Loss

I can't belive I will be home in three weeks. It's pretty scary how fast time goes by here, especially when you consider how slowly life moves - doesn't really make sense.

Last week I was forced to face the realities of being so far away from home. John Borushek, a beloved member of my family, passed away extremely suddenly and I was unable to return home for the funeral. It has been very difficult to be here in Tabora knowing what a hard time my family is having right now, and while I was considering staying for a week or so longer, I have now decided to return home as scheduled on 22 January. It would have taken me at least three days to get home to Perth from Tabora, in which time, according to Jewish law, the funeral would have already been held.

Working overseas is great until there is a major event at home. As long as everyone at home keeps saying "there's nothing to report here, everyone's fine - you know Perth!", there's not much to be homesick about. But when my family is reeling from this huge shock, it's very hard to be away.

I leave Tabora on Wednesday 16 January but out of respect for John I will probably limit these posts to the bare essentials from now on. The loss of John has really made me value (even more) how much it means to be close to family.

Despite my sad news I hope everyone has a meaningful and happy new year. I'll see you all soon.

Christmas Dinner

Here are a few pictures of us giving the children and their guardians their Christmas meal, courtesy of a past volunteer who raised the money back in England for each child's family to receive a chicken, a bag of beans, 25kg of rice, and some spices.

Check me out, holding dinner by its legs.

Special thank you to my dad and Carmel for providing the money for the cooking oil (the big yellow bottles). No such thing as refrigeration for these families, so chickens have to be given while still alive....

Liza’s Choice

I’m completely in love with two children in particular and it is damn lucky there is no international adoption in Tanzania or I would be in big trouble. I totally adore both Chiku and Shela, two girls aged 13 and 7, and when they cuddle up against my arms and gaze up into my face, I can completely imagine them feeling like my daughters. While I love all the kids, I have very different feelings for them all. There are always those who stand out for me, for example, but don’t do anything for Mandi (Jeni is one – I love her, Mandi couldn’t care less; Mandi adores Adelina, I like her but don’t have the same connection). I worship Juma but I couldn’t imagine him being my child; Mandi adores Sappy and would actually adopt him if she could but I although I love him, I wouldn’t want to be his mother. Leaving is going to be so, so ridiculous. Mandi is already dealing with the trauma she will feel (and will probably cause me) when she leaves. She’d stay permanently, she says, but there is the little issue of her husband at home in Phoenix.

They have collective moods. Some days I turn up to work and just a few come over and greet me, although none are ever actively aloof or disinterested. Other days, like Stocking Saturday (see next post), they literally burst through the HAPO fence, run across the road and leap into my arms until every part of my body is dripping children. No matter how pissed off or sad or angry I might be feeling at something else that may have happened (or, more likely, failed to happen) that day, when they do that, I get immediate amnesia. That’s when I just want to stay here forever. The way I feel when I am around the kids has really surprised me. I always liked kids but I never really loved them – the idea of having my own children never really felt like my singular purpose in life and although I enjoyed playing with them, I was always glad when I ultimately dumped them with their parents. I was nervous to come here because I wondered if I could handle spending so much time with so many kids, especially since we wouldn’t speak the same language and I am such a words person. But, that has been the single biggest surprise of this trip – how much I love just hanging out with them. They make me feel like I belong with them. They give total love and they have taught me a lot about not relying too much on verbal language to express humour, validation, love, anger, frustration.

I don’t care what anyone says, there is something special about African children. They’re completely devoid of the materialistic drive that has eaten into the West (regardless of what I might have worried about before Christmas). They’re wild and feral; they eat insects the size of my palm and they use knives as long as my arm better than I could (imagine a mother in Australia letting her 7 year old slice spinach with a chopping knife over a bucket without a chopping board). They use slingshots to kill birds for meat. They’re brave and aggressive; they stand up for themselves and for each other; they don’t cry when they bleed or when something stings or aches or burns. They don’t complain when they have to walk 6 kilometres in relentless, driving rain without an umbrella or a raincoat. They never say they’re hungry or that there’s no food in their house. They carry babies on their backs from the moment they’re able to walk; they do hard, unforgiving physical labour from the age of 6 so that by age 11, all the boys have bodies like Tupac. They have an inexhaustible list of ways to entertain each other without toys or balls or games or computers or movies or books or barbies or cars or lego.

The word that comes to mind for me, for so many of them, is “fierce”. Fierce in their fights, their courage, their will, their determination, their loyalty, their love for us. It’s a great quality, one I hope any potential child of mine has one day. Fierceness, directed in the right way, is passion. Passion is life. Life, and the joy that goes with it if approached right, is the one thing Africa has in abundance.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

[Pics:

1. Chiku
2. Kagori and her twin sister Shela
3. Me with Emmanuel, Andrew and Christina]

Do they know it’s Christmas

Kids in general are pretty ungrateful. I remember what I was like as a kid – I think my parents were often disappointed with my reaction to presents, especially the few attempts we made at Christmas (20 years ago). Here at HAPO, it’s a strange situation: our kids are the most vulnerable and underprivileged in Tabora, yet because they are at HAPO with wazungu, they get hugs and kisses and lollies and prizes and toys and extra education in a way that no ordinary kids right across Tanzania ever would, regardless of their economic circumstances. The last few times we have given prizes we’ve been disappointed in the kids; unless everyone gets exactly the same thing, there are inevitable arguments and long faces until we get fed up with them and wish we never gave presents in the first place. They’re just kids being kids, and they have so little to fight over that we can hardly stay mad. But it certainly made Christmas a daunting task for the four of us, as we had to figure out how to fill 36 stockings (made from kanga material by a mystified clothing fundi, for whom I had to draw “christmas stocking”) for 36 boys and girls from age 7 to 16 with numerous gifts under $2 that they would all like. This was particularly challenging in a country where there is basically nothing to buy except kangas (the materials worn by the women) and second-hand tee-shirts. Needless to say we were not expecting anything but disappointment from them.

But, oh, yesterday.

This is what ended up going in each stocking:

1 toothbrush with a clip-on lid in the shape of a lion
1 pair of plain white socks
1 pair of earrings (girls)/1 punching balloon (boys)
1 ruler
1 sharpener
1 eraser
1 lead pencil
3 stickers
4 hard lollies
1 stick of Wrigley’s gum
1 hand-made card (from one kid to another)
1 TzSh2000 note ($2).

There are no words to describe the reaction when they opened their stockings. Basically there was silence for a moment and then someone started yelling and then the yells just spread like a tidal wave across the classroom as everyone picked up something from their stocking and started waving it in the air. At first I thought it was just the money that had them so excited (Mandi’s last-minute genius call, although I originally had my doubts about it, but we were really worried the kids would be disappointed with what we had) but Zaituni squealed as she found her ruler; Kagori threw her head back with laughter as she held her card; Shela and Sophia brandished their socks in the air, Elisha kissed his stick of gum. Everywhere I looked there were kids looking up at me and saying “asante, Sister Liza! Asante! Asante!” and grabbing my hands as I walked through them. I burst into tears, because I was ashamed that I’d though they were going to be ungrateful, and also because I felt so overwhelmed that a group of children could get so beside themselves over two bucks and a pencil. And I mean, beside themselves. I have never seen them like that. Sure, they can get excited, but this was another plane altogether. At HAPO they have to share resources; there are always arguments and fist fights over sharpeners and erasers and at home no one has a toothbrush (they keep a supply for use at HAPO). And the money… I asked Kagori “pesa untanunua wapi?” (where will you spend the money?) and she told me she was going to the salon with it (like all kids here, her head is shaved, so for that reason her answer was extra cute and hilarious).

The new girls, having done some moping about being away from home for Christmas (although they are now getting more than enough comfort from the pilots… they haven’t been home since Friday) said it was the best Christmas they have ever had. It gave some legs to that nebulous concept of “I just feel so guilty spending all that money at Christmas, there are so many starving people in the world and we are just so materialistic” that you always hear being bantered around (but generally ignored) during Christmastime at home. It was such an extraordinary moment. I have a list of Top Five Tabora Moments and giving the children their stockings immediately leapt onto the list and is jostling for at least second or third place. I hope the pictures do it some justice, but I can’t imagine they will.

