Home for the Holidays

Happy holidays to all the followers of our blog. We wish you all the best in the New Years!


Celebrating Christmas overseas, particularly in the tropics, was a little bit surreal for a Vermonter like myself. I’ve had recent recollections of the winters of my childhood – sledding out in the hilly fields on our farm, playing hockey on the pond with my brothers, and nighttime snowshoe walks under the full moon. Maybe I’ve just been dreaming of cooler climes, as I toss and turn while trying to sleep here in Mtwara. December and January are the hot months in Tanzania, and Mtwara seems to bare the worst of the annual heat wave. It’s not particularly humid in Mtwara, even though we’re on the coast, but the sun seems particularly strong for some reason in this town, which is why Mtwarans which generally exclaim “jua ni kali sana” (“the sun is very fierce”) rather than just simply “mimi ni joto sana” (“I am very hot”).

December and January are also the beginning of the long rainy season here in Tanzania, which for Merritt and I, means some of the first rain we’ve seen since arriving in June. The Mtwara Region doesn’t really have the short rainy season that typically comes in September and October for most of Tanzania, and before leaving for training at the beginning of the month, I think we’d seen rain only twice in Mtwara.

One good aspect of the rain is that its finally greening things up here in the Deep South. After looking at the gnarly, ugly baobab trees for months, suddenly they’ve emerged from their dormancy with dense canopies of young, bright green leaves. And right in time, the Christmas trees are in bloom, which are especially pretty along the road leading into Mtwara, as Merritt recently captured on her camera during a bajaj ride across town.


Even our pumpkin plant in our backyard made the most of the rain, nearly doubling in size in the three weeks we were gone…


But rain also brings plenty of challenges for people here in the Deep South. Tanzanians have often told us how difficult travel can be in the region during the rainy season, at times cutting off Mtwara from the rest of the country. A few years back, the Peace Corps even had to evacuate some volunteers due to flooding throughout the region.

So it seemed inevitable that Merritt and I would run up into some kind of trouble brought on by the rain, but little did we foresee what was waiting for us upon returning from training in Morogoro.


I travelled back to Mtwara by bus last Monday, alone, as Merritt had another training for her job in Dar that required her to stay through Wednesday. By the time I finally got off the bus, after twelve long, hot, miserable hours on the trip from Dar, it was just getting dark. So when I got home, I couldn’t really see anything when I first opened the door, but I knew something was terribly wrong. I tried the light switch by the door and nothing happened. Taking half a step into our living room, my feet were immediately swamped in water. As I felt my way through the living room, the water only got deeper, until it was well over my ankles. Our carpets, the refrigerator, chairs and tables, several boxes of books, an electric power strip – they were all sitting in half a foot of water. Wading to the kitchen, I finally reached some dry floor, but could see through the dim light that the flooding also extended into the office. The house was a furnace, smelled like a swamp, and was swarming with mosquitos. It was a disaster. Exhausted from the day of travel, with no electricity, my flashlight batteries fading, and only one overmatched mop, I had little choice but to retreat to our bedroom, close the door, and wait to get a start on cleanup in the morning.

The next day I came to learn that, luckily, the flooding had probably occurred only three days prior to my return, during a particularly fierce rainstorm one evening. The water had pooled up in our courtyard, before pouring under kitchen door and draining into the living room, the low spot in the house. Apparently, the new concrete wall that was built before we moved in prevents water from draining out of our courtyard.


All in all, it could have been much worse. We can only imagine what a nightmare would have awaited us if that water had sat in there for a week or two. After squeegeeing out the house and mopping with a strong bleach solution, the smell seemed to largely fade, leaving only a permanent brown bath-tub line on the wall. Now after being repainted, it’s hard to even tell that there was a flood. The two straw carpets were of course ruined and the legs of the chairs now have permanent water staines, even after a sanding and re-varnishing, but the refrigerator somehow survived the flood. Even the mosquitos have finally started to taper off, thus hopefully marking the end of yet another adventure here in Tanzania.

Anyway, after all the cleanup, we had a pleasant Christmas Day – opening presents, going to the beach, and generally, “kupumzika” (resting, relaxing). Another volunteer, a secondary school teacher who lives about seventy kilometers outside Mtwara, stayed with us for the holiday. For Christmas dinner, Merritt made chapati (a type of flakey tortilla/bread) and I panfried fresh kolekole (a type of trevalley, similar to snapper), along with other Tanzanian dishes, like our personal favorite, katchumbari (shredded tomatoes, green peppers, cabbage, red onion, hot pepper, lemon juice and salt). Merritt and I certainly missed being home with our families, but we didn’t let the distance, or the flood, spoil the day.

