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.…