Redemption Songs

So much happens in just one day that it’s hard to try to trace the steps back and bring home up to date with Tanzania.
A lot of the past month can be summed up in a few words; chaos, gossip, illness, anticipation, freedom.

Chaos? This describes not only the past month but my life every month since last year when I graduated college (which I still cannot believe is already done..)

Gossip? A lot of PC drama and insanity went down this month and it’s been a non-stop talk/texting circle of gossip, lies, truths, and misinterpretations. In the end a few people that I really did love had to go home, a few people got to stay on “probation” and on the whole the PC office in Dar is sick of the shenanigans.

Illness? Aside from the hospital stints of Olie and Joshua, half of Ikuna has been sick, I got a pretty bad case of the stomach flu (or something like it) and everyone seems to just be not in great health. I actually think that this season is the time for dying…That’s really morbid, but I cannot tell how many funerals I have been invited to.

Anticipation? Well, I can finally, FINALLY say that I am doing real life work. Not teaching too much, but working on income generating projects that the villagers have been asking about. They are SO excited, and so am I. In defense of not really teaching, I must say that with the SPWs teaching day and night about AIDS, I really feel like they have the bases covered, and plan on taking over the things they have set up once they are gone. It will be great. Actually, it already is great : )

Freedom? The past week I have been traveling. Not for fun, but for work and “supply collection.” I must say, it has been wonderful. I know that most of you won’t like to know that I have been traveling alone, but I have and it ROCKS. Yes, I am being VERY careful. Yes, I am meeting up with my PC friends, but for the most part I am just exploring my will to explore. Man it’s exhausting!

I just finished reading The Secret Life of Bees, and I put it on the must read list for everyone. Even though it’s not about Africa, it’s about African Americans and it just really speaks to how I feel most days being the white girl in the black village. I must admit, my color has never mattered more to me, and at the same time, it has never mattered less. I don’t know if it’s because Westerners have lived in Ikuna village before, or if it’s because I took the time to really get to know people , the community and culture, but I do not (on an average day) feel out of place when I’m walking around Ikuna. I don’t get anything out of the average, just a greeting, handshake, and that’s that. It makes me appreciate Ikuna SO much, knowing that I do have a place to go home to and know that I really don’t need to explain myself to anybody.

Well, on Sunday (and most of the reason for this long crazy trip) Mama Witi and I are going to teach a bunch of Mamas how to make Batik (WEBSTER: a method of hand-printing a fabric by covering with removable wax the parts that will not be dyed). I would like to try and turn it into an income generation project, but first we need to see what the Mamas think about it. It should be a BLAST, and a headache, but I look forward to it.

Right now I am in the beautiful city of Iringa. It’s about 3 hours north of Njombe (my banking town/home base town). It’s on the top of a mountain and it just totally jive. There is a university here so a lot of the Tanzanians know English and assume that I don’t know Kiswahili, which turns everything into tons of fun. There are a lot of places to get good Western food, and just an all around awesome vibe to the whole place. Aside from that, being on the top of a mountain on the sprawling city, you not only get food, culture and life but a breath taking view. I’m a big fan and never knew it. I will admit that it saddens my heart a little bit to know that I will come home one day and have nobody (but my fellow PCVs) to relate to about all of this, but hey that’s life and this is my adventure, so I won’t let it stop me from just doing my thing.

Well, I promised a picture post and here it is, assuming I can get them to actually post! Hope that you are all enjoying life and looking forward to the summer sun. I’ve been basking it in for 11 months now, and I must say, it feel damn good!








Pic 1: The Kibena Hospital waiting room, complete with fresh breeze, tea, and a bicycly
Pic 2: The day I got some of the baby hats that my grandma made (thanks g-ma!) I went to visit Olie and Mama Witi and found out a woman in my village had twins! So, I gave them matching hats (not the ones in the pic). It's Mama Witi and the babies grandma holding the kids
Pic 3: While sitting in the hospital "waiting room" I met a little boy and tried to show him how to make glasses with his fingers...he got this far. It was cute.
Pic 4: Mama Witi and I have spent a lot of time looking at each others feet, we have decided that they really are not all that different. We walk the same path together and it's good.
Pic 4: This is my Mama, and I just love her. What more can I say?
(All of these were taken during a LONG 2 week wait at the hospital)

What was supposed to be a picture post...