A few pictures from the past couple of weeks…

Merritt and I are in Morogoro this week for training, where we're enjoying a little respite from the heat of the Deep South, where apparently the rains have finally begun. We're looking forward to starting our garden upon our return, and turning the corner on our first six months in country. Life is, as I said in my last posting, settling in to a kind of norm here in Tanzania, but we plan on updating our blog more often, as it seems like there's never an end of experiences or ideas worth commenting on. But those will have to come later, so for now, here are some of the recent pictures from our travels. Sorry for the lack of people in them, but whipping out a camera is something that one must be extremely cautious about. At least you can see some of the scenes that make up part of our everyday life here…


The Mtwara fish market. Here you can by fried pweza (octopus) or nearly any other variety of fish fried up in these big woks, three even four feet in diameter, which are housed in these little shacks on the beach. The fish come in and what isn't sold fresh is fried up for more distant markets. Fried fish can apparently last a couple of days, even in the sun and without refrigeration. We don't eat much of this kind of fish, but every once and a while Kali has no choice.


You can see the Mtwara port in the distance, where right now, most of the ships leaving have their holds filled with unprocessed cashew nuts, bound for India, where apparently they have major processing facilities. Anyway this landing site is where the last time we were at the market, Merritt and I saw a man was hacking up what clearly was no regular fish, and which turned out to be the flank of a small whale. We couldn't figure out how the whale had been acquired, but this man was determined not to let the fatty meat go to waste. Quite a sight!


There's talk of this old tugboat being raised, but at least for now it sits half out of the water where it looks to have been resting for sometime. The boat in the foreground, with all the passengers on it, is a ferry that operates between the fish market and the adjacent Msimbati Peninsula, which is sparsely populated. The channel in between Mtwara and the peninsula is narrow, maybe a quarter mile, but surprisingly deep, thus allowing for the port.


Here's some of the famed Makonde carvings. This piece was probably 35 inches high, and you can only imagine the painstaking work to carve out those details. I've heard estimates of the time it takes to complete such works, and it's in the hundreds of hours. The price for one of these larger pieces, maybe 65 to 75 thousand shillings, which is around fifty dollars. That's of course a lot of money here in Tanzania.


Another larger Makonde piece. Let us know your orders, we'll try to comply...


Morogoro. It's great to back in the mountains again, if only for a few weeks. It's not only much cooler here in Moro, but quite a bit more lush, thanks to the arrival of the long rains. It's been a dry couple of months throughout Tanzania, but we're finally starting to get some rain, and its unbelievable to see how fast the place greens up. Suddenly the country looks a little less like a desert and a little more like the East Africa I've always imagined. As you can see, Moro is beautiful, and the laid back atmosphere of the town, not to mention the good food, is a nice change of pace from Mtwara.


Sunset at the Catholic Center of Tanzania (CCT), where our in-service training is being held. I am pretty sure these our grapes planted, though still young, in the foreground, and the trees in the background are mango, which are finally ripe now. It looks like Merritt and I will be eating more mangoes than we'd ever have imagined, as when they come, they come all at once.

As you can see, it doesn't much look like the normal Christmas scenes were used to in the States. In fact it doesn't much seem like the holiday season to us, but we're planning of having some kind of celebration, probably with some of the other volunteers in our region, when we return to Mtwara at the end of the month. Much love to everyone in the States; we miss you all a ton.

At the Five-month Mark

It seems like it has been sometime since I last commented on the blog, though the last couple f months have sort of rolled by here in Mtwara. We’ve had quite a few visitors that have kept us busy recently, including the Peace Corps county director and both the environment and health program directors, each of whom visited separately for a day. We also had two other volunteers stay with us recently, Katie and Tyler, as the first of hopefully many guests to our home. It was great to have each of them stay with use for a few days; Merritt and I enjoyed getting to show them around our town, and just hearing about life in their villages made us realize how fortunate we are with our own placement.

