Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Juanita!
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Mwenge ya Taifa
Mwenge ya Taifa (the National Torch) came to Kibondo yesterday afternoon. I’m still not entirely sure what the torch is or why it came to Kibondo, but I think it’s kind of like a Tanzanian version of the Olympic Torch – except instead of traveling around the world it travels around the country and sometimes coincides with the opening of a new school or something like that. While I might be a little hazy on those details, what I know for sure is that Tanzanians know how to party! The torch arrived sometime around noon yesterday and the festivities started shortly thereafter. I went to bed to the sound of the party continuing and it was still going strong when I woke up at 2am … and at 3am … and at 6am! And by “sound of the party continuing,” I mean I could hear the music and the MC’s voice like they were coming from a speaker right outside my window … except it was coming from Uwanja wa Taifa (the National Stadium) … which is a good 10-15 walk from my house.
At some point between 3 and 6am, I decided that as long as I was lying in bed listening to this raucous party, I might as well actually go see what all the fuss was about. So, as soon as it was light enough, I made my way over to the “stadium” (which is not as much as stadium as it is a large open area with a football (soccer) pitch, basketball/netball court, and wooden grandstand/stage). Unfortunately, the dancing/partying stopped right before I arrived and the speeches started, but there was still quite a sizable crowd there and at least I got a glimpse of the torch!
(click on the picture to see a larger version)
The torch is now on its way to some other part of the country – in fact, it passed me on its way out of town as I was walking to work. And while I’m not about to begrudge anyone here a chance at excitement (I did get excited about finding a garbage pit in my yard this weekend after all … I realize that truly exciting events are few and far between out here in Kibondo …), I wasn’t sad to see it go. All things considered, I think I’ll take a good night's sleep over a torch any day! :-D
Monday, August 18, 2008
Weekend Excitement
This past weekend was fairly exciting (by Kibondo standards) for a number of reasons. To begin with, I ventured into my backyard for the first time since arriving here (like I said ... exciting by Kibondo standards...) . This led to the discovery of the garbage pit (and musings about whether or not the neighbor's goats have ever fallen in) as well as the discovery of a mystery room! The mystery was solved as soon as I remembered that the house's original occupant was the woman who taught the children of former TCRS expat staff (i.e., the room was the schoolroom), but still, finding out that your house doesn't end where you thought it did is kind of momentarily thrilling. Kind of like realizing that one of the downspouts has been stolen off the side of your house, except in a good way :-P I also made some new friends up at UNHCR, ooohed and ahhhed over the delicious homemade pizza & salad I ate there, and almost adopted a cat (at the last minute he decided he didn't want to be adopted afterall and ran away). Some brownie baking also got thrown into the mix as well as a few hours of Olympics coverage (the power literally cut out right when the men were going into the blocks for the 100m race....argh! luckily we caught a re-run of it later. and Michael Phelps....wow!).
All of this absolutely pales in comparison to the single most exciting part of my weekend though ..... CHEESE!!!!!!!! A big, incredibly tasty hunk of cheddar cheese!!! It survived the long, hot car ride up from Kigoma and was waiting for me in the refrigerator at IRC when I went to bake. :-D Here it is in all it's cheesy-beauty:
(Now I just have to find a way to make it last as long as possible while also somehow prevent it from spoiling in my refrigerator (which only has power for 2/3 of the day)...)
All of this absolutely pales in comparison to the single most exciting part of my weekend though ..... CHEESE!!!!!!!! A big, incredibly tasty hunk of cheddar cheese!!! It survived the long, hot car ride up from Kigoma and was waiting for me in the refrigerator at IRC when I went to bake. :-D Here it is in all it's cheesy-beauty:
(Now I just have to find a way to make it last as long as possible while also somehow prevent it from spoiling in my refrigerator (which only has power for 2/3 of the day)...)
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Oh Kiswahili...
