Zanzibar!

Another beautiful sunset here in Mtwara… I was just walking up the hill to the duka behind our house (to get “mayai” (eggs) for dinner), when I came over the rise to see a mushroom-cloud of a thunderhead towering over Mikindani Bay.

I swear I could recognize Mtwara just by the sight of her skyline (see the panorama below of a typical Mtwara sunset). Most days, the sky is filled with building thunderheads, as they role off the Indian Ocean – we only see the lightening and rain falling further inland in the late afternoon. Occasionally it rains hard in town for half an hour, and sometimes, like yesterday, you can be standing in the middle of a downpour, as the sun beats down upon you with its full intensity.


But whereas one might be able to recognize Mtwara from the horizon-up, one will never forget Zanzibar for the other half of the spectrum – the horizon-down. The water – that crystal blue ocean – can only be one place – East Africa’s famous spice island.


Merritt and I recently returned from our first real vacation, five days out on Zanzibar. Except for a Peace Corps training in Morogoro in December and Merritt’s business trips to Dar, we’ve been pretty much at site for the past seven months. While Tanzania is generous with their public holidays (about one every month and three for Easter), we were both in need of a break from the daily eight to four – and also perhaps the seemingly endless household chores that come with living in Tanzania (e.g., washing clothes by hand, filtering drinking water, cutting the grass around your house with a machete). It also happened to be right around our second anniversary, so some kind of trip seemed in order.

While the memory is still fresh, I have a few scenes that I want to describe for you, which I hope will at least bring joy to those of you for whom spring has not yet sprung and are in need of a little reminder of more tropical climes.

Leaving hot, crowded Dar es Salaam, after being hustled for a “deal” on a ferry ticket (“Hapana asante” – “no thanks”), you motor out through Dar’s busy port, littered with dhows and hand-hewn canoes – and as you relax in your bean bag chair (“kweli!” – “really!”), you’re glad you’ve made the effort to come so far already.

And two hours later, having left all the worries on the mainland, you arrive in Stone Town, where the water is so blue it hurts your eyes.


Ferry passengers, residents and tourists alike, burdened with the wares they’re bringing back from Dar and their overstuffed camping backpacks, throng to ferry railing. But there’s really no rush, at least for foreigners, who upon debarking are promptly corralled into a little “customs” waiting area – a set of wooden benches with tin roofing to offer pitiful relief from the eternally fierce sun. But at least there’s a breeze and the ocean to look at – and at least you’re in Zanzibar.

Why do you go through customs when your in the United Republic of Tanzania? Well, Zanzibar has found it advantageous to go along with its coastal neighbor, the former Tanganyika territory, which it joined in 1964, but hasn’t ever quite bridged the gap between it and the mainland,. So things are a little different in Zanzibar.

Anyway, so you finally get through customs, where you Kiswahili lessons pay for themselves, and then, just as in Dar, your greeted by a throng of just as numerous, but even more determined, street “touts.” I hadn’t heard the expression before (it’s British, apparently), but the touts of Zanzibar are a lesson in persistence (in Kiswahili, they’re called “papasi” – “ticks”).

Again, knowing a little basic Kiswahili saves you many a “shida” (problem). “Hoteli!” “Taxi!” “Safari!” They shout at you. “Hapana asante.” “Hatuhitaji.” “Hatuna haja.” You respond.

And when you’re free of the mass of people, you find yourself on the port street of Stone Town, walking in front of the Sultan’s Palace, the House of Wonders, and the Old Fort, and there’s no escaping that you’ve landed in another world, perhaps another time. The city is a combination of Arab, Indian, European, and African influences – big, square, two or three story cement buildings, with massive window-less fronts surrounding their famous carved wooden doors. Built side-by-side, these forts-unto-themselves leave only a maze of shadowy alleyways, in which one can spend the day exploring – every shopkeeper beckoning you into their store, and the occasional small coffee house or outdoor eatery where you can take a rest during the midday heat.

Counterclockwise from top left: House of Wonders (Zanzibar Museum of History); Old Fort; Tanzanian cat; baby basket; and three variations on the Zanzibar front door.

Merritt and I stayed at a bed and breakfast in Stone Town within walking distance of the port, called the Zenji Hotel. The ground floor of this three story building is divided between the hotel office and a coffee shop where the owners sell locally-made crafts, like Zanzibari woodwork and fabrics. The top two floors are small rooms, each individually named, like the “Taste of Culture,” where we stayed. The hotel serves breakfast under a canopied rooftop deck, where you can watch Stone Town come to life, as you have your morning toast (with banana-vanilla bean jam) and black coffee.

