You Love the People That Love You, You Hear the Music They Move To

I just thought that I would add in some more cultural experiences that we have had while in Dar. One of the biggest ongoing crises in Tanzania since we arrived has been the doctors’ strike. Many of the doctors hadn’t been paid in over six months, and for at least a few weeks a majority of them stopped working and the nurses essentially ran the hospitals. This was shocking to us because as a vital part of society doctors have different codes of conduct which I assumed were universal. However, I think people can only work for so long without proper compensation. Ultimately, the state does not have enough money to finance even the most basic institutions. This seems to be a reoccurring theme, which can be seen in the crumbling infrastructure and with constant strikes. Eventually the doctors strike was called off because under their union contract they are not allowed to go on strike, and the government threatened to fire all of them and replace them with the military doctors. Unfortunately the doctors have still not received payments, and some have tried to strike again.

Another interesting development has been with the arrival of our new housegirl, Rebecca. Rebecca is 19 and was married in her village because her family needed the dowry money. Her husband wanted to move to Dar to study (I think they said he is in form 4, or just finishing primary school) but she had to work at our house to help finance him. However, he dropped her off at our house and has not had contact with her since. At first she was frantic, trying to walk and find him in the city (of three million). She even stopped eating and tried to walk to her village (which is about 800 kilometers away). I felt terrible for her, but our family did everything they could so that she could just stay in the house and not run away. They said that anything could happen to her in the city alone, including being raped or turned into a slave. Luckily she is still here and has calmed down a lot, although she keeps on trying to borrow Emily’s phone to call her husband, who is still refusing to talk to her. Our parents told us that if she returns to live with her family, the marriage would be over but they would have to return the dowry. The whole situation is really sad and it illuminates how unequal men and women’s status really are. An interesting conversation with our host parents spawned from this situation about marriages in traditional villages. The funniest example was of one village in which a man will chase and try to tackle who he wants to marry, and if the girl can get away she doesn’t have to marry him. So we joked that all the girls in that village must work out so they don’t have to marry someone they didn’t want to.

As a side note, a water pipe broke somewhere on the outskirts of the city, and nowhere in this area had water for basically this whole week. Luckily we got it back two days ago and it has been flowing pretty consistently since, but it looked like it could get pretty bad there for a while. Anyways not too much going on this week, but Easter weekend are going to climb Mt. Hanag and see the rock art paintings, I’m wicked excited!

Much love,

Beebs

Spring Break 2012...Safari

Hey there!

This week was our Spring Break and we went on safari! (In Swahili it translates into journey) It was so much fun and we saw such an amazing variety of animals and plants, I wholly recommend everyone to try it if they can. We were by far the youngest people out of the other tourists we saw but I am so glad it was part of our program. Our group consisted of me, Emily, Gabe, Aurora, Dr. Alibrandi (an Education professor at FU who was on sabbatical), and Freddy our tour guide. We left early on Sunday morning and took a bus to Arusha which lasted about 11 hours. We took the Dar Express which is one of the nicer buses, everyone had a seat and luckily we were able to sit next to one another. However, there are no bathrooms on the bus and we only stop once for lunch at what would be the Tanzanian equivalent of a highway rest stop. So we basically did not drink at all on the bus because the only other option is going on the side of the road, but we got to Arusha without too much hassle. The weather was so much nicer there and much less humid and the landscape was gorgeous. We did not actually get to see Kilimanjaro but the surrounding mountains were beautiful as well.

On Monday we began our safari with Lake Manyara National Park which was beautiful. We saw so many monkeys and baboons, and although they freak me out with how human like they could be some of them were pretty cute. They basically just chill on the side of the road and pick the ticks off each other and climb trees, not a bad life. We also saw pink flamingoes in the lake, but they were so far away all you could see was a line of pink and even through the binoculars you couldn’t really distinguish individual birds. We also saw zebras, water buffalo, warthogs, antelope, and gazelles. After we left the park we drove up the Rift Valley which was so beautiful. This was also Maasai territory, and we saw many villages and people herding cows. It was sad as well because there were many of them sitting on the side of the road waiting for tourists to stop and take pictures of them for money. Traditionally Maasai are known for resisting outside influence but there were also chances to go into the village near the road. I am not sure if their village was there before the road was built, but more likely they moved there as a quasi tourist attraction. There is always a fine line between sharing and celebrating traditional societies with the outside world and exploiting and forever altering them through that process, but it would be interesting to learn more about the Maasai culture in the area. We also stopped at the Olduvai Gorge, where they originally thought they had found the oldest human remains. A few years ago they discovered older ones (in South Africa?) but it was still a very cool site. However, after spending essentially three whole days in the car the three of us were pretty antsy so we didn’t stick around for the lecture but the views were incredible. After driving for a few hours we arrived at the Migunga Camp, a beautiful camp where there were “tents” with running (hot!) water and electricity. The surrounding trees were beautiful (minus the terrifying rectangular spiders) but the sunrise was beautiful.

