The Glass Half Full of Floodwaters

Perspective (n): true understanding of the relative importance of things; 

a sense of proportion.

I realized that, really, when I have talked about what I want to gain from this experience, perspective is the ultimate goal.  I could write post after post about the things I want to learn, the reasons why I came, the challenges I have had so far.  And I have written those posts.  I like those posts and, from what I've heard, so do you.  But, when it comes down to it, all of this can really be summed up as a quest for perspective-- an attempt to gain a true understanding of the relative importance of things.

Most big adventures, I think, are just that.  People putting themselves in a completely different place because they want to see what the world looks like from somewhere new.  I'm certainly not saying you need to jump on a plane and move 8000 miles away for 2 years to gain perspective, because I do firmly believe you gain a bit of perspective with everything you do and everyone you meet.  But if you want a big dose of it all at once, put yourself out of your comfort zone and spend some time with people whose daily reality is different from your own.

This past Saturday, at 8 am, I loaded up on the school bus with five other teachers and 26 of the students in Form Three.  We drove for a little over an hour to get to our destination-- a small village of people who had been displaced by a flood almost 2 years ago.  Still living in what were supposed to be "temporary" shelters, this community of around 200 women, men, and young children welcomed us in.  We gathered together under a long, open sided structure made of wood and corrugated metal.  Laundry hung along lines on one end, children sat around the edges on the ground, spinning bottle caps and chattering quietly.  An older mama in the village began to tell us their story.  Different adults would chime in from time to time-- talking about the many challenges they had faced and answering questions from students.

After our introduction, the girls split up into small groups and went to go help individual families with whatever needed to be done.  They played games with the dozens of kids that were hanging about, washed dishes, talked to the families in their homes, helped work in the garden, and went to fetch water.  I started off going with a few students as I definitely felt like I needed a translator.  But, as I was the only one who had brought a camera, I ended up hustling from group to group snapping pictures.  This was great because I ended up getting to meet a lot of different families, take a lot of pictures, and talk to a lot of the girls about their perspective.

I spent the walk back from getting water talking to an incredibly insightful student who said, "I'm really happy to be doing this.  Some of it reminds me of home, like going to fetch water.  But, really, my life is very good,  Very easy.  You know, we complain about our lives being difficult until we see what real difficulty is."

I'm sure when I look back on my experience here, there will be some moments that really stand out as "defining".  There will be some moments that give me a better sense of proportion than others.  I really do think this trip and, specifically, this conversation will be one of them.

I realize that this was a little more serious (less entertaining) than the usual post, but I had a lot of thoughts on this and felt it was important to share.  I also took around 200 pictures in the 3 hours we spent there and I will be posting some of them to my Facebook, as blogger isn't the most picture-friendly space.  I think some of them turned out pretty well, so take a look if you're interested.

Until next time,

Carolyn

No, This isn't an April Fools Joke.

I feel like I always start these posts off by apologizing about the length of time between posts.  I could give a lot of pretty legitimate excuses for why I dropped off the bloggy map for the last 1.5 months, but instead I will just leave my first ever vlog post here:

It's a little sappy, and for that I will apologize.  But, give me feedback! Let me know if you enjoy this whole vlog thing and maybe I will do another one at some (probably really distant) point in the future.

For now, we're off on Spring Break for the next 2 1/2 weeks.  Although, all of next week we will still be here in Morogoro and I may be FINALLY getting a rain garden project underway (it seems rainy season may have started at long last).  The week after, however, Veronica, Dana, and I will be travelling.  We're going to Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, and ending with a weekend in Kibaha at our Tanzanian Mama's house where I will be painting a mural in her 6-year-old daughter's room.

In other news, my stomach issues are a never-ending battle (just finished another round of anti-parasitics-- thankfully this time they gave me a non-NSAID pain reliever for the accompanying headaches) and it's finally fall here which means rain and "cold".  Cold here, of course, is the sort of warm weather all you on the east coast have been dreaming about for months... but I did actually think about grabbing a sweatshirt this morning.  Which is really saying something coming from someone who has essentially spent the past 4 months continuously sweating.

Apologies in advance for the undoubtedly long wait until the next post, 

Carolyn 

Water You Doing?

You would think I would be done writing about water.  I mean, come on, I have a 50 page thesis paper from my senior capstone project that was all about water.   I then did a group project on the “Great Flood” of 1916 for the same class.  And that same spring got extra credit in one of my classes for going a week without using water for anything but drinking and cooking (I look back and laugh at the fact that a week without a shower seemed like an eternity to me at the time). 

