Excited to go home but so sad to leave...

Its been an incredible 105 days (almost 106) in Tanzania. Its unreal that I'm leaving to go back to the U.S. tomorrow. So much has happened and I'v had so many incredible experiences and memories. Time has FLOWN by and every-time i look back through my journal or blog posts Im surprised that time has gone by this fast and the amount of crazy things we got to do. I literally still remember getting off the plane like it was last week. Everything from totally immersing ourselves into the culture,  seeing wild animals traipse through our campsite, being stuffed into dola dolas that are already filled to the brim, to drinking blood and everything in between I'v had the time of my life. I know thats a cheesy thing to say but now as I'm facing going home its all that really comes to mind. I've learend more this semester than I ever have before and that's because, without grades, we were forced to really delve into what we thought about issues or things going on here, rather than just write a paper on what other people say. Im super excited to get home and see family and friends and of course cuddle with Mod and eat cereal but at the same time i DON'T want to leave. I'v cried already and i know the waterworks are coming tomorrow. Even listening to Tanzanian music and having so many memories of dancing to it with friends pop up, is making it really hard to say goodbye to Tanzania. There were definitely some rough parts of this trip but even those I'm glad I had. The biggest struggle I had here was the constant divide between Tanzanians and us because of our skin color. By the end we had meshed into the culture so well that I feel comfortable doing anything or going anywhere. I don't feel like the freshman on the first week of class with wide eyes and constantly nervous about fitting it. But even things like being a Mzungu which was really hard for me I think helped me really grow and realize the differences of power between people based on superficial things and how even skin color can automatically determine that. Even in Mazumbai where it didnt' bother me as much I was just so different from them that they were either really excited or really scared of me ( some of the kids actually were terrified of me). I was a celebrity for doing absolutely nothing and I hated it.

I'm not going to lie, I'm a little scared in going back home. Everything there is now so knew and everything is going to be overwhelming. Even being able to understand EVERYTHING that people are saying is going to be so much constant information that we can take in. The vast amount of choices I'll have of food, clothes, places to go, and other things like that is going to be overwhelming. It's a hard thing to explain but trying to give this trip justice is impossible. I can't even put it into words myself. I'v adopted so much of this culture and find myself doing things subconsciously now that going back is going to be the exception not the norm. I remember leaving for Tanzania and being a little scared and nervous because I had no idea what to expect and now going home although not as strong I have some of those same feelings.

I don't want to go home but at the same time can't wait. I have such strong conflicting emotions that its hard to know what to feel. Saying goodbye has been hard and will only get harder when I have to say goodbye to the final groups of friends, Baba Jack and the Country but at  the end of the day I'm lucky to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.

A compilation of things that have become normal

40 normal daily things that are weird or crazy in the U.S.

1. Bed bugs

2. Two lane roads that are actually 5

3. Safari cars in ditches

4. Giraffes on the side of the highway

5. Running from gunshots

6. Not being able to drink from the tap

7. Constant noise “if you can’t get to sleep your not tired enough”

8 Dola Dolas “you can always fit 2 more”

9. $1.50 beers that are twice the size

10. Hard alcohol that comes in plastic packages.

11. Huge  human drawn carts full of chickens

12. People pushing lawn mowers down the middle of the road

13. Goats and other animals in public transportation

14. Cold showers

15. Killing your food

16. Food that runs out of the restaurant. That’s how they know when to close

17. If a duka or restaurant doesn't have change you either don't get it or they tell you to come back later. 

18. Warm beer

19. Lions and hyenas in campsites

20. Staring is ok.

21. Marriage proposals everyday (some by married men)

22. Bumpy ass roads

23. Cars breaking down and the owners fixing them on the side of the road (if it’s a dola dola you wait until its fixed)

24. Sightings of albinos (almost everyday)

25. Daily power outages ( I was on a treadmill and almost fell overtop of it when the power suddenly went out)

26. lack of electricity and if you don’t have it steal it from your neighbor by throwing a wire onto the other wire

27. People calling me “mzungu” aka white person

28. Women who are most of the time bigger than men

29. seeing dead dogs almost daily off the sides of the roads or sidewalks

30. half built buildings everywhere.

31. Lack of traffic laws in general

32. Government corruption

33. bargaining for everything (fruit, clothes, bus tickets, jewelry, anything at any sort of market, cab rides). 

34. no waste management. Trash is piled in a corner and burned and there is no recycling

35. You can’t pet dogs :(

36. if it rains everything’s at a standstill

37. No laundry machines in the entire country

38. Banks only give 10,000 bills. They don’t give you small change no matter how hard you beg.

39. Meals cost $1.50.

40.  If you have writing on your shirt people passing you read it aloud to you 

Music is playing, decorations are up, cheer is in the air, it must be mango season!