Katie, for example, was living in a small village outside Msasi, where she said food was quite hard to come by, with fresh vegetables and fruit only really available in the nearest town, a half day’s journey away. Katie was actually staying with us on account of having to move sites, to a new village outside Iringa, in the central part of the country. Moving sites mid-service is by no means normal in the Peace Corps, but for Katie, she didn’t have much of a choice – it turns out that she’s allergic to a chemical in part of cashew shells, similar to that of poison ivy, which she was being exposed to from all the smoke in her village produced during cashew processing. Cashews are a big business here in the Mtwara Region, in large part because getting the nut out of the shell is such a labor intensive process. When harvested, the softball-sized cashew shell is roasted in large bunches in a bonfire, after which the shell is cracked open and the single nut collected, where it can then undergo further processing and sorting. For Katie, who has no reaction to the cashew nuts themselves, and who ate lots of them without any problem, it took quite some time to piece together what was causing large rashes to break out all over here body. She spent sometime at the German missionary hospital in Ndanda, which is apparently the best in the region, but she eventually had to self-diagnose her allergy, with the help of an uncle back in the States who had luck Googling the problem.

The week after Katie left for her new site, Tyler, a volunteer who comes from near Oshkosh, Wisconsin and is a little younger than Merritt and I, came to stay for a couple of days of R&R from village life. Tyler’s Kiswahili is getting very good, and he is integrating well into his small community of five-hundred villagers. Tyler is the first Peace Corps volunteer at his site, and so has proven to be a real novelty in his new community. Being the first to a new site can be challenge for a volunteer, but it’s also helpful to be able to define Tanzanian’s first impression of Americans and mzungu in general.

After hearing from our guests about how challenging and different life can be in the village, I felt like I didn’t have much to share on the blog, from what is our nearly Western-style life. Just having running water and fairly reliable electricity makes a big difference in one’s everyday life, not to mention the routine that comes with an everyday job. Also, our access to news from the outside world through the internet and to be able to email friends and family on a regular basis changes the entire Peace Corps experience.

More recently, however, I have been thinking about how our life here in Mtwara, including our assignments working for the national government, providers a different but equally interesting experience of life here in Tanzania. Just being able to compare our everyday life here in Tanzania with the latest news from back in the States creates a strange lens through which to view the people of this country. For example on October 31 Tanzanians voted in what proved to be relatively uncontentious and peaceful national elections. A couple of days later, we followed along with the election results from America, after hearing for months about what sounded like a particularly acrimonious and ugly campaign season. Several Tanzanians I have spoken with about national politics have said that people in this county feel like they have little at stake in national elections – that whatever the outcome, the government isn’t likely to make any kind of real difference in their difficult lives. While such an assessment might typically seem discouraging for an American to hear, in the wake of our own national elections, a little apathy doesn’t seem like the worst thing.

Living in town has also allowed me to continue my legal work from Colorado, and despite some challenges to trying to do this from so far away, I have actually found it can be quiet convenient to be ten hours ahead of the world in which you work. I send out emails that arrive before 7 a.m., and that’s if I wait to send them until the very end of the day – otherwise it looks like I am up in the wee hours of the night, thinking up specific questions about reservoir capacities and other random water-related information. (When I email people for work, I usually don’t attempt to explain where I am writing from.)

But whatever life we are able to lead in America through the internet and the occasional phone call, it’s still second to our life here in Mtwara, where even with water and electric service, there’s no escaping the fact that, as Merritt wrote about, this is Africa. Merritt was right when she said that sometimes life here suddenly catches you by surprise. At the market especially, you’ll see some scene, like a street salesman negotiating with a burka-clad women over the price of kitchen knife, or a butcher plucking a freshly decapitated chicken, and you’ll find yourself doubting what you really just saw.

The epitome of this experience occurred recently when at the Mtwara fish market, amidst all the flies and the mats of fresh sardines, Merritt and I came upon a man hacking up part of some large animal. People gathered in a crowd, and someone informed us that it was a “nyangumi,” which was not any type of fish that I know of. Later, when we got home, we looked it up in our dictionary, confirming what we had suspected; the man had been cutting up part of a small whale. I have no idea if the whale was actually caught, or if it was a dead animal that was being salvaged.

Despite these kinds of encounters, being so close in contact with the home, it’s sometimes too easy to think about what life would be like back in the States. But Merritt and I are committed to the idea that Peace Corps affords the opportunity to really live in a foreign county, as opposed to just traveling through it, and that that integration process takes time – probably about two years. So we try to ignore thoughts or returning, with the reality being that some days are difficult enough to make us really entertain the idea. Most Peace Corps volunteers seem to have such moments, and in that respect, our experience is similar to the average volunteer’s.

At the five-month mark, it’s amazing to reflect on all that we’ve already seen and experienced. Yet it’s also impossible not to feel like our work here is just getting started and we have still so much ahead of us in this journey. Still, we’ve learned to take one day at a time, and to take the difficult times in stride with the better moments. And thus the days, weeks, and now months roll on here, in what has become our Tanzanian life.

