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Monday, May 31, 2010

I made a fantastic dinner tonight after almost a whole week of having no appetite (I think due to stress and the fact that I had a bad cold) I thought I would save half of it for breakfast tomorrow, but managed to eat it all! I made fish (from dried) in a sauce of tomato, onion, garlic, and carrot. Then I made some matembeli (delicious and healthy greens) and I managed to eat it all before the rice finished cooking (it’s still cooking now). Sometimes if I have leftover rice I boil it with milk for breakfast. (I have Nido – powdered milk – which is expensive but. . . necessary)I am glad to have my appetite back as my avocado a day diet probably wouldn’t have gone over well after the first week.Anyways, I know, again, it has been awhile. I have had some personal things going on, which are still unresolved, but I figured it was good time to let you in on how things are going.

My Easter I spent again with Flora and her family. It was subdued because of some family problems she was having, but I was happy to be able to go house to house to visit other neighbors in her subvillage. I was secretly happy that we didn’t manage to find milk so I didn’t have to bake cake, because I kindof didn’t feel like it. After cooking all day on Christmas and feeling like I missed out on visiting and being with people, I was ready for a holiday of being a ‘guest’ instead of the host.

The break of Easter along with the activity of it being rainy season (EVERYBODY IS FARMING EVERY DAY ALL DAY) put a long strange gap in my work routine. It gave me some time for a much needed rest, and to readjust my project schedule and visit people and reevaluate needs.

Also, I was finally able to plant my garden which already had some healthy matembeli and lemongrass, as well as some american sweetcorn and both tanzanian beans and american stringbeans which are well on their way to bearing fruit now. I have to say that the Tanzanian beans (which they are calling soybeans but I don’t believe they are) are so much happier and healthier than the stringbeans and I can finally have proof to back my claim that me providing seeds from America will not help their gardens. (although I do give some seeds to every person who comes to me to show me they have dug a permaculture garden, they are mostly of tanzanian origin)

But back to my garden, I have now added hot and bell peppers, tomatoes, watermelon, cantelope, cucumber, carrots, eggplant (though they are still tiny and pathetic little sprouts), and Chinese greens (they call them chinisi pronounced chai-nee-zee) which are eaten cooked and rather yummy. I also have a bed which I just put some zinnia and portulaca seeds, as well as ornamental sunflowers. I have approximately 3 of each plant listed, which if they all bear generously should be enough to keep me fed and take around to my neighbors to interest more people in vegetable gardening. As people who farm to feed their family as well as for most their sole source of livelihood, and who have done so since their ancestors first inhabited these mountains, I am sometimes taken aback by their lack of knowledge on how to farm well, as well as their lack of interest in planting anything other than corn and beans.

May 25, 2010 6:50pm

It can’t be that more people die here in Africa, because the truth of it is that everyone dies. Everyone dies. So why have I been to more funerals here in Tanzania than months I have spent in country, while I have yet to attend a single funeral in the US?

Yesterday, the funeral was for a woman whose wedding I attended part of in December. She was young, 25, with no known health problems. The day before she died she received notice that her mother had died. During the long trip to her mother’s funeral she fell ill, and died before she reached the hospital. Cause of death is unknown.

About a month ago I had been planning to go to a wedding, excited as I enjoy these cultural exchanges that have to do with happy things, and I have seen so few. When I got to Flora’s subvillage, as we were going to walk to the farther subvillage together, she told me that within the family that the wedding was taking place, the brother of the bride had passed away due to complications from polio. POLIO! They have vaccinations for polio! WHY!!!??

But the farther you are from the towns the less knowledge gets around, and when the people come once or twice a year and say ‘come and get shots for your baby’ if you’re sick, or your baby’s sick, or there’s farming to do, you don’t know how important it is to go. And years pass. And life goes on. Until it doesn’t.

