Tanzania – Wiki Kumi na Tano

Mama Paskwalina filling a big yogurt order at the kitchen.

I spent the morning of Monday the 12th working on my laptop in the apartment – prepping my blog, finishing my editing of Jodie’s report (all 49 pages!), and organizing some information gleaned from the mamas pertaining to the Tukwamuane balance sheet. I went over to Kivulini briefly to speak with Maimuna, and was introduced to an American woman and a Canadian man who are in Mwanza representing a North American foundation. They expressed interest in finding an appropriate group or project to support financially, so I took the opportunity to tell them about the work that the Tukwamuane women are doing. The Kivulini staff offered to bring them to see the kitchen, and they promised to keep in touch with me. In the afternoon, Alison and I ventured to town to run errands – we had a very successful internet session, went to the bank and the post office, and bumped into some volunteers from the baby home for lunch. We hurried back to Mlango Mmoja before travelling up to Mabatini to teach English. We got suckered into staying for rice and beans with the mamas (again!)… we need to start coming up with more creative excuses if we want to avoid having to eat huge portions of starchy food every afternoon! After eating, we came back to Mlango Mmoja with Mamas Cesilia and Asha to start lesson one of Email 101. They were very fast learners, although we had to start from the very beginning (i.e. this is a mouse, this is how you use the mouse). I came home to two exciting postal packages (thank you to everyone who has been sending mail… it’s the best pick-me-up when it arrives!), and Alison and I were very happy to spend our evening indulging in watching the new Sex and the City DVDs sent from Canada.

On Tuesday morning (the 13th), Alison and I did work while waiting for a meeting with Maimuna to discuss several issues. The wait ended up being a lot longer than we expected, so we kept productivity at a high, doing laundry and getting organized for our December travels (Alison – around Tanzania, me – home!). Finally, Maimuna was available and we had a very productive meeting, receiving advice on a number of issues – Mercy’s disappearance (we’re getting Kivulini Legal Aid to try and track her down), allocating donations to the Tuelimishane Youth Group, getting in touch with our landlord to negotiate next year’s lease, requesting mediation services between Tukwamuane and the street leadership, training resources in Mwanza, contacts with Heifer International (to get information about the dairy industry in Mwanza for the Danone consultant), improving communication between WHE interns and Kivulini staff, etc. etc. We later met with Mama Yusta of Legal Aid to follow up on some issues, before heading into town for the afternoon. We arrived at the Regional Commissioner’s office and waited for a while before meeting with Mr. Kiamba, Mwanza’s Principal Planning Officer. We had intended to speak with him about registering Tukwamuane’s business name, but it turns out that he’s the man responsible for registering NGOs. Lucky for us, that’s another procedure that we need to start working on, so we talked it through and will hopefully set that process into motion over the next few weeks. After our meeting, we grabbed a quick lunch and spent a short while online before heading to Swahili class. Later, we swam laps at the pool and returned to Claire’s before meeting Major (& his family), Ross, Papae and some of the Indian boys at the Mwanza Yacht Club for a curry cookout next to the lake.

My favourite sight in Mwanza - "paper birds" (egrets) flying against the hillside homes.

I spent Wednesday morning (the 14th) preparing an English lesson and compiling a list of WHE email addresses for the mamas, so that they are able to communicate with Canada if they wish to. We finally had success in reformatting the ‘new’ educational brochure (as per the faculty’s recommendations), but were out of luck when we attempted to meet with both Maimuna and Mama Yusta. We set off into town to use the internet, and so that Alison could spend some time at the travel agency. I came home alone for a quick bite to eat before running photocopies of the English lessons and the brochures. Alison and I met up again to travel to Nyakato to meet with Dr. Sokombi of Heifer International, in hopes that he might be able to provide us with information about the structure of the Mwanza dairy industry, which we could later pass on to Ivan. We were dropped off at Heifer, and I called Dr. Sokombi to let him know we had arrived. Guiltily, he told me that he was still on the road and asked if we could wait for 1 ½ hours for him to arrive. We decided it would be best to reschedule the meeting and grabbed a dala-dala back to Mabatini. We taught an English lesson and spent a long time chatting with the mamas (with some translation through Asha’s cousin). Fortunately, we managed to sneak away before the inevitable rice and bean afternoon meal. We waited at home until Cesilia and Asha showed up, and went to the internet with again to practice their new emailing skills. Afterwards, Alison and I ran to the tailor to pick up my Charity Ball dress, had dinner with Ruben (with mid-meal visits from Claire, Basi from Tuelimishane, and Jondwa, Ruben’s tailor friend), watched a movie and went to bed early.

