One of my college professors brought it to my attention that I should probably put up a link to the NGO that is funding this project for any of you who would like to donate. The NGO is called Run for Africa and you can donate at their site which is www.runforafrica.org
For those of you who are more interested in education and social justice issues another great NGO is It's My World which was started by two fellow Peace Corps volunteers and myself. It's main purpose is to make sure Tanzanian students have access to the natural wonders that all the tourists come here to see like the Serengeti and Kilimanjaro. We fund class trips to Kilimanjaro (we plan on expanding) with the goal being to integrate the experience into the classroom, increase interest in basic sciences, and build self esteem within the students. You can donate at our site which is the following: www.itsmyworld.org
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Fear traffic not Ebola
Mpumbavu means fool or idiot in Swahili. It isn't used very often as it is very rude but I met one last week. To be more accurate one drove me home at 11 P.M. along with 4 other current volunteers. To be even more accurate one drove me and four current volunteers off the road at 11 P.M. on Wednesday. We are all fine and it was completely ridiculous so I'm going to rant a bit about it. So first the setting.
The road to where I am currently (an area known as seed farm) is paved the entire way but has a massive hill on it, a couple decent curves, and is lined on both sides by drainage ditches roughly 2.5 to 3 feet deep. In other words it is a very good road and there is NO EXCUSE FOR DRIVING OFF OF IT!! Hell Tanzanians tend to drive in the middle of all roads anyway since there is so little traffic outside of the cities so its not that hard to stay ON THE ROAD. It's not rocket science. You have a gas peddle, a brake, and maybe a clutch- bas (that's it). Stay on the paved area between the two ditches, roughly on the left side, and you are good to go. The problem is that I doubt most taxi drivers actually have licenses, the cars are often in less than optimal condition (I've watched the road go by between my legs once), and it was 11 PM so this idiot may have been drunk.
So as I said there were 5 of us. Since I was here they have put volunteers up in the mountains outside of a small town named Mbinga and put one back at a small school called Namebango along with volunteers near Songea. All of the sites outside of Songea are totally in the middle of no where. The guys up in the mountains outside of Mbinga don't even have cell coverage (this will probably come as a surprise to all non-volunteers reading this but Tanzania actually has pretty decent cell coverage). Their sites are supposed to be gorgeous but with nothing to do so two of them had escaped for a bit to the bustling metropolis that is Songea and then there was Ariel (the guy at my old site), and Matao (mat) who is over at Peramiho. They are all Education volunteers and interesting guys. For RPCVs reading this, one of the mountain crew was a third year with a rocking Grisly Adams beard that I think could go toe to toe with Andy's. For future reference. None these guys are small. Minus Matao they are all around 5'10"+ and of your average athletic build so around 170-180 pounds. Matao was only a little taller than me but probably in the same weight range as he has fairly broad shoulders. For those of you reading this who have never met me I'm fairly hobbit like. I'm a 5'7", pale, and kinda "stumpy" in my overall build. So four of us cram into the back of this taxi with the last guy in the front and its tight. As in clown car tight. As we are going home, all of a 5-10 minute drive, we are all talking and not really paying attention to the road when we get to the top of the main hill. Our driver is flying along as though he is in the indie 500, even going so far as to try and "beat the turn". None of us really paid any attention as this as it is all standard fair here on paved roads since Tanzanians love to drive fast. Just after the top of the hill though we all notice at the same time that this idiot is WAY to close to the edge of the road and his trajectory is not so much going to "beat the turn" and he is coasting. No brake. I'll say that again. No brake despite the fact that anybody can see that we have no chance in hell of coasting around this turn. It's strange what goes through your mind when you're in a bad situation. I remember my sister saying that all she could think of was the black knight from monty python's Search for the Holy Grail in the initial moment she came across a car accident where the driver had lost his arm below the elbow and he was hemorrhaging blood all over the accident site as she tried to get access to him (he lived...go EMT training). My brain all of a sudden became British. I have no idea why as I can't even do a good British accent but that's what