Speaking of food, Stone Town, apparently, has many great restaurants – from fancy Italian places to hole-in-the-wall, vegetarian-only Indian joints. However, except for lunch on the first day, Merritt and I wouldn’t know. Two nights in a row, we had talked about and chosen a restaurant for dinner, and both nights we got side-tracked along the way at Foradhani Gardens, a small outdoor park on the waterfront, which transforms nightly into a mecca of street food.

Table after table is piled high with skewers of grilled snapper, barracuda, shark, prawns, lobster and other fish, grilled vegetables, grilled bananas, chapati, nan. Men stand next to giant milling machines, grinding up raw sugar cane to make fresh juice. Then there are desert tables, where they make banana and chocolate pizzas.


After a vendor gives you the tour of his table and you have selected your dinner, they heat it on the grill and give you it on paper plates, so that you can sit out on the pier and watch the sunset, or moonrise if it’s later.

It’s a little overpriced ($1-2 per skewer of grilled fish, $3-4 for lobster or prawns, $2 for banana-chocolate pizza), and you’ll have to forget any questions about the sustainability of your catch, but it may be worth the trip alone.

Stone Town is on the southwestern corner of what is a fairly large island (roughly 30 miles long, 8-10 miles wide), and is in close proximity to several spice plantations that are popular for tours, as well as Jozani National Forest, home to the island’s remaining native red colobus monkeys. Merritt and I were planning on heading to the northern tip of the island, to one of the other major tourist destinations, Nungwi, so we used our one full day in Stone Town to go on a spice tour and to visit some of the other nearby historical sites.

At 8 a.m. the tour guide picks you up at your hotel and before you head out, the driver stops quickly at Darajani Market, where, because it’s so early, you never know what you might see in the “fish department”…

A man cuts up “pungu” (shortfin devil ray) at Darajani Market. Not pictured in this photo, the 12-foot high stack of swordfish directly behind the cameraman. The Island of Zanzibar, roughly twenty miles from the Tanzanian coast, offers its fishermen access to some of the deeper-water, open-ocean fisheries that produce East Africa’s bigger fish. In Mtwara, most fishermen can’t reach such waters in their dhow and dugout canoes, and so the catch is generally smaller.

But it only takes the guide a minute to buy the food for the group’s lunch, and your off to the “shamba” (farm).

The spice tour is, of course, very touristy – for instance, several locals follow the tour group around in the plantation, weaving palm straw necklaces (for the women) and ties (f0r the men), so that they can then ask for tips at the end. But the groups are small and the tour guides good.

As for the spices themselves – you walk along a path through what otherwise looks like the woods, and learn that basically everything you’re looking at – the trees, shrubs, undergrowth – has been specifically imported and planted for some special property. For example, did you know that iodine is comes from the sap of a tree? (This little tidbit proved useful within the hour of learning it.)

Cinnamon trees were another interesting stop – yes, the bark is used to make cinnamon, but who knew that the tree’s roots also contain the compound in menthol, also found in certain types of mint? Seems odd that the same tree can produce two such distinctive flavors.

From left to right: iodine, cinnamon, vanilla, and jackfruit.

Cardamon, nutmeg, black pepper, vanilla, cocoa, cloves – Zanzibar grows it all, and from what I understand, exports surprisingly little of it these days (a compliment to the local cooking).

Clockwise from top left: nutmeg, tamarind, cloves, and cocoa.

If you go on a spice tour out of Stone Town, there’s a good chance you’ll get to visit the Kidichi Persian baths, built by Sultan Seyyid for his wife in the 1850s. There’s not much to look at, but it’s still fun to imagine the sultan, his wife, and their entourage traveling out from their palace for their daily bath.

Our final stop of the day on our spice tour was Mangapwani caves, along the island’s central western coast. For much of the 19th century, Zanzibar was the capital of the East African slave trade. By one estimate, in the four decades before the British abolished the trade in the region in 1873, as many as 600,000 Africans were sold in the Zanzibar slave markets, destined for Arabia, Persia, and the Indian Oceans. After the slave trade was outlawed, however, an illegal slave trade continued on Zanzibar, and the Mangapwani caves were used to hold slaves until they could be smuggled out under cover of darkness. With a small spring at the bottom, slaves could be held here for weeks before being led out the two hundred meter long tunnel that leads to the ocean, where a boat would be waiting.


I think I’ve mentioned before that the remnants of the Colonial era are ever present in Tanzania – from German missionaries to massive sisal plantations to Mtwara’s failed peanut scheme. But Zanzibar, with its spice plantations, Persian baths, and former slave markets, offers a very different impression of colonialism – one of brute subjugation being used to support luxury and opulence.

