The Long and Winding Road

After Thanksgiving, we had just a couple of days back in the village before packing up for IST, In Service Training, in Morogoro. Training started on December 4th and it was going to take us two days to arrive in Morogoro from Masasi. Toni, Ben, and myself met up in The Sass and boarded the Najma bus to go to Dar es Salaam for a night before continuing on the next morning for Moro. Somewhere along the way of our 10-hour bus ride, we made a quick stop at the bus stand in Lindi where Toni and I decided we should take advantage of the opportunity to use the bathroom. We get off the bus and weave through the masses of people frantically running to catch their respective buses. We run behind the few small shops at the stand to find the bathroom. We begin to make a B-line for the right side of the small building that reads “Wanawake” when some of the women begin to yell at us and we realize that we had bypassed the line where you need to pay 200 shillings before you’re allowed to pee in the hole in this small cement building. We pay our 400 shillings and proceed to the next line to go to the bathroom. As we get to the front of the line, we step up to the other side of the cement partition in front of the two choo stalls. Women are pushing and shoving us and we turn the corner to realize that there is just a crowd of women that are proceeding to squat and pee on the cement just outside of the choo stalls. When one woman would come out of one of the stalls, three more would run in together. Apparently there’s just no time for everyone to be able to pee in privacy, or even to pee in the choo, and nobody wanted the bus to drive away without them. Toni and I decided to at least wait for one of the stalls to open up. One of the doors opened up and Toni made a quick move and ran in and closed the door behind her. Before I knew it, another woman behind me shoved passed and forced her way into the stall with Toni. As I’m treading lightly outside the stall door wearing my flip flops among all the other women who just couldn’t wait their turn, I hear her say, “Oh..hello…” from inside the stall. A quick minute later, she left Toni alone in the stall and I realized that there wasn’t going to be an opportunity for us to go to the bathroom separately so I just went in the stall with her. The floor was soaking wet, and the choo hole was overflowing. Toni was squatting trying desperately to find an appropriate spot to relieve herself. She said, “Just come in.” The stall was not quite large enough for the both of us to be in there taking care of business at the same time. I said, “I don’t wanna pee on you!” “Just pee!” she said. I proceed to take my position and go pee, the whole time we are both laughing hysterically at the situation we have found ourselves in. In the midst of the laughing and hysteria, I lift my hand to try and brace myself on Toni’s shoulder, and next thing I know my hand has grabbed her bare bum on the way up to her shoulder. Meanwhile, Toni still can’t find her happy place and just let herself pee. So after I finish peeing and accidentally molesting her, I run out of the stall and leave Toni to finish up on her own. When we both emerge from the “bathroom” there’s no time to process what had just happened to us both, so we just run back to the stand and try to find our bus again. There are at least 10 large buses at the stand, all painted with bright colors and nonsense words marking the sides. We boarded one large bus that said Najma, and began to look for our seats. After a couple of seconds I realized that I didn’t see Ben’s white face and glasses sticking out amongst the many Tanzanians that had already boarded the bus. I ask Toni, “Wait a minute, where’s Waldo?....I don’t think this is our bus!” We quickly jump off the bus and start to run around to try and find our bus. We see another Najma bus a few buses down and jump on. Sure enough there’s was Waldo, and we both let out a sigh of relief, muscled our way back into our respective seats, looked at each other and began laughing uncontrollably. We had reached a whole new level of friendship at that bus stand in Lindi that day.
A few hours later, we reached the stretch of unpaved road that we drive through to get to Dar. It takes about two and half hours on this road before we reach pavement again, and the ride is so rough that the people seated in the back of the bus get up and move to the front to stand in the aisle for the duration of the dirt road. After being knocked around for about two hours on this road, we notice an 11 year old boy who had moved to the front aisle from his seat in the back. He is beginning to pace up and down the aisle with a terrified look on his face with his right hand cupping his mouth. He had nowhere to run and ended up stopping in the aisle right between Ben and Toni. He couldn’t hold it in any longer and he began to vomit into his hand and all over the floor and arms of their chairs. Toni had a look of disgust and astonishment on her face as she noticed the vomit on her skirt and tried desperately to wipe it clean as quickly as she could, while Ben curiously decided to take a closer look, and then leaned over excitedly to inform me that “it looked like he had chicken for lunch.”
