Best of Tanzania

I have a lot to say about this semester, and it is a bit overwhelming to try to encapsulate my experiences and reflections in one blog post. However, I’ll give it a go! I have gone through many ups and downs over the past four months, and now I can finally say that I feel comfortable in a place where I never thought I’d be at-ease. I have learned so much from the Tanzanian people and culture, but there are still many things that are baffling, frustrating, and go over my head. Our program director gave us a packet concerning how to deal with reverse culture shock, and one of the exercises is called “The Best of Tanzania”. I thought that answering some of those prompts might be a good way to cover the bases, and to give specific examples instead of broad generalizations…

Biggest success or proudest moment: sneaking into and out of Zanzibar without a residency permit by using my low-level Swahili skills.

Most embarrassing moment or mistake: buying a candy bar in Olasiti, and absent-mindedly opening it before I got back to the campsite. Almost immediately a hoard of children came out of nowhere screaming: “HELLO HELLO HELLO GIVE ME CHOCOLATE!” and I hid the candy bar from them and walked away as quickly as I could. Not my proudest moment.

Most humbling experience: This entire semester has been a humbling experience, but the most poignant moments were probably during the field portion in Olasiti. One evening I was helping cook in the kitchen at the field site, and I was chatting with Stevie, who is the youngest member of the safari staff. He was telling me about his life ambitions and how he really hopes to go to school, and it really struck a chord. Stevie is my age, and he is just as deserving of an education as I am. I am in Tanzania as part of my education, and sometimes I forget just how privileged I am. Stevie wouldn’t be able to come to the United States as part of his education if he wanted to, and it has nothing to do with a discrepancy in our intelligence.

Funniest moment: there are so many…probably one of the most absurd moments occurred during one of our evening Jillian Michaels sessions at the campsite. There was one particular evening when we were jumping around and looking like idiots (as usual), and we had our regular audience of five or six children, and of course babu. One of our drivers, Walter, was doing the video with us, but his main objective was to poke fun at us and he was not doing the moves even remotely correctly. About half way through, a giant truck passed by that had probably 20 Tanzanian men in the truck bed and of course they were intrigued by what was going on. There is a speed-bump right next to the campsite, so the truck slowed down to go over the bump, and then stopped to watch us for a while. I couldn’t continue to do the video because I was laughing so hard. I also thought that smashing a giraffe piñata with a zebra femur was pretty ridiculous.

Worst experience in Tanzania: the lowest period of the semester was the week before break. There had been a series of assaults and robberies involving people in our group and other international students, and multiple people had malaria and other health ailments like scabies. I have never felt so targeted and aware of my personal security before, and it was highly unpleasant. Our altercation with the Russian men also sucked.

Most unique experience: some of the most unique experiences I had were in Engerkerat, the first Maasai village we visited. I had never witnessed a goat sacrifice, and the night dance we participated in was insane. It is difficult to describe, but I have never been part of a ritual like that before.

Most useful thing I learned: that not everybody in the world is obsessed with/possessive of time. I am accustomed to a very schedule-oriented culture, and it has been both infuriating and liberating to be a part of a society that, excuse my French, doesn’t give a shit about time. People take the time to greet and acknowledge each other, even if they have somewhere to go, and there seem to be few consequences for tardiness. One of my favorite examples was when some members of our group had scheduled to go cattle herding with Maasai warriors at 7 am, which was facilitated by one of our translators, Leboy. They didn’t leave the campsite until 7:45, and when they asked Leboy if the warriors would be upset that they were late, he replied: “But it is still the hour of 7!”

Most bizarre/crazy experience: maybe being cursed by a Maasai bibi for not buying her jewelry. I’m not really sure what happened, but she pretended to spit on and slap me, and then waved her nipple around at me while screaming in Maa. It was really weird. 

Most difficult thing I did: climb that mother-effing volcano. I have never had to push myself mentally/emotionally like that before. I really thought I might fall off the side of the volcano and die.

You know you’ve lived in Tanzania when: you suggest to your roommate that she should try to trade her camera for a woodcarving at the market. (By the way she tried this and it worked beautifully). 

Okay I'd better hurry up and post this, because there is a guy sitting next to me who hasn't stopped talking even though I don't think I've responded to him in the past fifteen minutes. Oh and just now he invited himself to go back to America with me. He also just told me that when I am old enough to marry I should find him.  It is really time to go. Thanks for reading this! 