After two days in Stone Town, we had had our fill of history, street hustlers, and fish kabobs – it was time to head to the beach.

Yet while I would love to be able to tell you more about Nungwi, I honestly can only describe what I saw from the taxi window, as Merritt and I were driving to Mnarani Beach Cottages, where we were staying. Nungwi is, by all appearances, a small fishing village – one that also happens to have several major resort hotels. Only here can you find a Double Tree Hotel in the midst of mud-and-thatch homes.

But Mnarani Beach Cottages is lovely…


Perched on the tidal cliff at Zanzibar’s northern pinnacle, Mnarani has a lighthouse for a neighbor (“mnarani” is “lighthouse” in Kiswahili). And though low tide exposes a half mile section of seafloor, at high tide, the swimming and snorkeling are considered some of the best on the island.

After finally picking up a pair of snorkel and goggles for Merritt in Stone Town, we finally got to go exploring out on the reef together, and Zanzibar did not disappoint. Though we never got a chance to get all the way out to the main reef, what we saw was still pretty incredible. Within our first two minutes, while still swimming out through the sea grass beds, Merritt spotted a beautiful bandit-stripped sea snake – calmly cruising through the sea grass on her morning hunt. We paused to watch her swim by and then continued on for deeper waters.

I must say that much of what we saw was overrun with sea urchin (a well-known sign of overfishing). Still amidst fields of sea grass and coral rubble, you could find these massive brain corals, teaming with tropical fish – wrasses, anglefish, squirrelfish, sergeants, sweepers, gobies, even the occasional puffer fish. And if you dive down to get a better look, occasionally you’ll see the eyes of a moray eel, peering back at you from his cave. Sometimes he’ll even swim out a little to give you a good look at his bald, brown and white-spotted head.

A morning or afternoon can go by pretty quick when your snorkeling. On one trip, it took us an hour to get out of the water after we discovered that the dock at the neighboring Italian resort was packed with bait fish – and barracuda and snapper charging through the schools. We saw more fish in an hour under a dock than we’d seen in three hours out on the reef.

So pretty quick, our two days in Nungwi were gone and it was time to return to Stone Town to catch the ferry to Dar, for the following morning’s return flight to Mtwara.

Anyway, it was a great trip, and there’s much of Zanzibar that we didn’t get to see – like the famous white beaches of the east coast or Jazani Forest. So if you feel like you need to see Zanzibar for yourself, “karibu” (welcome), and Merritt and I will meet you at the ferry (if not the Dar airport).

Chakula Kitamu Sana!

Moss and I now consider ourselves professional Tanzanian cooks… well not exactly, but we sure cook a lot of traditional food. Our staple meal includes… wali na nazi, maharage, katchumbari, mboga, na samaki (coconut rice, beans, tomato salad, pumpkin greens or cabbage, and fish). We also love chapati, which is similar to a tortilla or pita bread, but much more tasty. We will walk you through how to make our favorite Tanzanian meals.

Maziwa ya Nazi (Coconut Milk)

Coconuts are grown in abundance in Mtwara, and the people use coconuts for much more than just eating. They make straw mats, baskets, and bowls out of the palm leaves, and various types of jewelry and decorative items out of the shells. Coconut milk is also added to many dishes as it adds a nice sweet flavor. It takes a lot of work, but it’s worth it. Wali na nazi (coconut rice) is one of Moss’ favorite Tanznanian dishes, so we make a lot of coconut milk.

Steps:
1. Crack open coconut, save the juice that is inside
2. Grind the coconut using mbozi (coconut grinder/seat)
3. Place coconut shavings in a large bowl and cover with warm water and juice from inside the coconut
4. Using your hands, squeeze the shavings of coconut until the water starts to look milky
5. Pick up a handful of coconut shavings and squeeze juice into a smaller bowl, return shavings back to larger bowl after squeezing
6. Continue to pick up handful of shavings and squeeze until all the liquid is in the smaller bowl and only shavings remain in the larger
7. If a number of shavings have fallen into your milk you can then use a strainer to strain out chucks and get pure, yummy, delicious coconut milk

Grinding Nazi

Straining Nazi

Now that you have coconut milk you can add it to the rice and beans. You can even add a little milk and sugar to the coconut milk if you like it extra sweet.

Wali Na Nazi (Coconut Rice)

You simply use coconut milk in the place of water when making rice:
1. Place 1 cup of washed rice in a small pot
2. Place 2 cups of coconut milk in the pot
3. Add a little bit of salt and oil
4. Bring to a boil, stir, cover, and reduce heat to a simmer for 45 minutes or until its ready
5. Fork it and eat it

Katchumbari (Tomato Salad)

One of my favorite things to eat is Katchumbari (tomato salad). It is super delicious, especially if you are a salad person like me, and it’s a lot easier to make compared to the coconut milk.