On Thursday morning (the 15th), we met with Maimuna and Omari from Kivulini to follow up on a number of issues, and I attempted to get in touch with Dr. Changalucha for our scheduled follow-up meeting, to no avail. We waited around for the landlord to show up, and were able to confirm that the apartment will be available for rent next year (which is great news – first of all, because it’s a great location for interns to work out of, and second of all – Alison and I were not looking forward to apartment hunting during our last weeks here!). We headed into town so that Alison could do some more banking/travel agency errands, and so that I could spend time online researching for a potential paper to submit for publishing upon my return home. I finally decided to count my losses and purchased a new USB key at the internet café (mine mysteriously went missing last Friday)… it’s a very important tool to have when you’re doing work on a new computer every day! I met with Alison for a quick bite to eat before walking with her to Precision Air to have some of her flights changed, and on to the bank where we had no success in withdrawing funds. We hurried to our Swahili lessons, picked up the “wazungu” yogurt order from home, and drove to Tunza for our yoga class. We had dinner with some of the International School teachers, and heard about an opportunity for us to apply for a grant for the project from the German embassy in Dar es Salaam… lots of possibilities for us to pursue in our last month here!

Grace, enjoying a snack of yogurt at Forever Angels.

I woke up on Friday morning (the 16th) and prepared the day’s English test before we set off to Mabatini. We were picked up on the way by a German man who is managing the road construction there… we see him every time we go to the kitchen and he never fails to salute us and wish us good luck with our work. Once we got to Mabatini, we bought several new plastic containers for the yogurt to accommodate our big orders. We gave the mamas the English test, enjoyed chai and chapati for breakfast, and set off to town with 20L of yogurt – 14L for Charity Ball, to be served alongside the curry (our ‘donation’ to the cause), and 6L for the orphanage. We use the same taxi driver to take us to Bwiru every week, and when we got in the car, he presented me with my missing USB key – I suppose it had fallen out of my bag the week before… extremely kind of him to save it for me! We dropped off the Charity Ball order and went to City Council for our 11am meeting with Joseph Mlinzi. While we waited, he sent me a text message requesting that we reschedule for 3pm as he was out of office. Alison and I had had quite enough of waiting and rescheduling, so we talked our way into the Mayor’s office to speak with him about his promise to assist the mamas in obtaining a new plot of land. He immediately got us in touch with the City Planning Officer, Mr. Tukay, who booked a follow-up meeting with us for next Monday afternoon… we will travel with him to Mabatini so he can see the facility that the mamas are currently working out of, and then take us to some new potential plots. From City Council, we went to Forever Angels. The baby home was very crowded as they are conducting interviews for new staff – with new children arriving all the time and some in the hospital in poor health, they are desperate for extra hands. Though I have been mostly been posting pictures of chubby toddlers, it’s important for me to remind you that this baby home also cares for some very sick babies. One tiny little boy, Adamo, was brought to FA last week because his 14-year-old mother is now in the last throes of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. He’s extremely malnourished and needs to get growing over the next few weeks to maintain his health. After cuddling the little ones through a huge thunderstorm, we came home for a quiet night in – dinner with Ruben and Tobias (stuffed peppers… we are determined to continue our culinary creativity!) and a movie.