Sheki

Too much socializing recently. Too many blogs about konyagi and clubbing. I know it’s not what I came to Africa for, and not remotely why I love being here. I think it’s just that blogging is storytelling, and while every moment with the children is sacred and wonderful, it’s the going out experiences that make the best stories. I don’t want that to be the case, though. I have a tendency to gravitate towards telling every story in a humorous way, which I think is a symptom of the fact that blogging makes me feel very exposed. It’s hard to communicate my innermost thoughts when 35 people are reading them (or, at least, signed onto my site; who knows who’s really out there reading? J ). I’m often sitting on the ground with the kids or working with Mr Mwendapole in the office or buying my tomatoes from the Mama across the street or sifting our evening rice for stones and twigs, when I have sudden longings to be able to really capture what it feels like to be here. But, as my dad and I just discussed in our first-ever text-message conversation, this is what the Buddhists mean when they say that life is an illusion. I have to accept the fact that no one at home will ever know what it was like to be me or see me living and working in Tanzania. More importantly, I have to accept that after a while, I will forget how to remember how it felt. So although it’s two in the morning and I really should go to sleep so I am fresh for the last day with the kids before our Christmas break, I’m going to listen to the voices in my head that tell me tonight is a writing night. The two new girls (18 and 19) wasted no time in hooking up with two of the pilots, so they are busy with a sleepover at the Man Pad in Ipuli, and Mandi is dead asleep after going out with Daniel last night and being the only white person at Bubbles Nightclub (haven’t had the guts to try that one yet). It’s a good time to write about something that matters. Luckily, I have the languid (and heavily distorted) sounds of Bongo Flava wafting in through the windows from the night guard’s (apparently very cheap) radio to keep me motivated.

Sheki. How to describe Sheki. I’m sure I’ve mentioned him before; he’s a nephew of the Sekasuas and works as a volunteer at HAPO. He’s 23 years old and has been waiting for a place at university; he wants to study business administration. Sheki watches over us girls like a featherweight boxer. He’s half a foot shorter than me and is the sweetest young man I have ever met; he goes almost everywhere with us, comes to visit us, escorts us home at night, yells at men who get too close to us, and when he puts us in taxis at the Tabora, he talks at length with the driver and then writes down the numberplate before the cab leaves. He’ll never leave the restaurant before we do and walks us home every time we go out. The kids call him “ka Shek” (short for “brother Sheki”) and adore him. He is the guardian angel of the HAPO girls, and he has been acting awfully secretive recently. Since we both adore him, Mandi and I have been asking him repeatedly to tell us what’s wrong for the last few weeks, but all we got was more secretive behaviour.

When I say Sheki was “waiting” for a place at university, what I really mean was Sheki was waiting for Dr Sekasua to tell him that he was willing to send him to university. This is what I found out tonight (finally). In Tanzania no one has any money. Period. This is unfortunate, since there is no such thing as a loan, student or otherwise, and no jobs (again, period). There is a push to get students to finish school, but there is no net to catch those who actually do defy the odds and do so, since there is no employment for them with or without a university education. At to add to this problem, university costs around one million shillings ($1000) a year. This is a ridiculous, astronomical, unreachable sum of money, and a 23-year-old fatherless Tanzanian with no home and no possessions is about as likely to secure it as he is to land a space shuttle on the surface of Jupiter. The university year started in September and Sheki has been waiting for the Dr to decide whether he can afford the money. So far Sheki has heard nothing and as a result, he will now have to wait until next September, even if Dr gave him the money tomorrow. Meanwhile he works full time at HAPO for nothing.

There was never anyone as desperate to go to university as Sheki. I never saw anyone crave a university education so badly that he starts to cry when he talks about it. Sheki talks about university as though it’s this warm, golden thing just above his head; something he can grasp that will lift him out of the life he lives now. He wants to study business because it will be a good thing for Tanzania, he says; something that will develop the economy and help to improve the country. Sheki doesn’t want money for cell phones or stereos or even food. He doesn’t want to be given pocket money by wazungu. He just wants to go to university. “I don’t need a Masters or a PhD like you,” he told me tonight as we walked home together. “I just want, just one degree. Just one. I tell you this because you are educated, you have a PhD. I just want to have one degree. But then I think maybe God does not want this for me; maybe he wants me to stay in this life.”

And why didn’t he tell us this before? Because it’s not right for him to discuss family financial business with wazungu, particularly those who are working for his uncle, who is currently feeding and housing him.

So do I send Sheki to university?

Mandi and I discussed this a few weeks ago, after she had a long talk with him. We talked about how terrible it was that someone like Sheki, who works so hard and gives so much, could just be incapable of getting a break, even just a small one. I know there are thousands, millions, of people like Sheki here; people who dream of a better life but are truly victims of an inefficient bureaucracy and a gross surplus of potential workforce in a country with almost no private enterprise. Vodacom and Celtel, the two cell phone companies, appear to be the only real “businesses” here. Everyone else struggles along by working in dukas (shops), selling food at the market or off the tops of their heads, or dinkying people on the backs of bicycles (but mungu wangu, is that heaps of fun – it’s my new preferred form of public transport).

Split down the middle, a thousand dollars a year isn’t a lot of money to part with if it’s going to transform someone’s life. I have eight years of university education under my belt; I don’t think there exists a degree higher than the one I last acquired. I have lived an enormously privileged life as a result of being white as well as having very hard-working immigrant parents who both placed huge value on education. I’d like to think I now have the opportunity to “pay it forward”, as my mom would say.

I wish the university year started in January; I wish I didn’t have to wait until September to give Sheki the money. I’m afraid I’ll go home and fall victim to that malaise suffered by 99 per cent of people who do what I’m doing now – best of intentions while here but life has a funny way of taking over once we return to the normalcy of the West. It has already happened to me a number of times on past trips, so I have been very careful here not to make anyone any promises that I’m not willing to put my life against as collateral. Right now I want to give Sheki the money but how will I feel next September? But does what I feel even remotely matter? I would be doing it for Sheki, not to satisfy my own privileged guilty conscience.

I get very frustrated here with the perception that wazungu should just pour their money into everyone and everything in Tanzania. Maybe that’s not actually how everyone feels, but it certainly seems that way a lot of the time; some people are just better at hiding that opinion than others. I feel like people think that if I give them money, that will solve all the problems in the country. “Hey mzungu, give me money” is a phrase I hear a lot (it’s not actually meant rudely likely it sounds in English, it’s just a translation of what would be considered polite in Swahili). And it’s very heard to deal with because part of me wants to give money to everyone who looks at me sideways – because after all, I am rich as Midas here – but a) it won’t solve the problems, and b) it will make me very poor when I finally do return to my own cultural (and financial) context.

But I do feel like sending Sheki to university is a constructive way of giving money here. I don’t like the idea of giving him money for clothes or even for housing, but if I could help him get a degree that would help him get a job that would help him improve the country? I could get my head around that.

I told him I could give him half the money every year and that I would have to discuss the rest with Mandi. I said the money would go into a bank account to keep it safe for his education. He put his head on my shoulder and wept.

Tanzathon

UPDATE!

More thanks to the following people for their donations:

Ximena Zumaran
Nedra Weerakoon
Shae Garwood and Ethan Blue

A huge ASANTE SANA to everyone who has pledged donations to HAPO so far! I have been really touched by the response.

Current total: ~ $2,100

This translates to over 2 million Tanzanian Shillings which is a huge amount of money here.

I have gratefully received donations from:

Susan Storm and David Sutherland
Phil and Carmel Beinart
Clifford, Stephanie, Lila and Violet Low-Beinart
Mark McBurney
Helen Maddocks
Moishe Muhlmann
Su Lee and Andy McDonald

I would like to say a special thank you to my mother and her partner David Sutherland who have been on a massive fundraising drive by selling Christmas ornaments at their bead and jewelllery store, Mayagems, in Avalon, Sydney. They have raised over $1000 so far and have done an amazing job of spreading the word and helping people to see that money and assistance really does make a difference on the ground here.

I'll be presenting the Doctor and Mama Sekasua with the money sometime next week and will post pictures of that on my blog. In the meantime, please feel free to be motivated by the people listed above :-)

Love and thanks to you all.

(Some of) those who have my heart

This is the Sekasuas' nephew, Ima. I never met a kid so eager for cuddles. As you can see from the first picture, he is definitely all boy - do they ever learn early. In the last one I'm dancing with Shela at the disco we had for the kids at the Tabora Hotel last week - they danced up a storm and I have some hilarious (and educational) video of the dance moves. :-)

Famous Last Words

So officially, according to the staff at Volunteer Africa, we are not really supposed to go out at night. We should be concentrating on the job, we shouldn’t be giving locals a bad impression of wazungu, and most importantly, it’s not seen to be all that safe. Obviously, this advice is not heeded at all and we always go out and always have a fantastic time, even if we encounter one or two minor dramas along the way (which we always do). These dramas make for good stories, but Saturday night’s drama I could have done without, even if I think it definitely makes the best story so far.