Today I went to the sokoni and bought two HUGE mangos for about a dollar. They were the biggest mangos I have ever seen in my life and weighed about a pound and a half each. I cut into the first one and it was so juicy it was dripping everywhere and puddled on the table. My mouth was watering as I cut it up but the first bite was full of the best tasting mango I have ever tasted in my entire life. I know thats a big statement to make but its true. Biggest, juiciest, sweetest, most fulfilling mango ever.  Best tasting mango I have ever tasted and it only cost me 50 cents. Fall and summer are no longer my favorite seasons but replaced by mango season.

A few pictures from the last 3 weeks

 Jungle gym. 

drive up to Mazumbai in the back up a pickup truck. bring the headless squirming chicken back to the chicken

dinosaur tree. 

Texas Hold 'em getting intense. 

chicken squirming and squawking after it was beheaded 

swinging vine. 

 Wood fueled stove we cooked on

When boys don't have football to watch...

early in the day of the saturday market

 stuffed chickens with potatoes, veggies and wine around them. 

 We cooked almost the whole meal. 

One of the best thanksgivings I'v ever had. 

I walk 10 miles to work everyday

Language is a funny thing. It can bring people together, separate them, alienate people or make them feel welcomed and at home. When people know English here and aren’t just asking me for money it makes me feel an instant connection with them. It’s the same thing when I speak Kiswahili. Peoples faces light up and they instantly have more respect for me and are super excited. There are also times that because I don’t know kisambaa and not a lot of Kiswahili I feel totally alienated and made to feel stupid and sort of unwelcomed. This happens mostly in interviews but when anybody laughs during an interview or even greetings I always get the feeling its about me but have no way of knowing. I’m kept in the dark about so many things because I don’t know the language. Language shapes cultures and can define who a person is based on how they use it. Based on tone and the words I do know in kiswahli I can tell what guys im interviewing (or are around during interviews) are assholes and whose not.

         

Not totally related to language but on the same sort of topic in coming here I knew I would be strange to the people here and their culture would be strange to me but even after 3 months I still feel so alienated and celebrity like—maybe even more than before. I thought I would get used to the culture and they would get used to me and we would sort of mesh but that hasn’t happened. Even into the second week all the kids stare at me chanting and cheering “mzungu! Mzungu! Mzungu!”. Because of how much aid and projects white people fund I feel like Mzungus to them mean money and when they see me that’s all they think. It gets so hard and tiring to be a celebrity here not for my accomplishments but because of my skin color, the money my skin represents and the fact that they hardly ever see white people up here (although it bothers me way more in Arusha where they see white people everyday). I guess its just really hitting me that no matter what I do or say I will always be different and strange to them. I will never be able to mesh with their culture because  the color of my skin instantly separates me. It’s a hard thing to come to grips with and accept. Im so tried of ALWAYS being the different one.

Oh also I measured it I power walk 4.6 miles to and from Mazumbai and then walk probably an extra mile around Mgwashi everyday for work. 

A Tanzanian Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was a little different than my usual thanksgiving but nonetheless it was one of the best I’ve ever had. So many of my friends here have way different thanksgiving traditions so it was awesome to come together and work out a thanksgiving that we could realistically do in Tanzania. The day started out with a regular day of work but around 3 we broke out the wine and headed toward the kitchen to start peeling the buckets of potatoes and sweet potatoes.

 Earlier that week we had requested two chickens but because we hadn’t seen or heard them all week we assumed they were dead. We had put the potatoes on the stove and we were ready to deal with the chicken and when we asked for them Richard one of the cooks took me back and there were two chickens… alive as ever. I hate birds and I think their disgusting but as our forester was cutting the head off the first one I tried to comfort the chicken I was holding and shield its eyes from its fate. A forester killed the first chicken because none of us knew how but the vegan of the group killed the second chicken. This was Gregs first chicken kill ever and right after the head had been cut the beak started moving and the body convulsing as it squawked and  actually made sound. It was the craziest most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen to see the head detached from the body yet still squawking and making sounds.