Sokoni Pictures

The view from our front yard. Moss and I are leaving our house to head to the soko so we can make a yummy dinner of wali na nazi (coconut rice), matemble (our favorite greens), and jodari (tuna).

Along the way we see some of the neighborhood watoto playing behind their house.


Our Sokoni. Since it is only a two minute walk from our house we come here most days of the week to get fresh food for dinner.

Azizi, our samaki man! He's great and can't get over how much fish we eat...he doesn't know we feed Kali his fresh jodari too. Each piece of fish costs 500 shilingi or about 33 cents.

Shikamooni...it's our matembele ladies. They are always so happy to see us. Each bunch of matembele cost 100 shilingi or around 6 cents.

Watoto at the soko

The Big Sokoni. This soko is located in town, which is a 10 minute bike ride away from our house. We only come here once a week to buy any items that we need for our house or to stock up on certain things that we can't get at our local soko, like pasta or bread.

Dried fish...ugh! When Moss and I were living in Mkayageni our mama used to cook dried fish for us and I have to say that it's disgusting... chewy and super salty! Now Moss and I stick to the fresh fish.

This picture and all of the following are at the big soko in town.

Wanawake buying mhogo (cassava).

Pineapple season just started and the pineapples here are amazing! They are as sweet as candy so of course I love them!

Moss buying a pineapple for 2000 shilingi or $1.33.

More matunda (fruit)

The fruit at this stand is called fensi or jack fruit. We actually have a fensi tree in our front yard. The fruit is so interesting in texture and flavor. It is chewy and has a foam-like consistency, and the flavor reminds me of an Airhead. For those of you that don't know about Airheads, they are a chewy taffy-like candy that you can buy in just about any convenience store in the states. For those of you that know about Airheads and have tried them before, fensi taste just like the mystery flavor Airhead.

Peanuts, get your peanuts! Peanuts here are dirt cheap, but we tend to buy more cashews which are pretty pricey... well I say pricey but I guess that's a relative term. Cashews cost 5000 shiligi or a little over 3 dollars, but to spend 5000 shiligi on any one item in the market now seems expensive. I get embarrassed and apologize to the store owner when I pull out a 10,000 shiligi bill or the equivalent of $6.66. It's funny how quickly ones perception of things change.

A clothing store in Mtwara. When you walk inside there are hundreds of different types of fabric of various colors and designs lining the walls. You can buy the fabric and get a dress made for 12000 shilingi or $8.00.

Obviously not the soko. It's Kali with her new favorite toy (thanks mom). I just wanted to give you all an update and let you know that she is back to her crazy, rambunctious self. Because she healed so quickly, we don't think she broke her arm or dislocated her shoulder after all.

"This Is Africa"

Often times I have to remind myself that “This Is Africa” or “TIA”. TIA is a common expression among Peace Corps Volunteers here in Tanzania whenever anything happens that would never happen in America. Like when a fellow volunteer dropped her phone down the choo (the pit latrine where everyone goes to the bathroom) and her neighbors decided that she just had to save her phone. So they created a 6 foot wooden pole with a cup attached to the end to dig out her phone amongst other nasty things I’m sure. The neighbors were soo excited that they rescued her phone! But then she secretly had to get rid of it because of the awful smell. Honestly that’s just gross, or no wait ....This is Africa!

I’m not saying that every TIA moment is gross or even that dramatic. Many TIA moments are simply times when things are lost in translation, but ultimately every “This Is Africa” moment makes you stand back and think... did that really just happen.

One embarrassing TIA moment was on my first day of work when one of my co-workers asked how Moss and I met. I replied “chooni”, which I thought meant “in school/college,” but when everyone started cracking up I realized I must have said something incorrectly. After endless laughter my colleague said “kweli?,” meaning “is that true?” I didn’t understand why it was sooo funny, but I said “nimefikiri” which means “I think so,” but then they laughed even more and once the laughing ended someone finally explained in English that I said Moss and I meet in the bathroom. I had said “chooni” which means in the bathroom, rather than “chuoni,” which means in college. Urghhh.... One letter difference messes the entire meaning up!

Another lost in translation moment occurred about 2 weeks ago when I was attempting to bake for the first time, without an oven! In our peace corps training we learned that you can create an oven by putting an inch of sand in a large pot and after this pot heats up, you can put a smaller baking dish inside, and the sand disperses the heat more evenly like an oven. Anyway, I went outside to collect sand to put in my pot and my neighbor asked in Swahili why I was cooking sand. I attempted to explain to her that I wasn’t cooking sand, but I was using the sand to bake. The only trouble is that I didn’t know how to say sand or bake, or even cake for that matter. So I said something along the lines of 'I put little pot in big pot with ... (and pointed to the sand)...I try cook bread." She giggled, shook my hand, and walked away probably thinking that this crazy foreigner likes sandy bread. Oh well, at least my mini chocolate cake turned out delicious!