Funerals are unbearable. The women who are close family wail. Not in that ‘wailing because it is culturally appropriate’ but wail in terrible, horrible agonizing pain of missing their loved ones. They fall to the ground and wail. And you want to hug them and comfort them, and you want to cry yourself, which I usually do. But there is no one comforting them, and no one to comfort me either. I tried to explain this to some women I was sitting with yesterday at the funeral, offering comfort, and hugs. They didn’t really get it. Here, they wail. I don’t like funerals. The break my heart, and I usually don’t even know the deceased. I cry the whole way through.

Last month a woman died because she bled out after she gave birth. She died because she was living where there was no cell reception, no transportation, and no clinic close enough to take her. She was healthy, from a reasonably well to do family. Her baby survived, and is thriving now. The family luckily has enough support from the community and within the family to purchase the very expensive and hard to find store bought breastmilk. The alternative for most babies? Cow’s milk and water.

Ah but enough of that. Good things have happened in all this time too. I have had some very important visitors to my site. (the Deputy Director of all of Peace Corps, the Regional Director of Peace Corps Africa, and the Country Director of Peace Corps Tanzania) Because I live in no-phone-service-land I got the information very late that they were coming and threw together quickly what I could think of as a welcoming but very short (40 minute) introduction to my village. My primary school kids sang and danced traditional Pare dances, and I showed them around the school and my home. They presented a plaque to my village in thanks for working together with me and supporting me, which my village loved, as well as pins to some of the people I work most closely with.

I was, as you can imagine with their large scale of boss-ness, very nervous about their visit, but they turned out to be extremely down to earth and comfortable and we had a very good time.

My garden, as you can see from the pictures, is beautiful. I harvested my first batch of beans, which my villagers said were beautiful and healthy (which is true) but they laughed when I told them how much I had harvested (about ¾ kilo) but this is only because they farm acres and acres, and I planted a space about 1 meter by 2 meters, or about 12 plants. I was impressed by my harvest.

My projects are moving along painfully slowly, despite the fact that I feel like I never have a second to breath because I am always in a meeting or teaching, or writing a project, or planning and scheduling lessons.

I am still teaching in the primary and secondary school. My gardening classes have come to a halt as people are busy with farming work, so I have put them on hold. I am starting a rainwater catchment project in Matongo which is our very poorest subvillage, with a high rate of childhood death and malnutrition, and the most desperate water situation.

I am continuing the process to try to get a water bore-hole dug for my secondary school which will also help the new primary school (they are beginning plans to build it and will be turning the current primary school which is much to large for it’s student body into a girl’s-only boarding highschool)

I am continuing to work on the youth club which will act as a school to teach out of school youth work skills such as carpentry, house building, tailoring, amongst other life skills. We just finished writing by hand the most tedious 26 page long katiba (I think that translates somehow into bylaws or constitution for a club but it is very important here in Tanzania) and we are now working on getting funding for the initial tools and materials to begin teaching.

This next week I’ll be heading to Lushoto to help an ed volunteer with a project that will be finishing up her service here in Tanzania. She is working on creating a history of her village. She will teach her students interview and documentary techniques, and they will go around and interview elders in the village. She then got some disposable cameras from the US that she is going to have a few students take around to document their village. And I will be teaching them some basic photography skills.



I spent this past weekend in Marangu, Flora’s birthvillage, her home, at the base of Mt Kilimanjaro. It is amazingly beautiful there. Coffee trees and banana trees line the roads, and there are avacados everywhere. If you’re hungry, you just walk outside a bit, until you find one that is ripe on the ground, and you eat it.

Paradise.

I went to see her niece’s wedding. Her whole family, of course came, and I have to say I have never been more comfortable with anyone (including, perhaps, volunteers) here in Tanzania. I was so comfortable that on 2 different occasions I forgot and spoke English. Which has never happened before. (although when the guests from Peace Corps came to my village, no one knew Kiswahili so I translated. I had no problem translating, though a few times I got mixed up and when I was addressing my villagers I spoke in clear English, and then addressed my guests in Kiswahili. Luckily, they just laughed. . )

The wedding was beautiful, though incredibly late. I didn’t really care since I didn’t have anything better to be doing, I was with good people, and NOTHING was my responsibility. I came when they said it was time, ate when food was offered, and wandered around and enjoyed my time off otherwise.