But, actually, when I think about it, it makes sense that I’m not done writing about water—it’s something I’m interested in, access to it is something I see as extremely loaded and problematic, AND it’s a global issue.  In short, I think I could write about water for the rest of my life and probably never really run out of things to talk about and perspectives to approach it from.

The issue of access is way more evident here, as I talked about in my post a few months ago about bucket showers and boiling all our drinking water.  At home, we turn on the faucet and water comes out 99% of the time.  Here, we turn on the faucet and water comes out most of the time. And, honestly, we're incredibly spoiled.  Most of the students here come from homes where they have to walk (sometimes for miles) to get access to any water at all.

It’s not that bad when we run out of water.  It’s usually only until the next morning, and most of the time I just go “meh, I’ll just shower tomorrow.”  What was (debatably) worse was the new problem we were having for the last two weeks of January.  In those few glorious weeks, turning on the faucet was like playing a game of Russian Roulette.  In this simile, the role of the gun was played by the tap and the role of the bullet was played by tadpoles.

One of the first "friends" that came out of our tap.

To make a long and kind of gross story short, I all of our little friends grew up into frogs over the past few weeks because we've been tadpole free for  15 10  a number of days now.  Realizing now that I don’t know the exact number is sort of concerning, but I know it’s been a while.  Mostly because I have become less anal about checking my bucket every time I do laundry or shower.  Now that I think about it, maybe I should be more careful… maybe they’re just trying to lull me into a false sense of security… but it’s probably fine.

I also want to talk about water because I started teaching environment and science club every Monday with Veronica.  Our first lesson was on—you guessed it—WATER!  Well, actually it was technically on diffusion, but we related it to water pollution.  The girls in the club are mostly Form 1 (the preform girls that I taught last year) and standard 7, so we’re just trying to do pretty basic stuff, introduce them to concepts, and get them more interested in the sciences.  As most kids do, they LOVE experiments, so they were totally excited about the demonstration part of the lesson.  Using water and food coloring, we looked at how temperature and mixing affect the speed that something diffuses.  I then related it back to water pollution.  We talked about how in oceans and rivers, the water is constantly moving and how this movement speeds up the spread of water pollution.

This past Monday we talked more about water pollution, this time focusing on how it can spread and how it ends up in our oceans.  In order to do this, I built what's called an "enviroscape" which is essentially a model of a watershed used for demonstrations on water pollution.  Even at home, enviroscapes are obscenely expensive and it’s obviously not something that I could buy easily here.  So, I did what I do best-- I got creative and used stuff we had on hand.

I started out with a plastic tray that I took from a donated board game we were getting rid of.
UNRELATED-BUT-SORT-OF-RELATED TANGENT: it's great to donate things, but please make sure they are things that can be used by the organization to which you are donating.  Donating 20 board games that are written entirely in German to a school where the students speak English and Swahili... not that useful.  Except I do have a LOT of materials for collages and random art projects now...

But, anyways, I then used masking tape to secure old juice containers, boxes and other random containers I saved to the plastic base and put a layer of bubble wrap on top to give it a bit softer look and feel.

Then came the fun messy part.  I decided I would use a bunch of neon modeling clay I found in the art supplies to create the basic shape of mountains, farms, roads, and stream beds.  The clay I used was waterproof, never dries/hardens, and we had a WHOLE box with five different colors.  It seemed perfect.  And it probably would have been except for the fact that clay like that tends to melt and get incredibly sticky when it is stored at high temperatures.  Like the "real feel" 105 F we've been having the past few weeks (the "long rains" have yet to make an appearance in my time here).  This made it pretty much impossible to roll or press it as thin as I would have liked, which in turn meant I used more clay than I originally thought I would need.  When I figured this out, I had to scrap a few of my original mountains and again, get creative.  I ended up using dead pens and pen caps to make a basic "skeleton" for the mountains and then covering those with thin(ish) layers of clay.

Honestly, it looked pretty ridiculous at this point.  When I showed some of the girls they thought the clay was cake frosting.   To be fair, cake frosting here does come in slightly obscene neon colors.  But I decided I had to paint it with acrylics to make it more "earth tone-y" to try and avoid confusion.  And to avoid girls trying to eat the model.

Amazing what a coat of paint can do for a project.