Ingredients:
-1 kilo of tomatoes (about 10 little roma or 4 big tomatoes), cut in half and then into small slices 2 red onions, finely sliced
-1/3 of a cabbage, shredded
-1/2 of a cucumber, cut in half and then into small slices
-1 or 2 green peppers, shredded or cut into to small strips
-Lemon juice (or lime juice, add enough to cover tomato mixture)
-Salt to taste (you can also add a little pepper if you want)

Prepare all of the ingredients above and add together. Make it how you like it, if you want more onions or cucumbers add them, if you don’t like cabbage or green peppers leave them out. Many Tanzanians add 1 chili pepper, and only eat a little katchumbari with their rice and beans, but we leave out the chili so we can eat it as a big salad. Do what you like. I highly recommend making some variation of this salad if you like tomatoes, because it’s super tasty.

Samaki (Fish)

We used to buy filets of fish, but now Moss has been going to the big fish soko right on the beach and buys the whole fish. You get more fish for a better price this way. We either pan fry the fish or do samaki uchemcha (boiled fish). When doing boiled fish, we add various spices to the water. Yumm.

Chapati (tortilla bread)

This is another one of our favorites, but you have to be careful because if you eat too many they will make you ‘nenepa’ or fat. Tanzanians tell anyone right to their face that they are getting fat, in the village this is a compliment, and the proper response is ‘asante’ or thank you.

Ingredients:
-3 cups white flour
-1 tablespoon of salt (more if you like things salty)
-2 tablespoons of oil
-water

Steps:
1. Wash hands, you have to use them for all the mixing and rolling
2. Mix dry ingredients well
3. Add 2 tablespoons of oil to flour mixture and mix in with your hands until flour feels a little sandy
4. Add a little bit of water at a time and continue to mix with your hands until it forms an elastic dough
5. You will have one big ball of dough, break off a piece of dough, a little bigger than an ice cream scoop, and roll dough ball into a circle. Place on board and flatten with rolling pin
6. Add ½ teaspoon of oil and rub on dough (amount of oil will vary, just cover surface)
7. Roll circle up, like a jelly roll/fruit-roll up
8. Roll it again into a snail shell/cinnabun shape
9. Repeat process, until you have done it to all of the dough
10. Some people like to let the dough sit for 20 minutes to 1 hour, but I often just start the cooking process, hamnashida, it tastes the same to me
11. Roll 1 dough ball out into a flat circle
12. Put a little oil in pan and place flat piece of dough in pan
13. Chapati will bubble up, use a spoon (that has been dipped in oil) to flatten bubbles and then after about 2 minutes or until first side looks cooked, flip the chapati and cook the other side
14. Place the cooked chapatti in a container that will keep it hot and repeat the process for all of the dough.
15. Enjoy, they are flaky and delicious!

Meals

A veggie burrito on chapati. This is tasty, but it's even better with a little samaki in there.

Moss' intimidating plate that includes samaki (fish), wali na nazi (coconut rice), maraharage na nazi (beans with coconut), and cabbichi (cabbage)

Samaki uchemcha, wali na nazi, maraharage, kachumbari, and fried pueza and calamari (fried squid and octopus)

A typical lunch served at my school. Notice this doctor has 2 plates! The plate in his left hand is filled with meat, juice, beans, and cabbage. The plate in his right hand is filled to the brim with ugali, or corn mush, which Tanzanians eat with most meals. You simply use your hand to form a small ball out of the ugali and then use the stiff ball as a sort of utensil to eat your other food.
Thought I would show you a picture of the kitchen at school... no stoves, ovens, etc. All the food is cooked on charcoal jikos! Pictured is our lunch mama straining rice.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Crunchy – Creepy Crawlies of the Rainy Season

No, unlike the volunteer in Newala, we did not find an eastern green mamba hanging from the beams inside our thatch roof – we’ll thankfully leave that story for another blog. But we did find a baby scorpion in our bathroom the other morning, probably hunting the ants that are often patrolling through the area. And a couple of weeks ago, I came into the bedroom to find a spider the size of my hand in one corner of the ceiling – crouching as though like he was making to spring at my head. He was more legs than body, but it didn’t make a difference to me – I got the bug spray.

The spider in our bedroom.