Walking, walking, walking
Talking, talking, talking
Eating, eating, eating
Sleeping.

Get your kitchens ready,
Big Mama is coming home!
...In about 8 months.

Lots to say and little time. Will say it all next week when I have a free computer in the Peace Corps office. Also, get ready for pictures! Thought I had my flash drive but I don't...just a few more days

F Squared Sun Burn Blues: A bad poem about a trip to the hospital with my village brother

The F squared sun burn blues,
man on man how they got me d o w n.
Face and feet.
Wrapped tight in colored fabric that must have been sewn from a mound,
of glory-ous flowers.
Not from the mound in the graveyard
under which lies that little boy in the bed next door,
with eyes half cracked thinking I was an angel.
Well, sorry kid, I’m no angel and I wasn’t comin to take you away,
but you up and left anyhow.

The F squared sun burn blues.
Where they came from…
maybe all of that sitting and waiting and sun bathing,
wrapped up tight in my fabric,
face and feet left to the elements.
Or maybe just sheer bad luck.
Bahati-Luck has a lot to do with pretty much all things,
Good or bad, it seems to be the biggest curse, or
a really great gift.

Our boy, in the peak of youth, curled up in fever and fear,
he was asking for a miracle.
Actually he wanted Huruma- Mercy.
A friend that he made with me.
Either way, I did my best to bring him both
Huruma and Bahati.

We fed him oranges, pineapples and peanuts,
prayed for blood, and played the game.
It was easy with a walking trump card-
The white kid that speaks the language.
We waited outside with a mob of Mamas,
gave a sermon on egalitarian relationships and were applauded.
Trying to pass the time, we walked
the maternity ward,
the malaria ward,
and learned, learned, learned.
We picked off the skin drying on his lips,
rubbed down his shaking body,
put the cup to his lips to drink.
While waiting, back-ups were called in.
One white kid equals startling,
5 equals downright scary.

Work began!
Blood came!
Attention came!
Jealousy came.
Rearing its rank face in a place that’s already pretty much
rancid.
Ward 4 was suddenly a shrill of pleads…
please pay attention to my sick person,
please help me pay for this medicine,
please, please, please…
I said it man, I said it,
I am no angel.
The temperatures rise, he gets a fever,
we can all feel the heat,…
waiting…waiting…waiting…waiting
is what a heart monitor would beep,
but we’re a far cry from heart monitors

Then, “Getting better” began.
The shakes stopped, the fever went down,
color came to his eyes and hands
just in time
with the sun bringing color to the world,
rising again, another rotation around the Earth
and we’re still here, but now with more then a hope.
Luck is seems, the bearer of news good and bad,
wanted to bring us good.

5 days and the F squared sun burn blues got me d o w n.
Eyes wide open, I went and saw…too much.
Peeling red skin, but no lotion will heal these wounds,
to fresh, to bitter, to deep.
Some pretty big question marks have been drawn in the notepad of my mind.
No actions can erase them.
Damn those blues.


I really don’t have much more to say then that. I’m just here now, trying to figure out why government hospitals are so terribly corrupt and lots of other answers to questions that I don’t really want to ask myself.
I never knew that waiting in the hospital was such a horrid task. It doesn’t even matter if you’re in what looks like a WWII field hospital or you’re in the comforts of St .John’s, it is a TAXING job and I applaud, and pity and give nothing but warm and the courage to go on for all of those who ever have, or ever will have to sit and do it. The reality is that it stinks, worse then a Tanzanian man who hasn’t bathed in a week…and that’s basically the most horrible it could get.

In much happier news, aside from illness, dreaming death and constant worry, I am okay. I still love my village, love my life, and if anything feel more and more like I am really just one of the family. It’s funny, I talked a lot about just making a difference to one kid and I got a whole family…! I mean, the rest of the village is a concern too, but I have made my concentration pretty well known and made myself open to everyone, so we will see what comes of it.