I then added houses, a car, and a ship to the model courtesy of our German version of Monopoly (okay so the board games were not completely useless, I suppose).

For the demonstration we dropped food dye onto different places that would produce potential pollutants (a farm, a city, the road, etc.) and made it "rain" in the mountains.  The girls saw how the water went from the mountains down to the ocean, carrying any pollutants (food dye) with it and finally ending up in the ocean.  We talked about how the things that we put into the environment don't just effect us-- they spread and impact everyone who lives downstream.

They seemed really excited and one of the youngest girls came up to me after our meeting to ask me questions about the model.  She even related each of the parts on the model to places in Tanzania (Mt. Kilimanjaro, the Pangani River, and the Indian Ocean) which really impressed me and made me pretty confident that the lesson sunk in with (at least some of) the girls.  I am meeting with another one of the Standard 7 girls this Saturday because she wants to give her morning talk (a short speech each girl gives in English in front of the whole school as part of morning assembly) on pollution and the environment!

Waiting for the long rains,

Carolyn

P.S. My next installment could potentially be a vlog (video-blog) sort of showing "a day in my life" if people think that would be at all interesting?  Let me know!

My December Break: The Heat, No Internet, and A LOT of Alone Time

Here in Tanzania, the school year ends at the beginning of December and starts back up in January.  My roommates jetted off to three different continents for the break, while I stayed here at Sega and held down the fort.  Between living in the volunteer house with Dana, Ellie, and Kini, and sharing Sega's campus with almost 200 girls, in the three months I had been here I could probably still count the number of times I had more than a few minutes of alone time on only one hand.  Despite being the introvert that I am, I actually didn't (and don't) mind it at all.  My roommates are really awesome people and I seriously enjoy the time I spend with them.  We have so many stupid, funny jokes and we have grown to be pretty completely comfortable around one another.  It can be stressful to be here, at times, and we all provide a really good support system for one another that I am really thankful for.  It's also just a really entertaining, good group.  In addition to enjoying teaching and the general everyday interactions I have with the girls, they just make up so much of what goes on every day on the Sega campus.  There would be nobody coming up to our porch saying "Madam...." and standing there awkwardly quiet while I tried to wrap the nearest kanga quickly around my shorts-clad legs before opening the screen door to step out and give them a soccer ball or paper or colored pencils. I knew I wouldn't be waking up to the sound of girls screaming one another's names as they ate their morning porridge.

So, as excited as I was to have a little time to relax and recover from the long battle going on in my stomach, I knew it would be strange.  And it was.  Especially because, for a good portion of that time, our internet was out and I had no way to stay connected with people at home.  And, with a dead computer, I couldn't exactly watch the movies or TV shows I brought from home.  There was a lot of alone time, and very few distractions.  

You may be wondering (and even if you're not, I am going to tell you anyways) what I DID do for a month basically by myself. The answer is, honestly, not too much.  If I had to pick the one thing I did the most over break it would probably be sweat.  I'm not really sure that even counts as a thing I did since it's an unconscious bodily function.  However, I am fairly certain the only time in the entire month long break that I stopped sweating was the day I went to stand in line at the air conditioned bank for 2 hours to deposit school fees for some of the graduates.

Other than sweat, here's what I did over my December break:

Painting a Mural

One of the projects I did undertake, was painting a mural on the wall of the volunteer house.  Before my roommates left I sketched up an idea and got it approved by our director.  Then I took a picture of the sketch, used the school’s projector to put it up on the wall, and (with Ellie’s help) traced what I had drawn. 

I then spent the next 2 weeks painting in the mural with acrylics. 

We’re talking about extending the mural to take up more of the wall, and two of the other Sega volunteers that live in other houses want me to paint murals in their houses as well.  I anticipate a lot of painting in my future, and I am totally excited for it.

Filling More of My Sketchbook

Being alone without a working computer or internet for a long period of time meant that the options of what to do were rather limited.  One of the things that I did do was sketch.  A lot.  Luckily, one of the gifts that Dana brought me from home was 4 new sketchbooks. If I keep going at the rate I have been, I will have no trouble filling them in my remaining time here.

