Sometimes it feels like I live in a petting zoo....

As if 1 horse, 1 goose, more than 7 dogs, several cats, a couple very vocal roosters, a bunch of chickens, and quite a few goats weren't enough, I woke up this morning to find this noisy bunch in my neighbor's backyard:

Luckily they're only temporary guests and will be heading to other homes in the surrounding villages through an outreach program that the Kibondo branch of the TCRS CEP program runs. They were a surprisingly cute bunch though :)

A Day in the Life.....

At some point during my second or third week here in Kibondo, I settled into a pretty comfortable routine. My alarm starts ringing a little bit after the roosters next door start to really hit their stride and a few minutes later the buzz of the fluorescent lights as the power comes back on in the compound works like a secondary alarm clock that’s built into the house. This means that by 6:45 each morning, I’m awake and getting ready for work while the water for the tea boils. For the first week or so, I’d multitask during breakfast, writing notes to leave for Prisca. After several consecutive days of leaving notes with different versions of “you do not need to cook dinner today,” only to get back from work in the evening to find several hotpots lined up on the table, I decided that Prisca apparently thinks I need to be fattened up …. literally every other item on the notes would be taken care of while the no-dinner-items were being completely ignored. (A friend of mine who’s spending this year in Cairo joked about the success she’s had so far on the “developing nations diet” …. Tanzania might fall into the developing nations category, but if Prisca has anything to do with it, I’ll end up gaining weight this year, not losing it. (And before you question how much say Prisca really has in the matter, think about how effective the “finish your food, there are hungry children in [insert 3rd world country]” line was when you were growing up and then consider how that effect would be multiplied had you actually been in that country at the time. Wasting food = something that’s just not going to happen.)

So these days, I have more time to enjoy breakfast since realizing that Prisca will cook what she thinks I should eat means that I can spend less time writing her notes in the morning. Around 7:50 or so, I leave the house, duck under the Nkya’s gate, say hi to whichever member of their menagerie is closest, and then head up the road to the office compound. Although things could change, so far the job itself is for the most part a typical office job and tends to be either feast or famine … a lot of what I do involves preparing reports (reports to send to donors, internal reports to compile for the project, reports to send to the TCRS-Dar office, annual reports, semi-annual reports, quarterly reports, monthly reports … lots and lots and lots of reports) and since most of those reports have very similar deadlines, certain times of the month/year promise to be quite busy and other times will probably be pretty slow. I usually break for lunch around 1pm – there’s a canteen on the office compound so everyone once in awhile I’ll bring leftovers from the house and eat in my office, but on most days I enjoy Rhoda’s cooking and my co-worker’s company over at the canteen where I’ve also established a bit of a routine….i.e., a seat on the sunny-side of the porch and cooked bananas with cabbage (a whopping $0.60) or beans & rice ($0.30) when I feel like mixing things up. Then it’s back to the office until around 5, when I lock up and head home for the evening.

My first week in the office coincided with the deadlines for several semi-annual reports, so those first days had significantly less downtime than this past week. The upside of having downtime has been that I get to indulge some of my organizational neuroses … in other words, the files are in order, the computer is virus-free and entirely re-organized, and the dust has been cleaned out from under the keys of the keyboard. In addition to making me happy, all this organizing has also helped me familiarize myself with the ins and outs of the project’s activities, donors, and reporting mechanisms, which is always a good thing. I’m also the office’s human version of the Microsoft spell/grammar-check – which many other people would probably find tedious but I absolutely love to do :)

So there you have it … nothing terribly exciting but all my co-workers are friendly and I’m happy just knowing that I’m a cog in the wheel of an organization that does a lot of good for a lot of people in this part of the world.

One infitessimally small step for mankind, one giant leap for me...

First, some relevant background:
In addition to setting me up in the aforementioned house, TCRS employs a woman (an angel, really) who comes to the house during the week and takes care of things like going to the market, cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry. I realize that probably sounds a bit excessive (and despite what I say here, I'm still getting used to it myself...), but bear in mind that 1. this sort of thing is par for the course in most Tanzanian households and 2. I don't know the first thing about cooking the sorts of dishes that are made here. Plus, even though I did do my own laundry when I stayed in Dar before, it was always with the nagging suspicion that what I was doing wasn't as much cleaning my clothes as it was swishing them around in a bucket of dirty (albeit slightly sudsy) water. And as for whether or not I ever managed to completely rinse those suds out? Probably never. So Prisca is amazing. Both in the sense that she saves me from myself (i.e. - ineffective laundering) and she is a fantastic cook. However, she gets the weekends off (and deservedly so), which leaves me with two options as far as feeding myself goes on Saturdays and Sundays. The first involves carefully rationing the food Prisca cooked on Friday so that it lasts throughout the weekend. The second brings me to my big piece of news from this past weekend:

