Monday, May 23, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
Really Building Something…
To build a wall in Tanzania, you don’t just go out and buy the bricks, you make them first.
Merritt and I have found that everything takes longer in Tanzania, from the personal greetings to the simple chores around the house. (For example, need to do a load of laundry? Better clear your schedule, cause it’s gonna take a few hours.) But then you realize it’s not just because your a “mzungu,” for Tanzanians too, even the simple projects can become a Herculean efforts of insanity. Take the new wall around the front of our house as a prime example…
Now, first, I need to make clear that this monstrosity is not of our doing. When we had to renew the rental agreement for our house (which the organization Merritt is working for, I-TECH, is paying the rent on), there was a provision about building a wall in the front. This provision was apparently worked out between I-TECH and our landlord, and stupidly, we didn’t cross it off or insist on its removal then and there. The same provision was in the first contract, and though we were happy with the back wall they built us, we were pleased that nothing had ever come of the front wall that was supposed to be included.
Anyway, so when we recently heard that there was again interest in building the wall, we spoke with Mr. Nzigilwa, from COTC, who knew the landlord and had originally found us the house prior to our arrival. We told him we certainly didn’t need a front wall, that if one was built our house would stick out like a sore thumb in the neighborhood (only attracting more attention to us), and that we were had already started planting trees in front, to create a living fence that would serve much the same purpose.
But in Tanzania, if it’s in the contract, it’s in the contract, and whether we wanted it our not, it was getting built. The only good news, we learned from Mr. Nzigilwa, was that it was only going to be a “ukuta nusu” (half wall), “with pillars on which you can put plants,” as he described it.
So last Tuesday, Merritt returned home in the mid-morning to quickly get something she had forgotten, and found the fundi there with the mama ya nyumbani (house mama, the owner’s wife), laying out their plans for the work. And before they had even finalized the plan or Merritt had a chance to return to work, the first dump truck (of at least a half dozen) arrived, backed up onto our lawn, and proceeded to dump its entire load of sand directly onto all the tree seedlings we had planted (and spent the last couple months watering and tending to). By that afternoon when I returned from work, our front yard had morphed into a brickyard, with a crew of dozen men (actually two were children), including the neighborhood “mlevi” (drunkard) pounding out there hand-made cinderblocks. (The expression “s#%t show” comes to mind…)
To make the bricks, they basically form a big pile of sand, shovel on some dried cement, pour on the water
(carried by the children), mix it together, and then shovel it into a single wooden form, and pound it down with the back of a glass, liter Coke bottle. Why it should require a dozen men to make one brick at a time is beyond me, but I honestly didn’t try to figure it out, as I wanted nothing to do with this operation, particularly after they killed all our trees.
My only input into the project was on the first morning, when, after the drunkard arrived just after six, still lit-up from the night before and started stumbling along the top of the piles of sand, shouting, “I love you…!” to nobody in particular, I had to insist that he be relieved of his duties. He would eventually return though, until the work crew also grew tired of his antics and chased him off.
Anyway, now our house looks like … I don’t know, a castle/prison/construction zone, I guess. The front yard will be a hardpan of cement until next year’s rains, and the whole neighborhood mistakenly thinks that we have the money to somehow make this all happen (definitely not the case).
In other news, Kali does not appear to be pregnant, though her boyfriend has plans to try and change this. Our first attempted garden is finally growing (despite some dastardly little worms eating all our broccoli), and our second one (pictured below), covering the former choo (outhouse), is doing surprisingly quite well with squash, tomatoes, watermelon, and of course, for Merritt, salad greens.
Anyway, that’s all the news here. Hope everyone is staying high and dry with the flooding back in the States. Feel free to send a little rain our way, as we’re getting sick of hand watering the garden twice daily.…
Merritt and I have found that everything takes longer in Tanzania, from the personal greetings to the simple chores around the house. (For example, need to do a load of laundry? Better clear your schedule, cause it’s gonna take a few hours.) But then you realize it’s not just because your a “mzungu,” for Tanzanians too, even the simple projects can become a Herculean efforts of insanity. Take the new wall around the front of our house as a prime example…
Now, first, I need to make clear that this monstrosity is not of our doing. When we had to renew the rental agreement for our house (which the organization Merritt is working for, I-TECH, is paying the rent on), there was a provision about building a wall in the front. This provision was apparently worked out between I-TECH and our landlord, and stupidly, we didn’t cross it off or insist on its removal then and there. The same provision was in the first contract, and though we were happy with the back wall they built us, we were pleased that nothing had ever come of the front wall that was supposed to be included.
Anyway, so when we recently heard that there was again interest in building the wall, we spoke with Mr. Nzigilwa, from COTC, who knew the landlord and had originally found us the house prior to our arrival. We told him we certainly didn’t need a front wall, that if one was built our house would stick out like a sore thumb in the neighborhood (only attracting more attention to us), and that we were had already started planting trees in front, to create a living fence that would serve much the same purpose.