happened. I just sat there, stunned, thinking in my bad British accent "Surely he'll use the brake any moment now!" About a half second after the exclamation point my side of the car fell 2-3 feet into the drainage ditch at probably 40+ miles an hour and I thought for a second that we were going to flip. We didn't and for about a quarter of a second I was happy. After that initial moment of bliss when I new I wasn't about to die or get horribly maimed I was repeatedly crushed by roughly 400+ pounds of manflesh as we bounced along half in and half out of the ditch for the next 50 feet (the idiot still hadn't hit the break). Maybe his brakes were shot. I don't know or care as being crushed repeatedly by 400+ pounds of manflesh in roughly about as much fun as it sounds like it is. My ribs basically were turned into a spring for everybody else which hurt and Ariel's elbow (I think) hit me hard enough over the left kidney to bother me the next day. Ariel smashed his face on my shoulder which he was less than happy about and everybody else seemed to escape unscathed. When the car finally stopped thanks to the laws of friction our "driver" literally ran away without turning the car off. This is not as strange as it may sound. In Tanzania, if you hit someone in a car accident and stop to help you will be pulled out of your car and beaten to death on the spot. Peace Corps actually warned us about this in training. So this guy was probably beyond terrified that we were about to kill him and Tanzanians usually rent a car for the night to drive so what was left of the taxi wasn't his anyway. So jackass McGee is nowhere to be seen and 5 extremely angry and slightly paranoid white people are milling around like chickens with their heads cut off outside of a beat up taxi half in a ditch with a tail light hanging behind it like a little car tail. Matao, who doesn't realize that jackass has already run off is politely, but very firmly, requesting in swahili "FUNGUA BOOTI" (open the trunk). I am swearing up a storm mostly in English but with the occasional Mjinga (another word for idiot but not as bad) thrown in. Ariel is swearing up a storm as well screaming about his face. Grisly Adams is just chillin as he has been the whole night and as would be expected of someone who had grown a beard with such presence. The guy in the front was apparently scanning the area for thieves as he thought the guy actually planned this and that we were about to get jumped by people hiding in the bushes. At this point my medical "training" kicks in. The only thing that will make you more paranoid than Peace corps is medical school. You get to study all the various things that can go wrong with your body in excruciating detail for 4 years. The funnest ones are the ones that aren't symptomatic until to late like colan cancer or car accident injuries where you damage some internal organ and its bleeding but you are to hopped up on adrenaline to know it (plus lots of internal organs don't have nervous innervation for typical pain sensation).
Thankfully I was to angry for my brain to get to far. I did a brief "everything working ok?" check, decided I'd check and see if blood came out of anywhere it wasn't supposed to next time I went to the bathroom, and proceeded to start cursing at the darkness (I knew the driver was out there somewhere) and helping the others look for a way to open the trunk since are stuff was in there. The thing is cars from Tanzania all have interesting histories. You never know where they came from as most are refurbished models that are resold here so they come in configurations from all over the world and they have often been "modified" by mechanics here when some part or other breaks and needs to be replaced. So three of us start combing the car while Grisly Adams tried to simply peal back the trunk hood. He actually started making progress and I figured the lock might be busted up, plus I was angry and felt like taking it out on something, so I decided to help him out. Jumping up on the back bumper I proceeded to get a grip on the lip of the trunk and pull up with everything I could muster. It was extremely therapeutic. Ridiculous looking as my face flushed beat red and I made various groaning noises while the trunk didn't budge an inch but none the less therapeutic. Someone finally found the realise and that was that. The whole thing ended completely anticlimatically with us throwing his keys into teh bushes and walking teh rest of the way home in the dark. Ariel and I were a bit sore the next day and I was kinda dizzy that night (must have hit my head harder than I thought) but minus a sore back the next day that is gone now none the worse for wear. Took the next day off anyway just to make sure and since then I've been heading out to take pictures of the wells every day without any trouble. Next entry I'll try to actually try to talk about the wells which are being built even as I write this.
