Tanzanian TV Land

I started off my last post with a bit of good news, but unfortunately I must begin this one with some bad news. About twenty minutes after I put up my last post we headed to a roundtable discussion and final lunch before leaving Dodoma with the NY group. All the pastors of the various parishes were there to see off the visitors and to share their thoughts on the distributions at the roundtable. The pastor from Iringa Mvumi was in attendance, which was the parish I visited with the terribly sick 28-year-old man. The reverend unfortunately was the bearer of bad news, as he told us that the man had died that morning. It was in fact AIDS that killed him, and it was also this terrible disease that killed his wife two years ago. It is hard to imagine what will happen to the five children he and his wife left behind, and I can only hope that their grandfather and other family members are able to care for them. Eight percent of Tanzania’s population is infected with HIV, and many people are not even aware they have it. People either do not have access to testing services or they choose ignorance over enlightenment and forego testing altogether. Of those who are aware they are infected, however, I’m sure there are many who cannot afford the medication. Miriam told me a story soon after I arrived here which still angers me to think about. One of the Tanzanians she knows was telling her what they had been taught about AIDS in school. He explained they had been told that the disease was created in an American laboratory and was introduced to Africa in an attempt to eradicate the population. It is shocking to think people would teach children this, and I am sure that many of these now adults still consider this to be true. Miriam asked her friend whether they still believed this and only got a shrug of the shoulders as a response. It’s unbelievable!

These last few days have been blissfully boring and uneventful, as we were given a few days vacation after returning from Dar es Salaam. I was greatly looking forward to sleeping in to ungodly hours, but unfortunately this is an indulgence which has been taken from me. Three weeks straight of early mornings has ingrained a habit on me which 8am classes never could, and I find myself up everyday at 8am. The fact that I do not have solid glass windows doesn’t help matters either, and the squeals of the children at the primary school across the road eventually force me out of bed with the realization that there is no hope for more sleep. Aside from short trips to Liz’s door to borrow DVDs, I have rarely left my house – much less the compound – and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve watched an entire season of a show called Psych, and though I’m not sure whether it would hold my attention at home, it has definitely provided me with hours of entertainment! I’ve now moved on to Christy, which brings back memories of home. My mom used to like watching this show when it made its one-season appearance on TV years ago, and I can remember watching it with her on Saturday nights. Liz and I are a bit concerned about the day we make it through our sparse DVD collections. Hopefully by that point we will have internet access, which we all know can cause hours to pass in the blink of an eye. Tomorrow we go back to work, and we have a new staff member starting work with us this week – another New Zealander! Callum and his wife Laura arrived last week, and while Laura will be teaching at the CAMS school, Callum will be working with us. They are friends of Miriam’s from home, and from our first meeting they seem like great people. It will be nice to have new company both in and out of the office.

Our trip to Morogoro and Mikumi with the New York group was successful, and I think everyone enjoyed the trip to the National Park. We arrived in Morogoro on Wednesday night and checked into our hotel, which I was pleasantly surprised to find was very nice. I had my own room with a huge bed and a TV, and the best shower I’ve had since arriving in Tanzania. I was feeling a little under the weather again after our long ride from Dodoma, so I skipped dinner and settled in hoping to find some Olympic coverage, as I have not yet had the opportunity to watch even one event. My search yielded no results on the 10 or so channels the hotel provided, so I was resigned to watching terrible South African soap operas before I collapsed in exhaustion around 8:30pm. Whatever it was that I had last week – the headaches, soreness, and fatigue – had returned, and this time it settled in to stay for about 5 days. Any movement or activity was exhausting and simply standing made my throbbing headaches even worse. I put on a tough face for the Mikumi National Park visit the next morning, however, and it was another great trip. Though we still didn’t see any lions, we did have a wonderfully close encounter with a herd of elephants, which had been somewhat scarce on my previous trip. Everyone enjoyed themselves and we returned happy and exhausted to the hotel.