With the current rainy season, we’ve seen a proliferation of the insect life here on the hot, swampy southern coast. One of the few rewards of this “bounty,” if one can be said to exist, is the mass migration of butterflies that is passing through the region. Sitting at my desk at home, these big, colorful beauties bounce into my view through the window, as they stop and visit whatever plants we might have blooming in the front garden. And riding into town in the late afternoon, you’ll see thousands of butterflies, flying right over the city on their journey north. After their trip through the jungles of Mozambique and the Ruvumu mangroves, they are fat and strong, and rarely land for long. I guess they still have a long way to go, and I’m happy we can send them on their way with a little nectar from our front yard.

It being a tropical country, one also has to think about mosquitoes – and particularly the malaria carrying Anopheles type. With all the rain, Mtwara has no shortage of mosquitos, including our neighborhood and our house unfortunately. We had one Tanzanian suggest that we follow the national trend, and cut down the grass around our house, essentially to the dirt. He claimed the grass would attract mosquitos. I don’t know, maybe he’s right, but I would suspect the huge puddles of water around the neighborhood, left from the daily afternoon rain showers, have something to do with the problem.

But we’ve definitely had mosquitoes in our house, biting us at night, despite our mosquito netting. And then, a couple of weeks ago, just as we’re noticing what a problem it was becoming, Merritt happened to come down with a fever. We take malaria prophylaxis everyday, essentially a low-dose antibiotic, which should prevent us from getting sick, but it’s not guaranteed. When Merritt’s temperature spiked at 102.7° F, we were definitely nervous and decided for her to take the malaria self-test. Thankfully it came back negative, and Merritt seems to have recovered from whatever bug she had, but maybe we will have to get the grass cut anyway. Although I did recently here of another approach we could take for reducing the local mosquito population.…

I actually saw an article recently about some new research on a particular type of spider that preys upon the malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquito, which showed that this spiders are actually attracted to human odor, particularly, as this study found, the smell of dirty socks. Here’s the link to the story, but in case you miss it, here’s the key quote from one of the researchers in the study, Fiona Cross from the University of Canterbury, describing the hunting abilities of the East African jumping spider: “When they smell blood, they can launch into feeding frenzies where they kill up to 20 mosquitoes in rapid succession.”

Dirty socks, eh? Who knew that not doing the laundry and forgoing washing the sheets might be the solution to our mosquito problem? Personally, I was starting to suspect that might be part of the problem.

The East African jumping spider, Evarcha culicivora. I'm
positive I’ve seen these little suckers around our house.

Another somewhat welcome predator of the proliferation of insects is our “jusi,” which are little tropical geckos that are everywhere. They seem to also have found a way into our house, and we have one that we’ve watched grow from the size of a worm to now three or four inches. Lately, this lizard has appeared in our bedroom, hanging on the window screen, slurping up any stray flies. As you can see, we have a veritable circus of insects and their predators in our house.

"Jusi"

But at least there’s the one thing that we’ve thankfully managed to keep from our house – the termites. Now, I recognize that some of you reading this blog already know a thing or two about termites and swarming termites – but these are like the B-17s of termites and their swarm is like the pre-dawn bombardment of the German defenses on Normandy on D-Day. Their bodies aren’t all that much bigger then the typical termite, but its the wings that give it the effect – two oversized sets that create the sound of crumpling newspaper when they’re swarming.

A couple of nights we’ve left our outside light on too long after they’ve started up for the night, and we ended up with a cloud of them around our house. The first time this happened, we turned out the outdoor lights but kept our indoor lights on, curtains drawn. Result: determined to get the next source of light, the termites crawled in between the layers of mosquito netting on our windows and then, now trapped, proceeded to die. The next day, swarms of ants came and cleaned up the gross mess.

Another time we didn’t turn of the lights when the termites started swarming, some kids from the neighborhood came up onto our porch to set buckets of water up under the light, as a trap to catch the falling insects. It was then that I learned that people actually eat these things – apparently they’re quite popular at this time of year, fried up in a big batches until crunchy. We’ve since seen the kids amassing at a neighbor’s house, under their outdoor florescent lamp, swatting the termites into buckets. It’s quite the scene.

So while the inundation of insect life may seem like a nightmare, they’re all relatively harmless (except the mosquitoes, of course), and for some people, they’re even a blessing, an extra source of protein in the middle of the labor-intensive planting season. If we can just remember to turn out our lights when the termites start swarming, I think we’ll be able to tolerate it.

