Six and a half hours to liftoff

When I was eleven years old, my parents took my brother and I back to South Africa to visit the country they grew up in and the land in which I was born. It was 1988 and Apartheid was taking its last few dying breaths; I remember my father driving the Garden Route in our rented car, singing all the advertising jingles he remembered of South Africa in the '60s ("sticks like crazy, sticks like crazy, Scotch Brand cellophane tape") and my mother crying to a security guard who tried to confiscate her camera when we went to see a musical about Cape Town's District Six. But my strongest memory is of the black hitchhikers we picked up along the long drive from Pretoria to Cape Town, who walked the long, long highways on their way to and from jobs throughout the country, always leaving or about to return to families living along the way. They would climb into our rented van and sit in the back seat with my brother and I, cap in hand (did I mention this was during Apartheid) and my parents would talk to them in Afrikaans and English, asking about their families and jobs and the situation in the country. They began every sentence with "Yes Baas", even when my 7 year old brother was the one asking the question. And of these men, I remember most vividly the one we drove with for about an hour. He was a carpenter and it was almost Christmas; he had been up north looking for work but had found none and was now about to return to his wife and children empty-pocketed. As we stopped the car by the side of the road to let him out, my father turned around, handed him a 50-rand note, shook his hand, and said, "there you are my friend, buy your children some Christmas presents".

Years later, Dad told me that he picked up those hitchhikers so that my brother and I could have some personal contact with the 20 million or so South Africans who were kept so separate from people like him when he was our age. In 1988, it was perfectly safe and customary to pick up hitchhikers and 50 rand was a lot of money for a black carpenter. Back then I thought, wow! my parents are so kind! so generous! so liberal! such anti-Apartheid hippies! I want to grow up to be just like that. I want to help Africans too. It was an experience and an insight into a world that has stayed with me for nineteen years and, if I really thought about it, is probably one of the defining reasons I grew up to want to go and work in Africa. I would like to think that my initial eleven-year-old impressions and goals have somehow morphed into aims that are more realistic and less framed in a culture of "kind white people helping poor black people", but I am sure that the essence of the desire remains the same.

My dad recently lamented to a friend of his that his daughter was giving up "a perfectly good house, a perfectly good job and a perfectly good social life to go and live in the wilds of Africa so she can change the world - and you think your kids have problems?". Well, I never said I was interested in changing the world, but I have to admit, I am curious to see what I might be able to do in one tiny little part of it.

So, there's my long-winded introduction to this, my very first blog entry of my very first blog on the day I leave for three months in Tabora, Tanzania (that's in East Africa, for those who need to consult a map). It's 4pm on Saturday afternoon and I have weighed myself with my backpack (72 kilograms - 53 of which are me, so my luggage gets in just under the mark), I have quadruple-checked that I have my malaria prophylaxis (I just like writing the word "prophyalxis") and my passport and have tried to calm down by reminding myself that anything else can be bought in Dar-Es-Salaam. Then I thought - hang on, I'm going to East Africa! They may have mobile phones in abundance, but will they have dental floss? But it doesn't matter anyway; there's no way anything else - even a stingle string of dental floss - is going to fit into my backpack.

For anyone who doesn't yet know: I'll be in Dar-Es-Salaam from 21 to 27 October, and then in Tabora (in the Western Plateau area, towards Lake Tanganyika) from 28 October to 13 January. I'm working with a local Non-Government Organisation called HAPO (Health Action Promotion Organisation), a partner Agency with Volunteer Africa (www.volunteerafrica.org, for description of my program - see "Orphans and Vulnerable Children" link) that works with the most at-risk children in the Tabora region to increase life skills and HIV prevention and awareness. I've been planning this trip for about six months and have been thinking about it for about ten years. Now that the day is finally here, I feel like I am about to enter some kind of weird suspended animation period, in which part of me will remain here and a parallel me will be in Tanzania. I feel that that feeling will dissipate the second I get off the plane in Dar (at least, I hope it will - I always found that suspended animation scene at the end of Aliens really creepy).

I'm trying hard not to expect anything, and I am hoping the fairly excellent mood I have managed to cultivate recently stays with me throughout this journey, as I feel that motivation and initiative will be, after my malaria PROPHYLALXIS, the two most important things I can carry with me.

I'm feeling scared but ready.

I wish my Swahili was better (I can point at things and name some of them, I can say "please speak slowly" and I can differentiate between one's oldest and youngest wife, but that's about it). I hope, I hope I manage to get at least a handle on communication, because it makes such a difference.

I hope I don't get malaria.

I hope I am able to continue to update this blog in Tabora because I've had a great time writing this entry and am really looking forward to exploring the idea of a public journal (I will have to leave out the swear words, which, as anyone who knows me, will be a big challenge).

I hope I make some Tanzanian friends and learn to cook ugali.

Hope you all enjoy reading and that you leave messages!

Kwa heri and wish me luck....