We have been hanging out on the weekends with the pilots I mentioned in my first blog – they’re lovely boys and are here making maps of the landscape which their company sells to other companies that are looking for diamonds. They’re off to DR Congo at any second so we went out to celebrate our goodbyes on Saturday night. Ann-Marie and Sandra were also leaving the following day so a big night was planned.

The evening begins questionably with one of the guys (a new one who none of us girls know or like at all) taking a leak in our compound against our day guard’s house. I bawl him out while holding him by the scruff of his neck and tell him that his defence – that Africans do the same thing – has no rationale whatsoever and that if I see him do the same again I’ll give him a beating. We manage to get over that hurdle by piling 11 people into the boys’ landcruiser – when we get out the entire Tabora Hotel peers out to watch mzungu after mzungu tumbling out of the car (it’s like the punchline to one of those jokes – “how many [insert racial subgroup] can fit into a [insert typical Australian vehicle]?”. After dealing with the good-natured, yet cringeworthy humiliation of seeing all the pilots dancing on stage with the members of the One Temi Band (who, I will admit, take it all with much more good humour than would any band whose stage had been crashed in Australia), we head off to the infamous Club Royale, home of the pikipiki Coffin Cheaters, the squat toilets with doors that don’t close, and the Konyagi that comes in plastic bags. While walking there, Pilot Ed tells me that the last time he was here, he and Matt were forced to hand over money in the toilets (either that or have their throats slit – nice that they were given the choice, I think). I say “hamna shida (no problem)! We have been lots of times and nothing like that has ever happened to us. It’ll be fine.”

We get inside and grab a couch; some of us go to dance and others sit down to drink. At some point in the evening I remember that I was dancing with Ed and a guy comes up to us, pulls out a TzSh1000 note and starts gesturing to Ed with it.

“One thousand for Liza,” he says. (I must have told him my name.)

One thousand shillings? I’m offended. A girl like me should get at least a fiver (around $5)… but I am over 25 in Africa so my value probably isn’t what it might be in Australia, even if I am a mzungu. Since he doesn’t get to have me, he settles for muscling Ed for a beer (“Serengeti or else,” he says menacingly), making it twice out of two times Ed has been threatened at Club Royale.

I dance for a while with my bag over my shoulder, then come to flop down next to Matt and we chat for a while. I get up to go have another dance, take off my bag and ask Matt to look after it for me.

I say “please don’t take your eyes off this bag and do not move from this spot.”

He looks at me like I’m a moron and says “Do you think I’m a fucking retard?”.
I say “not at all, but you know how it always makes you feel better to have said the words, right?”. He agrees and off I go.

I come back later (I don’t know exactly how much later it was because I remember getting up and back a few times, always sitting in a different spot but Matt is always in exactly the same place, sitting ON my bag and Mandi’s (Mandi carries around all – and I mean ALL – her business: two phones, passport, ALL her money, her cards, everything, which I think is completely mental). Eventually Matt leans over and asks me to take his place so he can go to the bathroom. I scoot over, look at the situation for a split second and say “Matt, where’s my bag?”

Gone. Like a ray of light only faster.

No one can work our how or when, specifically how, since Matt has been sitting ON both bags. I have a panicked ferret around for about a minute, then say “forget it, it’s gone”, and walk outside in tears to deal with the loss (my mobile [on its last legs anyway but desperately needed here] and much more importantly, my camera). Luckily I’m obsessive about backing up pictures and have everything on thumb drives and CDs, so all I lost was the pictures I had been taking that night. In comparison to what could have been taken I was extraordinarily lucky so I know all I need is a moment outside for a quick cry, and then philosophy would kick in, and another drink of Konyagi would numb any residual pain or self-flagellation at having taken off my bag in a nightclub in Africa.

I’m standing outside to the left of the door wiping away the tears when I hear a commotion to the right. Mandi is calling my name; I go over and see a group of guys including Daniel, the Sekasuas’ son who is out with us, beating the crap out of a guy who had been sitting to my right trying to talk to me about five minutes before we noticed my bag was gone (Matt was to my left, so I can’t imagine it was directly this guy, although he may have been involved in the distraction part of the operation). Mandi is hysterically saying “Liza, please tell Daniel this isn’t the guy, please tell him this guy didn’t do it or Daniel is going to kill him.” I can’t even work out what’s going on at this point; all I can see is a group of men with Mandi smack in the middle of it. I hear a punch (they don’t sound the same in the movies) and I start shouting at Mandi to stop using herself as a human shield (Mandi is pretty streetwise and never, ever thinks of herself in a dangerous situation). She turns toward me, still begging me to say it wasn’t this guy, and I see she’s covered in blood – there are streaks of it all over her shirt (which she had borrowed from me) and spatters all over her face. I know it’s not her blood but considering we are in Tanzania, that’s even more scary than if it was. Meanwhile this guy is standing there with blood all over his face, not even fighting back.

I start weeping again and scream at Mandi to get out of the middle of the madness but she won’t. Eventually (I think) Daniel stops punching the guy who runs off, and Mandi tries to calm Daniel down while I storm off (unintelligently) down the road into the darkness alone before being stopped and brought back by Matt. Matt and Ed had been trying to stop the fight as well and start listening to a man who implies he knows what had happened. This guy starts talking earnestly to Matt and Ed and is noticed by another guy I had danced with briefly inside who said he was a police officer. The guy speaking to the boys asks to see proof that this guy is a cop. Another fight breaks out, which Mandi and I, ever the pacifists, keep trying to stop. The problem is that in Tanzania, getting the police involved in anything means there will be an investigation (locals are always outraged and ashamed when wazungu are robbed and we have been told repeatedly that, unknown to us, there is a whole subculture of people who watch out for wazungu and thwart attempts at crimes against us that we will never even know took place). A Tanzanian police investigation involves rounding up all the people in the vicinity of the crime and beating them senseless until one of them confesses. Over a camera and phone, I’m not willing to subject anyone to this so Mandi and I begin protesting vehemently to everyone to let it drop and leave everyone alone. Eventually the boys convince Mandi to get into a taxi but they’re are concerned that the guy trying to help us is going to get killed if we leave him there, so we chuck him into the taxi too and speed off back to our house. When we get there there’s another dispute over what to do with the guy we have abducted from the club, and ultimately he is sent off home in the taxi.

By this time it’s 5am and Matt, Ed, Daniel, Mandi and I decide there’s little that can be done now except to lie on the water tank and drink more Konyagi (I tell you, it numbs the pain). Matt, who has been apologising profusely to me for an hour, gets his guitar and composes a song that involves a repetition of the words “pole sana” and “obviously, my ass cannot be trusted”. At 5.20am, Sandra and Ann-Marie, who are leaving today and had gone home early to be ready for Ann-Marie’s 6am departure on a bus to Arusha, come out to the tank to investigate the weird mood on it and Mandi informs them that we were jacked. Around this time Ann-Marie realises that it’s 5.30am and Sheki, who is travelling with her to Arusha, is nowhere to be found. Another fight breaks out between Mandi and Ann-Marie in the midst of the stress of trying to get Ann-Marie to the bus station (there’s no other bus until Wednesday), and Mandi, for the first time since being here, loses her temper and lets fly with a homegirl monologue to rival anything ever written by Quentin Tarantino. Ann-Marie and Sandra leave for the bus station and Mandi storms off into her room which is the last they all see of each other, despite having lived and worked together for three months. Five minutes later they’re back, Ann-Marie having missed the bus and still having no idea where Sheki is.

Around this time Matt realises he and Ed should probably get back to the pilots’ house so they can start the day’s flying. Unfortunately, Harry, their driver, is nowhere to be found and Tim, one of the guys scheduled to fly that day, apparently has food poisoning. We finally get hold of Harry and Mandi, Ed, Matt, Daniel and I pile into the car, pick up Jason from the boys’ house, and head out to the airport. Daniel is basically asleep on his feet and is wrapped in the Masai blanket Mandi bought at the market. At this point it’s 7am and I look around the truck to realise that I am in Tanzania, bagless, cameraless, sleepless, surrounded by three severely hungover Kiwi pilots, an insomniac geophysicist, a pissed-off blonde Arizonian, and a Masai warrior.

And did I mention that Sunday is the day the new volunteers are scheduled to arrive? What a good impression we were about to make.

