Yesterday Connie and I successfully navigated the city streets of Arusha to 7+ electronics shops after only one previous trip out. Anyone who has traveled inner city streets in a developing country knows what an accomplishment this is.
I had ndizi ya nyama (bananas with meat, it's basically a delicious stew) for lunch as a special treat to myself. Lo and behold, my family decides to make it for dinner as well. I had no fewer than 10 bananas yesterday. Not an exaggeration. Today was rough...
More to come.
Hujambo!
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Thursday, July 18, 2013
July 18
Today can only be described as a whirlwind. We left our
homestays near Usa River this morning and went our separate ways to the
hospitals where we will be spending the second month of our visit. Leaving was
bitter sweet. We are all excited to begin working but know we will miss seeing
each other every day at our beautiful school.
Things to be missed: Mama Glory and my incredible Tanzanian
family, great friends, hearing Danish every day, the awesome facilities at
TCDC, cold beer and volleyball every day, late night dance parties in the
classroom, constantly laughing until my “abs” hurt, running into Ericki every
morning on our walk to school, Mt. Meru “backdropping” our walk home, swapping
homestay stories, Mama Glory’s delicious food, group sing-alongs.
Yes, we are now realizing that we have definitely been
spoiled for the past month.
Connie, Juwan, and I are living with Dr. Kway, the mganga
mkuu (head doctor) of St. Elizabeth hospital, and his family in Arusha Town. We
are only a five minute walk from St. Elizabeth. It’s really strange moving to
the city after living in the country side for so long. Busy streets, shops,
people and cars. It’s all a bit over-stimulating. I’m going to miss the rice
fields and banana farms. It’s like we’re still reading the same book, just a
completely different chapter. It can be pretty thrilling at times, the three of
us walking around the city on our own time. We will definitely have gained a new
sense of independence by the time we return home.
St. Elizabeth is a medium-sized hospital sponsored by a
German church. We met Jonas, the hospital’s lead (and only) technician, this
morning. His office is a repurposed freight container on the back of the
property near storage and laundry. We are under the impression that we will be
working with him almost every day. Occasionally we will do a bit of work at
Ithnaasheri, a smaller hospital. More on that later. Jonas seemed quite
impressed with our ability to understand and speak Swahili, no matter how
meager. He took us to all of the wards and introduced us to almost the entire
staff-- pharmacists, nurses, doctors, record keepers. Everyone got a kick out
of our very rehearsed introductions and I’m positive a few harmless jokes were
made (in Swahili) at our expense. St. Elizabeth has a lot of wards – medical,
surgery (upasuaji), opthalmics (macho), dental (meno), obstetrics, HIV (CTC).
Every hospital has an HIV ward. We [think we are required to] go to church
every morning at 8 am. Our daily schedule may look something like:
7-8: wake up, get ready, head to work
8-10: work – take inventory, interview staff about equipment
needed, repair broken equipment
10-10.30: tea (chai)
10.30-13: work – today we didn’t have much time to work
after introductions. We repaired two chairs and were stumped by an oxygen
concentrator, incubator, and an automated blood pressure cuff.
13-13.30: lunch – the hospital has a cantina and there are
some nice local restaurants. We ate at Losika House today. Ordered meat and
rice. The food was great expect for the fact that I think we ate cow intestine.
Juwan has a knowledge of mystery meat, stemming from Korean barbeques. I may
become a near vegetarian for the next month. The vegetables here are amazing.
13.30-16.30: work then head home
Our homestay is composed of various rooms surrounding a
gated courtyard. A large swarm of little children lives on our street. On our
way home from the hospital they came running at us from a block away, screaming.
They grabbed our hands and legs and walked/skipped home with us. “How are you?
Pipi?” They always want candy. One even spotted Juwan’s Mento’s through his
grocery bag. We live with a completely insane 2 year old, Glory, and a 6 year
old, Angel, who speaks incredible English. She wants to be a doctor, just like
her Grandfather.
We have taken to entertaining ourselves with Connie’s
electrified, mosquito-killing “tennis racket”.
Things to look forward to: meeting another family and seeing
Tanzania through their eyes, actually fixing equipment, learning from Jonas,
assessing hospital needs and using it to guide my Master’s project.
Tata for now. Hopefully some technical updates to come.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
July 8
This weekend was probably one of the best weekends of the
best summer of my life. On Friday, Sonny and I managed to fix two oxygen concentrators at Mt. Meru Hospital. It only required cleaning and replacing a few filters, but the nurses were so grateful for our work! Best of all-- we showed the staff how to clean and replace the filters once every two weeks. When they have trouble in the future, now they have somewhere to start looking. Hopefully the O2 concentrators in the
children’s ward will operate smoothly from here on out.