Kazkazi, Maboga, and Our Growing Fundi Collection

In Tanzania, December to March marks the season of the north winds, the “kazkazi” or north monsoon. But after a December in which we had a couple of very big storms (see earlier entry about our flood), January brought little if any rain at all. People were getting nervous about the growing season, and then February rolled around, and it’s like someone finally turned the faucet on. Sunny quiet mornings now give way to gusty, stormy afternoons, with the day’s rain lasting maybe only ten minutes but bringing with it an inch or two of water. The dirt roads flood and turn to mud soup, and then the sun comes out and bakes them hard again, in preparation for the next day’s storms. A couple of nights we’ve had earth-shaking thunderstorms and one afternoon’s storms included a lightening strike within half a mile of our house.

And with the rain, everything is suddenly green and springing into life. The word from up on the plateau is that the people have finally been able to plant their mahindi (maize), potentially averting the food shortages some people were warning about. (One volunteer had a neighbor tell him that as far as villagers were concerned, it simply had to rain because otherwise they would have no food.) Well, the rain has finally come, and the season seems prepared to go out on a bang.

For us, the critical staple appears to be not maize, but rather pumpkin, a enormous plant of which is thankfully growing wild our backyard. We’ve trellised some vines along the back walls and now up onto the water tower. In addition to the actual pumpkins, we’re eating “maboga,” or pumpkin leaves, with dinner nightly. (You pick only the small ones, cut them up, and sauté them with onions, tomatoes, and garlic. They’re delicious – kind of nutty in flavor.) Altogether, we have eaten one whole pumpkin (generating a dinner’s worth of boiled pumpkin and three pumpkin breads), and given two others away as gifts. This all from something we didn’t even plant.


Maboga – On the Loose.



Almost ready – the local pumpkins don't ever turn orange like back in the States, maybe just a little tan when there ready.


Maboga leaves, ready for cooking.


This miracle pumpkin is even the backbone of our nascent garden – providing much of the organic material for the sandy, clayey soil we initially found. We added chopped-up leaves directly into the soil, a day or two before planting, and composted larger piles of leaves for new soil. It’s been growing so much, if anything the pumpkin has benefited from all the trimming.

Though to be honest, the plant has had a little “supplemental” irrigation. Recently, Mtwara’s municipal water supply has been, well, sufficient, to say the least. The only faucet in the house that has yet to be replaced in our time here is finally busting at the seems, thanks to probably 1000 psi worth of water at times. So it was no surprise when I came home from work last Friday to find a small stream running past the back door, which I then traced to a break in the water pipe for our house, square in the heart of the pumpkin patch.

We got the phone number of a local plumber (i.e., “fundi ya bomba,” or literally, “craftsman of the pipes”), but by the time Jamal came on Saturday morning to fix it, I reckon the plant had drunk near a thousand gallons of water. I thought all the water might drown it, but it’s thirst appears to have no limits. It’s now making a break for the roof, after overtaking the water tank.

It was not the first time we’ve had a similar problem, and Jamal had actually been to our house before we moved in, when the water tank was installed. He joins the growing list of our fundis – one for every specialized repair job we need.

I have a fundi for our bikes – a man over by the town soko who works achingly, slow but keeps our bikes in good working order. Most bike fundis specialize in only one trade – repairing “puncha,” or tire punctures. They sit under the Christmas trees along the main road into Mtwara, like one every half mile or so, and can patch a tube in less than five minutes flat. For a 300 shilling, they’re a lifesaver in a pinch. But they can’t fix your breaks, nor might you really want them to try. So I found a fundi for that.

We also have our furniture fundi, Mr. Salumu, who has made, glass windows for our house, a couch, a coffee table, and two beautiful bedside bureaus. This man earned our undying devotion when he and his two helpers spent an entire day installing our windows, staying till eight in the evening, after having to shave down each of the frames by hand (it being my fault the measurements were off). More recently, he kind of botched two picture frames we asked him to build (badly warped), but I still plan to eventually have him build us some bookshelves for the Peace Corps book collection that we’ve temporarily inherited.



The windows Bwana Salumu built for our house – from back in October, when Kali was still a kitten.

We also known of an electrical fundi who lives near us, the cell phone number of a small appliance fundi (recommended by the Indian duka owner in town), and I’ve even scoped out a refrigerator fundi at the market, in contemplation of eventually needing his services on our second-hand unit. Even the young girls of our neighboring family are technically fundi, with the little sewing business they run on their front porch (though Merritt says they might not yet qualify as “craftsmen”).

So fundi are everywhere, and we have a list of ours. Salaried positions are not unheard of here in the town, but they’re still the rare exception – most people are in business for themselves, one way or another.

I recently completed some analysis on a new village community banking program that was established in the villages in the marine park, and people use loans for all sorts of basic businesses, from drying cassava to selling fish to starting up roadside food stands (called a mamalishe). Roughly a fifth of the one hundred and twenty women who borrowed money through the program reported using the money to start a business cooking the local type of doughnuts, called mandazi. But their businesses were generally profitable and few were unable to repay their loans.