Another crazy TIA moment occurred at the end of last week as Moss and I returned home from the beach. Right after sunset we were walking our bikes down this little dirt pathway that leads to our house and we see a group of five children (I’m talking young kids maybe 7 or 8) playing with fire. That’s right; they had sticks of fire that they were swinging at one another. Here in Tanzania it is not unusual to see a small fire, because that’s the way to dispose of trash (you simply dig a small pit on your property, throw your trash in there, and light it once a week. Our trash pit has actually become a popular place among the neighborhood children as they love to root through there looking for goodies. It’s a little disturbing, so we have tried decreasing this practice by burning it more frequently.) Anyway, a large trash pit was burning on a property only three houses away from ours where a new home is being built. Thus far they have only constructed a three foot tall brick foundation, which looks like an outline of the rooms that will exist one day. So not only were the children swinging sticks of fire at each other, they continued to take these sticks and light one of the ‘rooms’ on fire. Well it’s not exactly a room because it is simply bricks in a square shape, but none the less I was shocked! Some children ran to collect more sticks to build up their new fire and we could see the flames growing... The following day all was well and no harm was done, but honestly that was crazy!

There are so many TIA moments in our lives these days that this blog entry could go on for ages. I will have to add more when I’m not super busy at work.

In other news, something awful happened to Kali. We think she broke her front leg or dislocated her shoulder. We are not sure how it happened exactly, but Moss thinks it might have been when she jumped off the office table. She is miserable, in a lot of pain, and can’t put any weight on her leg. I am going to talk to one of the doctors at work today to get some advice, but we are not sure what to do as there are no vets anywhere around here. Keep her in your prayers.

Miss you all!
XOXO

Pictures

A DAY AT THE BEACH

Local fishing dhows plowing the waters off of Shangani Beach. Usually about four or five men man these boats, as they fish with hand-lines, nets, or fishing traps. The local fishing industry is what is known as an “artisanal fishery,” as it entails primarily the use of traditional equipment. These boats sail out from port just before sunset, and set up for the night, waiting to pull in their gear in the morning. Once dark, the lanterns on their boats line the ocean horizon, like a string of Christmas lights in a perfect line across the night sky.

West Shangani beach, near the original town of Mtwara, which is now no more than a row of mud thatch buildings amidst a forest of coconut trees. Sitting on this beach, you often have to remind yourself that you’re basically looking out towards Saudi Arabia. But when you get in the water, there’s no mistake that you’re swimming in the Indian Ocean. The water is warm, if not hot, heated by the bay’s shallow surface. The tide comes in fast, but even at high tide, you could walk several hundreds of meters out before reaching water over your head (you have to walk carefully, watching closely not to step on any sea urchins).


Moss enjoying the view


Merritt posing by the coral


At Msemo Resort, which is about a 15-minute bike ride from our house. This is a nice place to come relax and feel like we are on vacation rather than living and working in a small African Town.

HOME IMPROVEMENTS

Tanzanians have an unyielding affinity for painting rooms in a two-tone color scheme – dark on lower half, and a lighter shade on the upper half. While we’ve kept the pattern in our living room, the hallway seemed a little dark and dingy, though the remains of it can still be seen, as on the far wall in this picture. Now our house is mostly white with black floors, and although Merritt says it reminds her of a hospital, it is a lot more clean looking and comfortable. On the left is the office, the middle room (the former duka shop) is still unpainted and will serve as our workshop and a place to hang laundry. And the far room on the left will be a guest bedroom (so karibu!). In the middle of the hall on the right is an extra bathroom and shower room. The master bedroom is at the end of the hall on the right.


The new office – it’s still a little bare but nevertheless an enjoyable place to sit and work or read. Cooler than are other rooms (a relative term as you can see), from here you can take in the daily happenings of Magomeni. And the mosquito netting serves as kind of one-way window – allowing one to look out on the world, but apparently not allowing outsiders to look in. Here in Tanzania, the ability to go unseen is a rarity and it certainly is part of our growing affinity for this room.


