The weekend, then off to Tanga

This weekend I tried to relax and get some work done. Saturday I mostly stayed around the house, but I did take a nice bike ride around the peninsula and stop by the Slipway for some ice cream.

On Sunday, I wanted to go to Bagamoyo to see the ruins and the old slave trade head quarters. I was reading through my Lonely Planet guide book, and it turns out the tourist information center isn't open on Sundays. The thought of trying to deal with touts without the respite of a paid official to tell me which tours were legitimate didn't sound like a good idea. Instead I decided to check out the Village Museum. The guide book told me that the museum was across from the Mwenge carver's market, so I hopped on a dalla-dalla up to Mwenge. I got out and wandered around for 10 minutes, not seeing anything that resembled a museum. I finally asked someone, and it turns out the museum is back towards where I came from and nowhere near the market. Lonely Planet: you suck.

I headed back to the market, which was a mistake! I went into a shop and was talked into wandering around the market with the owner. We visited the stalls of his friends and family and I picked out a few really nice pieces. I had originally intended them to be gifts, but after the price I paid for them, I think they're all going to be mine. Haha! I have a wee bit of buyer's remorse from the price, but I think in the end, they are worth the cost. Now the problem is, how do I get heavy chunks of ebony home??

After our business transaction, my new, much richer friend took me out to lunch. His name is Sigari and he can't be much older than I am. I asked him about the carving business, which his family has been involved in for generations. Each of the statues I bought took one to two weeks to carve. His family now owns two stalls in the market and rents another two. In typical African fashion, all of his friends and family in other countries are being used as business contacts. He says he is now starting to ship carvings to LA and Helsinki, of all places. He knows a guy in Boston, and is trying to set up a seller there.

After our lunch, I told him I still wanted to see the museum. It was now 3pm and the museum would be open until 6pm, so I had plenty of time. He flagged down a top-top for me. I've seen tons of these little vehicles driving around, but had never had the courage to ride in one. They are very cute: three wheels and open on the sides. Their tiny little engines make high-pitched whirring sounds as they weave through traffic at break-neck speeds. Also, they are much cheaper than taxis, owing to the gas conservation of their small engines. At one point, I thought we were going to tip over, but we made it to the museum without incident. It turns out I could have easily biked to the Village museum from my house. It's probably closer than the CARE offices. I don't understand how the guide book could have such blatantly wrong information...

The museum is really neat. It's filled with the traditional houses of about 30 of the tribes in Tanzania. This country has over 120 different tribes and the museum showcased the largest groups. The houses ranged from domed huts made entirely from grass, to complex, many roomed mud brick houses with intricately carved doors. Many of the houses had corrals inside, so the people had to sleep only a few feet from the cows and goats! It must make for quite a stink.

I paid the extra 2,000/= fee to see a performance of traditional dances. It turned out to be a performance just for me, since no one else was visiting the museum at the time. There were three percussionists and four dancers. The dancers also sang and one of them would occasionally blow on a whistle. If I was asked to interpret the dances, I would say they were about farming. The women spent most of the dances bent over and sweeping their arms back and forth. After the performance ended, one of the drummers called me over and handed me the sticks for the marimba. Haha. Little did they know, I have no sense of rhythm. I actually handled the first song alright, since it only had three notes. The second one was more complex and I was completely hopeless. After about 15 minutes, I gave up, thanked them and then wandered around the museum grounds some more.

Today, I'm supposed to head to Tanga for my second workshop. This time it's with the environmental sector and I'm just tagging along as the note taker. I'm a little hesitant about the trip, because I'm running out of time here. I think it will be an interesting learning experience, however. One of the sector's main issues is land and resource governance in communities with refugee populations. Anyway, they're paying for my housing and food, and this time the conference will be in English. Many of the program directors are ex-pats who do not speak Swahili fluently. I'm at the offices now, but I'll have to leave soon with a driver to pick up my luggage. The man I'm driving with, Balaram, is apparently prone to leaving when he is ready and not at a set time. This means we will be leaving at some unspecified time before 1pm. Haha. Not much time to get work done...

Belated shout out for my sister:

Happy 20th Birthday to my ickle sister, Maren!

Here, have this picture of a giraffe as a present:


Yay!

Final Iringa post!