Early Saturday morning the gang met at TCDC to make our way
to Tanga, a city on the Tanzanian coast. The large van/small bus we rented only
set the group back 1.45 million Tanzanian shillings. For a moment, no matter
how brief, Simona and I were millionaires.
The TCDC transportation director estimated the drive to
Tanga would take about 4 to 5 hours. By an unfortunate turn of events (which
could only be explained by a temporary alteration of space-time), this turned
into a 9 hour drive. Please don’t ask me how or why. “It’s just Tanzania” is
the only explanation we could come up with. We managed to stuff 24 people into
a 25 person bus. This figure includes three incredibly uncomfortable and
lop-sided fold-down aisle seats. Mountain views were a nice distraction from my
scoliotic (not a real word) spine.
Regardless, the trip was surprisingly pleasant because of
the company. Luckily we manage to entertain ourselves quite easily. Example: Simona
groomed the ladies’ eyebrows and Jakob did sit ups in the aisle while we all
sang the tune of the Rocky theme song.
Actually arriving at Peponi Beach Resort made the drive
completely worth it. We felt like we were literally in paradise. If you ever
find yourself on the Northern Tanzanian coast, you have to look this place up.
It is completely picturesque.
The complex, owned by the British couple Denys and Gilly, has
everything you need to stay for an entire week without stepping foot off the
grounds. The bandas we stayed in were quaint, comfortable, and like something
you see advertised on a tropical honeymoon getaway. There was a bar, toilets (yes
this is becoming a motif) and showers that actually delivered the warm water
that their little red knobs promised! We definitely appreciated these amenities
so much more because we have been without them for the past three weeks.
We immediately ran out to the beach with all of the childish
enthusiasm we could contain (and then some). I was just excited to spend some
time in the Indian Ocean. Typical beach activity ensued.
Dinner was fantastic. I had fish with avocado butter,
coconut rice, and two giant prawns. We talked, played darts, and were merry.
After dinner we walked down to the beach and took advantage of the low tide. We
walked out 100+ yards – all the way to an unmanned boat we had seen anchored
earlier that day. This boat took two of our crew on a snorkel excursion the
next morning.
Saw a lot of sea life on our night walk and the next morning.
Mostly crabs and shrimp, a lonely shark fin, and once especially ornery octopus
that grabbing hold of our fingers with its little suckers and spraying water at
anyone who touched it.
We stayed up late and listened to the ocean. The palm tree
silhouettes against the purple night sky were second only to the incredible
amount of stars we could see, as we were at least an hour from the nearest
small city.
We spent all of the following afternoon at the beach. Luckily,
Niels dislikes being still as much as I do and we managed to dig a fairly good
sized hole on the beach. We are really cool kids. This brought back childhood
memories of trips to Playa Del Carmen (which is almost a little pathetic,
looking back. Haha. I must have been a lonely child). Overall, super successful
day.
I had my first Tanzanian hamburger for lunch! I’ve been
missing my Texas-sized portions of protein.
We had less than 24 hours in paradise, but all of our
spirits we lifted by the time we left. The bus ride home was a different story.
(Mom, stop reading now). We journeyed mostly on bumpy dirt roads in
aforementioned small bus/large van. It’s never encouraging to drive by Greyhound-sized
buses that are flipped on their sides on the shoulder. The unanimous “Whooooa
what the…”, followed by an uncomfortable silence and everyone goes back to
distracting themselves with Candy Crush.
Finally, to further my motif… it is funny how much a group
can bond over a simple community pee in the African bush. Toilet paper, hand
sanitizer, and senses of liberation and camaraderie accompanied the ladies
during all of our pit stops. If it’s been a while since you used nature for
what is only natural, I highly recommend you give it a try. Plus, this is just another situation that
makes great use of my head lamp (an item that is slowly becoming my favorite
travel accessory).
Kwaheri!
Monday, July 8, 2013
July 4
Happy Birthday Marekani! (Isn’t it cute how close the
Kiswahili word for America is to “ ‘merica!” ?)
So I don’t have much to update you guys on since my last
post. Just a few tidbits. Sorry, no pictures this time. The next post with be more visually appealing.
1.
There is some serious linguistic trading going
on here. I’ve learned a fairly admirable amount of Kiswahili since I arrived.