As the majority of Kiswahili speakers I’ve ever met have told me, Swahili is an “easy” language to learn. And in spite of often garbled sentences I produce when attempting to make myself understood in Kiswahili, I have to agree with them. Especially compared to English and its inexhaustible rules, exceptions, odd spellings, homonyms, homophones, and all the rest of its quirks, Kiswahili is a breeze: mercifully devoid of exceptions to its rules, wonderfully phonetic, and no gender (yes, I’m scowling at you, French…). While its noun classes do mix things up a little bit, they at least behave the way you’d expect them to once you learn the grammar. On top of all that, it’s also a simple language where vocabulary is concerned. My Swahili to English dictionary is literally less than 1/3 the size of my English to Swahili dictionary. Where in English we could say good, fine, great, excellent, superior, first-rate, decent, pleasant, enjoyable, lovely, delightful, skillful, proficient, accomplished, helpful, beneficial, advantageous, fair, well-mannered, wonderful, fantastic, magnificent, terrific, and so on, in Kiswahili they say “nzuri” … or, to lend that a little extra weight, “nzuri sana.” We say put, place, set, lay, position, situation, plant, deposit, leave, plunk, etc., and they say “-weka.” Depending on the modifier that it’s paired with, the verb root “-piga” can mean anything from hit to haggle, from vote to kneel, from underline to clap, from make a phone call to brushing teeth … and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Synonyms are not a key feature of the Kiswahili language. In fact, I highly doubt there is a word that means “synonym.” Its vocabulary is like a set of linguistic lowest common denominators. (Although I have come to appreciate this particular aspect of Kiswahili, my adjustment to it was rather slow in coming thanks in large part to Mrs. Streiff’s deeply ingrained lessons on sentence-opening variety…)
When it comes to greetings though, all that goes flying out the window. I keep telling myself that in time I’ll actually become familiar with all the possible greetings in Kiswahili. I keep telling myself this in spite of the fact that even now – after having already spent a cumulative total of more than 16 weeks here – new ones keep getting thrown my way. And for all that the rest of the Kiswahili lexicon might be slightly lacking in nuance, it is available in abundant supply with the greetings. I’m sure I’ll accidentally leave some out, but so far the list includes: shikamoo (if they’re older than me), hujambo, salama, habari, habari yako, habari gani, habari za asubuhi, habari za kazi, habari za siku hizi, habari za mchana, habari za jioni, habari za usiku, habari za nyumbani, mzima, mambo, mambo vipi, vipi, hali, upo, umelala salama, umelalaje, umeamkaje, umeshindaje, uko bomba (slang-ish), uko fresh (slang-ish), shwari (slang-ish), shwanga (slang-ish), mwakae (Kiha), mwidiwe (Kiha), kavubu (Kiha), and ulimo (Kiha). The kicker is that with the exception of shikamoo and the Kiha words (which obviously aren’t Kiswahili, but get used a lot out here), you can get away with responding with “salama” to any of those greetings. There are a handful of other responses, but salama’s the one-size-fits-all answer.
You might have guessed by now that greetings are a pretty big part of the culture here. Just about every time you see/pass a person here (regardless of whether or not you know them), exchanging 2 or 3 or more greetings is par for the course. It’s one of the little things that I really like about this culture, and I especially loved how thrilled the women usually get when I greet them in Kiha (I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard them exclaim “she knows Kiha!” in Swahili as I walk away. Sadly, that is not the case – I only know four words of Kiha, and all of them are greetings…). The only problem I have with the greetings comes up when someone throws a new one at me. Rationally, I know that the majority of the greetings make sense once they’re broken down. And I also know that I can almost definitely just respond with “salama” and be fine. I know all this and yet still, 9 times out of 10, my brain reacts to a new greeting by blowing a fuse. Which usually means I end up sputtering helplessly until the person who launched said tricky greeting in my direction either walks past or takes pity on me and tells me the appropriate response. Without fail, the meaning of the word or phrase becomes painfully clear to me shortly thereafter – too late to be useful, just in time to make me feel extra foolish :-/
Some other fun facts about and/or quirks of Kiswahili:
• The word for university is chuo kikuu, which can be abbreviated to chuo (chew-o (2 syllables)). The word for toilet is choo (ch-owe (1 syllable)). The only good thing about this similarity is that it doesn’t tend to be a mistake you make more than once.