Countdown

20 ACM students

19 people who have scabies 

18 interviews with the Maasai 

17 weeks of the program

16 cents to ride the bus 

15 minutes to take a bucket shower 

14 speed bumps on one street  

13 minutes waiting for change 

12 hours hiking a volcano 

11 days on safari 

10 goats in our campsite

9 Nipe kids 

8 standard greetings for every interaction 

7 cases of malaria 

6 people who got locked in bathrooms 

5 Maasai translators 

4 national game parks 

3 marriage proposals 

2 baboons in our back yard 

1 awesome semester 

Well, this is it – my final week in Tanzania. My only responsibilities are to finish my research paper and prepare for our presentations on Friday. I have already written a draft of my paper…but it definitely needs a lot of work. Last week we had our Ecology and Human Evolution finals, which I thought went well. Seeing as how you only need a 70% to get an A I don't think I will bad-fail. We were tested primarily on things that we learned in the field.

            I have spent the majority of my time hanging out in my bed this past week – working on my paper or vegging out. The director of ACM came to visit for a few days so we had a group discussion about what worked and didn’t work about the program, and we went out to dinner to a wonderful Ethiopian restaurant. Other than that…yeah I didn’t do much.

This weekend I went on a couple of excursions, and it was a blast. On Friday our Baba and Mama were out of town again, so my home-stay sister and I took the opportunity to go out on the town. We were invited to a barbecue in Oyster Bay, and it was a bizarre experience. The barbecue was on the patio of an apartment owned by a South African guy who we met a bar last weekend. The apartment was…woah. First of all, we used an ELEVATOR to get to the fourth floor, and I realized that it has been a long time since I’ve been inside an elevator. The apartment was air conditioned, and was equipped with a really big fridge and a flat screen TV. There were only about ten guests, and we met an interesting crowd. Most of the people there were ex-pats from South Africa, Kenya, or various European countries who are now living and working in Dar. I was with two other girls who are both vegetarian, so in the context of a barbecue the issue of our diet was brought up more than once. As a life-long vegetarian, I am used to people being curious and/or critical about my decision not to eat meat. It was particularly interesting in this scenerio, however, because we were surrounded by a crowd of game hunters. Most of the people at this dinner were either hunters themselves, and/or worked for hunting safari companies. (The rest worked for oil companies or uranium-mining companies). I don’t think I saw eye-to-eye with the majority of the people I met, but I think there were some good dialogues going on. They were very hospitable and friendly, and I didn’t really know how to feel about them.

On Saturday our group had one final field trip to Kipepayo beach, which is about two hours away from campus. The departure time was "8", which of course meant that we left at 9:30. We took boats over to a near-by island and spent the day lounging on the beach and snorkeling. There was a giant yacht also on the island, which incidentally was owned by a beer company. They gave us a lot of free beer and items like hats and beer cozies, which made some people in our group very happy. We spent the night at a beach resort on the mainland and had some group discussions about reverse culture shock, and just reflected on the past four months. The next day most people left in the morning, but a group of five of us decided to spend the day at the beach. It was an amazing day. We rented a ball and spent the whole day playing beach volleyball and then swimming whenever we got hot. The day was almost ruined by two incredibly mean-spirited Russian men. Our interaction with them made me more infuriated than I have been in a long time. When the ball bounced near their table (which was RIGHT by the volleyball net), they started cursing at us and when we apologized they screamed “DON’T SAY SORRY! THAT IS ALL I HEAR IN AFRICA IS ‘SORRY’!” and then proceeded to pick up the ball and throw it as far away as they could. Anyway, they were huge assholes. I really wanted to tell them that if they felt threatened by our game they could just get off their fat butts and move, but something told me that wouldn’t go over well. Other than that, the day was perfect. We made friends with some Danish guys who are here working on a bio-waste project, and we played some intense matches of volleyball with them. Around 5 pm we pulled ourselves away from the beach and all five of us squeezed into one pijaji all the way back to campus. It was the perfect way to spend our last weekend together.

I think for this last week I will mostly be running errands (laundry is an all-day affair) and working on my paper. I have been doing a lot of reflecting on my time here and what I have learned, and I hope to write a post about it before I leave on Saturday. Thinking about leaving makes me sad, but I am also excited to move on to the next chapter of my life. Taking a hot non-bucket shower is going to feel pretty good. 