Spending Christmas with My Tanzanian Family

One of my few travels over this break was to Kibaha to have Christmas with Pauline’s family.  I arrived there the afternoon of Christmas Eve and spent two nights at her house.  It was really nice to be with a family on Christmas, and I really enjoyed playing with Rey (almost 2) and Milka (5 ½).  As soon as I got to Paulines house, Rey ran up to me and wanted me to pick him up, giving me a big hug.  I had not met Milka before, so she took a little while to warm up to me, but by Christmas we were sitting on the floor drawing in my sketchbook together.  I also introduced “3…2…1… blastoff” to her.  Not sure why I keep introducing this game to children, because it always ends up in endless rounds of “AGAIN! AGAIN!” and me having really sore arms the next day.  But we had fun. For Christmas dinner we ate pilau, green beans, and cabbage.  They also had fish (which I didn’t eat) and fried grasshoppers (which I tried after a little hesitation... not my new favorite food).  My favorite part of Christmas was the dancing, which is saying a lot because I am definitely not a big dancer.  But, we put on some Bongo Flava and the whole family danced in the living room.  It was really fun and goofy and I definitely enjoyed it.

Getting into Yoga

Those of you that read the last post know my reasons why I don’t run as much as I should, but that doesn’t mean I have forfeited exercise altogether.  I've actually started doing yoga a few times a week and I already really enjoy it.  I don’t really do New Years’ resolutions, but one of my goals for 2015 is to be able to do a handstand by next December.  Even from just doing it a few times over the past month I can already see improvement and can feel myself getting stronger which is pretty awesome.

The Circle of Life: What Happens When I Go for a Run

After my last post it probably comes as no surprise to anyone that my laptop pretty much completely stopped working a few days after the last post.  That in combination with the fact that we completely lost internet for the last week of 2014 (and then again for the past 3 days) meant that updates have been few and far between as of late.  BUT Dana returned from the states with my beautiful, new, functioning laptop and it’s a new year! I don’t usually make New Year resolutions but, if I did, blogging more frequently would be on the list.

If you haven’t noticed from my other blog posts, a lot of things about life here are different from home.  One thing that I have noticed is that the “circle of life” is a much more real and evident thing here.  In the Last month I witnessed both a birth and a death.   Well, actually, multiples of both, really.  And both stories start in much a similar fashion—I went on a run.

I don’t run here that often.  Partly because it’s now summer so you have to wait until like 5:30 or 6 PM for it to get down to a temperature that doesn't feel like you're slowly being baked alive.  Also, we live without air conditioning which means that I am pretty much constantly sweating even when the most physical activity I am doing is lifting… my water bottle to my mouth while I lie on the couch.  Imagine going on a run in the middle of August in Florida and then coming back to have an endless steam in a sauna and you've basically got the picture.  Not the most appealing.  But, this particular evening I went on a run around campus.

As those of you who follow me on Instagram know (@clmacek if you don’t and you want more frequent and random updates on my life), I've made good friends with the canine contingent on campus and they've become my running partners.  I enjoy this both because it motivates me (“COME ON CARE, JUPITER HAS THREE LEGS AND SHE IS RUNNING FASTER THAN YOU”) and because I can appreciate how insane I must look to a Tanzanian that passes by on the road.  To understand the hilarity you have to know a few things:

1. Tanzanians don’t really run for exercise.  I’m pretty sure the only times I have seen a Tanzanian run was to chase after a cow that had gone astray.  Or when they were playing football (soccer).  That’s it.
2. A lot of Tanzanians don’t really like dogs.  In fact they are kind of afraid of them.  If it weren't for the fact that all of the dogs run faster than me and are usually in front, I am pretty sure people would think I was being chased by a pack of dogs.  But, no, just an mzungu chasing a pack of dogs.  Way more normal.
3. Our pack of Sega dogs is pretty visibly… special: Jupiter got hit by a motorcycle a few years ago and had to have one of her front legs removed.  Bingo is short, stocky, and only has one eye.  Neptune is the alpha and insists on coming to a dead stop every 100 yards to mark, frequently causing collisions with whatever canine or human happened to be running behind him.  Casanova  spends the entirety of most of our jaunts either insisting he runs directly behind me so that I frequently kick him on accident and look back to wheeze “pole sana” (translation: very sorry) to him.  Honey/Pluto/Mama (we haven’t decided on her name yet) is pretty normal, except for the fact that she was incredibly pregnant at the time of this run.

I know I am not doing it justice but, believe me, it’s quite the ridiculous spectacle. 