• Likewise, the word for pomegranate is uncomfortably similar to a rather course insult. Thanks to my awareness of this (which is thanks to an angry ice-cream vendor I overheard in Dar...), I will probably never use the word for pomegranate out of fear of the Freudian slip I might make. There is a silver lining to the paranoia though – my “Swahili street cred” went through the roof when Tabitha realized what it was that I thought she’d called the pomegranate,
• The verb for open is –fungua. The verb for close is –funga. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve mixed those up.
• For all that there isn’t gender in Kiswahili, it is considered grammatically incorrect to use the active verb –oa (to marry) when a woman is the subject. The correct verb is –olewa (passive voice). In Kiswahili, men can marry, but women can only be married. Sexist grammar … cute, huh?
• For some reason that continues to escape me, many Swahili speakers confuse their L’s and their R’s, especially when speaking English. This one wouldn’t baffle me as much if both letters weren’t used in Swahili … but they are … and with distinct sounds! For example, although everyone pronounces the "r" in my name, on more than one occasion, people at my office have spelled my name as "Katheline." More recent example of this: the secretary (a cute, sweet woman) walked into my office yesterday, put a stack of papers down, and cheerfully informed me that she was coming in on Saturday to do “firing.” Wow, I thought. She’s pretty excited about getting rid of someone. And then I realized she meant “filing.” She was still more enthusiastic about it than I would’ve expected, but hey, to each her own :-)
• On a related (but only tangentially) note, I keep running into two things here and wondering how/why the colonizers succeeded at importing them here while the colonists failed to do so in America. The first: the British “R.” For those of you who have yet to encounter the British “R,” it is basically an entirely different sound. This can make communication difficult at times. The second: the metric system. I try to console myself by remembering that I’ve never been very good at judging temperature, distance, weight, etc. regardless of the units, but seriously! I wish I could’ve been in the room when the decision got made to scrap the perfectly good – and more importantly, logical and universally-used – system of measurement in favor of a whole new system that isn’t logical in the least and doesn’t even convert easily to metric. I wish I could’ve been there so I could’ve shaken some sense into whoever it was who thought this was a good idea. I'm looking at you, Thomas Corwin Mendenhall. Harumph.
When it comes to greetings though, all that goes flying out the window. I keep telling myself that in time I’ll actually become familiar with all the possible greetings in Kiswahili. I keep telling myself this in spite of the fact that even now – after having already spent a cumulative total of more than 16 weeks here – new ones keep getting thrown my way. And for all that the rest of the Kiswahili lexicon might be slightly lacking in nuance, it is available in abundant supply with the greetings. I’m sure I’ll accidentally leave some out, but so far the list includes: shikamoo (if they’re older than me), hujambo, salama, habari, habari yako, habari gani, habari za asubuhi, habari za kazi, habari za siku hizi, habari za mchana, habari za jioni, habari za usiku, habari za nyumbani, mzima, mambo, mambo vipi, vipi, hali, upo, umelala salama, umelalaje, umeamkaje, umeshindaje, uko bomba (slang-ish), uko fresh (slang-ish), shwari (slang-ish), shwanga (slang-ish), mwakae (Kiha), mwidiwe (Kiha), kavubu (Kiha), and ulimo (Kiha). The kicker is that with the exception of shikamoo and the Kiha words (which obviously aren’t Kiswahili, but get used a lot out here), you can get away with responding with “salama” to any of those greetings. There are a handful of other responses, but salama’s the one-size-fits-all answer.
You might have guessed by now that greetings are a pretty big part of the culture here. Just about every time you see/pass a person here (regardless of whether or not you know them), exchanging 2 or 3 or more greetings is par for the course. It’s one of the little things that I really like about this culture, and I especially loved how thrilled the women usually get when I greet them in Kiha (I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard them exclaim “she knows Kiha!” in Swahili as I walk away. Sadly, that is not the case – I only know four words of Kiha, and all of them are greetings…). The only problem I have with the greetings comes up when someone throws a new one at me. Rationally, I know that the majority of the greetings make sense once they’re broken down. And I also know that I can almost definitely just respond with “salama” and be fine. I know all this and yet still, 9 times out of 10, my brain reacts to a new greeting by blowing a fuse. Which usually means I end up sputtering helplessly until the person who launched said tricky greeting in my direction either walks past or takes pity on me and tells me the appropriate response. Without fail, the meaning of the word or phrase becomes painfully clear to me shortly thereafter – too late to be useful, just in time to make me feel extra foolish :-/
Some other fun facts about and/or quirks of Kiswahili:
• The word for university is chuo kikuu, which can be abbreviated to chuo (chew-o (2 syllables)). The word for toilet is choo (ch-owe (1 syllable)). The only good thing about this similarity is that it doesn’t tend to be a mistake you make more than once.