Even people with salaried positions with the government, like my boss at the park or the acting principle of Merritt’s school, also own shambas (farms) outside of town, where they grow cassava or cashews for a little supplemental income for their family. (These men, after all, could be supporting a truly extended family, dispersed around the nation.) It’s a place where the majority of paid labor comes in the form of personal services, and the rest of the time, your work probably qualifies as subsistence labor (everyone after all, even the volunteers, have a bustani, or garden).

Some Tanzanians will tell you that the country’s labor system is partly what makes life so difficult for the people. You live from one season to the next, and those who do have salaries, are the cash cows to their extended family. I don’t know enough to weigh in on the economic aspects of it, but I will say that the system is unique at least for the personal connections and social interdependency it builds. As we’re discovering, sometimes the key to dealing with life’s little problems is simply known the right fundi.

February 20 marks six months at site, so we’re about a quarter through our service. As Merritt recently commented, life is entering a state of normality – though it’s a distinctly Tanzanian life.

It's Raining!

Right now it is pouring outside, lightening, thundering, absolutely pouring. And if you didn’t know any better you would think it is raining gold…

So our house is quite a bit larger than most of the houses in our surrounding community, and we also have a safi tin roof, rather than the typical thatch roof. As it started raining about five minutes ago, I began to hear screams and endless giggles. Of course I ran to the window to see what was happening and well, you certainly wouldn’t see this in America. People were flocking to our house, flocking!

Currently, there are eight people right outside the window, mainly young kids, but also two older dadas (sisters) who are around my age. They are all carrying big, empty buckets on their heads and they are strategically placing them along the concrete that lines our small flower beds out front. They are trying to catch the maji (water) that is falling off our tin roof in perfect streams; it almost looks like the stream of a pressure washer as the water is falling so hard.

As they wait for their buckets to fill, three of the little girls, who are around seven or eight year’s old, strip down to their underwear and attempt to take showers in the water that is falling from the roof. They are letting the streams of water fall and hit their faces, they are drinking it, and holding up their hands to it. Wow, they are just giggling their little hearts out, you might honestly think they were at Disney World or something. They are so happy to be playing in the rain and taking a shower (they normal only take bucket baths so I guess a shower is pretty exciting). Man, I wish my camera was charged so that I could take a picture of this…

After some of the buckets are full, the little kids simply place different buckets under the streaming water, and put the full buckets on their heads to walk back towards their homes. But they are not gone for long, they return with new, empty buckets just moments later.

Here comes one of my favorite little girls again, she is back now for her third bucket and has a huge smile on her face. This little girl is super cute; she is about eight, has corn rows in her hair, and is wearing only her underwear while carrying a mini white bucket on her head. She is one of my favorites because whenever I see her she always jokes with me and tries to make me laugh.

It has been about twenty minutes now, and the water is still continuing to pour, but the crowd and the giggles are slowly fading. There is just one last dada (sister) filling up her ndoo (bucket).

In a way, it is raining gold… Water is such a precious commodity that is often hard to come by when it is not raining. Sometimes we will see little kids collecting dirty, muddy water that is in a ditch on the side of the road, because at times people are THAT desperate for water. This rain water will be used by the whole family for drinking, cooking, taking bucket baths, washing clothes, doing dishes, etc.

Water really is an essential commodity that we (or at least I used to) take for granted in the States. It’s just so nice and easy to turn on a faucet and always have continuous, reliable water- BE THANKFUL! Can you image having to run in the pouring rain (in your underwear?), with buckets on your head, in attempt to collect as much water as possible?

XOXOX

A New "Normal"

In my last entry I said that life here seems normal. I feel that I should clarify and say that it is a new “normal”... Today on my five minute walk to work I realized that the sights I see would be completely foreign and even shocking to some people back in America.

When I step out of our back gate, I first see our five year old neighbor. She is wearing an old raggedy piece of faded gray cloth that is tied around her neck as she pours water into a small pot, which is resting on three rocks with burning wood below. She is starting to boil water for her breakfast. I say ‘za asubuhi,’ she simply smiles in response, and I continue walking.

Next, I walk about fifteen feet on the dusty dirt road and on my right I see three women dressed in their traditional clothes, two kangas wrapped around their body, one brightly colored cloth on top and one around their waist. They are working hard on their bustani (garden) with a jembe, which looks like a flat, sharp piece of metal attached to a long wooden handle. I wave to them, and greet them saying ‘za asubuhi’ (how is your morning). They reply ‘salama’ (peaceful). I say ‘shikamoo’ (I respect you elders, you have to say this to anyone that is older than you), the women respond ‘marahaba’ (I accept that you respect me) and I continue on my way.