August 15

Wow, the ride home was crazy. We passed by THREE major accidents on the way from Iringa. The first was at the top of the first mountain we climbed. We didn't see any of the wreckage because the petrol tankard had ROLLED off the mountain and into a small crevice between peaks. The fact that it was a petrol tankard meant that we passed several hundred people running up the road with buckets to collect the leaking gasoline before the authorities could arrive to clean up. The accident was probably one of the largest windfalls the villagers in the area have ever experienced. I just wonder if the driver made it out alive.

Once we were out of the mountains, it was a straight shot to Mikume, where we stopped for breakfast. The restaurant was also attached to a snake farm, but they wanted me to pay in US dollars in order to get in. I told Edson I could see snakes in glass containers in the US, but not wild giraffes, so we jumped back in the landrover once we finished eating. Our first ride through the park occurred during the afternoon and there were few animals to be seen. This time, it was around 10am and there were many more out and about. I believe we saw impala, zebra, buffalo, elephants and giraffes. There were way too many impala and not enough of anything else. The elephants were spotted by Rama lying under a distant tree. I'm not sure how he saw them while also keeping control of the car. The man has good eyes. The giraffes were my favorite and we got to see about 10 in total. I took pictures, and I'll post them when I can.

At this point, we saw our second accident. A bus had collided with a tractor trailer. The front of the truck was completely smashed to pieces and was on fire when we passed. The bus had been pushed off the road and was compacted all along its right side. About two dozen people were standing alongside the road looking confused and upset. There was a tow-truck moving the bus, but no evidence of an ambulance or emergency vehicles. I'm not sure how emergency services work (or don't work) in this country.

We again stopped in Morogoro for lunch. On the way to the restaurant I saw two familiar blond Danish girls walking by some shops. I pulled out my phone and dialed Lise and invited her and Line to eat lunch with us. They were totally surprised, but quickly joined us at the restaurant. It turns out they are in Morogoro for the weekend taking a break from life in rural Turiani. They have plans to go hiking in the morning (I'm totally jealous). We said a quick goodbye after lunch, but I should be seeing them in a week's time when they come for a visit in Dar. I believe Lise said it was her birthday on Sunday, so I'll have to figure out a celebration of sorts.

Just before the bridge that separates Morogoro district from Dar es Salaam city limits, we passed our third accident. This one looked like it was a few hours old. There was another tractor trailer blocking one of the lanes in the road. When we drove around it, we could see that the front was also smashed, similar to the accident in Mikume. There was no evidence of the other vehicle, though it must have been large to cause that much damage. Given that the truck was in the right lane facing the wrong direction, it must have been trying to pass another vehicle when it rammed into something going the other way. I don't think I've seen so much destruction in one day before.

I have the weekend free and then I have to pick up and go to another workshop on Monday, this time in Tanga. Tanga is a city roughly parallel to the smaller of Zanzibar's two islands. It should be about a two hour drive, but you never know in this country. I'm trying to decide if I want to go to Bagamoyo for the day tomorrow or not. Hmm.

Third post

August 14

I just watched the strangest Coke ad I've ever seen. It involved people drinking Coke and then saying “Brrrr” and shaking. Somehow this is supposed to be cool and sell more Coke? So, how about the Olympics? I catch odd snippets in the mornings before the workshop starts at 9am, which means I've watched way too much volleyball and not enough of anything really interesting.

Yesterday, I hit rock bottom on the boredom scale. I just sat through hours of Swahili and kind of wanted to cry most of the afternoon. Way to be hit with culture shock, Lexy, now that your trip is almost over. Oh well. After the workshop ended for the day, Edson and I walked (walked!) down the street to the Hasty Tasty Too for dinner. It's run by an Arab family and serves range of Swahili and Zanzibari food. I had vegetable curry, which was a nice respite after three days of almost exclusively dining on meat and carbohydrates. Edson and I spoke about a number of things, including why the workshop attendees are 85% male. It turns out that most of CARE's employees are men too. This is apparently not because CARE hasn't tried to attract more female employees, but when job openings are posted, the replies are almost exclusively from men. Edson went on to tell me, though, that universities in Tanzania are enacting very good affirmative action policies for women and offering them scholarships that are not available to men. Hopefully this will increase the number of women in the job market in the coming years and make the gender balance more fair in such pro-women organizations like CARE.