• Likewise, the word for pomegranate is uncomfortably similar to a rather course insult. Thanks to my awareness of this (which is thanks to an angry ice-cream vendor I overheard in Dar...), I will probably never use the word for pomegranate out of fear of the Freudian slip I might make. There is a silver lining to the paranoia though – my “Swahili street cred” went through the roof when Tabitha realized what it was that I thought she’d called the pomegranate,
• The verb for open is –fungua. The verb for close is –funga. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve mixed those up.
• For all that there isn’t gender in Kiswahili, it is considered grammatically incorrect to use the active verb –oa (to marry) when a woman is the subject. The correct verb is –olewa (passive voice). In Kiswahili, men can marry, but women can only be married. Sexist grammar … cute, huh?
• For some reason that continues to escape me, many Swahili speakers confuse their L’s and their R’s, especially when speaking English. This one wouldn’t baffle me as much if both letters weren’t used in Swahili … but they are … and with distinct sounds! For example, although everyone pronounces the "r" in my name, on more than one occasion, people at my office have spelled my name as "Katheline." More recent example of this: the secretary (a cute, sweet woman) walked into my office yesterday, put a stack of papers down, and cheerfully informed me that she was coming in on Saturday to do “firing.” Wow, I thought. She’s pretty excited about getting rid of someone. And then I realized she meant “filing.” She was still more enthusiastic about it than I would’ve expected, but hey, to each her own :-)
• On a related (but only tangentially) note, I keep running into two things here and wondering how/why the colonizers succeeded at importing them here while the colonists failed to do so in America. The first: the British “R.” For those of you who have yet to encounter the British “R,” it is basically an entirely different sound. This can make communication difficult at times. The second: the metric system. I try to console myself by remembering that I’ve never been very good at judging temperature, distance, weight, etc. regardless of the units, but seriously! I wish I could’ve been in the room when the decision got made to scrap the perfectly good – and more importantly, logical and universally-used – system of measurement in favor of a whole new system that isn’t logical in the least and doesn’t even convert easily to metric. I wish I could’ve been there so I could’ve shaken some sense into whoever it was who thought this was a good idea. I'm looking at you, Thomas Corwin Mendenhall. Harumph.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Weekends in Kibondo
Everyone seems to be curious about what weekends in Kibondo are like, so I figured it was about time I did more than just mention them in passing…..
You know how most DVD players now have slow-motion fast-forward and rewind options with 3 or 4 different speeds? Imagine putting your life on one of the slower settings, and you can get an idea of what a weekend in Kibondo feels like. A melodramatic comparison? Perhaps … but only slightly :-P After all, weekends here are victims not only of the time-moves-more-slowly-when-you-have-nothing-to-do effect but also of the time-moves-extra-slowly-when-you’re-waiting-for-the-electricity-to-come-back-on effect. Saturdays are a bit better than Sundays since the power’s on for a few more hours during the day … unfortunately there are also more things to do outside of the house on Saturdays so the extra power often goes unappreciated. In other words, weekends can be pretty boring. Since my default antidote for boredom antidote is reading, I realized pretty early on that weekends in Kibondo could pose a very serious threat to my tiny library. This realization, combined with a basic desire to avoid slowly driving myself crazy, has prompted me to seek out some alternative weekend activities. The results so far:
• Puttering around the house (my leatherman + the set of tools I inherited when I moved in = fewer things being broken in the house!)
• Going to the market (more of a Saturday thing than a Sunday one since there’s a bigger market on Saturdays)
• Cooking (don’t be too shocked … this is more of a hypothetical future activity … my culinary escapades to date only include omelettes, pasta & oatmeal)
• Playing with Everbright (for the most part, this involves having my (lack of) basketball & hopscotch skills ridiculed)
• Hanging out at the IRC compound (in addition to the friendly people element, they also have internet, satellite tv, a microwave, and a blender at their rec center – quite exciting!)