Sweatin' in Dar

Sweat. That pretty much sums up this past week in Dar, and will probably continue to sum up the next two as well. I distinctly remember the occasions during which my body briefly stopped sweating, and they do not include the nighttime or bucket showers. Once when I was in an air-conditioned car, and once at the mall…that’s it. The wet season is approaching, so Dar is muggy and incredibly humid. I’ve been told it gets a lot worse, so in some ways I am glad to be leaving so soon.

After about 6 am it starts to really warm up, so it has been a bit difficult motivating myself to move. However, I have gone on a few excursions to various places around Dar, and sweated my ass off the whole time. We had a really interesting dala-dala experience going to the downtown area, called Posta. The bus was so jam-packed that my feet were partially lifted off of the ground for most of the 50-minute ride. This was because I was sandwiched between one woman’s particularly large behind and a man who looked less-than-enthused that I was basically on top of him. It was a good day. Other outings have included Mwenge (the giant market close to the university), Mlimani (the mall), campus to use the internet, our Director’s house, Oyster Bay (the wugunzu part of town), and most recently to the beach (the ocean water was so dirty we only got into the pool). The majority of my time, however, has been spent sitting in my bed working on my research project…and of course sweating.

For Thanksgiving each home-stay pair volunteered to prepare a particular “American” dish, which would be supplemented by catered food at our director’s house. My roommate and I decided that we would make salad, which turned out to be an all-day affair. Our baba went with us in the morning to his preferred vegetable stand, and helped us get a good deal on a bunch of veggies. We then went to the mall with the goal of buying lettuce, but it turns out that Tanzanians don’t eat a lot of lettuce. Instead we bought a head of cabbage. Looking back that was a poor choice (no one ate it). In the afternoon we went over to our directors house with all of the food and then chopped vegetables for about two hours. It turns out we bought a lot of vegetables. The dinner was really really delicious – everyone’s dishes turned out much better than expected. People brought platters ranging from sweet potato and apple pies to pumpkin pancakes. I was impressed. We all ate a ton in the spirit of Thanksgiving, and unlike in the field there was more than enough food for everyone.

Thanksgiving was actually my roommate’s, Laura’s, 21^st birthday, so we had a belated dinner celebration for her on Friday. We all went out to this wonderful Indian restaurant in Oyster Bay, and it was a very pleasant experience. Usually when we eat out as a big group, the food takes forever and there are many complications, but everything went seamlessly. Afterwards most of us went out to a nearby bar called “George and Dragon”, but we left after a few hours when the power went out.

Our host family has been in-and-out, mostly because their actual home is in Mongorogoro, where they have a farm and livestock. Our mama is constantly traveling back and forth, and baba is on vacation right now so he has been taking the opportunity to go home when he can. Their son got married the day we returned to Dar, so they were gone for the first few days we were back. It is nice to have them around, but Laura and I are also completely fine on our own. Filomena the house girl is always here, so we still have breakfast and lunch at home. Filomena doesn’t speak any English, so we have been attempting some very broken conversations with her in Swahili. I much prefer living in a home-stay to the dorms. However there are still some awkward moments with our host dad, and I am still adjusting to eating dinner around 9 or 10 pm. Other than that we are very comfortable.

I think that pretty much covers this past week, maybe next time I will have slightly more interesting things to talk about. 

Archaeology Safari (Week 6)

        After departing Tarangire, we began the Archaeology portion of our safari. We picked up our Human Evolution professor, and he accompanied us for the last leg of our journey. We went to major archaeological sites such as Laetoli and Olduvai, and we also went to Ngorogoro crater for a few days. Ngorogoro was really cold, and it felt nice to wear a fleece and hat at night. Our campsite also was visited by a herd of zebras, which was fun. During our game drive in Ngorogoro we saw two black rhinos, and that was the safari highlight. We also went to an organic farm called Gibbs farm in Keratu, and we had probably the best meal of our lives. 