We spend about two hours at the airport trying to get the boys’ plane to work, then meet Dr Sekasua, Mama and Sandra in the departure room. Sandra looks like she’s about to kill us both before she gets on the plane to Dar but we are focused more on a) not telling the Doctor that we had been robbed, or he would be devastated, ashamed and humiliated by his own countrymen and spend his precious time trying to fix the problem, and b) hiding Daniel from the Doctor, who would probably murder him if he knew he was out with us and this had happened. I’m like the walking dead at this point and Matt, Mandi and I head to the Tabora for breakfast, then back to the airport to pick up the pilots who flew 100 kilometres at 20 metres above the ground, encountered a thunderstorm, and turned back after half an hour. At around noon Mandi and I finally fall into bed (having been told, blessedly, that the new girls had been delayed in Dar until Tuesday) and sleep until 5pm.

Pole sana. I wish I could say at least no one was hurt. And my shirt (which Mandi looks way better in that I do, so I hated her even before she covered it in a strange man’s blood) is still soaking in a bucket of water.

…and I will never, ever let Matt live “do you think I’m a fucking retard?” down.

The Giving Season

Hi all... it's almost Christmas and I'm out here in the middle of Africa working for a struggling NGO full of orphans. Therefore, I'm going to be absolutely shameless (have you ever experienced me being anything but?) and ask you to consider making a donation to HAPO during the Christmas season. It's the season to give and to think of all those billions of people who will never see a brand new Ipod or an MP3 player or even clothes out of the packet in their entire lives.

I know everyone goes a little crazy during Christmas but I also know many of you talk about how you wish you could make a donation to Africa and know that it actually gets somewhere and makes a difference.

Well, here is your chance.

I've been on a big fundraising drive in the last few weeks and I can guarantee that every cent that is donated to HAPO goes directly to the children and to associated projects intended to make the organisation grow. There's no corruption and no threat that your money will get swallowed up in administrative costs as I am here to see how it is spent (and will send you photographs to prove it). Here are some examples of how donations are spent and just how little can make a big difference here:

$5 buys a book for the new HAPO library
$15 buys one child a complete school uniform for one year
$20 buys four children a mosquito net each, providing crucial protection against malaria
$50 buys one month’s worth of supplies for the HAPO medical kit
$60 buys one week’s worth of fuel for the HAPO truck, which stops the children from having to walk up to 9km home in the evening
$100 pays for HAPO’s school teacher for one month, providing extra educational support for the children
$105 buys all 36 children a nutritious daily meal of rice, beans, spinach and fruit for one month.

If you are interested in donating, please email me directly and I will arrange for you to make a deposit into my bank account. I will then withdraw the money and provide you with a receipt so you will not have to pay overseas bank fees.

It's humbling to be here, everyone, especially when I think of how the West goes mental with consumerism around this time of year. Thank you all in anticipation of a generous (even if guilt-motivated) donation, regardless of how large or small.

T.I.A.M.F.

This Is Africa.

It’s a phrase you hear a lot around here, always uttered by wazungu, always with an accompanying chuckle and shake of the head. But this week I decided to modify it a bit, in keeping with the mood I generated as a result of being incredibly, uncontrollably, stereotypically, culturally-inappropriately pissed off at everything and anything.

This Is Africa, Mother Fucker.

When you first get to Africa you get completely drunk on the exoticism of it all. The smells, the sunsets, the smiles, the feeling of “here I really am in Africa, doing what I always wanted to do”. Being pulverised under the weight of 45 people on a daladala is fun, for example. After a few weeks you begin to get mildly irritated when you spend an hour at the post office trying to get someone to hand over a package with your name on it sitting half a foot in front of you. Now that I have been here seven weeks I can see why the expat wazungu who live here say what they say about Life In Africa. And I understand so, so much more why it is so hard for Africans who come to live in Australia.

This was the first week of the children’s school holidays so the “schedule”, such as it was during school term, was abandoned in favour of having a week of fun and games until Sandra and Ann-Marie leave (tomorrow morning at dawn). For Thursday’s activity, I had the brilliant idea of sponsoring a trip to Igombe, a dam outside Tabora where, apparently, there were lots of trees and nature-like things and the kids could all have a picnic, run around, fall in the water and half-drown, that sort of thing.

“It’s a good idea, Mama!” declares Mama on Monday.

Great. So, the plan is, we will ask Martha to cook the children’s food early on Thursday morning so it will be ready to take with us to Igombe at 11.30am. We will take the children’s water in buckets and the UN tarpaulin. Easy. How far away is the dam?

“It’s not far, Mama!” says Mama. “Maybe twelve kilometres.”

Great. Is it easy to get to?

“Yes, Mama, it’s easy!” says Mama.

On Wednesday night at 8pm I casually inquire whether Martha has been told to cook the children’s food so that it will be ready to take with us at 11.30am.

“It will be too difficult, Mama,” says Mama. “Why do you not go and buy the children’s food from Mayor’s (local fast food place) in the morning?”

Through gritted teeth I agree to this, not resenting having been asked to do (and pay for) it, just pissed off it was only discussed at the last minute, and then only because I raised the subject. Ultimately Sandra had the excellent idea of giving the children just a snack at the dam (eggs, bread and bananas), and returning them to HAPO for their mail meal around 3pm. Simple.

On Thursday morning I was a force to be reckoned with at HAPO, bossing everyone around with an air usually reserved for drill sergeants, determined that our scheduled departure time of 11.30 would be stretched by no more than an hour (I’m dealing with 37 children and I’m in Tanzania – cut my schedule some relative slack, please). This involved negotiating with Lazaro, the driver, on how much money to pay him for fuel for the truck. According to Lazaro, he needed TzSh25,000 to drive 24 kilometres. It occurred to me that if HAPO was running a truck that needed $1.50 to drive one kilometre, it was time to think about buying another truck (with what – but that was a problem for another day).

At 12.30 37 children squash onto the back of the truck with Sheki and Deus, Anne-Marie, Sandra and I pile into Mama’s car, and we start off. Twelve kms should take no more than half an hour. The kids love riding on the truck despite winding up with each other’s feet in their faces, and from the look in the rear vision mirror, they were loving their safari.

One hour later we find ourselves on a dirt track, both cars having driven 20 minutes in the wrong direction on the “main” road, after stopping passers-by to inquire about the state of their morning, their health, their work, and ultimately where the hell this dam is. The dirt tracks around here have a touch of the Wolf Creeks about them; they give a feeling of real remoteness and isolation even though there are always one or two random people about and I know we are only about 15kms from Tabora. The HAPO truck leans horizontally in places, random arms and legs hanging out at all angles and flushed faces beaming, never the slightest bit concerned when Lazaro swerves clean across the road to avoid a herd of goats. Mama’s car, something resembling a Corolla decked out with plastic flowers and images of the Virgin Mary, is probably not built for manoeuvrings that would rival Evil Kaneevil’s. But she approaches the situation with the usual attitude of Africans – calm, detached, completely without concern. The car struggles over the lumps and up from the walls of huge holes; Mama speeds where she can and then brings the car to a screeching halt at the foot of ditches and men carrying entire farms on bicycles, banging our heads on the ceiling.

“Pole,” says Mama.

All would be just an adventure if we knew where we were. I start to experience a mild form of my usual panic when encountering such situations, this one compounded by the fact that even if I wanted to cut and run, I’d probably get into a little trouble if I abandoned 37 African orphans packed onto the back of a truck. I’d probably be breaking the Child Protection Policy I agreed to before coming to Tanzania. Swallowing tears, I ask Mama if it is far from here.

“Not far, Mama!” says Mama.

Do you know where it is, Mama?

“Yes, I think so, Mama!” says Mama.

It takes an hour and a half to drive 17 kilometres but ultimately we reach the dam and, to make a long story somewhat shorter, the kids did have a good time playing for the 45 minutes or so we could now afford to spend there. Since we now knew where the dam was, the trip home should have been fairly stress-free (except for the aggressive-looking clouds that were gathering – and when it rains here, it means business, and this was a very sobering thought while out in the African bush on sand tracks in a senior Corolla and a dying truck with an open back section carrying, did I mention, 37 African orphans). After piling all the children back on the truck, the girls and Mama and I get back into Mama’s car.

“Oh!” says Mama, pointing to the fuel gage. “The light has come on.

"Pole."

One would think that when planning for a trip for 45 people into the bush, one would check one’s fuel gage before starting off. But this is just the cherry on the cake of examples of what it’s like here. There’s no planning, no thought for consequences, no organisation, no contingency plans. Everyone just goes ahead and does what they can and relies on Mungu to provide the rest. If we run out of fuel in the middle of nowhere in the rainy season…. but I’m writing like an Mzungu. No one would even start that thought here, let alone finish it. When we get frustrated enough to kill someone, people just laugh at us and say “pole”. It’s the phrase for everything and reminds me a little of the way “shame” is used in South Africa. Pronounced “POL-eh”, the direct translation is “sorry”, but it doesn’t only mean “I apologise”. It means “that sucks”, “I feel your pain”, “gee, that’s a pity”, “I wish I could help”, “ouch, that looked like it hurt”, “damn, I messed that up”, “here, let me comfort you”, “oh, that baby is so cute”, and “I’m feeling sorry for myself” (the latter of which we use a lot at home). In fact the term has completely invaded my vernacular and I can’t imagine being able to function a single day without it or its variation, “pole sana” (very sorry). I’ve noticed that it’s frequently used in a way that almost exonerates people from having to take responsibility for anything.