• Walking/hiking around town (2 weekends ago we walked with Everbright out to see where she goes to school, and this past weekend we went on a three hour hike up to the highest point outside of town – the view was amazing!)
In spite of my griping, my past two weekends have actually been fairly fun. Having visitors has certainly mixed things up … plus, the weekend before last the three of us went over to the IOM compound for a Kibondo NGO Field Day. We weren’t sure what to expect … the flier that got posted in our office compound promised egg balancing, a sack race, a potato race, a chicken race, “tag-off-war,” a “marathon” around the compound, table tennis, and volleyball – to be followed by a “disco” … for the most part that all happened. There were egg, potato, and sack races, although we were quite disappointed to find that the advertised chicken race did not occur (the PC of IOM insisted that chickens had been purchased … perhaps some cook got a head start on that race?). There was also a pretty amusing hula-hoop competition (the only event a mzungu won!) and an impressively serious volleyball tournament. Impressively serious, that is, except for the one women’s game they decided to have after the men were finished … that game just involved perpetuating a lot of gender stereotypes about women and sports (I’m sorry to say that wasn’t able to do anything to counteract that, not having played volleyball since high school (and I wasn’t particularly good at it even then…)). It made for a fun afternoon though, albeit one that I spent a good part of wishing I could fast forward my language skills a few months…
Since we traveled down to Kasulu last Thursday (my guests were going to interview more NGOs; I tagged along to help them talk their way past the guards at the gate of each NGO’s compound…) and arrived back in Kibondo on Saturday in the early afternoon, this past weekend also erred on the eventful side of things (I hesitate to say fun since A. it involved spending more than 6 hours bouncing along unpaved roads and B. we decided that bigger does not always equal better when it comes to the towns in Kigoma region – we missed Kibondo!). The trip did have “upsides” though: the interviews with the NGOS were all productive; I got to at least see Kasulu (and learn for myself that the less time spent there, the better!); and I received a useful lesson on the merits of not acting on impulse. Actually, there were several lessons learned: 1. when a shiny, modern-looking bridge appears out of nowhere, check to see if there are any men in uniform guarding it before whipping out your camera; 2. avoid taking pictures of men in uniform at all possible costs; 3. when there is a decent chance that your car is one of only a handful of cars crossing the bridge that day, there is little to no hope of something like, say, a camera flash going unnoticed; and 4. if you foolishly take a picture of the bridge before noticing the men with uniforms and guns, delete it immediately and quickly take a decoy picture so you can innocently insist “I wanted to take a picture of the bridge, but saw the men in front and jerked my camera down at the last minute so the picture is of the seat, not the bridge.” That whole bit of excitement/trepidation/extreme foolishness had an upside as well though – we eventually made it across the bridge … and didn’t have to pay a bribe! (hooray for Swahili-speaking drivers, decoy pictures, and not entirely corrupt bridge guards!) The weekend took a turn for the better on Sunday thanks to the aforementioned hike and the discovery that Prisca had cooked Sunday dinner for us since the director of TCRS was coming into town.
This weekend looks promising as well – Friday is “Peasants Day,” a national holiday in Tanzania, so I have the day off from work and am planning on going with some people to see the Peasants Day Fair (I think it’s like a trade fair with examples of all the food and goods people in the area produce, but I’m not entirely sure) in the morning, and then we’re hopefully going to watch the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics at IRC! But there will be more on that once it actually happens!
You know how most DVD players now have slow-motion fast-forward and rewind options with 3 or 4 different speeds? Imagine putting your life on one of the slower settings, and you can get an idea of what a weekend in Kibondo feels like. A melodramatic comparison? Perhaps … but only slightly :-P After all, weekends here are victims not only of the time-moves-more-slowly-when-you-have-nothing-to-do effect but also of the time-moves-extra-slowly-when-you’re-waiting-for-the-electricity-to-come-back-on effect. Saturdays are a bit better than Sundays since the power’s on for a few more hours during the day … unfortunately there are also more things to do outside of the house on Saturdays so the extra power often goes unappreciated. In other words, weekends can be pretty boring. Since my default antidote for boredom antidote is reading, I realized pretty early on that weekends in Kibondo could pose a very serious threat to my tiny library. This realization, combined with a basic desire to avoid slowly driving myself crazy, has prompted me to seek out some alternative weekend activities. The results so far:
• Puttering around the house (my leatherman + the set of tools I inherited when I moved in = fewer things being broken in the house!)