We came (Flora and I) Friday evening thinking that the wedding would be Saturday morning. All the guests came with this schedule in mind. But on Saturday morning word arrived that it had been postponed until Sunday. Afternoon. It didn’t even start until 430pm.

We took a rather fun and funny stroll to the house of the family of the groom, where he commenced in nervously offering us every drink under the sun, until agreeing that we would all, accept Flora who doesn’t drink, have beers. Despite my insistence that I HATE beer, they thought I as just trying to make Flora happy, which in it’s own way is sweet of them. (Flora thinks that drinking any kind of alcohol is bad)

They negotiated the terms of the bride price, which I assume was already mostly negotiated. What I overheard where last minute adjustments including making sure food and alcohol was brought for the elders who were unable to make the trip to the wedding place, as well as adequate transportation provided for the guests of the bride’s family.

This being my first full wedding (others I saw parts of the preparations which take place before the wedding but not the actual ceremony, or only the church ceremony as in the case of the wedding on Easter) I was unaware of the fact that it was a very sober time for the family of the bride. After some time, and careful observation, I finally asked Flora why the bride’s parents looked some mixture of pissed off and unhappy during the whole event. She replied that it is ‘unattractive’ for the family of the bride to appear happy during the wedding because they are losing their daughter.

Later there will be a ‘send off’ which is the party for the bride and her family to be happy and celebrate.

The wedding was an interesting mixture of western and Tanzanian culture. The service was Christian, Lutheran I believe, and then we went to the ‘kumbukumbu’ or party.

There were 2 cakes, but I believe only one made it to my photo album. The first one was a typical iced cake, made with flour, decorated as we are used to.

The second ‘cake’ was a whole goat, roasted whole, with it’s head sewn back on, and carrots and cucumbers placed as it’s eyes, and around it’s body as ‘decoration’ and celery or . . something. . coming from it’s mouth.

There is a ‘cake ceremony’ that Tanzanians do at events, whether it be birthdays or graduations, any event which cake shows up (it’s rare as they are expensive to buy and no on knows how to bake in the vil) They cut the cake into bite sizes, approximately the size of . . perhaps thick French fries. Then they toothpick each one. And each important party member (be it the graduee or the bride and groom or otherwise) takes it upon themselves to feed each individual who happens to have come to the party one by one with a bite of cake. They like it if there is a picture taken right at the point where the recipient’s mouth is gaping and the cake is half stuffed in.

Sometimes they then reverse the process and have everyone feed the said important person, but usually there isn’t enough cake.

It takes FOREVER.

And since I’m the one with the camera, they often want me to be photographing every gaping-mouthed-cake-eater. I have since declined to bring my camera to such events, but more for other reasons.

So at the wedding after they finish the cake feeding process with cake #1, they brought out, and in direct translation, cake #2 – the ndafu cake. (goat cake)

And they cut a little bit off the side of the goat. And they do the feeding thing all over again.

They gifts are not dropped on a side table to be taken care of later, but danced to the front in an organized procession, although at this wedding they were wrapped, which Flora says is a Chagga (tribal) custom. At the Pare (tribe) events and weddings the gifts are given without wrapping, so everyone knows what everyone else gave.

There was no dancing other than the dancing to and from the stage where the bride and groom with the best man and maid of honor where seated or standing the whole evening. When the MC suggested the groom and bride do a small dance before we left, and music was put on, they awkwardly (EXTRMELY AWKWARDLY) clutched each other with that 6-grade-dance hand on shoulder lean side to side. We all felt sympathy for them, and they ended the song after about 30 seconds.

Flora promised there would be tons of dancing at the send off, but the sad thing is the send off is at the home of the parents, who now live a day and a half trip away from their birthplace (Marangu) – a day and a half and very expensive trip away, and there’s no way I (or Flora) can make it.

Thursday, May 20, 2010