pretty sure it’s the first project which has received a ‘budget extension’ as I am calling it, in the history of PC Tanzania. (usually the rule of thumb is get it right the first time and if you screw up – it’s up to the villagers to pick up the slack, which is sortof silly, but I think is to prevent corruption which is such a big problem here in TZ) It is amazing that I got mine passed. I wish I could extend it even more. Build even more rainwater catchment tanks, help even more families obtain access to safe clean water.

But there is only so much one person can do. I was told a few days ago in another meeting that there are only 450 households in this village. Can’t I build each household a tank?

I wish I could.

But for now we’re building 21. 21 3,000 liter tanks. 13 of them have already been completed. They are working as fast as they can to get them all completed before the rainy season comes in full. We just got our first big rain a few days ago which was a blessing because the water in the spring that supplies 3 of 6 subvillages (including mine) had gone dry. Dry meaning no water. No water for almost a week. The 2 subvillages on either side of mine went for about 3 weeks without water, because the water reaches my subvillage first (we’re higher in the mountains) then goes down to the other 2. They were all coming to my subvillage to get water.

What do you do when you have no water? First you don’t bathe (a few swipes with a wet washcloth a day gets it done). Then you stop doing any house cleaning. Can’t really do laundry. You try not to dirty dishes as to have to clean them. But then I am single, I live alone. You can’t not bathe children. You can’t not wash their clothes, especially in a country that has no diapers.

I wrote a proposal to get a groundwater well dug that would be enough for the 3 subvillages that are hardest hit. I took it to Rotary (we have a Rotary Club in Same! Amazing I know!!!!) and they sent it to 2 clubs in the US to hopefully get funding. (IF YOU KNOW ANYONE IN A ROTARY CLUB PLEASE LET ME KNOW – OR ANY OTHER GROUP THAT WOULD HAVE THE AVAILABILITY OF FUNDS TO DIG A GROUNDWATER WELL!!) But it’s an expensive project. And I would want to be here when it is carried out because of the above mentioned corruption that is so prevalent here in Tanzania. So many donors give money that disappears before it reaches the intended beneficiaries. I would say easily 60% of aid doesn’t reach the people. So if a donor was found I would extend my time here long enough to see the project through to completion.

This one big rain that we had the other night also filled to at least half capacity the rainwater catchment tanks that have been completed. The households who were lucky enough to be amongst the first to receive tanks are still using water from one big rainstorm the first week of January. (It hasn’t rained, or even drizzled, or been damp, foggy, muggy, or anything hinting at water in the atmosphere since that first week of January and that was the first rain since the beginning of November)

We are getting huge rainstorms where the whole sky drops and the paths flood and the landscape is carved away once every 2 or three months instead of an actual rainy season in which every day or so it rains and crops can grow and mature. This is global warming. But I digress.

I mentioned before that I have been tired and homesick lately. Mainly just missing the comfort of people that I am familiar with. I miss talking about art. I miss talking about news. I miss talking about all the things that Americans talk about which are NOT the things that Tanzanians talk about. I miss sitting around and chatting and laughing and being with the people I love. I miss you guys.

So today I woke up early to do my laundry before going to my PLWHA Group meeting. I put my Ipod on it’s happy little speaker and put it on a book on tape – The Art of Happiness by The Dalai Lama. I have listened to it over and over and over hoping it would sink in and I would therefore learn to be happy. But you know when you listen to books on tape like this your mind wanders and you find you haven’t been listening for fifteen minutes and someone’s knocking on your door so you turn it off and go to make some tea.

But today I got lucky and the tiny moment I happened to be actually paying attention the author asks the Dalai Lama about loneliness. The Dalai Lama replies that he doesn’t ever feel lonely because he approaches all people with the same openness, seeing every person as wanting to feel accepted and having the same needs and wants as he (I am quoting this badly so I’ll let you guys use your google to get the right quote, as searching in an audiobook isn’t exactly . . . userfriendly.)

And either by luck or by having this thought bouncing around in the back of my head I was able to have a wonderful conversation with a good friend of mine for a few hours in which we talked about – The internet (even though he has never touched a computer) Internet sales (he was flabbergasted) and then drawing into talking about my art, talking about the project that I wanted to do here in Tanzania, why I hadn’t done it yet, what I was afraid of happening, and what my goals would be to do with it. And he understood (with patient explaining) and said he’d help me do it!

It would be amazing. And he’d be the person who’d really be able to understand. He is a member of the Muhama Group (the ones who are building the rainwater tanks) He finished 7th grade with great grades but couldn’t go on to secondary school because there weren’t any close by when he finished – there was only one in the whole district and his parents couldn’t afford to send him to boarding. But he’s a smart guy and he’s determined to keep learning. He’s more intuitive and ‘worldly’ than most others in the village, either by luck of experience or by his curiosity of the world and drive to keep learning.

Amusingly I have gotten to the point of explaining things to Tanzanians where I simplify the topic as much as I possibly can and then I explain it over and over in different ways until I get it. This can sometimes take a very long time as the concepts are very foreign to them. With this fellow when I start the second round he’s like ‘ok I got you, no need to repeat yourself!’

Anyways I have been rambling on for awhile now and I should go and make myself some dinner before I get too sleepy and decide to skip it and just go to sleep.

(And, More Pictures!)

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