Today I did a lot better. Instead of trying to pay attention to the workshop, I just worked on my computer. The manual needs a lot of work, and I don't think I'm going to have the time to finish it! I have to get in work on it when I can. Today was the last day of the workshop and we ended a couple of hours early so people could leave at a decent time. I took Rama up on his offer to drive me around Iringa so I could at least say I'd seen the place. He also had a couple of errands to run. First, he needed to pick up cooking oil. White people come to Iringa because it's the nearest city to Ruaha National Park and for the stone-age ruins near by. Tanzanians come to Iringa because it's the source of cheap sunflower oil. We drove up one of the many mountains to a small “industry” as Rama called it, where a bunch of men were sifting through piles of sunflower seeds. They were surrounded by their own small mountain of seed bags, and there must have been several tons lying on the ground. Rama bought 40 liters of oil: 20 for his family and 20 for Edson's. In Dar, that amount apparently goes for 60,000/=, but in Iringa you can get it for less than 40,000/=. (In US terms, that's $34 for 5 gallons of cooking oil).

Next we had to pick up shoes from a guest house that one of the participants had left. He lives in Morogoro, so I suppose we'll be dropping them off tomorrow. We passed by a view of a valley that literally took my breath away. I don't remember that ever happening before, but it was so beautiful and came into sight so suddenly that it made me gasp for air. On the way back into city center, I made Rama stop so I could take a photograph. I told him I was having a “mtalii moment” (tourist). The photos don't do it justice. Oh well. We're heading home tomorrow, very early I in the morning. We're leaving early so I can have another “mtalii moment” when we drive through Mikume National Park. The animals are active early in the morning, so we're leaving at 6am so we can arrive when it's still cool outside. Hoot!

Second post from Iringa

August 12

It's now two days into the workshop. It's not what I expected, but I'm dealing with it. Edson gave me the impression that the workshop would be in English but it's been about 80% Swahili at this point. I'm not angry, but I am a bit frustrated. After all, this is supposed to be a learning experience for the participants and the best way for that to happen is to conduct the workshop in their native language. I just feel a little useless at this point. Today I mostly sat around, listening when people were speaking English and trying to write my Fulbright essays when they weren't. During lunch, I chatted with a few of the other guests at our hotel and they were talking about all the neat sites around Iringa. Apparently there is a stone age settlement, good hiking and a game park near by. I feel a little let down that I'm stuck in a conference room all day when there are so many neat out-doors things to do in the area. I guess that's the nature of workshops: large numbers of people travel from their offices to an exotic locale and then spend all day inside.

Yesterday was more interesting. Edson had me leading two of the sessions, one on introducing governance and another on related themes. It was a little awkward. I would present a slide in English and then Edson would try to explain it in Swahili. Governance is a difficult topic in any language, but I feel we were getting through to people. Edson tries very hard to keep things participatory, so there were several small group exercises followed by a short presentation on each group's discussion. Honestly, it felt a lot like a class at Clark. I was nervous for about the first 5 minutes, but then I quickly got over it. I guess two years as a tour guide has done my public speaking skills some good.

I'm feeling a bit cooped up here. I'm used to being able to ride my bike around to blow off excess energy, but I don't feel safe leaving the hotel at night. I have a TV, but after 7pm all the channels are in Swahili which doesn't help my cabin fever at all. I borrowed a book from the Barkers', but I finished it on Sunday. Way to be unprepared for boredom. The book was The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. It's an ethnography and a good part of the book details the authors own experiences with researching Hmong immigrants. I feel like I'm totally up to writing a book about my own insecurities and mishaps, so maybe this Anthropology thing isn't so hard...

...

It turns out I spoke (wrote?) too soon. Rama came back after dropping people off at their hotels and took me to an internet cafe. As soon as he drove off, the place started having electrical problems and I had to sit and wait for half an hour before he came back. A couple of other people from the workshop happened to be near by, and we all piled into the landrover and drove around looking for another cafe that was open at 7:30pm. Iringa is a small, rural city and places tend to close soon after sunset. The place we finally found had a slow connection (that's where I made the short update), but I was able to check my email and read up on the news, etc. Afterward, Rama, myself and one of the other facilitators, Makame, stopped by the Miami Bar for dinner. The name made me crack up, but the food was good and cheap. We had nyama choma, which I think just means 'grilled meat' and grilled green bananas. Now, I know you're imagining grilling the bananas you buy in a US supermarket, but that's not this kind of banana. They're definitely bananas and not plantains, but they're cooked while still green. It kind of tastes like a bland potato, but was ok when when dipped in hot pepper vinegar. The kuku (local chicken) was tasty, but also probably the toughest meat I've ever had. You really had to chew the stuff to get it down. That's the trade-off here: food looks ugly and is hard to chew, but it is certainly a heck of a lot tastier than the soft, nice looking food in the States. Go figure.