Eleven hours later, we pulled into the large bus stand in Dar es Salaam. It had been a long day. Some of had been peed on, some of us had been molested, some of us had been vomited on, and we all felt like we had been beat to death. But Dar had never looked so good, and I don’t think any of us had ever been so happy to finally arrive. Luckily we had a night to recover before getting on another bus for Morogoro. We met up with Tyler that night, and we all slept like babies. The next morning, we got on the bus to go from “DAR MPAKA MORO!” Apparently TMK is a famous music group in Tanzania and they have a song titled “Dar mpaka Moro.” After about four hours, we arrived at Morogoro. I got off the bus and was on a mission to find a bathroom. I had to pee so bad! Even after all these long travel days I have learned to dehydrate myself, yet I still needed to go to the bathroom on this day. So Toni and I proceed on another bathroom adventure, but this time, we have no clue which direction to be going…and it was an emergency. We start walking one way and people point in another direction and tell us “Kule!” We proceed in the next direction and someone else points one way and says in a high tone of voice “Pale!” At this point we were running around the stand aimlessly as nobody had actually told us where the bathroom was but simply gave us a vague idea of which direction it may be. Toni was trailing behind me as I’m power walking to what I hoped was going to be a bathroom. After too many minutes and no more idea of where a bathroom might be, I yelled back to her, “Oh no Toni! This is happening! I can’t hold it!” I run behind a tin shack at the end of the stand, drop my arms full of luggage, lift up my skirt, and begin to pee out in the open while yelling, “Pole sana! I’m sorry!” Toni runs over and tries to cover me as best she can, but I don’t even care. I realized that I really didn’t have any shame anymore. This is Tanzania. I figured if I can walk around The Sass in broad daylight and see guys peeing in the middle of the road, there’s no reason why I can’t do the same in an emergency situation.
We grabbed a taxi to the CCT, Christian Council of Tanzania, where our training for the next two weeks was going to be. Rebecca, Alli, Sarah, Ben, and I got our own little house at the center for the next two weeks. It was really good to see them all again, after spending the past three months apart. We were all very excited to see our entire training class all together again. For the next couple of weeks we could be waking up bright and early for training seminars from 8:00 am until 5:00 pm. The second week our chosen counterparts from our respective villages arrived to complete training sessions as well. My counterpart, Mama Swaum, was very excited to be coming to Morogoro. She was always participating and taking notes very diligently during training sessions, which got me even more excited about working with her. The first day at the training center during a break she asked me to come with her to the bathroom, which was a little confusing at first. But then I found out that she needed me to show her how to flush the toilet. I guess the tables had been turned a bit, and now she was the fish out of water. I told her she could call her husband later and tell him she had arrived in America today, which she thought was pretty funny. For the next two weeks we learned about project implementation and management, working effectively with counterparts, grant writing, as well as specific project ideas, such as chicken and goat raising projects, teaching life skills and environmental education within the primary and secondary schools, more permagardening techniques, and HIV/AIDS education. We worked together with our counterparts to come up with a 3 month plan for projects in the village. After talking with Mama Swaum, we decided that we would start by talking to the teachers at the primary school about incorporating environmental education into the curriculum. We want to talk to the secondary school teachers about beginning to teach life skills to the Form 4 students. Also, we want to start by working with the women’s AIDS group who are interested in doing a chicken raising project, as well as looking into getting a well built at the secondary school.
The two weeks at IST went by quickly and before we knew it, it was time to say goodbye to everyone again. We took the trip back from Moro mpaka Dar and the next morning, we continued from Dar back to the Deep South. Unfortunately, there were no more seats available on the reliable bus and we were forced to board the infamous Akida bus line. As expected, the bus broke down about half way through the drive and we sat on the side of the road for three hours just outside of Lindi. We left Dar at 6:00 am that morning and we didn’t arrive at the bus stand in Masasi until 10:30 pm. It was a long travel day, and luckily my friend, Wambora, was able to arrange for a couple rooms at a guesti for us for the night. The next morning we all parted ways again.
We were able to come together again briefly to celebrate Christmas down in the Mtwara region. My mom had been kind enough to send me a small fake Christmas tree in the mail along with a stocking stuffed full of great goodies. We all decorated the tree together and exchanged Secret Santa gifts.
On the way back to my village, I passed through Ben’s village, which is up n the Makonde plateau. It was interesting to see the difference between the two villages. His village is much smaller, with a population of about 1,500 people. And while I knew water was an issue for my villagers, it’s even more of a challenge for the villagers of Nakachela to get enough water. There is no well in Nakachela, so many villagers are forced to go all the way to neighboring villages in order to get water.
I was able to go with Ben and his counterpart to a village celebration called ngoma, which is one of the many celebrations held each year for the tradition f unyago, which is the traditional education that many children in the village receive growing up. Today this was a party for the whole community, celebrating the coming of age of a number of boys.
I was happy to finally return to my village after all those long travel days. Pulling into the sokoni and getting off the bus, there were many familiar faces waiting there to greet me. The village chairman, Kilian, was seated nearby the drop off, and he greeted me with a big smile. Dickson came by my house later to say hi. It was nice to see them all again, and I really felt like I was coming back home. After returning to my village, Mama Swaum and I began talking about building our own permagarden together, and using it as a teaching tool for the women’s AIDS group. So now we’re gathering materials. I’m going to Masasi to see what seeds I can find to plant.