• Going to the market (more of a Saturday thing than a Sunday one since there’s a bigger market on Saturdays)
• Cooking (don’t be too shocked … this is more of a hypothetical future activity … my culinary escapades to date only include omelettes, pasta & oatmeal)
• Playing with Everbright (for the most part, this involves having my (lack of) basketball & hopscotch skills ridiculed)
• Hanging out at the IRC compound (in addition to the friendly people element, they also have internet, satellite tv, a microwave, and a blender at their rec center – quite exciting!)
• Walking/hiking around town (2 weekends ago we walked with Everbright out to see where she goes to school, and this past weekend we went on a three hour hike up to the highest point outside of town – the view was amazing!)
In spite of my griping, my past two weekends have actually been fairly fun. Having visitors has certainly mixed things up … plus, the weekend before last the three of us went over to the IOM compound for a Kibondo NGO Field Day. We weren’t sure what to expect … the flier that got posted in our office compound promised egg balancing, a sack race, a potato race, a chicken race, “tag-off-war,” a “marathon” around the compound, table tennis, and volleyball – to be followed by a “disco” … for the most part that all happened. There were egg, potato, and sack races, although we were quite disappointed to find that the advertised chicken race did not occur (the PC of IOM insisted that chickens had been purchased … perhaps some cook got a head start on that race?). There was also a pretty amusing hula-hoop competition (the only event a mzungu won!) and an impressively serious volleyball tournament. Impressively serious, that is, except for the one women’s game they decided to have after the men were finished … that game just involved perpetuating a lot of gender stereotypes about women and sports (I’m sorry to say that wasn’t able to do anything to counteract that, not having played volleyball since high school (and I wasn’t particularly good at it even then…)). It made for a fun afternoon though, albeit one that I spent a good part of wishing I could fast forward my language skills a few months…
Since we traveled down to Kasulu last Thursday (my guests were going to interview more NGOs; I tagged along to help them talk their way past the guards at the gate of each NGO’s compound…) and arrived back in Kibondo on Saturday in the early afternoon, this past weekend also erred on the eventful side of things (I hesitate to say fun since A. it involved spending more than 6 hours bouncing along unpaved roads and B. we decided that bigger does not always equal better when it comes to the towns in Kigoma region – we missed Kibondo!). The trip did have “upsides” though: the interviews with the NGOS were all productive; I got to at least see Kasulu (and learn for myself that the less time spent there, the better!); and I received a useful lesson on the merits of not acting on impulse. Actually, there were several lessons learned: 1. when a shiny, modern-looking bridge appears out of nowhere, check to see if there are any men in uniform guarding it before whipping out your camera; 2. avoid taking pictures of men in uniform at all possible costs; 3. when there is a decent chance that your car is one of only a handful of cars crossing the bridge that day, there is little to no hope of something like, say, a camera flash going unnoticed; and 4. if you foolishly take a picture of the bridge before noticing the men with uniforms and guns, delete it immediately and quickly take a decoy picture so you can innocently insist “I wanted to take a picture of the bridge, but saw the men in front and jerked my camera down at the last minute so the picture is of the seat, not the bridge.” That whole bit of excitement/trepidation/extreme foolishness had an upside as well though – we eventually made it across the bridge … and didn’t have to pay a bribe! (hooray for Swahili-speaking drivers, decoy pictures, and not entirely corrupt bridge guards!) The weekend took a turn for the better on Sunday thanks to the aforementioned hike and the discovery that Prisca had cooked Sunday dinner for us since the director of TCRS was coming into town.
This weekend looks promising as well – Friday is “Peasants Day,” a national holiday in Tanzania, so I have the day off from work and am planning on going with some people to see the Peasants Day Fair (I think it’s like a trade fair with examples of all the food and goods people in the area produce, but I’m not entirely sure) in the morning, and then we’re hopefully going to watch the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics at IRC! But there will be more on that once it actually happens!