I’m bummed out cause I didn’t get to teach the Mamas last week due to a middle of the night village evac with Mama Witi, Olie and Baba Witi, We got in a taxi to town and tried to go to the hospital that my friend Vincent (he’s a doctor from France) works at, but they wouldn’t take him. So we went to the city hospital, which is a joke for SO many reasons, and Vincent met us there. It was his constant showing up to make sure stuff was going on, and my constant presence that got Olie a blood transfusion…after 2 days of waiting…and now Joshua, his twin brother, is sick too, but we don’t think that he needs a transfusion. We think it’s just malaria, so that’s good. As of today they are both doing a bit better, and things are looking up. After 5 days I had to get the hell out of there and come home to help Witi with the Mgahawa and just BE.

Village projects are at a stand still seeing that I am supposed to be working with the SWP volunteers and they have been gone for 2 and a half weeks now…it’s okay though. I have been enjoying my time, but find myself getting very frustrated with the lack of enthusiasm, and the school headmasters efforts to thwart the pen-pals…apparently the two weeks before national exams is when the teachers start teaching, so I look forward to translating responses next week.

Other good news is that I applied to be a member of the PSDN (Peer Support and Diversity Network) for PC Tanzania and I got 1 of the 10 positions open to all 150 volunteers in the country….! I’m REALLY excited and can’t wait for training and to take on this new task. It will be a good way to stay busy, and do what I love to do!! Just PUMPED about it!

So, in sum, life is crazy and kind of hard, but all in all I am good. I have some great friends here who get me through and I have this amazing little Tanzanian family that is just…well, fabulous!

Also, package update! I’m having a crap time with the post office so I am going to start posting again the packages that I get, just so you can keep an eye out if you sent me something. SO, thank you Devon, Danelle (Mama Witi says KAMWENE and loves you!) and Mema/Daddy-O.

Just one more side note, I get the news about life at home and I just want to say that I’m sorry for everyone who is currently laid off. I’m sorry to hear about money problems, worries about keeping houses and cars and making ends meet. It’s very surreal that all of this is going, I can’t really get a grasp on it, and I guess it’s a huge part of the reason I’m just throwing myself full thrust into life here. I hope that you all figure stuff out. Who knows if and when the economy is going to get better. One of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned is that it’s not about worry about tomorrow, it’s about enjoying and getting through the day, if you can do both you have been successful. So, good luck in working it out. If I find the illusive tree of money I will be sure to pick enough of its fruit for everyone.

Love to you all from the bottom of my heart.

Will the Easter Bunny bring my basket to T-Zed?

Memories suffocate my ability to focus on the moment in action. A whiff of nostalgia and I’ve wafted back 8,000 miles and 15 years ago bundling up in fall jackets and hats to pile into the car with Tommy, Mom and Dad and head off to the cider mill on a beautiful late October afternoon. Watching the apple press squeeze the sweet cider out and into confusing machines, eventually making its way into our cups, eating warm doughnuts, watching the water mill, walking in the wet leaves next to the river with the smell of hay and sweets lingering in the air.
Come back, Come back to this moment- Oh yeah, here I am, wiping the sweat off my brow as I pull weeds from my carrot bed in Africa.
I need to be less of a time travele, but I enjoy these vivid recollections of my life. I am learning to enjoy not only the simple pleasures of here and now, but also the sweet taste of the here and nows past. My life is rich and good and I am nothing but grateful for every memory, each experience (good or bad) that has brought me to this present understanding, It feels so free to live knowing you know nothing and everything you really need is locked close to your heart (ok, with the exception of water which is usually available somewhere…)
I get lost in my recollections of the past, I always make then sweeten then how it really happened but I don’t mind because how I decide to remember an experience is how it really happened according to me. I get lot in dreams for the future and force myself back to the Earth, where I’m presently losing myself in the milky cover of stars and the piercing, ever waxing and waning, luminescent moon.
Yeah man, it feels good.