Looking out the office window


The Kitchen. While I was away in Dar es Salaam for 10 days, Moss worked hard to paint our entire house and build furniture. These two tables are his works of art, as well as the desk in the previous office pictures. Notice the green buckets... they are our ‘dishwasher.’ Because water is sometimes unreliable, we keep one bucket full of soapy water and one bucket full of clean water. Our bucket system makes doing dishes a quick, easy process!


Our guest bathroom/shower room, coming from the living room this is located in middle of the hallway on the right. We often use the shower room to do the worst chore ever... laundry! Image spending 4 hours in this little room scrubbing your clothes...not fun.


Our bedroom, to the left is our bathroom and to the right is a bookshelf filled with clothes. Can you see Kali, snuggled between our pillows?


The bookshelf that Moss made. It was so nice to finally unpack after living out of a bag for three months.


In Other News

Okay so this is absolutely disgusting! But since we had the picture, we thought we should share it. This is the result of Moss dropping a pot of boiling water on his foot. He was unable to run for 2 weeks and is still limping around. The wound is finally healing and he is feeling much better, but as you can see this was a rather painful accident.


This is a picture of Maren (one of my new favorite people) and me in Dar es Salaam. She is the other Peace Corps Volunteer working for I-TECH. She lives in Mbeya, which is about 10 hours away from Mtwara, but we will be traveling to Dar together once every three months for an I-TECH conference.

The “Mzungu” Thing

It’s been a while since we’ve posted an entry on the blog, and for that we apologize, but it’s been a busy couple of weeks – Merritt’s been out of town for a week and a half conference in Dar, followed by week long seminar at COTC after her return. And for myself, in addition to my work at the marine park, I’ve spent a week painting the inside of the house while Merritt was away, along with continued house improvements (e.g., replacing old, dilapidated faucets; cleaning up and starting a small garden the backyard; building desks and tables for our kitchen and a makeshift office). There’s still plenty of work left but the place is starting to look and feel less like the old, dirty duka/baa (i.e., shop/bar) that it used to be, and a little more like home.

But other than such endeavors, life goes on here in Mtwara. Now that it’s October, were supposed to be entering the hot and rainy season, but except for a brief downpour one afternoon last week, I can’t detect any change in the weather. To hear news of the approaching fall in the States makes me miss the seasonality of the temperate zone. Even in extreme southern Tanzania, the amount of daylight might change by at most half an hour during the year, and the temperature seems likewise always well above 80 degrees, despite apparently peaking upward of 110 during the middle of the summer. While Tanzanians talk about the benefits of the predictability of such a climate, I have tried to convey the sense of time that seasons can impart on life. I guess coming from Vermont, it should be no surprise that come September and October, I miss fall.

Anyway, what I had really hoped to discuss in this entry was not recent travels or even the weather, but a more tangible part of life here, specifically the reality of living life as an outsider, a foreigner, or more appropriately here in Tanzania, as a “mzungu.” Just for a little clarification, a mzungu is, practically speaking, a white person. But the term doesn’t literally translate so directly – for example, “kizunguzungu” is an adjective for being dizzy, like if you were describing to a doctor that you’re suffering from dizzy spells.

Apparently, the term “mzungu” (or “wazungu,” for the plural) was derived from the concept of foreign white people having literally travelled around the world to come to Tanzania. The white people’s willingness to travel around and around the globe is a real mystery to Tanzanians who can’t fathom going so far away from home. While the country is quite large and the people have, in some cases in the past, been forcibly relocated by their government, few Tanzanians can hardly fathom life outside the district they call home, and in this respect, the mzungu term seems relatively innocuous. But when little kids shout the term at you as you ride by on your bike, or adults drop it on you in the middle of a conversation, like it’s a given, it’s a different story – not nearly as innocent, or as tolerable.

It should noted that I fully expected to be called a mzungu well before I ever stepped on the continent, but I didn’t foresee that it would bother me so much. Just imagine taking off at 7:20 in the morning for work on your bike, and hearing, as you push up the long, steady hill to town, kids shout from half a league away “Mzungu! Mzungu! Mmmmzzunguuu!!!”

The other night, walking to one of the near by dukas (i.e., shops), within only a couple of hundred meters of my house, a little kid in the path caught sight of me, and proudly proclaimed “Mzungu!” Finally having had enough, I walked right up to the kid, and told him, “Mimi si mzungu. Mimi ni Mmerikani!” (“I am not a mzungu. I am an American.”) The kid, taken aback by the comment, was speechless for a couple of seconds and then softly muttered, “Mzungu?” Frustrated by this response and aware the kid clearly didn’t understand my emphatic statement, I thought for a second about what to say next, and then slowly, and as calmly as I could, said, “Unasema ambaye mimi ni mzungu, lakini halafu wewe ni nini?” (“You say that I am a mzungu, but then what are you?”)

