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.