After I finished this particular run I went to the big banda to stretch and the canine crew joined me.  When I run I listen to music and, enjoying the fact that campus was empty because everyone had gone home for break, I started to sing along.  In the middle of my out-of-breath and off-key rendition of the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic “Sweet Home Alabama”, Honey started howling. Quickly, the rest of the dogs joined in.  At first I thought they just wanted to join in my singing, but I quickly realized Honey’s puppies were on the way.  The rest of my roommates and I watched as she gave birth to the first puppy, quickly carrying it off to a more protected place.  In total, she had 6 puppies.  Sadly, two didn’t make it, one being stillborn and the other dying the next day.  One of the Maasai guards endued up burying them both and it was weirdly touching to see the care and tenderness he used putting the little pups to rest.  The four that made it were so cute and little and it was really pretty amazing to see.  After giving her a few days alone with the pups I tested to see how close she would let me get and ended up being able to pick one of them up and pet it for a bit which only further cemented the fact that I really want a puppy.  Unfortunately, about a week after they were born, someone showed up who was apparently the “owner” of Honey and took her and the puppies, which was a huge bummer.  BUT she has been showing up on campus pretty frequently so I’m hoping the puppies will end up back on campus when they’re old enough to follow mama.

A photo posted by @clmacek on Dec 15, 2014 at 6:49am PST

About a week after all of this excitement happened I went on another run (like I said… I don’t run often).  It started off in the usual fashion—I was quickly joined by the dogs (excluding Honey who was still exhausted and nursing her 4 pups).  We ran for about a half hour before returning to campus and cutting behind the chicken coops to do one last cool-down loop.  All of the sudden, Jupiter sprinted off into the bush and the other dogs followed closely behind.  They occasionally do that, so I really thought nothing of it and continued on my usual path.  About a minute later, I got to the classroom building and started to stretch, thinking it was odd I hadn’t seen the dogs again.  And then I heard the noise.  The fact that I heard it at all is relatively miraculous, as I usually have my headphones pretty loud to try and distract myself from the pain of running.  I’m not sure I could really accurately describe what the sound was, but it was loud and clearly animal.   At first I thought the dogs might have caught a bird of some sort.  I walked around the classroom building to investigate and saw what was clearly not a bird.  It was a small antelope. And it was now lying on its side in the middle of the circle of dogs.  I was shocked—mostly at the fact that our ragtag group of dogs was able to bring down something that big, but also at the fact that there were even animals that big on campus.  I know that I am in Africa, but our campus and town are both pretty isolated from the wildlife.  The weirdest wildlife experience I had previously had on Sega’s campus was the time I saw a chameleon chilling on the ground behind the school kitchens.  Cool, but not exactly anything in the way of big wildlife. 

As I was standing there, shocked, one of the Maasai guards walked up, grabbed the animal by its back legs and dragged it from the circle of dogs.  I followed at a distance, curious what he was doing.  I stood at a distance and he motioned for me to come over closer so I did, cautiously.  At first it appeared he was trying to save the animal—he brought it a little ways to where a few other Maasai were standing and they kept the dogs from grabbing it again.  They helped it get back to standing and it didn’t seem as though it was too badly injured.  It began to charge at some of the dogs and they let it, breaking it up when it looked like either side would get hurt.  And then one of the guards picked up a rock and bashed the antelope over the head. Repeatedly. 

It was surprising more than anything.  As different as things are here, it is pretty easy to forget just HOW different they are until something like that happens.  But, one man’s deer is another man’s dinner. And, judging from the fat bellies of the dogs the next morning, I think all those involved in the catch got to enjoy in the spoils of the feast.  Everyone’s a winner.  Except the antelope.  And my fragile constitution.

As Simba says in the Lion King, “Oh well, Hakuna Matata”,

Carolyn

Giardia update—the second round of meds seem to have worked and I've been healthy since then.  Here’s to hoping it’s gone for good.

Sicknesses of the Human and Laptop Variety

I know I haven’t written in a long while again, but I actually do have quite a bit to write about.  I even have the time to write now, as the girls are all on break for all of December and I have pretty much spent my recent days alternating lying around being nauseous from my second round of giardia meds and painting.  But more on all that later.  I do actually have a valid excuse for why I haven’t written—my laptop has decided that Tanzania isn’t a suitable climate for it to continue carrying out basic functions.

Basically, that means it just randomly decides that it has had enough and shuts itself off.  It can stay on for hours at a time or it can decide it’s had enough after 10 minutes.  Definitely not conducive to sitting down to write a long blog post when I am nervous it might shut off and I lose all my work at any moment.