After watching the boys stick fight instead of watching football the rest of the day was spent by me and my friends Maggie and Will making dinner. We made mashed potatoes and mashed sweet potatoes, Mchicha (African spinach with grated carrots and garlic), sautéed veggies, fruit salad, stuffing, and a doughnut thing filled with jelly for dessert. For the chicken I lathered it in Blue band (a palm oil based margarine), added some seasonings stuffed it with veggies and potatoes and put wine all over it. Not to brag or anything but the chicken was so moist and the best chicken I’ve ever eaten. The meal was one of the best and it was even better because we shared it with the cooks and our favorite forester/ healer. Two crates of beer and a lot of wine were bought and shared and we spent the night eating, drinking, talking Swahili and celebrating everything we were thankful for. We started the meal off with what we were thankful for and many cheers and bottle clanking followed. We didin’t know what the word for thankful for so we said “mimi ni ashe kwa” I am thankyou for, and everybody joined in, in this tradition. It was so cool to share this holiday with Tanzanians and come together to fix a meal that although not your traditional thanksgiving meal was pretty darn close. Killing chickens, cooking up a storm and having so many different people with different traditions come together turned into a thanksgiving I will never forget. 

Where bananas cost nothing

ISP has been pretty darn good.  The bus trip up here was pretty uneventful except for the fact that me and Maggie were handed a baby during one of the little rest stops when the mom had to go to the bathroom or something like that. Maggie who was on the outside looked up at the mom smiled and then the mom smiled back and just handed Maggie her baby and left for about 10 minutes. The handing off of babies isn’t anything new to the bus system but it was awesome that she trusted some Mzungu rather than another mama with her baby. Usually when mammas get on and they don’t have a seat they hand their babies off to other random women who will hold them for sometimes hours. Once off the bus we all piled into a pickup truck with all of our stuff. There were three people crammed into the front and then 7 of us in the back with all of our crap. We cracked open some beers and enjoyed the ride and when it started to pour we just embraced it and had a blast.

In working with the farmers I have gotten some really good interviews and soil samples. It’s a pretty bad situation for these farmers because they don’t have much land, fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and seeds are extremely expensive, especially in the last 3 years, and there are lots of problems with erosion and prices at the market are never what they would like them to be. A lonnngg time ago they used to practice this type of farming called shifting cultivation in which they would clear part of the forest farm on it for a season then switch to another plot so the forest could regenerate. In this way there was enough nutrients and a lack of erosion so they didn’t run into any of these problems. Then around the late 19^th century the Germans came and started to fuck everything up. They introduced tea and coffee but on plantations and as the population got bigger and they were faced with famine they started gathering in bigger settlements with permanent farms close and far away. They then started farming there but had to start using nutrient supplements in the form of cow poop (they still use that now because they can’t afford fertilizers). Another factor to is when farm owners pass their farms down to their kids they split the land evenly between the sons so generation after generation the land they have gets smaller and smaller so they have to farm ever season and as intensely as possible to get enough harvest. Its pretty much a vicious cycle of not having enough money to keep their crop voluptuous and healthy so then they can’t sell it for as much then they don’t has as much money to put back into their crop.

Other than ISP stuff Mazumbia is like a vacation. Even everyday after work we lie out on the “beach” (the porch and lawn) and read books, do stuff with our data, play Frisbee and can even go on runs and then after dinner we always watch movies ( I have yet to stay awake through one). This weekend we walked to Mgwashi for market day and even though it was sunny when we left it started about 30 minutes in it started DOWNPOURING for the rest of the 1.5 hours. Just walking in the rain and being totally fine with it was so much fun and as we passed all the women heading to the market they were all smiling and laughing at us and with us. The market was filled with people from all the surrounding villages selling their crops for dirt cheap. I got 4 small bananas for 100 shillings whereas in arusha I would pay about 1000 for 8. On Sunday I went to the “dinosaur” which is this huge tree with huge buttresses with a few friends. After climbing around on the buttresses we found a vine that was kind of like a swing and played on it for hours. This little area of forest was our playground and I felt like a little kid exploring a new jungle gym (literally and figuratively). Every night this weekend we have played poker and I have a new found talent. I have never been a good liar but deal me out a hand in texas holdem and I can lie my way to victory.

Its really crazy to think that in less than three weeks I will be home. So much has happened this semester and I haven’t really had time to reflect on any of it. This whole semester had been a whirlwind of new experiences and new friends and in only a few weeks time it will all be over and I will have to say goodbye to so many cool Tanzanians, Baba jack and a lot of really good friends I’ve made here. Its so bittersweet to be at the end because although in lots of ways im ready to be home in other ways I don’t ever want to leave here. The foods getting old, a few people im really annoyed with and if anybody calls me Mzungu again (except for the kids in Mazumbai, Sagara, and Mgwashi) I might punch somebody. (on a side note in Arusha every time somebody calls me Mzungu ) it takes everything I have not to flip them off. I’ve resorted to death stares, for those of you who know it its also known as the “dragon face”.) But things like how are classes are structured, the new cultures and experiences we constantly have, the majority of people and all of the wildlife, geology and ecology that is around here I will miss like crazy.