Maybe I can do a post in Kiswahili and English soon. Be on the lookout. I am
also trying to pick up a few Danish phrases. I haven’t had very much success
thus far. They’re hard enough to pronounce, let alone remember. Patience and
persistence will prevail! I’ve decided to give back to this cultural potluck by
teaching the Danes some Southern words. They think it is hilarious every time
one of us lets a “y’all” slip. Immediately, they chime in with a storm of very
awkward sounding “y’alls” and “yeehaw cowboys”. It’s pretty funny. It also
doesn’t help that I met a gentleman from Arkansas that is staying at our
training center. A conversation with him after any amount of beverage, and here
comes Kristen O’Hara. So far the Danes know: y’all, supper, dagummit,
dagnabbit, fixin’ to, howdy, taters, and yeehaw. Please comment with any more
suggestions!
2.
We planned a very elaborate 4th of
July celebration – delivery pizza from a lodge across the street. I think the aspect of sitting around a greasy
and cheesy (cheese is surprising expensive and hard to find) pizza and enjoying
each other’s company is very appealing at this point in the trip. No clean up
required. Perfect. Unfortunately, the cheese here is kryptonite. Maybe it’s
good that it is hard to find. When we all saw each other the next morning we
vowed never to eat Tanzanian pizza again. Claus pretty much summed it up when
he said “we will be able to lick our toilet seats when we get home and be just
fine”. We capped the night by watching The Lion King on a projector on the TCDC
grounds.
3.
Mama glory told us a pretty funny story about
her friend, Happiness, the other day. So Happiness was visiting our home and
left in the evening on a ‘boda boda’. AKA, a very fast, dangerous and cheap
mode of motorcycle transportation. We are not allowed to ride on them during
the program. Anyway, Happiness is cruising on the back of a boda boda when the
driver sees a snake in the middle of the road. He slows down to maneuver around
it, at which point the black mamba rears up and presumably starts attacking the
boda boda. I don’t know the details, but the story ends with Happiness and the
driver off of the vehicle (abandoned in the middle of the road) and a swarm of
locals beating the snake with a stick.
4.
Power outages are pretty frequent at home. Last
night I was putting my newly “favorited” squatting toilet to use when
everything suddenly went dark. So I sat squatted there in lonely darkness until
the power came back on. Luckily, one minute, tops.
5.
Besides the immense amount of volleyball we play
(which is totally fine by me), we have started to find new ways to entertain
ourselves between and after class. Simona has so graciously pointed out that I
have an unusually high occurrence of gray hairs for my age. She enjoys sitting
and searching. Claus is 31 and apparently has fewer gray hairs than me. Great.
I prefer the word “silver”.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Safari na rafiki
June 1
This past weekend was my first (and definitely not last) safari.
24 of us in 4 open-roofed Jeeps. 2 straight days of driving,
confinement-induced hilarity, wild life, and incredible views. Saturday we
met up early and drove to Lake Manyara National Park, passing through protected
Maasai land on the way. Herders moved their flocks along the highway sporting
traditional robes and walking sticks and, of course, neon second-hand Nikes.
Culture clash.
A fairly typical sight along the side of the highway.
A picture is worth a thousand words so here are some pictures from
our Saturday at Lake Manyara.
Lake Manyara from afar.
Twiga. All of the pictures in the
park were taken from our jeep.
We spent Saturday night at a camp ground outside of the park, but
we weren’t exactly roughing it. Simona and I had an entire tent to ourselves
conveniently placed by the campfire. The grounds had multiple toilets and warm showers,
neither of which I have at my home stay. We were basically at a Ritz Carlton. Who
knew I would have to go camping to find luxury accommodations? Strangely
enough, I know I have officially hit the adaptation phase of culture shock
because I now prefer squatting toilets to regular ones…weird…TMI? Sorry.
Sunday, my favorite of the two safari days, was spent at
Ngorongoro Crater. The crater is technically a caldera, or collapsed volcano,
and one side of the crater is still active. Maasai live and herd goats and
cattle inside. The crater, nearly 300 square kilometers, is indescribably
awesome. There is literally no other place like it on the planet. It is a
habitat completely isolated by a literal wall of mountains on all sides. If
you’re in you’re in, if you’re out you’re out.
Outside of the crater. High altitude and cooooold.
Silly Danes (Looking down into Ngorongoro). Apparently the
Danish have quite a difficult time trying to say “binoculars”. They are now to
be referred to, forever more, as “bolagolas”.
Crater floor.
Maasai.
The wildebeest. Africa’s most LOTR worthy animal.
This is an elephant.
Oh hello.