But, I will save often and try and break this up into more frequent small posts so that I can avoid the oft-occurring laptop meltdown.  I am warning you though, as the speed at which I need to get down information increases, the post quality will undoubtedly decrease.  Anyone who has tried to write a paper the night before it’s due knows what I am talking about (if any of my past high school teachers or college professors are reading this... I promise I never did this in your class sorry).

And here’s a poorly drawn supporting graph of this phenomenon for the visual learners in the room… on the blog… whatever.

You probably can't really tell, but I actually do spend a lot of time editing these because I tend to go on frequent tangents that require me to explain things via shoddy Microsoft-Paint-created illustrations.  Before now those have all just been edited out.  You're welcome.  But rejoice (I know I am)! I will be back to my regular well-edited posts in January when my new laptop from the states arrives.   Shout-out to dad for the incredible Christmas gift, to mom for taking the time to load up all the software and sending it to Dana, and to Dana for agreeing to bring a bigger carry-on so she can lug it back to Tanzania for me after winter break. 

But, anyways.  First things first.

Giardia Medication Induced Nausea and Headaches: a Cautionary Tale.

My first round of giardia meds didn’t work.  Despite being really strong and giving me some seriously wonky side effects, a few days after I stopped I was still having some of the same symptoms I had before starting the meds.  Apparently this isn’t uncommon—if you have it for a long time like I did there can be a lot of it in your system and it can take more than one round of meds to get rid of it all.  So, after consulting the nice lady in the pharmacy, I got a second round of meds.  Well, a different medicine, but for the same purpose.

So, the first day of taking my new medicine, I got a really killer headache and was nauseous.  It was one of the possible side effects of the medicine which is no surprise considering there was a small war going on in my stomach (side note, my roomies told me that I reminded them of the movie Osmosis Jones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeSpW75M2w8).

I shrugged it off and grabbed two advil.  This is a weird place to say this, but LOOK UP DRUG INTERACTIONS ONLINE before taking anything.  I was about to take the advil for the headache when I decided I should make sure that there weren’t any weird interactions.  Good thing I did, because it turns out if you take NSAIDs (like advil) at the same time as the antiparasitic meds I was on it can cause convulsive seizures.  It didn't say that in any of the warnings included in the box.  In all likelihood, that's because it probably doesn't effect most people and nothing would have happened to me. But, those aren’t risks I really want to take. I’ll ride out the headache, thanks.      

UP NEXT: The Circle of Life.  And don’t worry; it’s not a video of me singing the Disney classic.  I have a singing voice that’s really only fit for the shower or the car when the music is loud enough to mostly drown me out. 

Peace, Love, and (hopefully) No More Stomach Parasites,

Carolyn

Graduate Check-ins: Problems and Perks of Being a Mzungu Travelling the Tanzanian Way

I have recently been joking that I have many different hats here at Sega.  I’ve talked about my gardening hat and my art teaching hat… but one of my hats that I wasn’t really expecting to be wearing was my career counselor hat.  I’m not sure if this will be a permanent position for me here—it’s not exactly my cup of tea and it isn’t something I feel like I really know anything about—but it’s a big part of what I am doing for now.  Which lead to my most recent adventure—a weeklong trip all around Tanzania to check in with the girls that graduated last year.

First, a little background.

A huge part of what I’ve been doing is managing the continuing education scholarships for these graduates.  These girls are mostly in either colleges in a 1-year certificate program, or in “A-Levels” which is form 5 and 6. Managing their scholarships means I frequently have girls text me in all caps that they have run out of money and can’t pay for things like food.  Or toothpaste.  Or notes.  At first, this really stressed me out, as one could imagine. 

I’ve pretty much got the process down now:

1. Receive urgently worded text that they need money THAT DAY.  Sometimes at 6 AM or 8:30 PM.
2. Check the three different files we keep on these girls to see if one of those costs is covered somewhere or if we’ve already given them money for that thing.
3. Ask Pauline (the school’s counselor, and my amazing boss and officemate) if I should give the student money.
4. Ask Polly (the school director and my other amazing boss) based upon Pauline’s recommendation.
5. Fill out a form to request money from Geoffrey (the school’s accountant).  Probably have to redo it at least once because I consistently mix up what part of the form to write in the amount and what part to write in what it’s for.
6. Receive the money.
7. Go into town, and use a system called m-pesa to send the money to the girl’s cell phone at which point she can go withdraw the cash from a number of little shops in whatever city she is studying in.