As I walk a little further, I see three little boys who range in age from about three to five years old. They are sitting outside their mud/clay home, which is two houses down from ours on the left. They are all naked, one is sitting in the dirt staring and waving while screaming ‘dada Mary’ (that’s me), the other is squatting and taking a poo right in the front yard, while the third little boy is pushing a goat which is grazing on the grass next to their house. Mind you they are all naked! I just wave, smile, and continue.

As I walk a little further, there is one mama sitting on a wooden tree stump in front of her house making the local pombe (alcohol) out of coconuts that grow above her. We see each other kila siku (every day) on my way to and from work. This morning I greet her with ‘Habari za kazi’ (how is your work), she replies, ‘nzuri’ (good). She is in her 50s so of course I say, ‘shikamo,’ and I get a ‘marahaba’ in response. Side note: One time Moss and I tried her coconut pombe and it was disgusting! It tastes like bottled fizzy B.O., with a touch of coconut flavor. Moss and I actually make our own wine these days and it is amazing. I will have to share that recipe, but I am getting side tracked here. So, after I greet the pombe mama, I continue walking.

At this point I have to walk over a small hill and on the other side I see two watato (kids) waving at me from a distance and yelling ‘dada Mary, dada Mary’ at the top of their lungs. They are adorable and always get so excited to see me. I give them a good, long wave and continue on.

I am almost to work now, but right before I enter the big metal gates of the training institution, I see two wanawake (women) carrying big 20 liter buckets full of maji (water) on their heads. This skill has always impressed me, most of the time they don’t even use their hands to help balance the buckets. I smile at them and continue walking into the gates. I have arrived and I am now sitting in my office typing away.

So that is a typical journey to work, and it is now a regular part of my new “normal” life!

Life These Days

Pole (sorry)! I apologize that I have not blogged in forever… My only excuse is that life is finally starting to feel normal (yaa), and I don’t know that I have anything interesting to say about it. So I will just give you a little update on our life these days.

Moss and I are doing well. We are feeling settled into our house. We got furniture and it’s starting to feel like a home. The local fundi made us bedside tables, a coffee table, and the lovely sofa below.


We have also been working on the garden. I say ‘we,’ but we all know who the true gardener is… We planted squash, beets, onions, various greens, watermelon, muskmelon, herbs, and catnip. The pumpkin plant in our back yard has also taken over, and we have 2 pumpkins growing. We are very excited about that and I look forward to making a yummy pumpkin dish.


So I never thought I would be able to say this, but life really is starting to feel normal, things aren’t so strange and foreign anymore. Our language skills have been improving and we are getting to know the people in our area; they don’t call us ‘muzungu’ (white person) half as much. Most people actually know our names now, and that’s a huge step. In fact on my daily walk home from work, I have about 3 or 4 little kids run up to me with excitement saying ‘dada (sister) Mary, dada Mary.’ They are pretty cute! Since most Swahili words end in vowels, Merritt is too difficult to say, and so everyone in our neighborhood calls me Mary and most people call Moss, Mossy.

Lately I love giving our neighbors zawadi (gifts). I really enjoy how simple little things make people so happy. We gave our mama next door some fruit from our fenesi tree and it made her day. Later we brought her a loaf of bread and her little 5 year old granddaughter did a mkate (bread) dance. Holding the bread in the air and turning in circles- it was adorable.

Moss and I have been busy with work. Moss has been working non-stop on a research project for the marine park. He finds it pretty interesting so that makes his life more enjoyable. It is almost the end of the semester at my school so I have been finishing up my classes and writing exams. Here are my students taking their Health Promotion exam.


Outside of work we have had a lot of visitors. 2 weeks ago we had 8 other volunteers stay out our house for one big slumber party. It was fun to have them all, but it sure was a lot of people. We celebrated Moss and another volunteer’s birthday and spent most of our time on the beach or playing various card and board games. Volunteers love to get out of their small villages and spend time in town because town offers better food, drinks, shopping, electricity, and running water. Moss and I feel pretty fortunate to live in town and have so many resources.

Well I just wanted to say hello and that life is going well here in Mtwara. Moss and I miss everyone a ton and want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for all the goodies we received from our wish list and beyond.

We will definitely work on blogging more… it would be fun to do a Tanzanian food/cooking picture blog or a Swahili lesson blog. If you have any other ideas or want to know about anything specifically just ask and we can write about it.

XOXOX

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.