[Here is Mandi having her disastrous hair braiding session with the Masai...
... and Christmas day at the Sekasuas]
Mandi left this morning, in a whirlwind of overstuffed bags, stress and last-minute airline dramas which I think ended up making her departure easier in the long run. The stress and drama wasn’t helped by the fact that she insisted on getting her hair done by the Masai who braids hair by the side of the road. We figured: four or five corn rows, TSh15,000, an hour or two, hamna shida! SEVEN HOURS it took for this Masai to do her entire head in microscopic twists that we pulled out the second we walked in the door at 11 at night. Both of us were near tears at the end of the experience (yes, I was there from the beginning to the bitter, bitter end), which began by the side of the road and then, when night fell, moved to a shack that alarmingly resembled a crack house from a Spike Lee movie. Many onlookers came and went, offering advice and sharing gossip, beer and cigarettes with the Masai, who took hairdressing perfectionism to unprecedented heights and experienced intense inner conflict when trying to decide whether to include four hairs or five in the final sections of Mandi’s forehead. To top it off, he chattered away in Swahili for seven hours straight, which, when you can understand individual words but not what they mean joined together, can grate on the brain with an intensity that would rival torture at Abu Graib. Within ten minutes of the operation, I could tell that she was going to end up looking like a cross between Bo Derek, Britney Spears during her Deranged Phase, and Anna Nicole Smith, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her. Even if I had, Mandi’s determination to see even the most diabolical experiences through would have ensured we didn’t budge until it was done – even if we ended up disassembling seven hours’ worth of work in eight minutes flat.
Mandi came to Tabora with the group of volunteers before me (Ann Marie and Sandra) but fell in love with Tabora and stayed an extra five or so weeks. For months she has been thinking about how hard it will be for her to leave here, and now that I am back at the house writing this, I look over at the chair she always sat in by the window and I can’t imagine being in Tabora without her. I’ve lived, worked, played, eaten, socialized, cooked, cleaned up, done washing, cried and laughed (myself sick) with her for the last three months. So many of the phrases that have become integral to the HAPO volunteer house vernacular (in my memory) originated with Mandi. A few examples:
“Hapana sana!”: (Literally translates to “Very no!” and makes no sense in Swahili, but roughly means over my dead body/not in a month of Mondays)
“I am so done with this right now”: (Get me the hell out of this situation before I kill the person responsible)
“Pole mimi”: (Literally: sorry me, but means “everyone please feel pity for me, something bad happened”)
“I cannot mess with you right now”: (actually, I’m not entirely sure what that means)
…but the list goes on and on. I miss her already. I realized that when I leave Tabora, no one is ever going to look at me, point their finger and say “wewe…” (“you…”: it’s what Tanzanians say to each other when someone is being provocative/irritating/funny/
annoying/risking someone’s life on the roads/trying to get someone’s attention) like she did. It’s like ending a relationship – all the secrets you shared that no one else knows about get lost in the memories. There’s little that remains living about the experience – most of it is just memories that you can only trigger with photographs. I feel slightly envious of the new girls because they’re best friends and will always have each other to laugh and joke with about their time here. I’ll have to call Mandi to do that – and she hates talking on the phone.
Funny thing is, I’m not sure we’d have much reason to be real friends if we lived in the same place and had never had this experience together. We have a lot in common in terms of the way we handle interpersonal relationships (dealing with the schism that emerged in the house in the two weeks before Ann Marie and Sandra left revealed those similarities – both of us liked to get conflict out in the open and neither of us is bitchy, whereas… ) but there were also a lot of differences. What was great was that the differences didn’t make it hard to get along; everything always felt so honest with Mandi; we could be up front and all would be ok. It wasn’t like that with the other girls, even though I really liked them.
Mandi has to be one of the most courageous people I’ve ever met. She’s incredibly loyal and generous and giving and feels pain experienced by other people, and she threw herself into the experience of being here with amazing agility, particularly for someone who, at 28, has never traveled out of the United States, or alone, before. I feel really happy that she and I made the decision to sponsor Sheki’s university education together. That way I’ll have some connection with her over the next few years – and who knows, maybe we really will make good on the suggestion to come back here together to see him graduate.
So, Shane, if you are still reading this blog, I would like to thank you for giving your wife to us in Tabora for four months. It’s definitely a better place because she spent time here, and there’s a big Mandi-shaped hole in the HAPO house now. From everything I’ve heard, you are a totally top bloke (there’s some Australian language for you) and I hope we get to meet up in New York one day. Just take her for some Mexican food and she’ll be very, very happy to be home :-).
Mandi came to Tabora with the group of volunteers before me (Ann Marie and Sandra) but fell in love with Tabora and stayed an extra five or so weeks. For months she has been thinking about how hard it will be for her to leave here, and now that I am back at the house writing this, I look over at the chair she always sat in by the window and I can’t imagine being in Tabora without her. I’ve lived, worked, played, eaten, socialized, cooked, cleaned up, done washing, cried and laughed (myself sick) with her for the last three months. So many of the phrases that have become integral to the HAPO volunteer house vernacular (in my memory) originated with Mandi. A few examples:
“Hapana sana!”: (Literally translates to “Very no!” and makes no sense in Swahili, but roughly means over my dead body/not in a month of Mondays)
“I am so done with this right now”: (Get me the hell out of this situation before I kill the person responsible)
“Pole mimi”: (Literally: sorry me, but means “everyone please feel pity for me, something bad happened”)
“I cannot mess with you right now”: (actually, I’m not entirely sure what that means)
…but the list goes on and on. I miss her already. I realized that when I leave Tabora, no one is ever going to look at me, point their finger and say “wewe…” (“you…”: it’s what Tanzanians say to each other when someone is being provocative/irritating/funny/
annoying/risking someone’s life on the roads/trying to get someone’s attention) like she did. It’s like ending a relationship – all the secrets you shared that no one else knows about get lost in the memories. There’s little that remains living about the experience – most of it is just memories that you can only trigger with photographs. I feel slightly envious of the new girls because they’re best friends and will always have each other to laugh and joke with about their time here. I’ll have to call Mandi to do that – and she hates talking on the phone.
Funny thing is, I’m not sure we’d have much reason to be real friends if we lived in the same place and had never had this experience together. We have a lot in common in terms of the way we handle interpersonal relationships (dealing with the schism that emerged in the house in the two weeks before Ann Marie and Sandra left revealed those similarities – both of us liked to get conflict out in the open and neither of us is bitchy, whereas… ) but there were also a lot of differences. What was great was that the differences didn’t make it hard to get along; everything always felt so honest with Mandi; we could be up front and all would be ok. It wasn’t like that with the other girls, even though I really liked them.
Mandi has to be one of the most courageous people I’ve ever met. She’s incredibly loyal and generous and giving and feels pain experienced by other people, and she threw herself into the experience of being here with amazing agility, particularly for someone who, at 28, has never traveled out of the United States, or alone, before. I feel really happy that she and I made the decision to sponsor Sheki’s university education together. That way I’ll have some connection with her over the next few years – and who knows, maybe we really will make good on the suggestion to come back here together to see him graduate.
So, Shane, if you are still reading this blog, I would like to thank you for giving your wife to us in Tabora for four months. It’s definitely a better place because she spent time here, and there’s a big Mandi-shaped hole in the HAPO house now. From everything I’ve heard, you are a totally top bloke (there’s some Australian language for you) and I hope we get to meet up in New York one day. Just take her for some Mexican food and she’ll be very, very happy to be home :-).
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