The road to where I am currently (an area known as seed farm) is paved the entire way but has a massive hill on it, a couple decent curves, and is lined on both sides by drainage ditches roughly 2.5 to 3 feet deep. In other words it is a very good road and there is NO EXCUSE FOR DRIVING OFF OF IT!! Hell Tanzanians tend to drive in the middle of all roads anyway since there is so little traffic outside of the cities so its not that hard to stay ON THE ROAD. It's not rocket science. You have a gas peddle, a brake, and maybe a clutch- bas (that's it). Stay on the paved area between the two ditches, roughly on the left side, and you are good to go. The problem is that I doubt most taxi drivers actually have licenses, the cars are often in less than optimal condition (I've watched the road go by between my legs once), and it was 11 PM so this idiot may have been drunk.
So as I said there were 5 of us. Since I was here they have put volunteers up in the mountains outside of a small town named Mbinga and put one back at a small school called Namebango along with volunteers near Songea. All of the sites outside of Songea are totally in the middle of no where. The guys up in the mountains outside of Mbinga don't even have cell coverage (this will probably come as a surprise to all non-volunteers reading this but Tanzania actually has pretty decent cell coverage). Their sites are supposed to be gorgeous but with nothing to do so two of them had escaped for a bit to the bustling metropolis that is Songea and then there was Ariel (the guy at my old site), and Matao (mat) who is over at Peramiho. They are all Education volunteers and interesting guys. For RPCVs reading this, one of the mountain crew was a third year with a rocking Grisly Adams beard that I think could go toe to toe with Andy's. For future reference. None these guys are small. Minus Matao they are all around 5'10"+ and of your average athletic build so around 170-180 pounds. Matao was only a little taller than me but probably in the same weight range as he has fairly broad shoulders. For those of you reading this who have never met me I'm fairly hobbit like. I'm a 5'7", pale, and kinda "stumpy" in my overall build. So four of us cram into the back of this taxi with the last guy in the front and its tight. As in clown car tight. As we are going home, all of a 5-10 minute drive, we are all talking and not really paying attention to the road when we get to the top of the main hill. Our driver is flying along as though he is in the indie 500, even going so far as to try and "beat the turn". None of us really paid any attention as this as it is all standard fair here on paved roads since Tanzanians love to drive fast. Just after the top of the hill though we all notice at the same time that this idiot is WAY to close to the edge of the road and his trajectory is not so much going to "beat the turn" and he is coasting. No brake. I'll say that again. No brake despite the fact that anybody can see that we have no chance in hell of coasting around this turn. It's strange what goes through your mind when you're in a bad situation. I remember my sister saying that all she could think of was the black knight from monty python's Search for the Holy Grail in the initial moment she came across a car accident where the driver had lost his arm below the elbow and he was hemorrhaging blood all over the accident site as she tried to get access to him (he lived...go EMT training). My brain all of a sudden became British. I have no idea why as I can't even do a good British accent but that's what happened. I just sat there, stunned, thinking in my bad British accent "Surely he'll use the brake any moment now!" About a half second after the exclamation point my side of the car fell 2-3 feet into the drainage ditch at probably 40+ miles an hour and I thought for a second that we were going to flip. We didn't and for about a quarter of a second I was happy. After that initial moment of bliss when I new I wasn't about to die or get horribly maimed I was repeatedly crushed by roughly 400+ pounds of manflesh as we bounced along half in and half out of the ditch for the next 50 feet (the idiot still hadn't hit the break). Maybe his brakes were shot. I don't know or care as being crushed repeatedly by 400+ pounds of manflesh in roughly about as much fun as it sounds like it is. My ribs basically were turned into a spring for everybody else which hurt and Ariel's elbow (I think) hit me hard enough over the left kidney to bother me the next day. Ariel smashed his face on my shoulder which he was less than happy about and everybody else seemed to escape unscathed. When the car finally stopped thanks to the laws of friction our "driver" literally ran away without turning the car off. This is not as strange as it may sound. In Tanzania, if you hit someone in a car accident and stop to help you will be pulled out of your car and beaten to death on the spot. Peace Corps actually warned us about this in training. So this guy was probably beyond terrified that we were about to kill him and Tanzanians