I wasn’t looking for any particular response, or even any response at all, and I could see that my comment had hit its mark. The kid didn’t know what to say, let along the answer to my question. And that was the point. I simply said to him, “Sawa. Je unaelewa sasa?” (“Ok. Do you now understand?”) He replied with “Sawa,” and I was satisfied, and continued on my way to buy my eggs and tomatoes.

It isn’t that I consider the “mzungu” label to be racist, and for many kids, the exclamation is solely one of excitement at seeing someone that they’ve only ever heard about. There’s no spite or animosity in the label, at least not most of the time. (For example, when a student completing research at the marine park asked me about the term, I explained to him that it couldn’t be compared with some of the epithets that African Americans have historically had to endure in the U.S.) But I strongly believe, and all the more so now, that such labels are wrong solely for the fact that they are labels. The reality is that people don’t want to be defined by some label, even if there’s nothing overtly wrong with the name. But yet, as humans, our natural disposition is to try to classify people – whether it’s by the color of their skin, the length and style of their hair, or the clothes they wear. It’s a behavior that we can only proactively prevent, by refusing to let ourselves try to simplify the world into neat little categories.

One interesting aspect of the “mzungu” thing is that one only rarely hears the term from adults. You know these kids are hearing and learning the term from someone, and every once and a while, they’ll throw it out there and act like it’s not a big deal. But like when the student at the marine park asked me whether I minded the term, the real answer for him was, if you have to ask, then you already know the answer. While I don’t know all the history of the country’s colonial period, I don’t think there’s much collective recollection among the people of Tanzania of the pain and suffering that distinctions based on race can produce.

Merritt, for example, had a co-worker, whom she had just spent the previous week getting to know during a health conference here in Mtwara, excitedly proclaim, as people gathered for photos on the last day of the conference, “Oh, let me get a picture with the mzungu!” Merritt, though she complied with the request and didn’t voice her frustration, was really offended, if for no other reason than this lady not only knew her name but knew her on a personal level. And I can’t blame Merritt for being upset about the incident.

For me personally, whereas previously when some kid has shouted “Mzungu!” at me, I’ve either simply ignored them, now my patience with the term is running a little thin. Undoubtedly it’s a battle I won’t be able to win, and I will likely always be chased with the term no matter where I go, what I do, or how long I stay in this country. But I’ve decided, at least for now, that I am not going to accept being called a mzungu. To simply ignore it, or pretend it’s acceptable is to give in to the term – to implicitly recognize the legitimacy of it.

At one point I debated whether I should try to turn the tables on people who use the term – to come back with something like “mzaliwa,” which means “native,” an expression you’ll often read used by white Europeans and Americans in old books on safari hunting in East Africa and Tanganyika. But as bothered as I am by the mzungu term, I can’t seem to throw around similar epithets. Not only would I personally be disgusted with myself, it seems more likely to anger people than to make them realize the error of their own ways. And that’s one of the funny things about such labels. We’re so quick to use them, but so offended when they’re applied to us. I guess it’s easy for ourselves to ignore the double-standard in such reactions.

Merritt and I have accepted a whole set of new struggles in our daily existence in volunteering for the Peace Corps here in Tanzania (from dealing with the bureaucracy of a federal agency, to the challenge of having to learn a new language, to the problem of securing enough reliable clean water). But neither of us foresaw that the feeling of being an outsider, a foreigner – someone to be stared and pointed at – would be the single hardest obstacle to assuming a normal life here in Tanzania. We continue to try to integrate – by learning the language and culture, dressing and acting appropriately, and telling people about the nature of our work here – but there seems to be a barrier arising out of our skin color that may ultimately prove insurmountable.

Kali II

I would like to follow up Merritt’s last entry to discuss one aspect of the whole Kali saga that she didn’t address. Though Kali was, by all appearances, “abandoned” when we found her, after spending the better part of a day and night balling in one of the empty dorm rooms on the COTC campus, two days after we adopted her, two cats who were unmistakably Kali’s parents showed back up, and upon hearing Kali cry in our room, while Merritt and I were at work, preceded to hang around everyday for hours on end, waiting for their kitten to be returned to them, yet still too afraid of humans to come into our room when the door was open and Kali was playing on the floor.