The next morning we packed up and made our way to Dar es Salaam. We stopped on the way to the airport at a carvers market which had tons of stalls set up where merchants were selling fabric, wooden carvings, jewelry, and art. As soon as we got off the bus the merchants were yelling at us, urging us to come into their stalls. When we entered the shops we were quickly surrounded by people showing us all the wares they had to offer, claiming they would give us a good price. I have found there are hardly any set prices in Tanzania, and everything is based on who you are and what else you buying. Tourists are charged much higher prices for the same merchandise as locals are. (This also stands true for buying produce at the market in Dodoma, which is why I think I’ll be sending Margaret – the woman who cleans my house – to do my shopping! I’ll get back to Margaret later on…) It is understood that you never take the first price you are offered, and bargaining is a fact of life here. This has never been something I’ve been very good at, but I think I managed to do a pretty good job this time. Even when merchants claimed they were giving me the ‘local’ price and not the ‘Mzungu’ price, they were still extremely high, and I would make lower offers. If they didn’t accept, you have to show no further interest and walk away, when they will usually call you back and accept your offer. I made the mistake of showing interest in a canvas painting, though I was not interested in paying what they were offering. For the next 30 minutes or so I had men coming up to me claiming their shop had more and better paintings, and they would even go so far as to bring them to me and lay them out before me on the ground. I politely refused and continued on with the group, but these paintings kept catching my eye. I went to another stall and found one I loved, and proceeded to bargain with the artist and other men for about the next 30 minutes. He started out trying to charge me 100,000 Tsh for it, and though it was large (about 3’x2’), there was no way I was going to pay that! I used the fact that I was an artist as leverage, and told them I could go home and paint it myself for a very low price. I eventually got them down to 35,000 Tsh, which I still thought was a little high, but I was stressed and exhausted, not to mention it was time to leave. I am quite happy with my purchase – though I haven’t yet figured out how I’m going to hang it on my concrete walls – but I found the entire market experience to be highly stressful and not at all enjoyable. I prefer the method of shopping in which everything has a price tag, and this bartering business will take some getting used to!

I found the task of seeing the group off at the airport to be a bit challenging, as I knew they were going home to the U.S. and I was staying here. It’s hard to imagine being here for another 7 months and 18 days (but hey…who’s counting?!) when these past 3 weeks have seemed like forever. There is a quote I have found to be true which says something along the lines of: “The difficulty of a task gives it meaning. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing.” If leaving home and coming to Africa wasn’t going to be challenging, I don’t think I’d be here. I came looking for something new, and I’ve definitely found it. I know it will get easier as I find my niche, and I’m hoping being back in the office and learning our official jobs will help create that feeling. After saying our goodbyes and leaving the group at the airport (along with Miriam, who was headed with 2 of the women off for a vacation on the island of Zanzibar for a few days) the rest of the staff and I made our way to a Catholic and Episcopalian hostel to stay the night. I spent the rest of my birthday (I turned 22 that day) trying to sleep off the headache which now seemed like a permanent fixture in my head. Later on I was able to use the hostel’s internet (which was very fast and cheap…a rare combination) to respond to many emails I’d been waiting to get to. Calls from my grandparents and parents later on that night were a welcome end to the day, and it was so nice to hear voices from home. The next day Liz, John, Mmoti, Noel, Pastor Noah, Musa (our driver), and I made the 8-hour trip back to Dodoma. We were much more comfortable with the loss of 17 people from the bus, so we were even able to stretch out a bit, which made the trip much more bearable.

We arrived home to the wonderful smells of Margaret’s cooking, and though it was close to 5pm, she and her adopted daughter Maria were still hard at work. It is expected here that “Wzungu” hire someone to do cooking, cleaning, and laundry, and Liz and my help has come in the form of Margaret, a wonderfully kind and hardworking woman. Though we had originally decided she would come on Wednesdays for Liz and Thursdays for me, after one week she discovered she had too much other work to do. She told us she could come on Saturdays and do both of our houses at once, bringing along Maria to help with the extra work. Since the CK staff works on Saturdays this arrangement worked out fine for us, and we arrived home with her in the midst of her work. She and her daughter must have spent about 9 hours cooking, cleaning, and doing our laundry, all for a very small price. We were told she gets paid 3500 Tsh per day, which is an astonishingly small amount equaling about $3.00. She even does our shopping for us, which is a blessing. Although the market was exciting and new on our first visit, I found my second one to be slightly intimidating, and I feel very out of place there. I think Liz and I will be sending Margaret for a while at least, definitely until we know enough Swahili to communicate without help. After she leaves I find myself with a stack of clean clothes and a fridge full of food. This week she made me both cookies AND a cake, and I think she’s in on the scam to make me gain weight here! I plan to get the recipe for the cake to share, as I know my mom in particular would love it. I think I will be quite spoiled by Margaret, and it will be hard to return to home and doing these things all myself!

I’m going to try to stretch out and enjoy this final day of our vacation as much as I can, though I guess I may try to make one outing to the Internet Café to post this on my blog. I’ve received numerous emails and comments from people saying how much they are enjoying reading it, and that is wonderful to hear. It’s difficult to put what I see and experience here into words, and though I try, I know it doesn’t come close to describing what it’s truly like. I think telling the story is all I can do, and having someone there to read it makes it all worthwhile. Thank you for your continued interest in my journey, and I’ll try to keep my writings worth coming back for.

NOTE:
I thought I’d provide my contact info for Dodoma in case anyone needs it:

Cell phone: (255) 787 599 511
I’m not sure what it will cost you, but I can receive both texts and calls from the U.S.

Address: Sarah Dailey
Canon Andrea Mwaka School
P.O. Box 228
Dodoma, Tanzania
East Africa