What I find desperately annoying is that people are completely accepting about “the African way”, which means nothing is ever on time, there are no schedules, things change constantly and without notice, there’s no consistency to anything, there’s no planning, no foresight, no protection for the future (ie no insurance). People just laugh and say that’s Africa, you must accept it. But then in the next breath, people ask for money to help Africa. As an mzungu, you could walk down the street with every single cent to your name strapped to your waist and be completely fleeced of it by the time you walk home from the market, just by making friends and listening to people’s stories. I’m not saying people beg here (there are few beggars and the ones who do are old and take care of kids like ours, so we always give); I’m saying that given an opportunity, many people will ask an mzungu for money – ongoing money to “sponsor my life”. There is a very strong sense that the responsibility of wazungu, being as rich as we are, is to fix Africa’s problems. People seem unaware that billions of dollars are already sent to Africa every year, but that people in the West are disillusioned because nothing seems to make much of a difference. Last Wednesday night Mandi and I had a long talk with our (very drunk) program manager who was asking us for money for HAPO. I told him that no amount of money would fix the problems here; that people need to change their attitude towards life, work, money, structure and society. Yes, Africa has many problems that the West does not have but the West has its own problems which it works hard to address. Here, the only people who seem to work hard (and they work until they drop) are those doing unskilled work. Women selling vegetables on their heads strap babies to their backs and walk across Tabora for 15 hours and make about a dollar a day. But the bank shuts at 3pm and everyone takes at least a two-hour lunch break and pauses for chai (tea) at every opportunity. I remembered my dad telling me that the West is rich because people work their guts out. Here, some people work their guts out but it’s the kind of work people do to survive, not the kind of work that grows the economy and the country’s prosperity. It can be depressing, but I do feel I have some answers to my questions now.

(Oh, and by the way, we made it back to Tabora in one piece. Perhaps Mungu really does provide.)

Karibou Kikwete

The long-awaited World AIDS Day occurred last Saturday. World AIDS Day tends to have more meaning when you’re living in a country with an HIV infection rate of between 7 and 11 per cent. It has even more meaning when you work all day with children whose parents died of AIDS and are now struggling to survive every day, against all odds. It has particular meaning when you’re working in the capital town of the region that is hosting World AIDS Day. And it has extra-particular meaning when that town receives a visit from the President, himself a strong supporter of AIDS prevention and the leader of Tanzania’s “know your status” campaign. Yes, it turns out the President actually did visit Tabora (to be clear, my cynicism was based on disbelief that he’d visit HAPO, not on disbelief that he’d visit Tabora – and as it turned out, that cynicism was well-founded for reasons too complicated and enormously confusing to go into) and attended the festival being held on a local oval, where HAPO had an information stall. I even got to see his upper half as he got out of his landcruiser (here I should say that I appreciated how he rode in the front seat and was only accompanied by 17 more landcruisers, and that the public was allowed within fifty miles of him without having to undergo cavity searches. But I suppose people have little reason for wanting to kill the President of Tanzania.). He seems like a nice guy – but then again, I would endorse the Presidency of anyone who has endorsed the spread of AIDS education by encouraging people to learn rap songs about it (although it’s a little disconcerting to see and hear these cheerful-sounding and catchy songs being sung in Swahili, only to find out the actual content is about sickness and death). The whole town turned out this weekend and you could feel the safe-sex message in the air.

A lot of education here is done via song – it’s a good way to get people to remember the information and is in keeping with the local culture, which is obsessed – and I mean obsessed – with music, singing and dancing. I fervently wish that I could upload video to my blog because I have footage of dancing that has to be seen to be believed. I don’t mind saying that I am completely mesmerized by the way people dance here. First up, imagine a torso staying more or less still. Then imagine two legs spread somewhat apart but also making very little movement. Then imagine an ass circling round and round, seemingly completely detached from the torso and legs it belongs to. Where I come from, this kind of dancing would be most commonly found in a strip club (so I’ve heard) but here everyone does it all the time, with strangers, in front of old people (old people do it, in fact).. the kids do it, which is the most disconcerting thing of all. A few weeks ago little Shela, one of my favourites, ran up to me and said “Sister Liza!”, turned sideways, and started doing the thing. Then she got down on her hands and knees and did it! I hardly knew where to look. And the boys… today I got videos of them rapping and dancing and I tell you, there isn’t a white boy in the world who can dance like that, and these boys are 10 years old! Everyone has a ridiculously good body from doing so much manual labour and it’s pretty humbling to be taught to dance by an 8-year-old girl. But Shela’s lessons seem to be paying off… on Saturday night at the Tabora, I was told a few times that I dance “not like mzungu, like Afrikani”, which I considered to be praise of the highest calibre. That’s the funny thing about Tanzania… it’s considered deeply impolite and provocative to hang your underwear outside (it’s seen as a blatant message of “intention” to whoever), and men and women can’t kiss or hold hands in public (plenty of same-sex PDAs though) but anyone, young or old, can grind their hips and weave their butts in very sexual-seeming figure-eights and that’s acceptable (and expected). It certainly makes for good people-watching at the Tabora, where, this Saturday night, the One-Temi Band seemed to spontaneously break out of its usual Groundhog-Day set delivery and sang and danced up a storm. Whether they were inspired by the magic of Kikwete’s visit, or were feeling emotional about the power of the AIDS message, or had simply had too much Konyagi (my vote – it’s the local firewater and even I have become accustomed to it) – damn, they kicked some musical ass that night.

As a result it was even harder to leave before 3am when we got kicked out (after dancing to the Tanzanian top 40 – this happens to us a lot) and then went to the only other scene in town – the infamous Club Royale, which is surrounded by what seems, to the untrained eye, to be the Coffin Cheaters but is actually the local pikipiki (motorcycle) guys who ferry people around like taxis (no, Dad, I have not been on one – yet). No visit to Club Royale is complete without the mandatory Tabora power failure, so thank you Kendall for giving me my Mac light, which I carry absolutely everywhere I go. Luckily the crucial places in town – the hospital, the nightclub – have backup generators so we got over the hurdle of having no power for music and sang on the couch until the generator powered up. Leaving Club Royale at 5am inevitably involves a run-in with the pikipiki guys, who can never accept that anyone would want to walk home at 5am (especially if it means losing a fare), and always pursue and surround us on their bikes until one of us turns around and screams at them to bugger off (which never works; actually it tends to get at least one person’s foot grazed by a tyre). It’s a weird feeling to walk home at dawn after a night of drinking and dancing and hear the Muslim call to prayer on the way (strange juxtaposition which probably suggests to the outside world that I am an insensitive mzungu who refuses to leave her Western was behind).

When we got home we sat on the water tank in the compound and watched the sun rise, listening to Paul Simon’s “Under African Skies” and watching all the lizards come out to sun themselves. I am proud to announce (believe it, sceptics) that I was one of the last two standing (well, sitting) that night – I went to bed at 9am and could have stayed up longer (but kept telling myself not to be mental). When I woke up at 12 there was still no power and no water too. No gas here so this meant no food, so we cooked breakfast that afternoon on a charcoal burner on the front porch (picture proves). I can only hope that my new habits – which include eating with my hands; saying “pole”, “asante” and “sawa” before even thinking about “sorry”, “thanks” and “OK”; squatting in the dirt; handling insects with my bare hands; and buying vegetables from the tops of women’s heads, will cancel out any points I lose by having fun on Saturday nights. And surely dancing like an African wins some back too?

[Pics: Sunrise over Africa

The HAPO kids enjoying icypoles at the AIDS festival oval

On the water tank - the blurriness kind of reflects how we felt at 6am

Eating breakfast from the charcoal burner]

AIDS week

All of Tabora is in a spin over the President's (alleged) visit which is (allegedly) to occur today or tomorrow to celebrate national AIDS week. Tabora is the region on which the celebrations are concentrated this year so there is a big festival-type deal going on at a nearby oval. The last two days have been insanely frustrating and have really revealed to me how people go nuts trying to get anything done in Africa. Yesterday there was a neverending trek between the District Commissioner's office and HAPO in order to get permission for us to take photographs of the President's (alleged) visit. No, they said, you cannot take photographs as you are not Tanzanian. But, you can give your cameras to members of the Tanzanian press corpss and THEY can take photographs using your camera. Tempting as it was to hand over our cameras to total strangers, we declined this option. Anyway, here are some more pics.