BUT, I’m sure that you are much less interested in my state of mind and much more intrigued by my current state of being (assuming that being is doing)\
Well, life here is good. My work is what I choose and that’s almost more taxing then having it chosen for you. The mgahawa is going well. I made French Toast the other day and it wasn’t too scary for the Tanzanians to risk it and test it out. Once we get cinnamon and vanilla for the mgawawa I think it will always be on the menu because everyone loved it. Haha…and the cultural exhange grows!
Pen-pals are really fun and the kids LOVE it, but they had big exams for the last week, so the headmaster is cutting my translation time and now its vacation and the process of writing back is in a major hold up.
I had a meeting with the doctor the other day to call him out on his very bad example of “do as I say and not as I do” with the nurse sex scandal. Well, the man cried and asked me what I wanted him to do. I told him to just work it out and figure out want he thinks now that he has ruined his reputation. I was not my place to call the man out, but maybe I made him feel bad enough that it won’t do it again…haha, that’s SERIOUSLY wishful thinking!
The SPW volunteer from England and her Tanzanian counterpart are here now. They are my new neighbors since Anita (the nurse involved in the previously mention scandal with the doctor…) was kicked out of the village. I’m looking forward to working with them, but I am not looking forward to watching REALITY and DISSAPOINTMENT come crashing down on their SAVE IKUNA VILLAGE dreams…They are both really nice people, but man it’s weird speaking English in my village.
I think that my school grant finally went through so look for more on that later….
I’m teaching the Mamas at the dispensary on baby weighing day this month and I am really looking forward to it.


In garden news:
Place is a disaster area!! I’ve got some super sunflowers and corn, but my cucumbers were eaten by bugs. Damn. The onions and eggplant never came up but the squash and pumpkins are making little babies. I’ve got more edible leaves that grew as weeds then I could use in a year and my carrots ROCKS! (It’s only one bed, but 50+ carrots is tons). Beans are ready to be picked and dried and my huge peanut square needs a weeding bonanza #2. The potatoes…well, I have no idea cause I haven’t looked! My peach trees are done for the season, but I may have some bananas soon. All I really have to say about all of it is that I LOVE THE RAINY SEASON!

So, basically I have been in Tanzania for 10 months. Insane! I’ve grown the eyes of adjustment to the following things (which I need to think about in terms of shock value)
 Old ladies with no teeth, moonshine breath and hands as coarse as sand paper
 People picking their nose for extended periods of time
 Mamas in the field with a hoe and a baby tied to their back
 Grandmas wearing dirty old fabric and CONVERSE ALL STARS
 Kids carrying kids/babies on their backs
 People dying
 Having to wait hours for a bus after they tell you it’s leaving right now!
 Busses breaking down
 Being told “you have arrived” hours before you are really there
 Being asked for anything and everything under the sun, to the moon and back
 Being hazed in the fruit/veggie market
 Seeing man urinate anywhere
 Tanzanian’s undying love of Celine Dion
 General apathy towards everything
 Being ripped off
 Being screamed at in Kibena. Yes, I WILL understand if you say it louder…or not.
 Power outages
 Eating enough beans and rice to bore a Mexican
 Being gawked at when I do physical labor
 Meeting people who don’t know where Michigan is…what egocentric lives we live!


OKAY! That’s good for now. I’m off to work it out, share the love and do something really really important like eat some M & Ms. Haha, I miss and love you all.

HAPPY EASTER!!!!!!!!! Sending big love from this crazy world.

Sleeping through my waking life...

Moving within the shadows of myself.
Tracing the walkway back through the sticky mud
(the kind that sucks your shoes off your feet)
the ponds lie still and tall grasses sing frog songs.
I spot my reflection,
blue gray in the colorless early morning world.
Out of place, even at the break of dawn.
My comrade, a young boy with a sore tooth,
makes not a sound as we march through sunrise,
and into the foggy morning mist.
My thoughts skip puddles like stones,
skimming half a dozen spots for a brief instant,
then falling into the depths.

Attempts at conversation are lost,
either in translation or the groggy morning.
One can never know.
We move through our village,
passing the mud houses already awake,
brimming with smokes from breakfast fires,
and the constant swish swish of sweeping dirt.
Outside of the village the mist becomes a rain,
the houses become corn fields,
the sound of brooms becomes our own four feet,
making headway to Nyombo.

A man passes on his bicycle,
our eyes meet for the briefest of moments,
shock meets shock, greetings forgotten.
And so we carry on, through the farms,
past the school, eerie in the absence of students,
and into the next village.

Here the breakfast fires have been put out,
the sweeping is done,
the sitting and watching game begins,
And the tremor of my presence,
feels bigger, and tastes more forlorn
in the color filled world, of post dawn light,
as we pass families and strangers.
I wonder if this undertone is felt,
by my escort. Who fits in so nicely,
without this ghost, walking within her shadow,
beside him.