Of course, their return created a terrible quandary for Merritt and I, as we felt awful at the thought of stealing these cats’ baby, yet we couldn’t bring ourselves to return the kitten we ourselves had already fallen in love with. The sight of the parents hanging around elicited real guilt in me, and I badly wanted the parents to finally forget about ever recovering their baby.

When my guilt was ultimately relieved it was not by the parents finally forsaking their kitten, but rather by something that “Rabord” told us (pronounced like Robert, when spoken quickly), who is the accountant at COTC and was our neighbor during the time we were living at the school’s hostel. Rabord confirmed that Tanzanians generally don’t care for both cats and dogs as pets, and that cats were especially disliked by the students at COTC – to the point where the poor animals are sometimes poisoned. Knowing that I had rescued Kali from such an unfortunate fate allowed me to come to terms with our decision not to return her to her parents. Whatever nursing and care they might have been able to give her as a kitten, I cringe at the thought of the life she would have had there at COTC.

Recently Rabord told Merritt another interesting story that further confirms our decision to keep Kali. Apparently there is a witch doctor here in Mtwara who goes by the name of Dr. Nyeau Nyeau (the Tanzanian equivalent of Dr. Meow Meow; yes, animals apparently sound different in Kiswahili). He has been given his name because in addition to being partial to the taste of cat, he also often uses the animals, particularly kittens in his practice. He believes cats have special powers and so he’ll often require a patient to bring along a kitten when they come for their “healing,” whereupon he’ll sacrifice the kitten and use the blood for his patent medicines.

Ignoring for a second the grotesqueness of this story, it brings to mind the time my sister’s husband wore a shirt to one of our family reunions emblazoned with the simple statement, “Cat - The Other White Meat.” This was before he and my sister were married, and his choice of wardrobe prompted laughs from some and looks of utter disdain from others. As I recall the story, my little old grandmother, since passed on, was particularly upset about the shirt.

Who knows, maybe Dr. Nyeau Nyeau is just being practical in a country where pork is called “kiti moto,” since as the name literally suggests, it will put a Muslim on the “hot seat.”

Dr. Nyeau Nyeau also reminds me of a story we heard during Peace Corps training from one of our cross-cultural facilitators, whose brother is a real, legitimate doctor in the town of Tanga. The doctor confided to his brother that a woman had recently come into his office claiming to be pregnant and in the midst of child birth. Upon examining the woman, to the doctor’s great surprise, she promptly “gave birth” to two, still fresh chicken eggs. To confirm what the eggs manifestly appeared to be, the doctor cracked one open, to find a normal yoke and white, like any egg you would buy at the market.

One of the strangest aspects to the story, at least for me, was how many Tanzanians fully believed that the woman had really given birth to chicken eggs – rather than simply concluding, as Merritt and I have, that this crazy lady clearly put the two eggs up there, before waddling to the doctor’s office. The Tanzanians, including one of our language teachers, wholeheartedly believed in the witchcraft presumed in the story, and proudly told it to anyone who would listen.

My surprise at hearing them latch on to the sensationalism of the story was somewhat explained when, during a long bus ride back from Songea, I watched part of a Tanzanian movie featuring a scene in a doctor’s office, wherein the doctor explained, after examining the young girl (who later turned out to be bewitched), that she was “in perfectly normal health,” as far as the doctor could tell, who even checked to see if “air had gotten into her mother’s womb during pregnancy,” thus mentally handicapping the child. Apparently, Tanzanians have a fairly distorted perception of the “practice” of medicine.

Well, out of this crazy world, we have rescued Kali, who has enough of her own oddities to confirm her Tanzanian heritage. After two weeks, we’ve sufficiently spoiled her to the point where she’ll only eat fresh tuna (“jodari” in Kiwswahili), which thankfully is often available from our favorite fish monger, Azizi, at the small Magomeni market. After a dose of tuna, Kali turns into her namesake – fierce and unabiding, attacking any luggage or bag strap, foot or hand, electrical cord, that comes within her grasp. It’s like feeding her straight catnip – she loses her head. Any other food, even other types of fresh fish, she turns up her nose at and has to have gone hungry all day to be compelled to eat. We’ve definitely spoiled her, and my hopes of her one day being a prize cockroach killer are quickly evaporating.



Still, she’s a real joy to have – despite the lost sleep Merritt and I have had to endure and the worry she’s given us the few times she’s gotten sick or stopped eating. As Merritt said, all the Tanzanians think its a real hoot that we have adopted a kitten as a pet, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, regardless of how strange they may think us. Who knows what kind of difference we’ll make in the lives of any Tanzanians, but at least for one little, rambunctious kitten, we’re not just saviors, we’re now her parents.