This is my bedroom - the novelty of the mosquito net has started to wear off a little, especially when I forget its there and get tangled up trying to get out of bed without untucking it first (this tends to happen in the middle of the night)

And, this is the family of Christina which I visited yesterday to make sure Mama Christina was all right. Last week I went with Sheki to check on her as Christina said she had been sick for two weeks. When we got to the house she could barely stand up, let alone walk. I asked why she hadn't been to hospital and she said she was waiting to get together some money for a taxi. We bundled her into our cab (with her younger sister who had the youngest baby strapped to her) and took her to the hospital, where I gave her ten dollars and told her to buy medicine. When we went back yesterday she was her usual smiley self and said she had had a very bad case of malaria. Anyway, here is the family.

Mimi ni fundisha wimba

This is me trying gallantly to implement our brilliant plan to teach the children the song "Down to the River to Pray". Needless to say I needed a valium at the end of it but they did get the general gist and it was great to hear, even though I felt uncomfortably like a missionary within five minutes of hearing the words "Good Lord, show me the way" being sung in Swahili accents. Seemed like a good idea at the time...

Catch my disease

Today we had the AIDS talk.

Rumour has it that President Kikwete is coming to Tabora in the first week of December to promote international AIDS day on 1 December. Kikwete has been pretty good about encouraging AIDS awareness and even started the “know your status” campaign by publicly going to a clinic and being tested (his status wasn’t publicly revealed, but the point was that he got himself tested). A larger and (for the cynics) harder-to-believe rumour is that he will come to HAPO and open the new computer room that has been built with the funds raised by Holly, a former volunteer. Anyway, we decided that in the lead-up in to this alleged visit (I am amongst the cynics, in case that wasn’t clear), we’ll try to get in some lessons on UKIMWI (AIDS). Lots of the children have been orphaned by AIDS, two (that we know of) are HIV+, several have a queried status and many, we can assume, are affected by it in some way or another, as why else would both parents be dead in the 20s? We thought: a good lesson on how you can and can’t get AIDS; what to watch out for; what to do if you have it; how you have to be tested to know you have it; et cetera. This would include a safe sex talk (obviously). Our kids range from 7 to 16 years old so many of them are definitely in the market for a sex talk. We imagined.

Selling this to Mama, however, was another story entirely. We asked her to prepare a lesson on AIDS and this morning she called us into the office to say she had been going through several AIDS education books donated by former volunteers. She wanted each of us to read one of these books to the class (in Swahili) and she would basically commentate along the way. So we had a look at these books. The first one was about how you can’t get AIDS (sharing plates and cups, hugging, shaking hands, coughing, sneezing, playing football). The second one was about who can get AIDS (fat people, thin people, babies, black people, white people). The third one was about who can get AIDS (business people, sheikhs, reverends, taxi drivers, poor people, wazungu). The fourth one was about what to eat if you have AIDS so you stay healthy (spinach, ugali, rice, meat, fish, eggs).

So…. Fascinating. Very informative. There was just one problem.

Where did it explain how you do get AIDS?

“Here it is, Mama!”, says Mama (she calls us all Mama), opening up the first book. On the second-last page, there’s a picture of two toothbrushes and two razors.

Right. Don’t share your toothbrush and don’t share your razor. Two pieces of advice that have definitely halted the march of AIDS across East Africa.

Here’s where it gets tricky, you see.

“So, Mama,” I say, pausing (totally out of character, I know) to consider how to say the following, “do you think we can take some of the older children aside and talk to them about some of the other ways you can get AIDS? Like through breastfeeding, for example?”

Mama gives a smile that says damn these wazungus, marching in here with their wazungu ideas, trying to tell me, a teacher of 30 years, how to teach Tanzanian children about UKIMWI. But they pay for this program so I must indulge their questioning.

“It is not our culture, Mama,” she says. “We do not talk about these things in a sharp way. We talk slowly, slowly. It is not in our culture to talk to young children about such things. In Form One, Form Two, then we have this kind of talk. But not with children in Standard 3, Standard 4.”

At this point I forced myself to keep going even though I was privately having the culture vs. life preservation conversation with myself.

“The problem, mama,” I said very carefully, “is that the vast majority of people who have AIDS got it either from having sex with someone who has AIDS, or from their mother. Very, very few people get it from a razor or from a toothbrush.”

(Read: bloody no one ever gets it from a toothbrush; has there ever been a documented case of someone getting it from a toothbrush?)

Ultimately she gave in and agreed that we would have a general talk with the whole group, and then take aside a select group of older children, separate them by gender and talk to them in a separate room. We did count that negotiation as a success, though, because I was there for the girls’ talk and although I could understand about one word in nine and the girls spent a lot of time giggling their heads off, it seemed like the message got through in the context of keeping safe, staying home and not engaging in activities that would invite HIV, like sleeping at the train station (here there were some pointed looks at Zawadi).

It gave me some pretty good insight into how AIDS education happens here. Even though Tanzania is one of the better African countries in terms of AIDS education and encouraging public discussion of the issues, today really revealed that culture still plays a huge part in the extent to which the accurate message gets through. I get the point that a 7 year old is too young to learn how to put a condom on a banana, but if they think that a 16 year old, by definition, has no need to know about the connection between AIDS and sex, they are surely kidding themselves. I’ve always been conflicted over the relationship between culture and human rights, but I do believe in certain moral imperatives and surely, surely, the preservation of life should take precedent over the expectations of culture. I mean, in the ’80s when the AIDS thing happened in the West, sex education wasn’t really high up on the educational agenda for us either. Can anyone imagine learning how to put a condom on a banana in Year 8 25 years ago? But that’s what the kids in Australia are doing now, right? We had to acculturate in accordance with changes that AIDS created in society. Why isn’t it right to expect that the same thing should happen in a society that has been far more ravaged by the disease than ours has? Again, credit where credit is due; they do talk about it here. But it seems like the focus (at least at HAPO, who knows what goes on everywhere else) is on decreasing stigma of people who have it, rather than being upfront and honest about how to avoid it.

Today we sent Jeni home with a temperature of 39.5C. Malaria, of course (here, all you need is one hand on your forehead and the other on the suspect to “diagnose” malaria. It seems only wazungu are indulged with a blood test). The truck is still broken down so she had to walk the whole way home (about 4 km). Mama just told her to get her Bibi to take her to the hospital tomorrow. Jeni was crying as she left and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it except give her paracetomol. I have never seen a disease hit so many people in such a short space of time – not measles, not chicken pox, not a cold, not the way-overdiagnosed “flu”, nothing. Everyone has it all the time, it’s just ridiculous. It’s so debilitating; the kids end up out of school for days on end; they stay home from school looking after sick family members; they can’t concentrate when they do make it to school. It seems insane that mosquitoes could rule an entire country, and yet, indirectly, they do. Everyone send good vibes to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the hope their research finds a malaria cure soon. It’s just far too frustrating to think that life in Africa will continue to be so bloody unfair.

Malaria Tally Update

Count now stands at seven. Jason II has it now (Jason I got it last week). And the Sekasua's grandson Andrew got it on Monday (although he wasn't taken to the hospital; they just started him on meds but only after I insisted he was running a fever and was like a different child). Funny, people in the West flip out if their kid has a fever and I can't imagine what the average white mother would do if their kid contracted malaria. Yet here, people show more concern when looking for their chickens. There was 7-year-old Andrew standing about looking like death on a death and running a temperature of 39C and Mama is chatting away with all the calm in the world. It's just life here (and, for people who can't afford medicine or to keep themselves strong and healthy, sometimes death).

This is getting ridiculous. I mean, a cold wouldn't spread through this many people, and you can't even catch malaria from anything but a mosquito! I am starting to wonder if the rumour is true; that anything resembling a fever and aches and pains here is diagnosed as malaria (well, I suppose that's better than it being diagnosed as AIDS). Is there a grand national conspiracy to falsely accuse everyone's blood slide of being riddled with malaria parasites? and if there is, WHY? And possibly more disturbingly, if it isn't malaria, then what is it? Sandra has been horizontal since Friday. Somehow I don't think she's faking it. It's very strange, and even more strange is the wait for it to inevitably hit me. Seeing this many people come down with it has certainly lessened the fear I had, but let's face it, it's not something I want. Mosquitoes have evolved here to the point where you can neither hear them flying nor feel them biting. You only know there are mosquitoes around once you have been bitten. And they are tough thugs, too. They just laugh off the ordinary repellent, which means my feet have started to wrinkle and go grey from applying 80 per cent DEET every night. Vanity certainly takes a distant second to health around here.