So that’s my attempt at blog poetry. How does it feel? Haha.
On Saturday of last week myself and Oliey headed out of the village via foot at 6am to Nyombo to hitch a different bus then the one that passes through my village. I’ve decided that I want to boycott Sembula Exp. now that we have this new young guy driving and this new door man, and I really don’t like either of them. Tanzanian men are absolutely rotten in every way, and I wish to deal with them as little as humanly possible. Anyway, we left before the sun rose and walked 8k to Nyombo in the rain without an umbrella, got there and waited for a long time and lo n behold, Sembula is the first bus to pass…damn!
We got on it and got to town much later then expected. The reason we went was because I needed to go to the bank and post office and Oliey needed to get a tooth pulled. Luckily, I have adopted my friend Ben’s buddy Huruma who lives in Njombe. I had Huruma take us to where Oliey could get a tooth pulled…however, that was another long walk in the rain. I ended up leaving the boys at the doctors and went to the post office alone while teeth were being pulled. It’s a good thing I went because letters from Elmwood were waiting my arrival! About 2 minutes after leaving the post office I got caught in the POURING rain and was soaked through to my socks, or underwear, which ever way you want to look at this. So, I sat at the Internet place, talking to one of the other volunteers who is in the 60+ range. Her name is Bibi Jan and she’s the bomb. Then the boys showed up, just as wet as me, we all had chai and then Oliey and I had to boogie back to the village before we even had time to think about our crazy day.
About two days later I was laid up with the worst head cold later, and now that I have overdosed on all types of cold medicine and tea and things warm and good, I am feeling much better. Plus, it’s St. Patty’s Day! (Ooooooh time! How you evade me!) And I have my weeks worth of work cut out for me with all of these letters, the mgahawa, a health club, a bunch of drama with my doctor and a nurse doing dirty things and the most exciting news that there is going to be another volunteer in Ikuna. He/she is an SPW volunteer and will be here for 5 months…!?! I have no idea what any of that really means, but it should be another twist to this already outrageous adventure. Haha!

Thursday March 19, 2009

Witi went to the dispensary the other day and Mama Witi and I happened to be leaving the preschool just as she was leaving the dispensary. After Witi finished up at the dispensary (she went into the office alone), the three of us walked back to the mgahawa to do our routine pre-lunch cooking. I got bored with sorting rice so I decided to head home and wash clothes and Witi escorted me for a few minutes. We got to the duke (shop) that she wanted to go to and she pulls me aside and whispers in my ear, “ I have a present in my belly.” I think my sigh could have knocked Mike Tyson out of the ring because she just looked at me and asked if I was mad. I just had to laugh cause here is Witi, possible ex-prostitute, 20 years old, running a Tanzanian Village doughnut business with no husband, no grasp on reality (the girl spends at least 30 minutes of each day looking at herself in the full length mirror dancing) who is about to be one of the thousands of Tanzanian women getting ready to bring a baby into this crazy world…yes, just what we all need, more children. Haha. Oh man. All I can do is laugh and kick myself in the ass for not giving her more serious lectures on family planning…as if that would have been useful. She is happy as a clam. Seriously beaming with pride over this unborn child. Ohhhhh, so where does this leave me? Hm, well seeing that I spend basically all of my time with her or her mom I will probably start lecturing her on pre-natal care and see how all of that goes! The exciting part is that I will be here long enough to watch her stomach swell with life and see this baby born, hell maybe even take its first steps…dude, I am here for a long time! She says that she is due in November but I have a feeling that this is going to be a September birth- if so, it’s likely that the baby is not actually a “present” from her boyfriend/ possible soon to be husband??....ohhhh man.
Aside from that I’m in town cause I used the wrong format to do my grant…or something like that…so I wanted to come in and fix it up ASAP and get this thing off my lap. I’m not really here to gain perspective in grant writing. I went to the bank today and was almost slapped a very obese woman who was about the 8th person to cut in front of me, then I remembered that I know a secret language called English, so I swore under my breath and apparently she understands English too cause I was faced down with the most sinister evil eye I’ve ever encountered. Note to self: must stop assuming things.
Anyway, I’ll just wrap this up for now. I’m sure there will be lots to post next week after I meet the new mzungu of Ikuna…I have a feeling that things are only starting to get out of control.
Peace, love and all things eluding to Spring!