usually rent a car for the night to drive so what was left of the taxi wasn't his anyway. So jackass McGee is nowhere to be seen and 5 extremely angry and slightly paranoid white people are milling around like chickens with their heads cut off outside of a beat up taxi half in a ditch with a tail light hanging behind it like a little car tail. Matao, who doesn't realize that jackass has already run off is politely, but very firmly, requesting in swahili "FUNGUA BOOTI" (open the trunk). I am swearing up a storm mostly in English but with the occasional Mjinga (another word for idiot but not as bad) thrown in. Ariel is swearing up a storm as well screaming about his face. Grisly Adams is just chillin as he has been the whole night and as would be expected of someone who had grown a beard with such presence. The guy in the front was apparently scanning the area for thieves as he thought the guy actually planned this and that we were about to get jumped by people hiding in the bushes. At this point my medical "training" kicks in. The only thing that will make you more paranoid than Peace corps is medical school. You get to study all the various things that can go wrong with your body in excruciating detail for 4 years. The funnest ones are the ones that aren't symptomatic until to late like colan cancer or car accident injuries where you damage some internal organ and its bleeding but you are to hopped up on adrenaline to know it (plus lots of internal organs don't have nervous innervation for typical pain sensation).
Thankfully I was to angry for my brain to get to far. I did a brief "everything working ok?" check, decided I'd check and see if blood came out of anywhere it wasn't supposed to next time I went to the bathroom, and proceeded to start cursing at the darkness (I knew the driver was out there somewhere) and helping the others look for a way to open the trunk since are stuff was in there. The thing is cars from Tanzania all have interesting histories. You never know where they came from as most are refurbished models that are resold here so they come in configurations from all over the world and they have often been "modified" by mechanics here when some part or other breaks and needs to be replaced. So three of us start combing the car while Grisly Adams tried to simply peal back the trunk hood. He actually started making progress and I figured the lock might be busted up, plus I was angry and felt like taking it out on something, so I decided to help him out. Jumping up on the back bumper I proceeded to get a grip on the lip of the trunk and pull up with everything I could muster. It was extremely therapeutic. Ridiculous looking as my face flushed beat red and I made various groaning noises while the trunk didn't budge an inch but none the less therapeutic. Someone finally found the realise and that was that. The whole thing ended completely anticlimatically with us throwing his keys into teh bushes and walking teh rest of the way home in the dark. Ariel and I were a bit sore the next day and I was kinda dizzy that night (must have hit my head harder than I thought) but minus a sore back the next day that is gone now none the worse for wear. Took the next day off anyway just to make sure and since then I've been heading out to take pictures of the wells every day without any trouble. Next entry I'll try to actually try to talk about the wells which are being built even as I write this.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Songea is a beautiful place of rolling hills and occasional small mountains. Just a few miles outside of town the land becomes mostly savanna with thin patches of forest covering the mountains and small villages everywhere. These villages are mostly connected by village paths which are little more than hiking/mountain biking paths that criss cross the hills and are constantly intersecting with each other making a sort of rust colored web. Walking or biking on them is a truly unique experience, especially for a westerner, as these paths at times will literally pass within a foot of people's houses and cut right through people's farms. As a rule of thumb for every ten minutes I bike on one of these paths I greet around 10-15 people as you are constantly passing people sitting in front of their houses cooking, sewing, fixing bikes, drinking, or just gossiping and it's considered a bit rude to pass people, even ones you don't know, without at least saying hello as you fly by on the bike. This is a huge advantage over actually walking as when walking you'll have to refuse coming into eat, have a drink, or food on a fairly regular basis. Just as an example I stopped to speak with a friend of mine from when I was a Peace Corps volunteer and like 6 other people came over. I tossed out one of the two greeting I know in the tribal language here to an old man and he answered me, shook my hand, and said "Please wait here" and wandered off without further explanation. Even the Tanzanian I was biking with at the time had no clue what was going on so we just sort of shrugged and sat there