Ex-Paticularities

Pics: Juma, my new favourite. he never used to smile when he first came to HAPO but on Friday he blew me kisses (we taught them that).

Walking back from sports day

Chris and Tom, the ex-Zim tobacco farmers, with Anne Marie on Friday night

Sunday morning and I’m drinking instant Nescafe, with boiled yellow tap water and long-life milk. Mmm, delicious. Number on my list of edible cravings: a glass of cold milk (preferably with a Mint Slice biscuit or three, which my dearest mama makambo (stepmother) is arranging to send me. Not sure she can also include the milk, though). And why didn’t I listen to Kendall when she said bring Vegemite? Why? Why?

This weekend we had a visit from the Big Cheese in the UK, Simon Headington, who began Volunteer Africa in the early ’90s and has had a working relationship with Mama and the Doctor ever since. It was his first time out to Tabora since volunteers starting working here late last year and we were all slightly on edge about his visit because we had heard that the one volunteer so far who hated the program had sent a 13-page email to him outlining all her complaints and criticisms of the project. We arrived at HAPO at 9 on Friday morning as usual and, in typical Tanzanian style, we surprised with an unscheduled and unstructured four and a half-hour meeting in which the Singida project people told us about HAPA and the Tabora project people told us about HAPO. Needless to say it was total murder, particularly when meetings here always involve us volunteers being forced to watch the Tanzanian contingent engage in their favourite sedentary activity – digital exploration of the nasal canal. Yes, nose-picking is part of the lifestyle here and the subject of endless speculation amongst us temporary ex-pats. Let’s face it, everyone does it in some form or another, but in my world, anyone who gets caught doing it within a five-mile radius of another human being is considered the scum of the earth. Here, there’s absolutely no hint that it even occurs to anyone to be private about it; no one ever tries to turn their head or use a handkerchief. I’ve even engaged in anthropological experimentation by locking eyes with someone doing it to see if that has an effect. Nope. Round and round those fingers go; when one digit finishes a circuit or two, the next one on the hand gets a look in. Combining that knowledge with the other Tanzanian cultural imperative – shaking hands with absolutely everyone and then continuing to hold hands while you ask about each other’s families, children, houses, work, days and weekends – means it is very difficult to resist engaging in the ex-pat cultural imperative – surreptitiously reaching for the pocket-sized bottles of hand-sanitiser. Obviously it makes me think twice before I bite my nails around here.

Simon and his colleague Katie visited us (unannounced) at home yesterday for a chat about the vol perspective of the program. His biggest concern regarding volunteers seemed to be how often and to what degree we socialise here. There were stories about former vols bringing men back to the house; about vols going out drinking every night of the week, and while this is problematic simply because your mind is supposed to be on the kids, not on getting paralytic, it’s also an issue because of the impression of wazungu it gives to the locals. It was somewhat unfortunate, however, that we had to talk about this after having stayed out all night the night before; none of us except malaria-ridden Sandra had had any sleep at all and had just gone down for a nap at 2pm when Mandi yelled “you guys, get up, Simon’s here!” (this was after an earlier unscheduled visit from Mama and the Doctor at 9am which involved Adela banging on my window to let her in, and then me going to the door in my shorts, not realising the Doctor was there too and then madly scrambling around for a kanga). Luckily we were able to say truthfully that we only leave the house two nights a week, and that staying out till 6 is most definitely an exception to the rule. Well, usually. Is it ok to say a lot of the time?

We go to the Tabora Hotel every Friday and Saturday night and each week it’s so formulaic… we get there at 8 or so, the food takes the requisite hour to arrive, the band starts at 10 and plays the exact same songs in the exact same order interspersed with the exact same comments from the bandmaster, we have the exact same lovely drinks waiter who takes care of us all night, and we dance to the exact same selection of Tanzanian Top 40 when the DJ comes on at about 1am. Yet it’s always fun, particularly the Hanky Dance (see picture) which none of us can understand the meaning of but is a Tabora Hotel institution (basically involves waving a white cloth around while the band sings instructions: “kushoto, kulia, kushoto, kulia… Mmechoka mmechoka? (left, right, left, right.. are you tired?”.

This particular Friday I started chatting to two ex-Zimbabwean tobacco farmers (see pic) who now live in Tabora and who the others know a little (one of them is dating an ex volunteer who is coming back here next month). Both lost their farms in the violence surrounding Mugabe’s Land Reform initiatives in the early 2000s, but wouldn’t discuss any details when I asked them to talk about it. After drinking three-quarters of a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, one began to talk about his time in the Rhodesian Army in the independence war of the 1970s. When I asked him if he had read two of the most mesmerising books I had ever read – “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” and “Scribbling the Cat” by Alexandra Fuller, the first the memoirs about the author’s life as the daughter of Rhodesian farmers, the second about her relationship with an ex-Rhodesian soldier – he told me that he actually knew all the men in the second book. He was able to tell me exactly which pseudonym belonged to which person; that he knew the tattoo on the protagonist’s shoulder and that he had served in the army with two of the others.

It was amazing to hear this because that book had a huge effect on me and I remember my heart going out to the man on whom the book was focused; that he was a broken man who had seen and done terrible things for reasons he believed in wholeheartedly at the time but that now haunted and destroyed him. Then there I was, sitting next to a man who alluded to (but would not detail) many of the same things and appeared to me to be as broken as the man in the book. We’re all broken men, he said. I’m no hero. I did things I thought were right at time but they were terrible, I did and I saw terrible things. One thing about the army, he said, is that they never teach you how to grieve. I asked him if he had ever really told his story to anyone. He said he once told a total stranger, that he broke down and cried but had never told anyone else, not even his wife. His best friend was killed in the war, his marriage had broken down and he had been chased off his land and lost his family farm and was living in Tanzania alone. He was 47 years old and looked 60. And yet he adored Africa and had never left its shores. It was an amazing interaction which obviously took my mind off the dance floor, even though everyone around me continued to get soddenly drunk and insist that Anne-Marie riverdance for us.

Yet the wazungu image is a source of internal conflict, as it always is for me. At one point the drinks bill came for the 8 or so people who were drinking and it was a whopping TzSh82,000 (about $80). I felt horrified by this, not because $80 is a lot of money but because TzSh82,000 is about six weeks’ salary here and I hated the image of wazungu that this bill must have reinforced for the staff. At another point some of us were playing pool and one of the pilot boys leaned over the table and pulled his pants halfway down his ass before taking his shot. This is certainly not acceptable behaviour here (as far as I’m concerned it’s not acceptable anywhere but you know what Aussie pubs are like) so I was completely mortified and yelled at him, then apologised profusely to the waiter who was standing nearby, then insisted that the pilot apologise to him too. The guy accepted the apology but he wasn’t happy. All this, then added to the fact that everyone except me got horrendously drunk and were the last ones in the place (by this time we had joined tables with the tobacco guys), singing Irish folk ballads at the tops of their lungs and yelling at me for not being trashed like them. The whole evening gave me much to think about and it was fairly hilarious to immediately follow it with a three-hour discussion about the behaviour of volunteers at HAPO. Granted, this night was definitely an anomaly and we are a hardworking and dedicated group of volunteers who are certainly focused on the program and not on socialising. But it’s funny that how no matter how hard I try, how sober I stay or how earnestly I apologise on someone else’s behalf, there will always be times when I will be embarrassed here just by virtue of the fact that I am white.

Malaria Tally

The malaria count between the volunteer house and the houseful of pilots now stands at six (not six currently, just six in the last six weeks or so). Rebecca got it four days before she left last weekend; Sandra was diagnosed with it yesterday; Marieke had it while she was here; Matt and Ed had it about a month ago; and last weekend we had to rescue Jason from the plane because he intelligently decided to be diagnosed with it and then do his usual 10-hour flight shift the next day. Needless to say that only lasted about an hour and we had to drag him from the plane sweating and shivering and fairly embarrassed to be doing both in front of chicks. He was also fairly sheepish when I asked him politely if he would consider being slightly more dedicated to actually taking his Doxycyclin from now on. Boys – honestly. The whole malaria thing is quite strange as we have been told it’s impossible for so many of us to have had it, and that when you get it you think you’re actually going to die. But, each person who has gone to the hospital for a blood test has been told they have malaria parasites in their blood and we can’t think of a reason we would be told that if it wasn’t true – it’s not like the hospital sells the treatment regime or that the drugs are even expensive (about $3 for a course). Sandra and a few others even looked at theirs under the microscope and the Doctor knows what he is looking for and would have no reason to tell his volunteers they have malaria when they don’t (it’s bad enough PR for him anyway). I don’t freak out about it anymore, I am basically just waiting my turn as we can only do so much to prevent it and the rest is up to Mungu (God). I’m more surprised to have not caught anything from the kids yet, as you know what kids are like with their coughs and colds… but I will stop with the disease talk now in case it tempts Fate.