          Our last stop was Lake Natron, also the site of Oldonyo Lengai, which is a big-ass active volcano. We off-handedly decided that it would be fun to hike said volcano, but because it is so hot during the day it would have to be a night hike. Once we reached our campsite, we had dinner, took a short nap, and then departed around 11 pm to the trailhead. We didn’t begin our hike until 12:40 am, and our guides warned us that it is a difficult hike so we should have water, lights, and proper clothes. Some of us didn’t have these things, but we laughed it off and were like “yeah, whatever. We will be fine”. We weren’t. After about two hours of hiking in the dark, the terrain started to become really ashy and slippery, and it started to get steep. Some of our group members decided they were done, and turned around to go back to the cars. As we kept ascending, the ground kept getting sketchier and steeper. After the halfway point our guide told us “now we begin the climb”, so even more people dropped off. It was too dark and dangerous to go down, however, so they had to sit and wait in the dark until the sun rose. The remaining 11 of us decided to push on, even though I was getting kind of scared and it was difficult to hold the flashlight because I needed to use both hands at all times. Once the sun rose I almost had a panic attack because I realized we had gone really high, and we still had a ways to go. I kept slipping down a few inches with every step and I had all four limbs touching the side of the mountain to keep from falling down. It took us six and a half hours to reach the summit, and at the top I primarily felt cold and miserable. All I could think about is that we had to somehow get back down vertical scree and dust. It didn’t help that I hadn’t slept or eaten in a very long time. The decent was…interesting. We were all getting a little bit delirious, and I couldn’t stand so I slid down on my butt most of the way. Loose rocks would come tumbling down every so often, so we would scream “ROCK ROCK ROCK” and the people in front would cover their heads and duck. There were a few close calls but no one got hurt. It took us five hours to get down, and in the end our hike was a 12-hour experience. I was so glad when it was over, and I have a sore body and bruises and cuts to show for it (there is a big one on my butt from all of the sliding on the ash and rocks). Retrospectively I guess it was sort of fun. That was the grand finale of our six-week adventures. The next day we drove back to Arusha, and yesterday we had a 12-hour bus ride back to Dar filled with lots of horrible movies and music videos.

            We will be in Dar Es Salaam for the last three weeks, and I am going to do my best to make peace with this city. We don’t have any classes, so our only responsibilities will be to study for our Ecology and Human Evolution finals, and to type up our research reports. I think I have thoroughly bored my audience, so I will cut it off here. I’m sure I will post later about my last few weeks in Dar. It actually feels good to be back, and now I have internet, so please send me updates on life at home! Baadaye. 

Tarangire/Olasiti (Weeks 2-5)

               The field portion was amazing, and gave me a more realistic idea of what it is like to conduct Anthropological research. We stayed in a campsite about three miles away from the gates of Tarangire National Park, and about a mile away from a tiny town called Olasiti. There were six students doing Biology projects, four doing Archaeology projects, and the remaining ten of us did Cultural Anthropology projects. Every day the Biology and Archaeology folks would take the cars to the game park or the Archaeology site, and they would usually go twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. It was way too hot between the hours of 11-4 pm to do anything, so during that time we would usually attempt to sleep, play cards, read or just sit there and sweat. There were five translators living with us, all of who are Maasai and speak Maa, Swahili and English to help the cultural students with our projects. Only a few of the translators wore their traditional Maasai clothes, and most of them have moved away from their home villages, but they were important cultural brokers in our interactions with the Maasai community. All of us got really close with the translators, drivers and kitchen staff, and some of my favorite times at the campsite were hanging out with the translators, doing dishes or helping prepare dinner in the kitchen. Even though most of the staff spoke English, it was a good opportunity to practice some Swahili (although I am still not fluent by any means).