I still would not say that it is something I enjoy, particularly when I have to tell the girls that, no, we already paid them and they don’t get another payment until X date.  But at least it doesn’t drive me to go on long, solo, stress-relief runs at the end of the day every time it happens.  It also takes a sometimes crazy amount of time and it has definitely limited my involvement in doing a lot of environment stuff which is pretty unfortunate, but that will hopefully be resolved within the next few weeks.

But anyways, at the end of October, Pauline told me one day that I would need to do check-ins with all of the graduates at their schools.  After convincing her that if I did it alone I would probably end up getting incredibly lost and never make it back to Sega, she agreed to come with me.  Which, seeing how our trip went, was definitely best.

It started off in much the same way that these things always seem to—ending up working out but in the most stressful way it could.

The Trip
The night before I was supposed to leave, my stomach woke me up at 2 am for an urgent trip to the restroom.  This had been happening a few times a week since about 3 weeks after arriving in Tanzania so, as uncomfortable as it was, I figured it would be fine by the morning.  And it was, except that I was exhausted from being up half the night and so I slept in late.  I had to meet Pauline at the bus station and had told her to text me when I should leave to meet her in the bus station in Morogoro.  I missed her first text and it wasn't until she called me from 10 minutes away that I realized I was supposed to have left already.  Thank goodness for one of the Sega drivers—he rushed me to the bus station and I literally ran and jumped on the bus just as it was leaving.  I was exhausted and would have slept, but buses in Tanzania do this fun thing where:

1. They drive insanely fast on not so great two lane roads and aggressively pass each other so you’re white-knuckling it the whole way
2. They play a fun mix of Justin Bieber, Jay Z, and Bongo Flava (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttdU19Kwce8) at earsplitting volumes
3. When they aren’t playing music, they show poorly dubbed, cinematic masterpieces like “Jurassic Attack” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2303110/) at the same earsplitting volumes

It is definitely all part of the experience, but I was still really happy to get off that bus in Iringa.  Now, getting OFF the bus is an adventure in-and-of itself.  Because, waiting at the door of the bus is a crowd of people trying to convince you to buy soda or nuts or cake or a ticket on their bus or a ride on their motorcycle or taxi.  Basically, I would hold onto my bags tightly in one hand and Pauline’s hand with the other as we weaved through the crowd of people shouting “MZUNGU!”  Despite the shouting, which happens pretty much anywhere I go in Tanzania, I really enjoyed Iringa a lot.  It’s a bit smaller of a town than Morogoro, the people are pretty friendly, and the weather is a bit cooler so that you aren’t perpetually sweating.

I also liked Iringa because, despite my initial nervousness at the bus station there, people really didn’t try to mess with me too much.  I found out the next day that it was because of a story called Mzungu’s Bag.  Mzungu means “white person” in Swahili, and pretty much anywhere you go in Tanzania that isn’t on the tourist circuit you are guaranteed to hear a few shouts of it come your direction.  I wouldn’t say that it’s enjoyable—a part of me is tempted to respond with sarcasm and go “WHERE?!?!” and look around dramatically—but it isn’t threatening or anything.  Honestly, I think they’re just surprised, more than anything.  Pauline also informed me that they think that because I’m white, I have a lot of money and so I should be able to buy anything.  I told her the joke is on them—I’m a volunteer and spent all my money on the plane ticket getting here. 

But, anyways.  Mzungu’s Bag.  So, the morning we were leaving from Iringa to go to Mbeya a woman from one of the buses offered to carry Pauline’s suitcase, but gave me one nervous sideways glance and didn't offer with my duffle.  I was fine with that—it wasn't heavy and I was still pretty wary about my belongings.  Turns out I didn't need to be.  We got to the bus station and upon seeing the woman carrying Pauline’s suitcase and not mine the bus conductor busts out laughing and turns to Pauline to tell this whole long story in Swahili.  I stood there quietly, with no idea what was going on, as per usual.  At the end of it Pauline busts out laughing and as we get on the bus she explains it to me—

Apparently, about a year ago, there was an American travelling on the buses in Iringa and her bag was stolen.  She reported it to the police and the police showed up every day for 3 weeks looking for the bag, checking all the buses, and generally giving everybody a rough time and delaying things.  It’s now a longstanding joke at the Iringa bus station that nobody should ever touch mzungu’s bag.  It certainly worked in my favor.