waiting for him to return. After about 5 minutes he came back with two eggs and said "You know tukuoni (the greeting I had said). Please take these." and handed me the eggs. That same day we had to refuse lunch and promise to eat with them another day twice as we were behind schedule on surveying. It isn't a hard and fast rule that you MUST greet everyone you pass or they will hate you or anything but when you are walking within feet of people who are sitting on the doorstep of their house even in the US you would at least have to throw out a head nod, wave, or something so the same rule applies here just a little stronger and you are doing the above every 2-3 minutes if not more often instead of driving by in a car with the house hundreds of feet away and the people who live there inside it watching TV. It's just very different and depending on what mood your in is amazing or very stressful as sometimes your not really all that interested in a cross cultural experience and just want to get your work done for the day or enjoy the beautiful scenery and get lost in your own thoughts as you bike along. Since I haven't been here for almost four years I was thankfully in the mood for a solid cross cultural experience both times I went out with Joseph Mbawala (the well expert we're working with) and it was an amazing experience. It was like Peace Corps light. I already speak the language to a tolerable level, I already know more or less what I'm doing culturally, funding is already secured, and everyone I'm working with at the NGO has already done this twice with me and once with the PCV who replaced me so we are all on the ball and know our roles. All I had to do was cruise along on my bike with Joseph and take "before" pictures of all the sites and occasionally repeat what Joseph had already said concerning the fact that we will only come once with the lorry so it is very important that everything that needs to be moved to the well site be ready on that day and that it be somewhere where the truck can get to it. As you'll find out in a later entry that last requirement is really more pleading than a real request. Wandering around villages is always fun as you never really know what is going to happen but it is far more special in my mind when you can do that within a context. Having actual work to do gives you a reasonable answer when people ask you what you are doing there (out of curiosity not hostility) and automatically gives you a reference point for interacting with people which I love since I'm not very good at "how is the weather" types of conversations. As much fun as the Serengeti safari was I went on when I first got here (we saw a leopard from like 4 feet away and our truck was literally attacked by a heartabeast both of which are unheard of events) I think this was more fun.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Coming home isn't always all that much fun
Today I was going to write about biking around the villages and surveying all the proposed well sites. It was a good time but it has to wait. A few of my friends from the HIV drama group I worked with when I used to live here tracked me down last night. It was Agesh and Eric. When I first lived here I used to do HIV work with the drama group 3 days a week for about 2 hours each meeting and most of the Swahili I learned was thanks to that group (which is why I know so many dirty words in the language =) ). I was really excited to see them as I had planned on going down to where they used to hang out today anyway to say hello and find out how everyone is doing. The answer turned out to be not so well. Three people from the group I knew, one of them being someone I would call a friend, have died since I left from HIV. Another one I was pretty close with before I left I haven't seen yet as she is in Njombe right now but I've heard she is kinda sick which means I'll probably get more bad news in the next two years if not this year and two more I knew reasonably well are also getting sick off and on. None of them is much past 35 and most are probably closer to 30 than 35. I didn't sleep well at all last night thinking about all of it. Reading about high risk groups, infection rates, and death rates turns out to be way different from excitedly asking what your friend is up to and hearing "Amefariki" (he/she died) or "Anaumwa kidogo siku hizi" (he/she is a bit sick these days). I'm glad I know now but....it is an experience I could have done without. It was kinda like getting punched inthe stomach over and over. I did go down today to see the ones who are still living in Songea (some have moved to Njombe and Dar) which was fun. Everyone was really excited to see me and they are still trying to do HIV education though the group has splintered into two or three thanks to some internal drama I haven't sorted out yet and some embezzling I think. It was great seeing all of them and I'm sure I'll head over there again but it still hurts knowing what's happening. I guess that's all I have to say today.
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