Unfortunately the lions were lazy and not in the mood to entertain
our hopes for a nice lion-wildebeest show down.
Flodhest. The only animal Simona cared about seeing.
Words of wisdom: Girls, if you go on a safari, wear a sports bra.
Shout out to Steve, our only Canadian, on Canada Day! Hoorah!
Monday, July 1, 2013
June 23
Juwan, one of my hospital partners for the second month, soldering the battery holder of a hearing aid.
The past few days have been amazing! (I feel like I will end up saying
that a lot) Friday was our first day to leave TCDC (aka The Danish). All 26 of
us piled into a van and made our way to Tengeru Hospital for our first taste of
“field experience”. It was less of a western hospital and more of a one road
complex with multiple small buildings that housed various wards. There were
very few covered windows and doors and paved floors were not necessarily
guaranteed. It definitely made us stop and think about how lucky we all are to
live in a world where sanitation, privacy, and treatment are required and
expected, respectively. We managed to fix a few small pieces of equipment
during our 3 hour visit – a few power strips with burned fuses, the control
panel for a NICU incubator, and an ultrasound monitor. Not bad for a first
day’s work. It’s surprising how true it is that most “problems” with equipment
are really just a result of user error. The incubator panel simply had to be
unlocked by holding down a button for 5 seconds; something totally intuitive to
us as engineers from the developed world, but completely foreign to the
hospital staff. User manuals in the local language would make all the
difference here. Michael also managed to shock himself a few times on 250 V.
Womp womp. We should all probably accept the fact that it’s going to happen.
Darn invisible electricity.
On Saturday we left as a group to visit the Warusha tribe about 30
minutes up the road toward Arusha and near the base of Mt. Meru. The Warusha
people are a sort of subset of the Masai – the most famous tribe local to this
region. The only difference is in their lifestyles. The Masai are nomadic
whereas the Warusha are small farmers that settle permanently. We were shown
around by two Warusha gentlemen in street clothes (today, traditional duds are
only used during ceremonies and celebrations), both of which are attending
college. We toured a traditional clay, plaster, bamboo and tin-roofed hut that
is still their main type of housing. The
indoor stove plus the fact that they keep their livestock inside at night made
the air quality less than ideal. We were shown a slew of local plants by a
medical healer who may or may not have cured Greg’s knee of pain by rubbing a
charred leaf on it. Placebo effect?
Flocks of little children (some less than 3
feet tall, yet nonchalantly wielding machetes) followed us around asking for
candy, also known as “pipi”, and to take their picture. The cuteness factor
disappeared when Danwei gave one child a mechanical pencil and an
office-supply-wanting swarm emerged from the bushes (again, some with machetes)
and chased her back to our lunch spot. Lunch was topped off with us shelling,
roasting, grinding and brewing our own coffee beans.
Jakob "deshelling" coffee beans.
Did anyone else know that
coffee grows on trees?!?! I had no idea… I guess I’m a bad coffee lover. A
quick hike up a hill with a great view of Arusha and the afternoon ended
perfectly.
Today, Melina and I went to church with Mama Glory. Everyone here is
extremely devout and basically either Christian or Muslim. Some of the kids on
our program wake up at 4:30 every morning to the sound of prayers coming from
the local mosque. Our neighborhood alarms are dog fights, blaring radios, and
roaming roosters. We introduced ourselves to the whole congregation in
Kiswahili this morning. Slightly nerve-wracking. Men sit on the right side of
the church and women on the left. The music is upbeat, the choir dances, and I
couldn’t understand a darn thing that was going on. Well, except for the
donation portion – that’s universal. And bored children playing with their gum.
Individuals who don’t have money to donate to the church bring goods which are
then auctioned off after the service. Mama Glory bought 4 parichichi
(avocadoes). Melina and I are thinking that the children’s Sunday school class
that Mama teaches might be more our speed. At least they find my inability to
communicate with them more funny than annoying. A good fish face will never do
you wrong.
Stella, our sister, took us to the market in Usa River afterward. There
is absolutely no way not to attract attention when you go into busy public
places. “Mzungu! Mzungu!” Yes I am white. Yes I am a visitor. Thank you for the
reminder, because for a minute I began to feel too comfortable... But in
actuality, they say it in good humor and I even laugh most of the time. Canvas
tarps covering the market floor displayed everything from produce to Spanx to
piles of lonely shoes with no matching partner. Beautiful patterned fabrics hung
down from overhead. Melina and I couldn’t resist purchasing a few yards, of
course.