            My research project was on comparing traditional Maasai education to the formal education at the local government schools in and around Olasiti. I conducted several participant observation sessions at the local primary school, spoke with teachers at both the local primary and secondary school, and did interviews with Maasai elders and parents in Olasiti and another village called Oltuki. I really enjoyed going to the schools and it was very interesting for me to see how the classrooms work and what teacher-student interactions look like. The teaching style is heavily based on call-response and repetition, and I never saw any students asking questions. I watched Swahili, English, and math classes, and once a friend and I got to teach one of the English classes (which meant writing things on the board and then checking the answers in the students’ notebooks). The educational system is still a bit confusing to me, but I definitely learned a lot during the short time I visited the schools. The interviewing process was a bit of a wild goose chase. There was limited access to the translators and we never created any kind of schedule, so I just leaped at any interviewing opportunity that came my way. I was able to conduct about 18 interviews, including my interviews with teachers. Sometimes interviews could be stressful and frustrating. Often participants wouldn’t show up at the time you had scheduled an interview, and people were often busy, especially the men. We compensated our participants with a box of tea and a kilo of sugar, but sometimes they would get angry and ask us for money. Most of the community members in Olasiti were welcoming, but we would frequently be asked tough questions like “why are you here? How will your research help us?”. It was difficult to answer questions like that because the reality is that our research won’t really help them, despite our best intentions. I really enjoyed wandering around from boma to boma with the translators looking for participants, and I got to see a lot of cute babies and goats in the process. I audio-recorded the interviews, and in my downtime at the campsite I transcribed them by hand to try to see if I could find any trends in my data. Transcribing was tedious. Sometimes it was difficult to understand the translator, and the background noise of goats, cows and children drowned out our voices. However I think the transcriptions will be valuable during my analysis, and it was a good way to stay focused on my topic. A lot of us encountered the same obstacles during our research, and it was helpful having each other and our director to find different ways to approach various issues. I could keep going on the research aspect, but I think I have covered the main ideas. I learned a lot, mostly about the research process than my actual topic. The last day we gave a presentation to the community members, and in the true Tanzanian fashion we started two hours late, and the presentation was about five hours long.

            When we weren’t out at the park, arch site, or doing interviews, we had a lot of time to hang out at the campsite. The cultural anthro people had interviews to transcribe, but that would only keep us occupied for so long. Strangely enough I never got bored, although some days I would accomplish absolutely nothing. Even when we wouldn’t leave the campsite, herds of goats would raid our tents, and Maasai children would stick their heads over the walls and yell “HELLO HELLO HELLO! Give me pen! Give me chocolate! What is your name? HELLO!” several times a day, every single day. I would go for runs in the mornings before breakfast or in the evenings, and almost every time I would get mobbed by groups of children who would grab my hands and run with me until they were tired. At first I sort of dreaded the child-attack, but after a while I grew quite fond of them. Also in the evenings we would do a Jillian Michaels (she is on the Biggest Loser for those of you who are not familiar) workout video, and we always had an audience of several children and an old babu who would watch us over the wall. It was pretty hilarious. We decided that they probably thought that we were doing a choreographed dance, because that is way less absurd than what we were actually doing. Other past-times were walking into town for a soda or snack, making friendship bracelets, and we gave each other haircuts using child craft scissors. The last few days we found and adopted four adorable and probably diseased puppies, so that kept us entertained as well. In the evenings after dinner each of us had the opportunity to tell his or her life story for about 1-2 hours, while the rest of us sat under the stars and listened. It was interesting hearing the experiences of people with whom I lived in such close contact.  It was also a good exercise telling my own life story and thinking about what parts are important and worth sharing. Other than that we didn’t do too much. We rose and fell with the sun, and did our best not to annoy each other. 

There were two special events that occurred during our time in the field. The first was Halloween. There was a bit of drama over the proposition of buying and slaughtering a goat at the campsite in order to include the Tanzanian staff in our celebration. Another girl and I felt uncomfortable with the goat situation, and when we raised our concern our group had a very long discussion deciding whether or not we should buy the goat. More than half of our group is vegetarian, incidentally, but only three of us (against 18) had an emotional response to the idea of killing a goat at our campsite. In the end we decided not to buy the goat, and I think the conversation we had about it was important for all of us. Instead we created makeshift costumes out of the resources we had, and ate a lot of candy. I was a dust devil (they are everywhere), and I was very impressed with the costumes that people threw together. The other major event was the election. That was probably the highlight of my time at Tarangire. The morning after the election we found out that Obama had won, and we took the day off to celebrate. Actually, we couldn’t do any research because the cars had no gas, so we used that as our excuse. We went into town for some celebratory sodas, got to watch some CNN at one of the bars, and then after lunch we had a piñata. The piñata was a paper mache giraffe that we had made for Halloween, and the staff got to demolish it using a cow femur we found. It was so much fun and I took several videos of people taking turns trying to take down the piñata. That night we all went out to dinner at a restaurant in town, in order to celebrate Obama’s victory, and to show our gratitude to the staff. We made thank you cards for all of them, and had a blast eating and dancing together. It was really sad to say goodbye to the translators when we left Tarangire, but we made sure to friend them on Facebook.