On Tuesday we drove through the Serengeti. In the stretch before we actually entered the park there were legions of wildebeest, our guide said that there must have been a million of them there, and that was only a third of the pack. It was unbelievable, I even put the Lion King soundtrack on for a while to emphasize the mood. On Tuesday and Wednesday night we stayed in the Ikoma Safari Camp, which was right outside the top border of the Serengeti. We were actually fairly close to Kenya at this point, but their Serengeti equivalent is called the Maasi Mara. The camp owner’s name was Pepe, a tiny Catalonian man who smoked a new cigarette every two minutes and had the most ridiculous stories and mannerisms. He was a lot of fun and the wildlife (cheetas and elephants!) that he had seen right outside his camp was crazy. It was cool because the whole camp ran off solar energy, and he showed us the batteries in the control room. He also had dug his own borehole so he always had running water, even when some of the villagers didn’t. We couldn’t quite understand him, but it sounded like he told us if they had gone down thirty more feet the water would have had arsenic in it…naturally we drank bottled water the whole time and no one had major problems which was thankful with the bumpy ride we had.  

On Wednesday we spent the whole day in the Serengeti. I think it was my favorite day and we saw so many different types of animals. At first we were a little antsy because all we had seen were the normal hippos, giraffes, zebras, elephants, and birds, but we really wanted to see the big cats. Luckily we did not have to wait too much longer, and right before lunch we saw a lion cub and a mother. We were so unbelievably close, and the lion was so chill like it didn’t care about anything and barely took notice of us. At lunch a man came to talk to us about the Serengeti Lion Project, in which they try to track the female lions in order to keep records of the pack and how many lions were actually in the Serengeti. The lion we had saw earlier had a collar on it, and there is a radio attached so the Project can locate them. Unfortunately we did not see a kill, but we did see a herd of elephants walk menacingly towards a leopard. We saw two leopards in trees, but in one case our guide said that the elephants don’t like them in the tree because then they cant use the shade. So we watched as a herd of elephants approach the leopard (mind you, it took around 10 minutes) but anticlimactically the leopard just climbed further up into the tree. We also saw more lions hanging out in trees, and we were so close that someone actually yelled at us because we were sitting on top of the safari car. After a great day of sightseeing we went back to the Ikoma Camp, and we sat outside for a fire after dinner. I have never seen stars that bright, and the sky was enormous because there was no development….anywhere. We also got to see the Southern Cross which was pretty cool, but we were basically on the equator so it was far down in the sky. Interestingly, we noticed that the guards had arrows so we asked Pepe about it. He told us that they carried poison-tipped arrows with a license to kill any animal or person that unrightfully entered the camp. That probably will be the only time in my life that I am escorted by a guard with poison tipped arrows so I would take note of it.

On Thursday we sadly left Pepes camp onto Ngorongoro Crater, but first we drove through the Serengeti for the last time. It was absolutely beautiful. Ngorongoro Crater was also a great experience, it is definitely one of the top places in the world to visit because of the incredibly biodiversity. There was such a concentration of animals that every angle you turned you saw wildebeest, zebras, antelope, pink flamingoes, lions, and rhinos (black rhinos-there were only 14 in the park and we saw 4, apparently they are endangered). We also saw around eight lions just napping in the grass, as nonchalant as ever. We were also able to get somewhat closer to the pink flamingoes, but you could barely distinguish what they were besides a pink blur. The crater was so beautiful and we were sad to leave it, but first we had to go up the steepest road I have ever been on in my life. The views were spectacular but I was so glad that we had Freddy as our guide and were in a safari car. We stayed in Rhino Lodge, which was one of the nicest places we had stayed at with a great view of the forest. I felt that as I was talking on the phone a dinosaur was going to burst out of the trees, and the owner told us that often there were elephants that come in the morning looking for food. Most amazingly, it was actually cold and I needed to sit by the fire to cool off, and I slept under several blankets, another first for my time in Tanzania.

On Friday we arrived back in Arusha, and stayed at the same hotel. It was nice to relax after all our traveling, and on Saturday we took the eleven hour bus ride back to Dar. It was a fantastic spring break, and I absolutely recommend going on safari whenever you get the chance!