But in Tanzania, if it’s in the contract, it’s in the contract, and whether we wanted it our not, it was getting built. The only good news, we learned from Mr. Nzigilwa, was that it was only going to be a “ukuta nusu” (half wall), “with pillars on which you can put plants,” as he described it.
So last Tuesday, Merritt returned home in the mid-morning to quickly get something she had forgotten, and found the fundi there with the mama ya nyumbani (house mama, the owner’s wife), laying out their plans for the work. And before they had even finalized the plan or Merritt had a chance to return to work, the first dump truck (of at least a half dozen) arrived, backed up onto our lawn, and proceeded to dump its entire load of sand directly onto all the tree seedlings we had planted (and spent the last couple months watering and tending to). By that afternoon when I returned from work, our front yard had morphed into a brickyard, with a crew of dozen men (actually two were children), including the neighborhood “mlevi” (drunkard) pounding out there hand-made cinderblocks. (The expression “s#%t show” comes to mind…)
To make the bricks, they basically form a big pile of sand, shovel on some dried cement, pour on the water
(carried by the children), mix it together, and then shovel it into a single wooden form, and pound it down with the back of a glass, liter Coke bottle. Why it should require a dozen men to make one brick at a time is beyond me, but I honestly didn’t try to figure it out, as I wanted nothing to do with this operation, particularly after they killed all our trees. My only input into the project was on the first morning, when, after the drunkard arrived just after six, still lit-up from the night before and started stumbling along the top of the piles of sand, shouting, “I love you…!” to nobody in particular, I had to insist that he be relieved of his duties. He would eventually return though, until the work crew also grew tired of his antics and chased him off.
Anyway, now our house looks like … I don’t know, a castle/prison/construction zone, I guess. The front yard will be a hardpan of cement until next year’s rains, and the whole neighborhood mistakenly thinks that we have the money to somehow make this all happen (definitely not the case).
In other news, Kali does not appear to be pregnant, though her boyfriend has plans to try and change this. Our first attempted garden is finally growing (despite some dastardly little worms eating all our broccoli), and our second one (pictured below), covering the former choo (outhouse), is doing surprisingly quite well with squash, tomatoes, watermelon, and of course, for Merritt, salad greens. 
Anyway, that’s all the news here. Hope everyone is staying high and dry with the flooding back in the States. Feel free to send a little rain our way, as we’re getting sick of hand watering the garden twice daily.…
Monday, May 9, 2011
Life Update
It has been so long since I the last blogged, so I thought I would give you all a little update about what’s been going on in our life.
From our last post you can see that we had a great time in Zanzibar! It was a blast and it was really nice to get away from our daily working routine. But now it’s back to real life...
Work
It’s the second semester at school and I am teaching Entrepreneurship in Health to the 3rd year medical students. Things are going well so far, but the language barrier makes things difficult at times. Additionally, I just finished gathering data for a library needs assessment of 8 health training institutions in Southern TZ. Now I’m compiling a report and trying to get books and shelving for a number of libraries.
Moss has been working away with both marine park work and his law work back in the states. For the park he is making a great manual, complete with pictures of all the fish and their various samaki names so that the fisherman can properly identify the fish they are catching. He has also been working non-stop on a report for a client back at home (the topic is over my head, so I won’t even try to explain that one.)
Our Garden
It’s growing big time! We have actually been able to make real salads with spinach and mix greens. Anyone that knows me well knows this makes me really happy! We also have kale, various peppers, tomatoes, watermelon, broccoli (it’s kinda dying though), and a number of flowers growing. Our big papaya tree also has fruit on it. We planted a few other trees in our front yard; they are coming along slowly but surely.
Cooking
We now have a new amazing addition in our kitchen, a toaster oven! Yes, it is wonderful! It almost feels like we are cooking in America (besides the fact that we haven’t had running water for 4 days). We have been baking non-stop – we made banana bread, oatmeal raisin cookies, pizza, and last night I made whole wheat pita bread (and it tasted like the real thing, with the little pita pocket in the middle and all). In other culinary adventures, Moss rigged up a grill using a charcoal jiko so we have been grilling fish and steak. You can buy a huge piece of ‘steaki’, which is enough to feed 6 people, for 6,000 shilingi or about $4.00.
Adventures
On Saturday we had an interesting experience... We were dressed in our beach wear (for me that just includes shorts and a tee-shirt, but of course I wouldn’t dare to bare my knees in public, so I just wear a long black skirt on top of my shorts). So we hop on our bikes to ride to the beach, right as a man that Moss works with shows up at our house on a pikipiki. He rode all the way across town to remind Moss of the fundraising event happening at his church. He mentioned this function to Moss the previous week, but Moss completely forgot about it. So after his surprise visit, we decided that we really needed to just stop by and donate a little to the church. We thought we could simply slip in, stay for a few minutes, give a little pesa, slide out, and continue on our way to the beach. Boy, were we wrong!