I COOKED! Since my deficiencies when it comes to any non-baking culinary activities are pretty well established and since there is no microwave for me to fall back on in my kitchen here, I figured this would be moderately surprising news for almost everyone who knows me. However, what made this achievement blog-worthy in my opinion, was that this was my "stove":
Yes, it is sitting on a chair. And in order to light it, you have to dismantle it almost completely, light about a dozen wicks, and then carefully put it back together without extinguishing the flames. I realize that the chair-stove is still a pretty big step-up from a whole slew of more primitive cooking apparatuses, but it's also no microwave, so I was feeling rather pleased with myself while I ate dinner last night...and was still basking in the glow of my small success this morning when it occurred to me that nothing I'd eaten had made me sick. Hooray for the little things!

Glimpses of Kibondo

The Flight to Kibondo

Lake Victoria and Mwanza:Tiny Plane!

Somewhere over western Tanzania...

My New Home!

Some of the neighbors (there are a few more sitting on the court in the shade...)

TCRS-KRP

My office :)

View of the compound from my office:

More of the compound...

(And just because it's pretty ...) the view from canteen at the UNHRC compound:

Kibondo!

In one of the emails we exchanged while I was still in America, Shelly had mentioned something in passing about it being dusty, about using a scarf to cover her face whenever trucks passed on the road. A lot of things were mentioned before I left in almost as many emails and my attention was more easily captured by the promise of my house having not just one but two (two!) flushing toilets than it was by something as mundane as dust. I really didn’t think about it again until I’d arrived in Kibondo. Even then, I didn’t think about it or notice it myself; it was more that random people I passed would comment on it. “Habari yako?” they would greet me. “Salama, na kwako?” I would reply, prepared for the typical volley of greetings – and for the most part the social script that I’d grown accustomed to in Dar was sufficient. But then every once in awhile (and often enough for me to hear it several times over the course of two days), the next remark wouldn’t be another greeting, but instead a statement: “vumbi.” “Ndio, vumbi sana,” I would agree, outwardly sympathetic, inwardly bemused. Yes, a lot of dust … judging from the approving smiles it elicited, my answer was the correct one, and yet for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was. Obviously trucks driving on unpaved roads were going to kick up a good bit of dirt into the air, but that was to be expected, so why all the fuss?

And then, about halfway through my third day in Kibondo, it finally hit me. (I quite literally hadn’t seen the dust for all the dust.) It was like coming home with my first pair of glasses and realizing that the maple tree in front of our house actually had individual leaves on it. Except this time around, I was realizing that absolutely everything in Kibondo is covered in a layer of red dust – and not just the obvious targets, like cars, white shirts, and feet, but even things like the needles on the pine trees and the insides of closed drawers. I’m sure that in a few more days it will begin to wear on me and, like the strangers I’ve met, it will become one of the things I dislike but deal with, but for now I’m still caught in the amazement-phase. It’s like seeing the world through rose (err…rusty-red) colored glasses … sure to lose its appeal soon enough, but for now, magical in its own way.

Now, back to those two flushing toilets! Or rather, back to my lovely house with its wonderful indoor plumbing :) My home for the year is one of several houses in the Nywela compound, which apparently used to be home to a decent number of foreigners and Tanzanians who worked for various NGOs associated with the camps but is now a little less lively. So whereas in years past, the 4 bedrooms in my house used to have regular occupants, now it’s just me. Aside from the aforementioned bedrooms and bathrooms, there’s a kitchen, pantry, small eating area, and a common room – all in all, quite a bit more palatial than I was expecting! Outside of the house, there’s a small backyard and a basketball court in the front (I think someone else has a volleyball court as their front yard…)

My neighbors are a rather mixed crowd. Right next door is the Nkya family – Mr. Nkya (who works for TCRS in the Community Empowerment Project division) and a rotating assortment of kids (a few currently away at school, one about to go away to school, a couple others in school here….lots of kids!). The TCRS-KRP Project Coordinator (i.e. – my boss) lives in the house below them with his family. And then there are my non-human neighbors: more goats, dogs, chickens, and roosters than I can count … plus a horse and at least one goose … and those are just the ones I’ve discovered in my first week! Technically there are barbed-wire fences between the properties, but they’re more effective at keeping humans out than animals … and that’s not saying much since I duck under one such fence every morning and evening on my way to and from the office :) The combination of the basketball court and fences that aren’t really fences means that the majority of the non-adult occupants of the compound can be found in my front yard at different points during the day….when I wake up, it’s usually a couple of goats hanging out on the court, by the time I come back from work the goats have been replaced by a bunch of kids throwing a basketball around, then the dogs make the rounds later at night….it makes for one of my favorite kinds of ambient noise and reminds me a little of growing up at home with everyone playing outside (and then I see a goat and have a “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” moment!)