First entry from my Iringa trip

August 10

I'm rather pleased with yesterday's trip. Spending too much time in Dar has given me the impression that Tanzania is one big, dusty, overcrowded urban environment. Dar is a huge city. We traveled almost 30km from the city center before we were officially out of the city limits. The view out the window slowly changed from urban to peri-urban to scattered settlements dispersed in the bush. It's hard for me to describe what the countryside is like here. I haven't seen landscape anywhere in the US that is similar to what is found here. The only tree I recognized is the baobab, with the iconic swollen, silver trunks and bare branches towering over other vegetation that looks stunted and pale in comparison.

Most of the land we passed through was either flat or covered in small, gently rolling hills. The flatness made the mountains looming in the distance appear so much taller since there was nothing to diminish the view of them. The land was practically flat right up to base of the mountain ranges, where the earth would suddenly jut skyward into steep, craggy peaks. The city of Morogoro, where we stopped for lunch, has just such a backdrop. The city is small in comparison to Dar, but is the fourth largest urban area after Dar, Mwanza and Arusha. We ate at a Swahili restaurant and I had the usual fare of fried fish, rice, beans, greens and a banana. I was positively stuffed from all the food. I made the mistake of ordering soda water—my second choice after the restaurant didn't have bottled water—which caused my stomach to swell with gas bubbles that made me feel ill until several rounds of burps released the pressure. While we were eating, a large, well-armed motorcade drove past the restaurant. I asked Edison who traveled in such style and he said it was either the president, VP or prime minister. That's probably the closest I'll ever get to a leader of a country.

It took us about two hours to reach Morogoro, and our driver, Rama, said it would be another four hours to Iringa. It would normally take us less time, but part of the route goes through a game park with a strict 70 kph speed limit. While in the park we passed by warthogs, zebra and several kinds of antelope. After the park, it was flat for about another hour, then we started to head up into the mountains. The mountain roads are similar to driving through East Tennessee: they are very narrow and full of tight curves. They are, however, in rather poor condition and most drivers seem to interpret lane markers as suggestions only. At one point, we passed a tractor trailer that had flipped over, probably from taking a curve to quickly. No one appeared hurt, but neither was there anything around that would help them move the truck from out of the middle of the road. Luckily it was only blocking one lane and we were able to pass through. At the top of another mountain was a group of young men selling roasted maize. They practically threw themselves in front of everything that came by, from passenger cars to giant trucks, waving a fistful of partially burnt corn. We each bought a cob, including the driver, who ate with one hand and steered us down the winding road with the other. That was a bit scary.

The road flattened out again as we drove closer to Iringa, though we were surrounded on all sides by boulder covered mountains. Iringa is positioned at the top of one of these mountains. The final climb was surprisingly precarious. The speedometer indicated that the vehicle never went above 40 kph, but it felt like we were still going too fast up the curves, especially with all the bicycles and people crowding along the road. Our hotel turned out to be at the Lutheran Center and is quite luxurious by African standards. My small room contains a TV with 6 channels and a flush toilet. The bed has a mosquito net, but I think the weather is too cold this time of year for the buggers to be out. Hopefully all my bites will heal this week so I can arrive back in Dar as a fresh source of food for the little f***ers to feast on. I really hate mosquitoes.

This morning I got up early, took a long hot shower and ate a big breakfast. I was reading in my room when Edson knocked to ask if the ride had upset my computer in any way. I booted up and found that everything was fine. I asked if something was wrong with his computer, and he said that “some files were missing.” This turned out to mean that Microsoft Office and all of his documents had mysteriously disappeared. It looked like the computer had somehow reverted back to factory settings. This didn't seem possible and despite the fact that Edson appeared calm, I could tell he was trying not to panic. It's hard to run a four day workshop when all your notes are gone. After poking around for a while and finding nothing, I told him to reboot the computer. When it finally came on again, all the files were there. I have no idea what happened, but this is two days in a row when a Vista computer has acted strangely in my presence. (Yesterday morning, Sally's new laptop appeared to be having hard drive trouble and wouldn't boot properly.) I have to wonder if a new Vista update isn't causing some kind of trouble.

quick update

The workshop is going smoothly, unlike this internet connection. I'm in a small internet cafe in Iringa, and I don't have the patience to upload a big post. I'm keeping an off-line journal (imagine that...), however, and I'll post a couple of long entries when I get back. Hoot!