Love,

Beebs

These are the good times in your life, so put on a smile and it will be alright

Hey everyone,

Well I had a pretty eventful week although not all of it was so great. First off, both me and Gabe got food poisoning from the restaurant on campus, which was pretty upsetting because it was one of the best places to eat but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to eat there again. Luckily it only lasted about 24 hours, but it’s an experience I would rather not repeat. Also, we didn’t have running water through the whole thing so it was a true “3^rd world” experience. However my host parents were pretty good about the whole thing and I got my appetite back a few days ago so everything is back to normal.

                We had sculpture again last week and we are working with clay. I’ve never taken a sculpture class and I’ve never really worked with clay, but in class our professor wanted us to make an abstract piece. Now I’m not a particularly artistic person to begin with, so I just played with the clay until it made a shape that resembled anything, which turned out to be a turtle. So I decided to go with an underwater theme and after a few failed attempts to make starfish and a seahorse I made a clam with a pearl inside and some seaweed. So when the professor walked around and asked us what our projects represent, everyone’s answers were really funny. I said that the turtle was searching for his passion, symbolized by the pearl, to which professor responded, “Oh yes, and that could even take months or years.” It was really funny, also coupled with the fact that a girl in our group made a giant sperm and an egg and he was okay with it so I guess anything goes in that class.

                And then on Sunday we went to a football (soccer) game. It was one of the TZ national teams, Simba versus Rwanda. We hadn’t bought tickets beforehand, so we just went before the game and they were selling them outside from a van, but they scanned so they must have been real. At first it was really fun and everyone in the crowd was very into it and we were some of the only white people there. We sat with the Simba fans and we scored twice in the first half, and everyone was cheering and really into it. At halftime Emily, Gabe, and I wanted to go outside to get cold drinks. We asked if we could leave and come back, and a man said to us that he had seen people try to leave and weren’t allowed to come back in, but word for word he said because we were white they might let us. And turns out he was right, they just ripped our ticket in a different place. So we started to walk along and there were a lot of people standing on the sides of the road selling drinks and snacks, and I was carrying my wallet in my hand. Some guy came up behind us and wrenched it out of my hand, and I yelled out because it had obviously scared me. I immediately regretted doing that because of the “mob justice” that is common in Tanzania and in all of East Africa I believe. The police are pretty ineffective and I can imagine not well paid, and theft is a very serious crime here. If someone yells out thief a mob will form and will immediately kill that person, from what I have heard usually by lighting them on fire. My roommate Emily has seen it when she was in Kenya, and it happened at Mwenge (a market close to school) last week but no one was there. I have also heard that it has happened on campus before, but not recently.

So anyways everyone starts swarming the guy and I almost start having a panic attack because I wasn’t sure if I could handle being responsible for someone’s death. But everyone was yelling for us to follow him while people were running up with sticks and batons and were beating the guy. Gabe got pretty far into the crowd and was able to pull some people back and saw that somehow the wallet had been either passed off or stolen by at least two other people. It was not that dangerous for Gabe to do that because he was white and white males are basically the only ones that can break mobs up because they won’t get beaten. Luckily there were a lot of police around because of the game so they grabbed a guy who hadn’t stole my wallet and were dragging him away while beating him up with their batons and their hands. We hadn’t realized that he was one of the ones that did have a wallet at one point, as Gabe saw him put it down his pants. So we all sprinted after the police because we knew that he wasn’t the thief, and we caught them just as they loaded him onto the truck. We repeated over and over how he wasn’t the one that stole it, but they made him strip down to prove that he didn’t have it. One of the hardest parts to see was that they were still hitting him and handling him roughly. They still took him because they said that he had information about who had taken the wallet, and at that point there was nothing else we could do so we just went back to the game. For all of that the only things in the wallet were student ID, my phone, and 7,000tsh (less than $5). Luckily I wasn’t hurt and neither was the thief, and I definitely learned from the experience. I saw a part of the side of Tanzania that I had been warned about, and everyone in our group was either pickpocketed or attempted to be. Additionally, when we had been outside the stadium there was a fight in between the Simba fans and the Rwandan (many of the Tanzanians who support the other league were supporting Rwanda) and people were pulling chairs up to beat each other with but there were a lot of police there so they were able to break it up. All in all it could have been much worse, but it definitely is going to make me more wary and careful about how I carry money because I never want to be in a situation again.

I can hardly believe I am saying this, but we are almost half way done! We are going on our safari next week, and I will definitely be writing again soon about it!

Love,

Beebs