As for the town itself …. it seems I am destined to live in small towns … first Oakmont, then Princeton, now Kibondo. Kibondo’s small even compared to Oakmont though, which is saying something! Unless there’s some big part of it I haven’t stumbled across yet (highly unlikely), it’s basically comprised of one main road with TCRS on one end and a cluster of other NGOs on the other end (IRC, UNHRC, UNICEF, Right to Play, etc.). In between there’s a bus stand and a small business district full of little stalls where you can find everything from a tailor to Pringles. From what I saw on the way here, the surrounding area is mainly subsistence farming … so compared to its outskirts at least, Kibondo is quite the booming metropolis! Geographically speaking, Kibondo’s due east of Bujumbura (the capital of Burundi) and lies to the north of Kigoma (on Lake Tanganyika) and to the south of Mwanza (on Lake Victoria). The latter two towns are both a relatively short flight away, but by road it’s a good (and probably really bumpy!) 7 or 8 hour drive to Mwanza.

Since I flew in to Mwanza from Dar es Salaam, you can understand then why I was happy to learn that the second leg of my trip would be by plane rather than car. As an added bonus, this was the first time I’d been on such a small plane (I think it had a 10 person capacity at most), and I loved it! Considering what I now know about the dust here, I have a feeling that driving to Kibondo would not have been as much of a long picturesque journey as it would have been like spending 7 or 8 hours suspended in a thickly opaque cloud of dust, whereas traveling by plane meant I could see everything we flew over. The Mwanza airport is located right on the shore of Lake Victoria, so as we departed we flew out over the lake (which was even more beautiful than it seems in these pictures I’ll put up in my next post). Then gradually, the landscape started changing and become much less flat and the blue of the water was replaced by different shades of green, red, and brown (yes, green ... for all that's it's dusty, it's still lushly vegetated - there are an amazing variety of trees, shrubs, and flowers...). We were flying low enough to be able to see houses and things moving around - I kept thinking that it looked more like one of those 3-d topographical maps than like reality what with the everything being so tidily miniature!

And that's all I've got for now....illustrations to follow in the next post!

Dar es Salaam!

One thing that I have realized since arriving in Dar es Salaam earlier this week is that a slow internet connection is almost the same thing as no internet connection when it comes to encouraging timely blog posts. Before the clock runs out on my time in Dar es Salaam though (and before my arrival in an entirely new and unfamiliar region eclipses my memories and impressions of my third stay in Dar…), I decided to bite the slow internet bullet and post this update. So, starting from the beginning:

Tuesday, July 1
After spending approximately 34 hours in transit (43 if you count the trip from Pittsburgh) (and what felt like that many hours arguing with airline representatives about the flight they had charged me for but not booked me on … grrrr), I finally arrived in Dar es Salaam. Since the trip had started with the airline “losing” my reservation on the flight from Dubai to Dar, it was only fitting (in a full-circle kind of way) that the trip ended with the airline temporarily losing one of my bags. Luckily, the organization I’m working with (more on them later) had gotten the message about the change in my flight itinerary (thanks again dad and Aili!), so getting from the airport to where I’m staying in Dar was wonderfully uncomplicated. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been happier to see a bed (and that’s saying a lot coming from me!) – not surprisingly, I was asleep within minutes :-)

Wednesday, July 2
Wednesday morning started off with a quick breakfast and then I was whisked off to the TCRS office by Odillo (one of the TCRS-Dar employees). My introduction to the Dar office started out as a whirlwind of introductions (I had met the Programmes Officer, Adam, the night before when he picked me up from the airport, but now I also knew Allan (the Technical Coordinator), Bwana Mbunda (Administration Coordinator), Teddy Deo (Refugee Coordinator & Counseling), Suzy (Project Accountant), Taskazee, Beatrice, and several others whose names have slipped my mind…). After the initial flurry, things settled back down as everyone else got back to work and as I familiarized myself with TCRS by way of their two most recent annual reports. For those of you who have been wondering what exactly it is that I’ll be doing, well, I still don’t have a definitive answer for you. I can, however, give you an idea of what exactly TCRS is and does.