More Pictures

Me with Elizabeti and Jeni

Sappy, one of my favourite kids - fierce and passionate

The girls (now minus Rebecca) at the Tabora: L - R Mandi, Sandra, Anne-Marie, Me and Rebecca

Adela making chappatis for dinner yesterday

Me with Kulwa and Iddi

Ground Zero

I’ve had a few Ground Zero experiences in the last week or so.

Last Monday the Doctor took us out to visit a village about an hour and a half from Tabora, where there is a school that Africare supports as one of its outreach projects. We rode in the back of the Africare truck on a packed dirt road for about 45 minutes, then turned off onto a dirt track and then another dirt track and then another one, which took a further hour or so. It’s pretty hard to describe the scenes we rode past – just that there were these mud huts in the middle of the biggest Nowhere I have ever seen, populated by chickens, half-naked toddlers, headscarved bent-double women and the occasional goat, all wandering about or squatting underneath leafy trees dripping with mangoes that dotted an otherwise very dusty, red landscape. Every now and then there’d be a village along the track, and by village, I can only say they qualified because there was more than one mud hut and at least one woman sitting under a tree selling tomatoes in fungus (piles of four). It was almost impossible to realise that many people who lived here would be born, live and die in the same square kilometre of land. Although that being said, we passed hundreds of people just walking, walking walking… from where? To where? I never found out, but man, did they look patient. Lucky no one in this country is ever in a hurry (and by that, I mean I trip over people walking in front of me because I am physiologically incapable of walking as slow as Tanzanians).

When we got to the village we went to the school and parked in the middle of the quadrangle. There were seven teachers at this school, seven classrooms and 550 students (yes, you read that right). We went into one classroom and all the students rose, dumbstruck, and said “shikamoo” (that’s the Tanzanian greeting to someone older than you… you say “marahaba” in return) with their hands touching their heads (more respect). It’s possible many had never seen wazungu before, living, as they were, in Ground Zero Africa (I don’t think it’s possible to get any closer to real, living Africa than the trip to this village). There were one hundred and fifteen students in this one classroom (yes, you right that right too), and walking in was like crashing an assembly, not a classroom. I tried to take a picture but I couldn’t begin to fit all the kids in the one frame, so I took three pictures (above) of the same classroom to try and at least attempt to communicate how many children were attempting to get an education in this one room. At HAPO, we work with the children in the classroom every day. We have 35 kids and there are four of us plus a teacher and every two seconds there’s a kid pulling on our arms saying “Sister Liza..... mwalimu (teacher)… mimi fundisha (teach me)”. I can’t begin to imagine how anyone could successfully teach over a hundred students at once. In case I haven’t successfully communicated the pattern here, there is a severe shortage of teachers, desks, classrooms and school latrine facilities in this region (in Tanzania in general, but I only know specifically about Tabora). The average classroom size is 45 to 50 students which is massive by Australian standards, and here I was standing at the front of a classroom with 110 kids. It blew my mind.

All the teachers came to meet us and then we went to visit each classroom, where the kids were made to stand up and say “good morning, our sisters”. Needless to say they loved the digital camera experience and were very well-behaved and quiet until the second we left the room, at which point we heard them cracking up into gales of laughter. Once all the classes were let out the entire school convened on the quadrangle to get a better look at the wazungu and line up to have their photo taken with us. The most hilarious part of this experience (and it’s a close competition) was the way they couldn’t get the hang of staying in one place to have their picture taken… so in attempting to get a picture of me surrounded by hundreds of kids, Rebecca ended up being pursued by a giant wave of miniature, uniform-clad humanity who moved in a pack while singing. I have the video, it’s hilarious. This school had less than nothing but when we left, the headmistress heaved a huge sack of peanuts onto the back of the truck as a gift. It left me feeling very small and very big at the same time.

On the way home we visited a high school at another village where the staff wanted money to build a dormitory to house all the children who want to attend high school but live too far away to attend. At the moment these children are living in one room, all together, boys and girls. Total cost of building a dormitory with separate rooms for boys and girls and provision of food every day for all: $13,000. Everything here costs an absolute maximum of a tenth of what you would imagine. Mangoes are 15 cents. Four tomatoes cost 10 cents. It’s an advantage for tourists and fantastic if you ever want to come here and feel like you are making a difference in people’s lives… but the only problem is government corruption.

Today I went to visit the home of two of our girls, Zaituni and Zawadi (zawadi means “gift” in Swahili) who live with their aunt in Kiloleni on the other side of the tracks (literally, not figuratively… the train line runs right through Tabora). Zawadi has been consistently absent from HAPO and on the weekend the kids found her at the railway station, about to board a train with a man she had met who (we found out today) promised to give her food and clothes take her to Dar. Originally we thought it was a woman she met, which happens a lot because in Swahili there is no distinction between she and he so Swahili speakers often mix them up in English. Zawadi is a real wild spirit and runs away a lot, but to me, there must be something fairly seriously wrong for a little girl to spend three days without food rather than go home or come to HAPO (our kids often don’t eat at home). Zaituni also seems troubled – she’s very bright and has been chosen to attend boarding school next year (sponsored by a former volunteer) but there always seems to be something bothering her. So Mandi and I, Mr Mwendapole (the program coordinator) and Sheki and drove out to Kiloleni to visit. When we got there Zawadi took one look at us and ran, but was hotly pursued by Sheki who brought her (sheepishly) back to talk. We were invited in to her house by the aunt, who, according to Zawadi, is a heinous abusive witch. But this woman (who seemed no older than 30 so I can’t believe she’s the older sister, and there were four other children in the house) seemed really nice and made us sit down on these wooden planks while she squatted in the corner next to a pile of charcoal and some cooking pots. This room had no ceiling and no floor, just mud on the ground and the walls. Zawadi herself seemed extremely withdrawn and answered our questions with a minimal amount of communication.

Anyway at the end of it, we went back to HAPO and discussed the possibility that one or both girls are being interfered with, to put it delicately. Zaituni is a lovely little girl but she often has these inexplicable moods, while Zawadi is running away from home and exhibiting behaviour that concerns us: last Saturday we had a sports day, and while the children were standing in line waiting, Zawadi started messing around with another girl in a sexually suggestive way. She’s only ten years old and there’s no MTV or internet or sexy magazines here for her to see that kind of thing, and Tanzanian society is very modest about sex (except on the dance floor where all bets are off, but that’s a story for another post) so we can’t imagine she just generated that behaviour without someone showing it to her. Anyway, not to keep writing about entirely miserably depressing things… the upshot is that we spoke to Mama and Sheki about possibly taking all the girls aside and talking to them about their bodies and their rights. Also, we are going to call in a psychiatrist to talk to Zawadi alone, which is something that has been planned for all the children but had taken some time to eventuate. I think the suspicion we have about Zawadi’s home life might help to speed up the process and put psychiatric evaluations on the top of the agenda.

I realise I keep writing about the sad stuff but that’s only because they are the experiences that resonate the most. It’s definitely not all doom and gloom here, far from. Every day I have a little connection with a kid, and it’s always a different kid; like yesterday, I went over to Iddi, who I’d never spoken to before, and I touched my nose to his, and we had a whole conversation and I learned his name. It’s a fantastic feeling when I arrive there in the afternoons and the kids yell “Sister Liza!” and come running for hugs and hand-holding. One of the funniest things so far is the kids’ discovery (Christina made it and then it spread through HAPO) that my legs are only smooth every third day, and that the rest of the time, they could prick their fingers on them. Africans don’t shave their legs so I had to explain this to Christina by pointing to her head (all the kids have their heads shaved every few weeks, I think just because it’s easier and cleaner) and making the shaving sign, then pointing to my legs and doing the same, while explaining that shaving is something mzungus have to do even if Africans don’t. Christina thought this was the most hilarious and ridiculous thing she had ever heard and dragged other kids over to me, grabbing their hands and guiding them to my legs to feel them. Then they all had to compare the hair on my arms to their enviously hairless skin, so by the end of this examination, I was feeling quite the hairy mzungu. But it’s worth it to see the reaction of each kid as they run their hands over my legs and literally recoil in shock, and then examine their fingers for an explanation!