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Friday, October 16, 2009

Pictures Added!
(Check towards the bottom)

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Tuesday, October 13, 2009 4:18pm

It’s been awhile since I have written, I know. I have been busy, I assure you, with meetings and research, trying to understand this village of mine and figure out how I can even begin to help.

I have been going house to house in each subvillage, of which we have six, and asking a very long list of questions pertaining to the family, their perception of life in the village, their health, their nutritional status, their income source(s), their perceived needs, etc. It has been the most amazing and exciting and fun part of my work so far here in Tanzania.

Since I have the list of questions, there is no awkward silence, and I learn so much from them about their families, life here, and about the village. It is amazing the differences of attitudes and qualities of life amongst the different subvillages and even within the subvillages. But the conclusion is pretty grim. There is a draught here that has affected the area severely for the past four years, although it has been slowly encroaching for many years before that. Everyone who lives in this village is a farmer. A lucky few have alternate sources of income: carpentry, tailoring, teaching, shopkeeping. But income from these jobs is still insufficient to support their families. They grow maize and beans. What they don’t need to feed their family, they take to Same to sell. But they haven’t had enough crops to even feed their family in years.

Traditionally in this area there are 2 rainy seasons. One in the fall, a shorter season where they grow corn; one in the spring, a longer season, where they grow beans and other vegetables like tomatoes and onions and such. The problem is – for 4 years now – the rain hasn’t come.

A question I have come to dread in the survey inquires about the nutritional status of the family. Every family but one so far has answered that they cannot even begin to address nutrition because they don’t even have enough food.

Which brings us to water.

There are 6 public wells in my village, one at each subvillage, as well as a number of private ones that I haven’t figured out quite yet. They use a gravity system to bring water from natural springs on the top of the mountain down to villages. When the system was built there were 6 natural springs that provided water every day without fail. This was many years ago when this area was lush forest, before the beautiful hardwood trees where harvested and sold in the 80’s.

Over time the springs have slowly gone dry, one by one. Now there are only 2 springs that provide water at all, and they are inconsistent.

(Here in Tanzania, if you live in a village, you normally go daily to the water source, be it a pump from groundwater, the river, the pond, the mud puddle – as we had in Kilulu - whatever, and you carry buckets of water to your home to use.)

There are now only 2 wells in the whole village – which spans many miles – which ever have water. And the water they provide is inconsistent. This means that families spend whole days simply walking to get water and carrying it home. All week, every week. If there’s water.

So I live in this desert that once was lush forest. There are dried tree carcasses remaining, and people KNOW – they tell me – the environment is suffering because the trees where cut down. They want more trees. But the situation has gotten too dire – you can’t plant new trees without water for them to grow. And climate change will hit this area hard as well. Tanzania’s average temperature is supposed to rise (I think?) between 3 and 5 degrees in the next 30 years. The cycles of extreme draught and severe rain will become even more exaggerated.

So I have been spending this time, when I am not conducting my surveys, in meetings with people who know things about water.

I’m going to find a way to get my village water. I have to. They can’t live without it.



It has rained once now since I lived here. I was so happy and surprised. It rained for hours fast and hard – drenching the barren dusty landscape and eking out gullies and ravines. And suddenly little green leaves are budding out of trees I thought were dead. Beautiful stones dot the landscape that were once hidden by a mask of copper colored clay dust.

It is the year of El Nino and the expectation is that instead of no rain, as we have gotten these past years, we will get such torrential rain that it will cause massive flooding and erosion. You can’t win. But I will teach rainwater catchment, I hope. And people will be able to use it. I have no idea what to expect. I live day to day and learn and reshape my judgments and expectations as I go.

I was told yesterday that I will be given land to farm – that I MUST farm mahindi (maize) and send it back to America to sell. Every single person here is a farmer and they can’t even begin to understand my lack of interest in growing a field of maize. #1. I don’t like maize (but I wouldn’t dare tell them that). I tell them I want to grow a garden with vegetables and maybe some fruit trees, but they look at me funny. That is not food. Grow maize!




I have a radio now. I am borrowing it from the woman who I think will become my counterpart if she doesn’t get fed up with me first. She said I could borrow it for my entire service here, which is fantastic. It is a wonderful outlet to the world and sometimes I can get BBC new reports. I actually heard about Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize the day it happened. I went around the village gleefully telling everyone I saw – I was so excited and happy – but they didn’t know what the Nobel Peace Prize was. . .