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The Tanganyika Christian Refugee Service was founded in 1964 by the Lutheran World Foundation in order to provide emergency relief to refugees and refugee camps. Over time, the organization has expanded to include development initiatives, such that its stated “vision” is now empowered communities living in a just democratic society, united in diversity and enjoying quality of life and God-given dignity, while its “mission” states that it is committed to reducing suffering and poverty by empowering vulnerable, marginalized, and displaced communities in Tanzania to achieve self-reliance and sustainable development.

TCRS devotes a considerable portion of its energies on refugee support, especially in Kibondo (which is where I’ll be working). Due to repatriation efforts, there is only one refugee camp in the area that remains in use (three others have closed in recent years). In addition to continuing to facilitate the repatriation efforts, TCRS provides support to the nearly 43,000 residents in Nduta Camp. The forms this support takes really run the gamut: from supplying food, water, shelter, and sanitation to providing primary, secondary, and vocational education; from encouraging agricultural and environmental related training to supporting income generating projects; from promoting HIV/Aids awareness to working with FilmAid to organize movie viewing throughout the year.

Outside of Kibondo, TCRS also has projects in the Old Settlements (communities of hundreds of thousands of Burundian refugees who fled to Tanzania during the 1972 genocide) and in Dar es Salaam (where in addition to refugee assistance, they also work with media outlets to promote refugee advocacy). In keeping with the ideas of “tujiwezeshe” (let’s empower ourselves) and “usimpe mtu samaki, bali mfundishe kuvua samaki” (the familiar proverb about teaching a man to fish rather than giving him the fish), TCRS also has initiated community empowerment projects in Karagwe, Kibondo, Kigoma Rural, Kilwa, Kishapu, Morogoro, and Ngara.

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Later that afternoon, Chande (another TCRS-Dar employee) drove me to the airport, an errand that was productive two times over since I retrieved my missing bag and was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had retained enough of my Swahili to be able to chat pretty comfortably with him. Finished with “business” for the day, I returned to my temporary home, a wonderful pseudo-hotel/hostel run by the Passionist Fathers. I hesitate to call it a hotel, because it feels homier than that, but I do have my own room with a bathroom attached and there are a number of other guests staying in other rooms. While I’m not sure if you’d call it a hotel, hostel, bed & breakfast, or something else, I am sure that it’s wonderful! And by wonderful, I mean: air-conditioned, clean, free (albeit slow) wireless, full of friendly and interesting guests, and delicious food J There are two priests who live here – Father Aloysius (Tanzanian) and Father Ricardo (Italian) – and perhaps due to the Italian influence (I think the Passionist Fathers are affiliated with the Italian church, although I’m not positive), the meals are delicious! Breakfast is usually Tanzanian style (i.e. – British), whereas dinner errs more along Italian lines … pasta, minestrone soup, etc. – as an added bonus, all the main dishes (at least so far) have been vegetarian! (I promise not to wax poetic about every meal I eat over the course of the next year … it’s just that food that isn’t fried or in the beans & rice family is quite a treat!)

While eating dinner Wednesday night, I made the acquaintance of Naomi, a little pixie of a six year-old who responded to her father’s suggestion that she not chatter quite so much by turning to me, motioning to the space between her and her father, and saying “I wish there was a wall right here.” Faced with her mischievous smile and adorable accent, I couldn’t hold my laughter in, which effectively won me Naomi’s approval and by the end of the meal, I’d learnt all about her sisters, brother, newly adopted brothers, and pet chickens, exchanged thoughts on favorite foods and other lofty subjects, and had been invited to her birthday party in August. Talking to Naomi’s father was also interesting (although perhaps not quite as amusing) – although originally from New Zealand, their family had lived in Tanzania for the past twelve years working with a NGO, which I found pretty amazing (it’s a little hard for me to imagine one year here, let alone 12!).

Thursday, July 3
I had promised Naomi that we’d eat breakfast together, so my day started out great and just kept getting better. After breakfast, I found my way to the university, where I met up with Annie (a good friend from Princeton who was also in Dar last summer). We spent the better part of the day hanging out and catching up, then stopped by English class at Mwenge. I was surprised and delighted to find out that a number of my Group 1 students had “graduated” to Group 2 … and it was just a lot of fun to get to see everyone again. As an added bonus, I got to hang out after class with Bahati and Katie, two friends from my January visit – I hadn’t been sure that I’d get a chance see them, so that was really nice.