Ecology Safari (Week 1)

Wow. Well I have a lot to catch up on, considering I haven’t posted on here in six weeks, and a lot has happened between then and now. I will do my best, though. In order to make it more manageable I will divide up the three major portions of the past six weeks. I will be impressed if any of you make it through all of them.  

      From Arusha we drove to Engerkarat, which is a Maasai village pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The ground was black volcanic ash, and it was extremely hot and dry. Water is scarce so the only plants growing were various species of Acacias, which have vicious thorns. We stayed in Engerkarat for a few days, and got a crash course on Maasai culture and traditions. We went on an herbal medicine tour, beaded with some Maasai mamas, witnessed an orpul (goat sacrifice), collected firewood, and participated in one of the night dances (which involved a lot of jumping and chanting in the dark). It felt a little strange and touristy at times, but never the less it was a really fun and interesting experience. The last night in the village there was a question and answer session around the fire, where we got to ask the Maasai some questions, and they asked us questions as well. They asked things like “how many children do Americans have?”, and it was difficult to answer for an entire diverse nation. It gave us a little taste of the types of questions we would be asked during our interviews to come. After leaving Engerkarat, we picked up our Ecology professor at the Arusha airport and began the Ecology portion of our safari. 

We drove all through Lake Manyara and the Serengeti, spending the majority of our time in the Serengeti. I got to spend my 21^st birthday on safari in Lake Manyara, which was incredible. Instead of getting drunk at a bar I got to see some wild elephants, so I think it was a fair trade. We would drive around in our safari caravan and every so often we would get out of the cars to talk about Ecological concepts we were witnessing. Each student had a designated topic, but our knowledge was limited at best. Our cars had a sticker on the back saying “special permit do not follow”, and sometimes we would drive for hours to the middle of no where so that the other tourists wouldn’t see us getting out of the vehicles. The off-roading was bumpy, to put it mildly. We saw so many amazing animals, including lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, cheetahs, leopards, hippos, etc. etc. For me the most thrilling animals to see were the cheetahs and leopards. It rained every day in the Serengeti, marking the beginning of the short rainy season. After about a week of traveling, we drove to Tarangire National Park, where we would spend the next month doing research.

Off to the Serengeti! Nitasafiri!

Well, I only have a little bit of battery left on my computer, so I will try to write this quickly.

I just wanted to blog once more before I disappear from the blog/internet world for six weeks.

Yesterday we arrived in Arusha, after a twelve-hour bus ride from Dar. The bus ride was...interesting. We arrived at the bus station at 7 in the morning, and were instantly yelled at by every single bus driver to board their bus. We had tickets for a certain bus company, so our taxi driver helped us locate the right bus. Maybe things were going over my head... but I don't understand the bus system one bit. People were boarding and leaving the bus at random places along the way that didn't seem to be real destinations, and sometimes they paid, and other times they didn't. We only made two stops, and it was very unclear how long the stops were going to be. I was afraid to drink any water because there were no bathrooms on the bus, and it didn't seem like they were going to stop because one person had to pee. They played Tanzanian movies along the way, and the star-actor, producer, and screen-play writer was the same guy for all of the movies. We watched "Uncle JJ" 1 and 2, and "Magic House" 1 and 2, and I slept through some of the others. Once we arrived we were assaulted by ten different guys telling us that they could drive us to our hotel. The taxi system is also something I don't think I will ever understand. There are so many different guys talking to you, but it turns out that they all work for the same driver. Most of the time they try to scam you into giving them extra money that doesn't go to the driver, so it's hard to know who to talk to. It is extremely confusing, and I think we ended up paying twice the amount that the driver originally charged us. We were so tired though we didn't really care.

The hotel we are staying in here is really nice. There was a bit of a room mix-up though, and today we had to move all six of us into one of the triples that we had booked. It was frustrating that they didn't write down our booking correctly, but "this is Africa".

On Monday we are going to the Serengeti to go on safari, and then we head to Tarangire to begin our research projects! I have no idea what to expect, but I am excited. Today we bought a bunch of beautiful kangas to wear when we interview the Maasai.

Until mid-November!