So we ride to the church, which is actually about 20 minutes away. We did not know exactly where we were going, but we simply followed the sound of the loud music in the distance. This was a singing/dancing event, where the church choir and various performers were selling their CD to raise money. Despite the exciting performance, Moss and I became the show! We parked our bikes and just wanted to listen to a few songs, but suddenly all the kids have formed a circle around us and are just staring and giggling as we stood there watching the dancers. They were mesmerized by the new wazungu. You would have honestly thought that we were the ones jumping around and singing. We ended up staying for a little while; one community member even tried to get Moss to make a speech. Moss managed to dodge that one and we still made it to the beach for a quick swim before the sun went down. All and all it was a fun and interesting day. We told the pastor that we would love to join them next Sunday, so I will have to let you know how that goes.
Kali, Our Paka
We think she might be pregnant! (Or maybe she’s just getting fat!) We are not quite sure, but she has 2 boyfriends that will not leave her alone. Moss continues to scare them away, but who knows what kind of trouble she’s getting into when we are not around. We measured her belly and will measure it again in a week. Hopefully it will not grow. I’ll let you know.
I hope you all had a great Mother's Day! XOXOX
From our last post you can see that we had a great time in Zanzibar! It was a blast and it was really nice to get away from our daily working routine. But now it’s back to real life...
Work
It’s the second semester at school and I am teaching Entrepreneurship in Health to the 3rd year medical students. Things are going well so far, but the language barrier makes things difficult at times. Additionally, I just finished gathering data for a library needs assessment of 8 health training institutions in Southern TZ. Now I’m compiling a report and trying to get books and shelving for a number of libraries.
Moss has been working away with both marine park work and his law work back in the states. For the park he is making a great manual, complete with pictures of all the fish and their various samaki names so that the fisherman can properly identify the fish they are catching. He has also been working non-stop on a report for a client back at home (the topic is over my head, so I won’t even try to explain that one.)
Our Garden
It’s growing big time! We have actually been able to make real salads with spinach and mix greens. Anyone that knows me well knows this makes me really happy! We also have kale, various peppers, tomatoes, watermelon, broccoli (it’s kinda dying though), and a number of flowers growing. Our big papaya tree also has fruit on it. We planted a few other trees in our front yard; they are coming along slowly but surely.
Cooking
We now have a new amazing addition in our kitchen, a toaster oven! Yes, it is wonderful! It almost feels like we are cooking in America (besides the fact that we haven’t had running water for 4 days). We have been baking non-stop – we made banana bread, oatmeal raisin cookies, pizza, and last night I made whole wheat pita bread (and it tasted like the real thing, with the little pita pocket in the middle and all). In other culinary adventures, Moss rigged up a grill using a charcoal jiko so we have been grilling fish and steak. You can buy a huge piece of ‘steaki’, which is enough to feed 6 people, for 6,000 shilingi or about $4.00.
Adventures
On Saturday we had an interesting experience... We were dressed in our beach wear (for me that just includes shorts and a tee-shirt, but of course I wouldn’t dare to bare my knees in public, so I just wear a long black skirt on top of my shorts). So we hop on our bikes to ride to the beach, right as a man that Moss works with shows up at our house on a pikipiki. He rode all the way across town to remind Moss of the fundraising event happening at his church. He mentioned this function to Moss the previous week, but Moss completely forgot about it. So after his surprise visit, we decided that we really needed to just stop by and donate a little to the church. We thought we could simply slip in, stay for a few minutes, give a little pesa, slide out, and continue on our way to the beach. Boy, were we wrong!
So we ride to the church, which is actually about 20 minutes away. We did not know exactly where we were going, but we simply followed the sound of the loud music in the distance. This was a singing/dancing event, where the church choir and various performers were selling their CD to raise money. Despite the exciting performance, Moss and I became the show! We parked our bikes and just wanted to listen to a few songs, but suddenly all the kids have formed a circle around us and are just staring and giggling as we stood there watching the dancers. They were mesmerized by the new wazungu. You would have honestly thought that we were the ones jumping around and singing. We ended up staying for a little while; one community member even tried to get Moss to make a speech. Moss managed to dodge that one and we still made it to the beach for a quick swim before the sun went down. All and all it was a fun and interesting day. We told the pastor that we would love to join them next Sunday, so I will have to let you know how that goes.
Kali, Our Paka
We think she might be pregnant! (Or maybe she’s just getting fat!) We are not quite sure, but she has 2 boyfriends that will not leave her alone. Moss continues to scare them away, but who knows what kind of trouble she’s getting into when we are not around. We measured her belly and will measure it again in a week. Hopefully it will not grow. I’ll let you know.
I hope you all had a great Mother's Day! XOXOX
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