Unfortunately, one bad thing about being mzungu is that I am not used to the germs here—our first night in Mbeya I got really sick again.  I was then fine again for a day, and got really sick again the next night in Dodoma.  At this point, Pauline told me that I really needed to go to the doctor as soon as I got back to Morogoro.  She was also nice enough to let me skip out on one of our interviews so that I could sleep in the hotel for a little while.  Unfortunately, this sleep was interrupted when one of the ladies from the hotel front desk came into the room and told me I had to check out.  She spoke about as much English as I spoke Swahili, so there was a lot of confusing gesturing and I ended up sitting on the front stoop of the hotel waiting for Pauline to return. 

When she got back she sorted out our room situation so that we could leave our bags at the hotel and have a room in Dodoma when we got back.  We then had to rush to get on a bus to Singida—it was only supposed to be a 3 hour bus ride and it was before 11 am at this point.  We were sure that we would be able to make it to the girl’s school and back without any problems.  But, when we got to the bus station, we found that the only buses for Singida weren't leaving for another hour.  So we bought tickets and cookies (which ended up being the only thing I ate that entire day) and waited.  One hour, then two.   Finally, at around 2, the bus shows up.  And the ride ended up taking closer to 4 hours than 3.  So we arrived at around 6, interviewed this poor graduate across the street from the bus station, and rushed back to try and get a bus that was returning to Dodoma. 

There was only one bus.  It was leaving at 8.  And there were no seats left.

But, (A) our bags were in Dodoma, (B) we had already paid for our room there, and (C) neither of us had brought enough money to pay for a hotel in Singida.  We would have to go back that night.  And we would probably have to stand in the aisle the entire 4 hours.  After waiting for an hour and a half, a miracle happened—another bus had broken down en route to Dodoma, so they were sending a different bus from our station to pick those people up.  And there were seats on this bus.  AND it was a really nice bus.  So we boarded and off we went.  Now, if I thought being on buses in the day was terrifying, night is a beast of a whole ‘nother color.  I won’t go into it, but at one point I just put my head down and tried to sleep because flinching every 30 seconds was exhausting.  After around an hour and a half, we made it to the bus that had broken down.  It took about 20 minutes for those people to shuffle onto our bus, find their seats, and settle their luggage.  And then OUR bus wouldn’t start.  After another 20 minutes, they finally got the engine to turn over and we were on our way. 

I was pretty convinced that nothing else could possibly happen on that bus ride.  I was wrong.  At around 12, the police pull us over.  After some frantic conversations between the police and the driver, the conductors, and other bus patrons we are still stopped.  Pauline told me to stay in our seats as she went to figure out what was going on.  She came back and told me that the police said that it was too late and that the bus wasn’t allowed to be on the road this late.  They wanted us to pull over and spend the night on the bus in the middle of nowhere.  Meanwhile they let another half dozen trucks and cars pass through.  Pauline said it was probably because they wanted us to pay them off.  

At this point I was exhausted, hungry, delusional, and I needed to pee.  So we got off the bus and Pauline was nice enough to hold up her kanga (piece of Tanzanian fabric) for me while I peed.  I was not in any rush to get back on the bus (there were a lot of crying babies on there) so we stood outside and joked about how insane this trip had been.  As we stood there, I noticed the police officers kept glancing my direction and talking between themselves.  A few minutes later they went to go talk to the driver and they had changed their tune—we were allowed to leave.  Pauline looked at me and told me thank goodness I was there.  Turns out the police are a lot more worried about leaving a bus on the side of the road when there’s a mzungu on board. 

We were about half an hour from Dodoma at this point, but that didn't stop two more groups of police officers from trying to get us to stop.  We didn't make it back to our hotel until 2 AM.  We slept in late and headed back to Sega the next morning.  Thankfully, this bus ride was much smoother and incredibly uneventful.

Our meetings with students were definitely the things that made all of the crazy trips worth it.  Most of them were so excited to see Pauline, and a lot of them are doing really well and working really hard in classes.  Generally speaking, they are extremely grateful for the opportunity that they have been given and they really understand that Sega’s support is giving them a chance at a better future.  They’re motivated and driven to succeed.   Not all of the girls are like that, but enough are that it makes it feel like what I am doing is worthwhile. 

P.S.  In case you were worried about my health, don’t be.  On Monday I went to a really good doctor in Dar to try and figure out what was wrong with my stomach.  Upon hearing my symptoms, he told me I probably had giardia.  So I’m on the last day of these anti-parasitic meds that make my abdomen twitch and my pee highlighter yellow.   Good times.