Saturday, July 5
Aside from signing my contract at the office on Friday and another excellent dinner with the Fathers, the 4^th was pretty uneventful. Saturday, however, was anything but … I met up with Annie and some of the Princeton in Dar summer students early in the morning, and we all went to Kipepeo Beach on Kigamboni peninsula together. The sky was a bit overcast when we arrived, but it turned out to be perfect beach weather – the brief rain coincided perfectly with lunch and the sun eventually came out but wasn’t too strong. It was fun getting to spend some time with this year’s group of Princeton students … obviously I’m a bit biased toward last year’s gang, but I have to admit that these guys seemed like they were almost as much fun as us :-) We left the beach around 3 and set out for the (belated) 4^th of July party at the American Embassy. Visiting the embassy in Dar is always a little surreal (it almost seems more like Florida than Africa!), but it is even more so on American holidays … the whole place was decked out in red, white, and blue; the games included a dunking booth, tug-o-war, and sack races; hotdogs, hamburgers, baked beans, coleslaw, and ice cream were the dinner/dessert options; and there were fireworks to the tune of the 1812 overture and “I’m Proud to be an American!”

Sunday, July 6
There isn’t much to write about Sunday since the day isn’t over yet (and since I’m not really planning on doing much aside from blog updating and repacking my bags). I met some new guests at breakfast this morning and (true to form) they (Brigit and Peter) were just as fascinating to talk to as everyone else I’ve met here. They’re Swiss anthropologists who have been coming to Tanzania for various projects for the last twenty years, the most recent ones being research on the lives of elderly people and a historical project on healthcare in Africa. I’m heading to Kibondo finally tomorrow (hence the bag repacking), so tonight will definitely be an early night … I have to leave for the airport at 4am! Then, as long as everything goes smoothly (I have to take a commercial flight to Mwanza and then a flight on a smaller UNHCR plane to Kibondo), I’ll be in Kibondo Monday afternoon :-)

Graduation!

In the spirit of better late than never and before I move on to more current news, here's a quick overview of the graduation festivities.

Baccalaureate Mass
On Sunday morning/afternoon, the senior class filed into the University chapel for the interfaith Baccalaureate Mass - the highlight of which was an address given by Paul Farmer, a medical anthropologist who I have admired since I was first introduced to his work. Suffice to say, he's an amazing individual - a real role model for anthropologists, doctors, and humanitarians. I'd been looking forward to hearing him speak and was most definitely not disappointed - he was both inspiring and unexpectedly witty/self-deprecating.

To read more about Farmer's speech and/or to watch a video of it, check out Princeton's website.

Emily, Dave, and me before Baccalaureate Mass

Class Day
Monday opened with Class Day and the much anticipated Stephen Colbert. Trying to paraphrase his speech wouldn't do it justice, so instead I'll just include a few highlights.

"On behalf of the adults ... I am begging you to leave the world alone ... Some of us like it the way it is. Personally, things are going great for me right now ... you people are like a virus that will soon be unleashed upon the world, with your unstoppable drive and your infectious enthusiasm ... Please don't try to change global warming ... The older generations cut down the forest and sprayed millions of tons of CO2 in the air for a reason -- because they felt a draft in here ... When you're older, you'll understand that it is a lot easier to raise the ocean temperatures a few degrees than to remember to bring a cardigan."

Or, thanks to youtube, you can just watch the speech (or at least parts of it - I don't know if these videos will cover the whole thing or just parts of it...):
Colbert - Class Day 1
Colbert - Class Day 2

Stephen Colbert, holding his "Great Class of 2008 Understandable Vanity Award" (appropriately mounted on a mirror) and wearing his Class of '08 beer jacket (he had mocked the jackets at the beginning of his speech but revised his opinion of them after being made an honorary class member and receiving his own jacket)

Commencement
This event speaks for itself, so instead of words, I'll stick with pictures :)

Before the Ceremony
(L-R): Emily, Patrice, Mackenzie, Meg, Sandhya, Lisa, Michelle, me (over the past 4 years, I've lived with all of these girls except Meg)

Walking out Fitz-Randolph Gates for the first time!
(L-R): Patrice, me, Emily

Scott, Susan, and me in Prospect Garden after the ceremony

With Mom and Dad after the ceremony :)