A raging thunderstorm woke me up early on Saturday morning (the 17th)… the rainy season has definitely arrived, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Storms arrive and move on quite quickly, and it seems to rain most frequently at night or in the early morning. No flooding yet (knock wood!), and our mobility around town (on foot!) hasn’t been hindered too much so far. We spent a slow morning primping (painting nails, ironing hair… yes, with a real iron) and then met Claire in town to run some casual errands and to have lunch together. She came back to our house and we got dressed together before setting off with Ruben to the Bank of Tanzania Institute for the Grand Charity Ball. We all took turns volunteering to sell raffle tickets during the evening, enjoyed watching the ‘high rollers’ participate in a live auction (for items such as a piece of unfinished Tanzanite, bars of gold and silver – donated by the mining companies, flights around Tanzania etc… a little out of range for those of us with no income!), and watched presentations of where the grants went from last year’s event. It was a really lovely evening – nice to see that all the volunteers and NGO workers can clean up a bit, and great to celebrate together for a good cause.

Alison, Ruben, Claire and I on the roof of our apartment, pre-ball.

Tini, Matt, me, Claire, Alison, Manuela, Ruben, Lawreen, Lauren, Lindsay, Jenny and Carlos.

Alison and I were picked up on Sunday morning (the 18th) by Mama Asha’s sister, who walked with us to Asha’s house in Mabatini. We met her family and sat in the living room with her as she showed us her photo albums and her ‘guest book’ (with messages written by several former WHE interns), with a kung-fu video playing in the background on the television (??). We enjoyed tea and breakfast with her, and chatted for a while before trying to duck out and return home. Much to our surprise, she and her sister pulled out some black kohl makeup and immediately started drawing Alison’s eyebrows on. They rubbed my eyebrows to see if I already had makeup on them, confirmed that I didn’t, and drew mine on as well. Another sister started painting our nails, while another braided my hair. We were a bit bewildered, unsure why we were suddenly participating in a spa day, but thanked them for their efforts and started our walk home with bushy black eyebrows. I spent a bit of time online (with black eyebrows still intact) before we grabbed a taxi to go to Tunza to spend time with the birthday boy, Ross. As we were driving along Airport Road, a young boy ran out in front of our vehicle and we struck him. It was really terrible… he flew through the air and hit the road, and I thought for sure that we’d be administering first aid to a very serious case. I scanned his limbs to see if there were any breaks, but he seemed to get away with only a tiny bump on his head. We took him in the taxi to the hospital to get him checked out, and then went on to Tunza. Alison and I were both very shaken up, but were very relieved that the boy was okay. We spent the evening playing cards with Ross (Po-ke-no), and having a celebratory group dinner with a wild thunderstorm outside.

At Asha's house with members of her family.

Alison being "beautified" at Asha's house.

I have been desperate to cement the unique details of Mwanza in my mind as I approach my departure. I see the town in snapshots: the night market at the Pasiansi taxi stand, with glowing candles lighting up pineapples, piles of oranges, and other produce; the female civil servants whose job is to sweep the same section of road every day, piling the dust and grime into their wheelbarrows; the kind faces of the elderly people who sit in doorways and are thrilled when you surprise them with a “shikamoo” (the respectful greeting for those older than you); the makeshift toys of children – a plastic bag on a string becomes a kite, drink cartons with water bottle lid wheels for trucks; the upbeat music accompanying men with pushcarts who sell cassette tapes; the reds and blues of the elegant Maasai who suddenly appear together on the city streets, walking with their staffs over their shoulders. Once again, I look to Karen Blixen to accurately put my thoughts into words:

“When I look back upon my last months in Africa, it seems to me that the lifeless things were aware of my departure a long time before I was so myself. The hills, the forests, the plains and rivers, the wind, all knew that we were to part. When I first began to make terms with fate … the attitude of the landscape towards me changed. Till then I had been part of it, and the drought had been to me like a fever, and the flowering of the plain like a new frock. Now the country disengaged itself from me, and stood back a little, in order that I should see it clearly and as a whole.

I have before seen other countries, in the same manner, give themselves to you when you are about to leave them, but I had forgotten what it meant. I only thought that I had never seen the country so lovely, as if the contemplation of it would in itself be enough to make you happy all your life. Light and shade shared the landscape between them; rainbows stood in the sky.”

A stormy-day rainbow across the bay from Tilapia Hotel.