In the afternoons at 3pm if I am lucky I get BBC world report. That same BBC world report I’d listen to at Craven Allen, and it is so nostalgic. I try to imagine what you guys are doing – if you are listening too. I think that’d be 8am your time. So you’d all be bustling around your houses with your running water and your electricity, eating your breakfast and walking your dogs…



I am sitting here with time to write this, I should tell you, because on my last bike ride in to Same, I fell and sprained my ankle. Which has made me pretty immobile for almost a week now. It has been a blessing and a curse. It has given me time to breathe and step back from my work, a much needed break. But also, I can’t do my work! And even more, I can’t go anywhere!!

People from my village have stepped in immediately to take care of me. The second I got home my favorite neighbor, who is about 10 years old, saw that I was limping. He asked for my water buckets and fetched my water. He has returned every other day to get water. He has been sweeping my front courtyard (it’s dirt, they sweep it. . . it’s what they do here. It gets the chicken shit, and the cow and sheep and goat and dog shit, out of the walking area.)

The following morning 3 neighbors arrived to make sure I had food and could cook for myself and one promised to send her daughter the following day to help me. Her daughter cleaned my house, did my laundry, and my dishes. I felt kindof guilty, but she seemed content and happy she got to listen to the radio.

And you might be wondering why in the world the woman who is helping me so much might get fed up with me? Miscommunication. Miscommunication has caused now a lot of struggle for both of us in – not knowing where the other one is that we are supposed to meet to begin work. I will wait at my house and she at hers. A 35 minute walk from each other, waiting. Not knowing. And that’s just the beginning. She must have infinite patience. I take everything as it comes here. This is my job. But this is not her job. She has a family and children and a non-profit organization to run. She is giving up her time to help me. I hope her patience doesn’t run out. She wants me to start working again tomorrow but my ankle is still swollen and the Doctor said I should wait until it is fully healed – next week – before I begin work again. To begin work would entail walking almost the entire day through the village, starting at sunup and returning at dusk.

And I can’t wait until I can work again. . .

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 12:43pm

It’s a lonely day today. Perhaps because I have been shut in my house with my sprained ankle this last week, limping as far as the duka that I get cellphone signal, and hanging out a bit at the dispensary chatting with the nurses, and returning home.

Today is a holiday, which means the school is closed and the dispensary as well. It is an overcast day, and everyone is at their shomba (farm) planting their maize and preparing their fields for the rains to come. It is a good day for work, without the sun beating down on them.

The adjective they use to describe sun here is so much more effective than I have heard used in English – they say – Jua ni Kali – ‘Jua’ is ‘sun’, ‘ni’ means ‘is’ or ‘are’, and ‘kali’ means ‘sharp, cruel, difficult, etc’ I find it a precise description of the sun here in Tanzania.

This morning as I was waving my phone around searching for signal, my favourite mzee (elder) came by with his bucket of vegetables. He is the only person who has hodi’d me yet, which I find somewhat unusual. To ‘hodi’ is to come to one’s house to visit. You say ‘hodi’ in their doorway and wait to be welcomed into the home. One Sunday a few weeks ago he came by, and I invited him in.

He is the man who caught my eye during the party they held for me on my arrival. His face is weatherworn and reminds me perhaps of a wild west cowboy, which might be due to the fact that he wears a cowboy hat often. I remember he smiled warmly at me that day as I sat in amongst these strangers awkwardly trying to understand the events that were unfolding. Every time I saw him since he always smiled so kindly at me, and though we greeted, it was never in a situation that allowed for conversation.

He lives in a subvillage an hour and a half walk from my house. He walks around with a bucket of vegetables going from house to house to sell them. That day he hodi’d he told me about his work, trying to sell vegetables. He buys them from a village very far away (where they have water) He also told me about the minerals and stones that are mined in the mountains here. He had rocks and bits of previous stones that he showed me. I didn’t understand a lot of what he said but I appreciated the company and the interest. Before he left he gave me a bunch of tomatoes as a gift. I was taken aback by the man who worked so hard, but came here to give me these tomatoes.

Today, as I sat on the rock by the duka, waving my cellphone in the air, he handed me another bunch of tomatoes, after greeting me, and continued on his way.

It is for him that I will do my work. It is for him that I will find a way to provide the village with water. And then teach the village permaculture so that he may grow his own vegetables, and his profits will be larger, and he can live comfortably.


My choo is stopped up again. Which is a terrible problem to have. The solutions you try first are to pour water in, preferably boiling water. So I made up a big pot of boiling water and dumped it in, and now, excuse the profanity, it smells like cooking shit, and it is not draining. So I have twice the problem. And yet again the only source of solution is from those gov’t leaders and the doctor, the headmaster at the school. And they will crowd around in my choo-room and look at the shit floating in water and talk about how it’s a problem. Again. Ugh.