Monday, August 04, 2008
Nipe Tano!
I went for a run last week after work with two other foreigners that led to two discoveries:
1. Not exercising for about a month + Prisca's cooking + an elevation increase of more than 4,300 feet = being really really out of shape!
2. The little kids who live outside of town have gone from being terrified of seeing random wazungu go running past their homes to being thrilled about it. As soon as they catch sight of us (usually fairly easy to do even from a distance ... something about our white skin and how we're not slowly walking tends to mean we stick out ...), they come running from the surrounding fields and homesteads in little gangs, all with their arms outstretched and hands curled into little fists, saying "nipe tano! nipe tano!" (give me five!). It is just about the cutest thing I've ever seen - some of these kids are so young they've practically learned how to walk and get fist bumps at the same time. Even in town, kids (and adults for that matter) find it really exciting/hilarious when they see me and/or say hi (or, just as often, say "give me money!"), which I've always found amusing or endearing. But there's something about the laughter and smiles of these "nipe tano" kids that's special - it's like they radiate absolutely pure joy ... and all you had to do was give them a fist bump!
(I didn't have my camera with me when we went running - this picture's from a walk we took this past weekend along the same route as the run.)
Nduta Refugee Camp
Although being the office grammar editor comes in a close second, my favorite unofficial work responsibility so far is hosting guests who visit the KRP. I was pleasantly surprised to learn last Wednesday that two Americans had arrived in Kibondo and would be staying with me for several weeks. I would have been happy to host them regardless, but was even more excited to learn that they were also in their early twenties and that we have enough in common to get along really well. They were excited to learn that they wouldn’t be sleeping in a tent, would be able to shower, and wouldn’t have to survive for three weeks on power bars and iodinated water.
Aside from the obvious perks of having other people around to hang out with and not being the only foreigner living on the TCRS end of town, it’s also been a lot of fun taking them around town and discovering while doing so that I have actually managed to remember the names of most of the people I’ve met in the last three weeks. Their arrival coincided neatly with my camp entry permit arriving, so the three of us headed out to Nduta camp for the first time last week. Since then we’ve gone back two more times and had fairly different experiences during each visit. Some thoughts, observations, and illustrations:
July 24
Our first visit to the camp was really more of a tour than anything else. Neema and Janie (from the HIV/AIDS office at TCRS) took us around to see the residential blocks, schools, former markets, churches, youth centres, storage units, transit centre, food distribution area, reception centre, and the IRC clinic. Due to repatriation, there are only about 14,000 refugees (mostly Burundian with some Congolese and a few other nationalities) left in the camp (that’s down from 39,000 in January ’08 … which is down from close to 160,000 in the Kibondo camps in ’02). Furthermore, due to the government’s decision to halt any activities that might provide incentives for refugees to stay in the camp (i.e., secondary education, income generating activities, markets, youth centres, refugee employment opportunities, etc.), the refugees that are still in the camp are for the most part concentrated in the residential blocks. Since we were being driven from site to site, it felt a little bit like driving through a huge ghost town. Every once in awhile we would stop near a populated area where we would immediately get mobbed by crowds of children wanting to pose for our cameras. But more often than not, we were just walking around one empty compound after another or driving by piles and piles of rubble where small houses used to stand (for security reasons the camp administration can’t leave empty houses standing). Perhaps because we spent so much of that visit inside the car, I still found myself feeling a slightly disassociated from the experience – not quite as disassociated as I would feel if I were back in
July 25
For all that we didn’t move around at all during our second visit to the camp and for all that we spent the morning a guarded area that wasn’t open to the general public, this time around it finally started to feel real. We’d gone that morning with a specific goal in mind: to speak with some of the refugees who worked as teachers in the camp’s schools. (Or rather, the visiting Americans had gone with that specific goal in mind. I was just tagging along …). Since only one of the three teachers they met spoke English, I ended up earning my keep for the day by moonlighting as a translator. (And lest you look askance at schoolteachers not speaking English, bear in mind that French is the official non-African language in both
July 30
We went out to the camp again this past Wednesday to observe a food distribution – again, another sobering experience. We were only there for a few hours … considerably less time than the people waiting to receive the week’s allotment of cornmeal, vegetable oil, and beans.
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