Tomorrow should be a typical school day. Kiswahili lessons, lunch,
volleyball, and we are building an LED flashlight in lab. ‘Til then!
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
best...week...EVER!
Let’s avoid a lengthy post here. My brain is on cultural overload (in a
wonderful sort of way) so let me just bullet point the mentionables. Hopefully
this method will give you a more thorough understanding of Tanzania than any
sort of lengthy, metaphor-filled prose I could attempt to write.
If you decide not to read all of this, at least read the last point. It
will blow your mind.
This is home sweet home – the room that Melina and I share.
Southerners, we have nothing on Tanzanians when it comes to being
friendly. Yes, it’s hard to say, but it’s true. People here are ridiculously
welcoming and upbeat. I mean ridiculously. It even has roots in their language.
They have a common greeting “Habari za…”, which means “News of…” (and then you
fill in the blank: day, work, school, family, etc.) . The only response that is
ever used to answer this greeting is “nzuri”, or “good”. You hear “habari”, you
say “nzuri”. Simple as that. If you are have a bad day, you say “nzuri”. If you
just got fired, you say “nzuri”. Both probably accompanied by a slight wrinkle
of the brow, but you are still “good”. See? Optimism.
I live in Makimura, a small area near Arusha in the Usa River region. The
highways are nice but the side roads we take to get to our house look like
dried creek beds, which make for a bumpy ride. Now that I think about it, they
probably are dried creek beds since the rainy season just ended.
Those images you see in movies of 15 Africans sitting in and hanging
off the side of a truck…are completely accurate. We had one driving around our
street the first night we got in. Students were campaigning for the election of
the local university present. Pretty cool if you ask me.
Our bedroom is never quiet, even in the middle of the night. People in
the street are constantly laughing, conversing, and listening to music. It’s
fairly comforting to fall asleep to these sounds. The roosters and the dogs
however, are not as welcome. I’m sleeping with ear plugs tonight.
We have electricity but no running water and boil everything we drink.
Our toilet is a “squatting toilet”. Basically a porcelain rimmed hole in the
ground that is connected to a drain. This hole also doubles as the shower
drain, as we bathe with pitchers of water just standing on the bathroom floor.
You would be surprised at how little water you need to get clean. I have heard
that some homestays have running water and wifi. I think I’m better off without
them it for this trip. We spend a lot of time with our family playing games,
doing homework, talking, and joking around.
Tanzanians value relationships above anything else. You slow down,
having meaningful conversations, and get to business only once you have
invested time in that person and shown them respect. “Tanzanians are never
late, just delayed” said one of my instructors today. If you show up a tad
“delayed” because you were speaking with your mother or a close friend, no
biggie! Time is just slower here.
Tanzanians call white people “mzungu” which is derived from something
along the lines of “one who is still spinning”. It’s very cute and clever
actually. People, of all races, who don’t live here are still on the move (not
settled) and are still spinning. A lot of their words have interesting origins
like this.
Dhalla-dhallas, a type of taxi, are small vans with three rows of
seats. I think there were about 15 people aboard on the way home from class
today. My ride to school only costs about 25 cents one way.
If I zone out during class, it is probably because I am watching the monkeys goof around outside of our classroom.
Tanzanians love volleyball and soccer and that is how we spend most of our free time. Could this be any more perfect?
The food here is awesome! Rice, beans, veggies, coconut curries, fish,
ugali (described to me as a stiff porridge), fresh fruit juices. We are
culinarily spoiled. We had some sort of sautéed greens with dinner tonight and
I have never enjoyed wilted leaves more in my entire life (or ever).
Telling time in Swahili is different. And I’m not just talking about
military time. Imagine a clock. Not digital you cheaters. The minute hand
pointing straight up and the hour hand pointing due east. This is 3pm, right?
Not in Swahili time. This would be 9 pm. Instead of reading whatever the hour
hand is pointing at, they read what is directly behind it. So they would look
at an English 3pm and say “oh, it’s nine o’clock”. But…when you really think
about it…the odd thing is that they still associate the Swahili 9pm with the
afternoon. 9pm is the middle of the day, just after lunch and before dinner. IS
YOUR MIND BEING BLOWN?? It took Melina and me a good ten minutes to figure this
out. Poor 8 year old Ruth must think we are incompetent. The only thing I can
kind of compare it to is how we associate December – February with winter and
they associate it with summer. The time is still now and it still looks the
same, we just call it completely opposite things.
Hope that gives you a little image of this world I’m experiencing J Signing off.
(And yes, I realize that ended up being a bit lengthy. Sorry!)
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