I went to The Sass the other day to get on a computer. I was waiting at the bus stand at 6:00 am as usual for my crowded daladala to come barreling around the corner of the dirt road. But today, my bus didn’t arrive, and I learned that it had recently broken down so they weren’t running it at the moment. This didn’t surprise me as the bus had broken down on the last two occasions that I decided to go into town. But I knew that there was also a lorry that would be coming through my village that morning. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the lorry came around the corner and screeched to a halt. A lorry is basically a large truck with a large iron cage in the bed where people load in and stand up, hanging onto the sides. This lorry was already pretty full of people, but the conductor yelled “Tuende!” and I grabbed the rope hanging from the back of the cage and hoisted my self up in to the bed of the truck along with the sea of Tanzanians already packed and standing. I made my way to the middle where I figured my chances of survival were the highest in the case of an accident. As we made our way towards Masasi, I could see people’s astonished faces at every stop as they picked out the white blonde girl crunched in the lorry with all of the Tanzanians, as we barrel down the dirt road. It was definitely a new experience and one which I suppose I better get used to because that bus doesn’t look like it will be going anywhere anytime soon. I did learn that good footing and a good grip on the cage is key. Sometimes I try to make it more fun by pretending I’m surfing in the ocean as I try to maintain my balance as opposed to crammed in the back of the lorry trying t stay standing and not falling on the bibi seated below me.
I got to see my good friend, Mwanahawa, after returning from IST. She came hobbling into my house and I asked her why she was limping. She showed me a large gash in the bottom of her left foot and said she had cut herself with her jembe at the farm the previous day. She said she would have to be going back again the next morning. So I told her that I wanted to go with her in the morning to help her, little did I know that we would be heading out at 6:00 am. I woke up bright and early the next morning and we made the walk out to the farm together. After coming back to my village from IST, everything looks so different. The rains had started, and everything had come alive again. Grasses had started growing everywhere, and everything looks much greener than it did when I left. It was a nice walk out to her family’s plot of land through the fresh new grasses and cashew trees. I could see that many families had started farming while I was away. The cashews had been finished and now people were preparing their land and planting cassava, rice, corn, and peanuts, which we would be planting that day. We took the ground with our jembes in one hand and our handful of peanuts in the other. After three hours of being bent over, digging small holes, and places a single peanut in each one, we had finished for the day. As the sun is beating down on us and I start sweating uncontrollably I begin to understand why we needed to wake up so early to plant. As we’re walking back to the house to make chai, I inspected my hands to find that I had some of the biggest blisters covering my fingers and palm.
We get back to the house and I collapse on the ground. I probably could have fallen asleep right there. But Mwanahawa is still going. She proceeds to get some firewood together to make tea and roll out dough to fry up some chapatti for us. She amazes me! She really never gets tired and she works incredibly hard everyday.
This week I started teaching Life Skills to the Form 4 students at the Secondary School, which was so fun! They were all a little quiet and shy, but I think that once they get more used to me they will be more open about talking. We are going to work on communication skills, decision-making skills, and relationship skills. Life skills is intended to give them more information about how to live healthy lives, as well as how they can utilize that information and set goals for themselves for the future. There are also lessons on safe sex and HIV/AIDS that we will talk about. Each class I pass around a paper so that they can write down questions anonymously in case they are too embarrassed to ask. We’ll see what kind of questions we get next week…
I also started teaching English after school to those students at the Secondary school who are interested in getting a head start. This past week, the room was packed and it was a little overwhelming. But I started ff by teaching them a few English slang words and then having them write sentences about their families and what they were planning to do after school.
I also had a meeting with the headmaster of the school and the Village Water Committee to talk about the possibility of a water project. This will be a big undertaking and I will have to talk to the District Water Engineer first to see how feasible this would be. But getting water to the secondary school would open up so many doors for them, such as building a garden for the school, so I definitely want to put some focus into it.
My house is starting to feel more like a home. I started doing a little work out routine in my back yard in the mornings, so that I don’t just turn into one giant white blob of ugali. Every morning the primary school girls let themselves into my backyard to get their brooms to sweep in front of my house. I usually hear them arrive at about 7:00 am. This particular morning I started my little work out a bit late, so I was cooling down in my backyard, zoning out listening to my ipod. Oh ya,I forgot to mention that I live in Africa and I sweat uncontrollably when I’m sitting still, so why would I rationally be putting on extra clothing if I’m planning to be exercising? I’m no dummie, so of course I was bouncing around my courtyard with nothing more than my sports bra, my undies, my running shoes, and my ipod blasting away. So when I was finishing up this day, I failed to hear the herd of girls funneling into my backyard until I looked up and saw their little brown faces stunned with a look of astonishment as they beheld my naked, and I must say extremely whiter than usual, body. I froze for a minute and ran to hide in my house. I poked my head around to tell them in Swahili that I was just exercising and that maybe next time if they knock I could put some clothes on for them. Although I thought the experience was traumatizing enough, they still open up my side door all on their own. The only difference now is that I start working out at 6:00 instead of 6:30.