I guess, that is progress.

In a place where one cannot drink clean water, have access to sufficient medical care, have much of a chance for any sort of education, or reasonably expect to live past 50, at least, you can still find music that employs auto-tune.

Everything I ever needed to know about Kiswahili I learned from the Lion King.

So, as I have previously stated, Kiswahili is a ridiculous language. Unlike before, I am actually picking it up very quickly. Many of the first words and phrases I learned I have actually known for years. “Jambo” means hello (even though it is not all that commonly used compared to other greetings). “rafiki” means “friend” and “simba” means “lion.” Timone, Pumba, Nalla, and Scar, unfortunately, mean absolutely nothing. “Hakuna matata” translates to “we have no troubles,” or “there are no troubles.” People actually say this all the time. Children’s movies can have a useful application for life.

         As a general consensus, every Tanzanian tells me the learning of Kiswahili holds no difficulty. This is not true. Originally designed as a trade language, learning Kiswahili, certainly gives one less trouble than learning English, say. There are no articles, no strange verb tenses, and everything is spelled phonetically. Okay, that makes it sound easy. However, Kiswahili has 9 different noun classes (though only 5 are ever really used) each with a different prefix and the prefixes change for plural and singular (except when they don’t). For instance, the M-W class contains only humans with the exception of the words for animals (myama) and insects (wadudu). The Ki-Vi class contains only objects and things, except for blind, deaf, or lame people, which also belong in this class. The prefix of the noun matches the prefix of any adjective or adverb you use. For example, “wadudu wengi sana” means “very many bugs” but “ndizi nengi sana” means “very many bananas.” This seems straight forward, except, though many words fit neatly into the various noun classes, many words seem haphazardly thrown in. For example, we find the word “chupa” or bottle, in the “n” class, and not in the “ki-vi” class where we find almost all other words that begin with “ch.”

         Over the course of the past century or so, due to the influx of new cultural elements, as well as, the influence of globalization, etc., many new words constantly appear in Kiswahili. Such words as “bia, boksi, chayngi, simu, schule, komputa, shillingi,” and others have been introduced into the language only relatively recently. I use most of those words all the time. They translate to “beer, box, change, cell phone, school, computer, and shilling (the monetary unit here),” respectively. In Kiswahili, (and I suppose they do the same thing in most languages) all borrow words are merely phonetic spellings of their mispronunciation of words from other languages. However, this creates a problem in Kiswahili. I have no idea which noun class any of these words fit into. That means that I have no concept of how to say “a good beer” or “few computers.” I just have no idea how to conjugate the prefixes. Kiswahili, as a language, grows every day at a rapid pace to cope with all the new modern inventions. In the past, they maybe just used an old word and gave it another meaning, for example, “ndege” means both “bird” and “aircraft.” Now, that simply won’t cut it. This wouldn’t be a problem if the governments of Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, and some other countries held a conference to standardize the language (something not unprecedented). If they do not do this, in, say, one hundred years, the language will become and even more impossible morass of verbiage than English. They need a Kiswahili OED.

         Also, problematically, you simply cannot express certain concepts and ideas in Kiswahili. Sometimes this means that people will not understand a joke you make, for example “nitakupika” means “I will cook you.” We made the joke to a friend who helped us learn verbs and he said our grammar was correct, but you do not cook people so it does not make sense. I can imagine this complicates anthropological teaching. I also have no fucking clue how Catholicism spread here given the incredible difficult in explaining things like Transubstantiation or the Trinity. “What? You cannot eat a human let alone a god? What? It is a thing and a person? But things and people are in different noun classes? Does God have some sort of physical deformity?” Kiswahili has no word for fresh. One person explained to me “you see because this is a tropical region, everything is fresh, so we do not have word for it.” I beg to differ. I have seen the large, fly covered piles of dried rotten minnows ya’ll eat (dega). These are certainly not fresh, in fact, they are about as far from fresh something edible can be. Perhaps I made my statement too hastily, for you see, “fresh” or in Kiswahili “freshi” is a word. It means fresh as in the slang term fresh, for those of you how are not hip-hop inclined, fresh as in Fresh Prince of Bel Air. This means that youth all over the country use this word every day, and not only do not know the actual meaning, but also do not even understand the concept behind the word. For another example, if one recalls the “we slept together” incident, you must realize it would never happen in Kiswahili. There is not really a way to say this. It is almost as if they decided “one cannot express this idea because men don’t sleep together, silly goose.” As far as know, Kiswahili has no word for homosexual other than the (I assume) offensive slang term “kitifu*.”

         Conditional sentences constitute a major part of English day-to-day use. “If I can, if I am able, could I, may I, if it is possible, etc.” have no real equivalent in the language. As we know, Americans never like to commit to anything, and if one commits to something and does not show up, she or he has just made major faux pa (I am fairly certain I misspelled that). If a person says flat-out no to something, we consider this rude. Not so in Kiswahili. If somebody says they will do something they very well might not do it, or at least take several days or even months**. For us as foreigners, especially, people here constantly ask us to do things, many of which are quite difficult. Luckily, all the many lovely noncommittal things English has to offer can be (sort of, kind of) expressed with the phrase “nitajaribu” or “I will try.” However, for the most part language is really devoid of gray era, which make many things incredibly difficult. It either is or it isn’t. No. The world is filled with viscous-metaphysical-volcanic-ash-cloud–nom-de-plume-Tom-Waits-albums-moral-ambiguity-motherfucker-irony-carnivours-flower-timebomb-vaudvile-act-I-don’t-want-to-but-I-feel-obligated-to-mustard-gas-ham-sandwich-hold-the-mayo-inncorrect-grammar-on-purpose-see-Kurt-Vonnegut-for-refferance-not-just-yes-or-no. Ugh. You can imagine how difficult this makes teaching something like history or physics. “Light is a particle and a wave? Huh?”

         Sticking with the black and white simplicity thing, in Kiswahili using the command form does not seem rude to anyone (including when they speak in English). Thus, children on the street often tell me “give me money,” or once, “give me my money” and it does not register as something rude, even though we generally only associate this phrase with pimps. “Trick hit the track and trawl, I want my money.” I try not to take insult, even though the worst crackhead bums in America would never say that and expect a dime. There are sorts of ways to ask for things politely, but, for the most part, you only really use these with “wazee” or old wise people.

         Perplexingly, there is not problem with a word having multiple and completely unrelated meanings. For example, nyanya can mean either tomato or grandmother. Moto can mean both fire and hot, that one makes sense. However my favorite has to be kupiga or to beat. When learning a language one generally learns the most useful and common words first. Imagine my chagrin when one of the first verbs I learned was beating. Also, mwongo or liar, was an early one. Keep in mind I speak much better Spanish than Kiswahili and I only learned mienteroso as a joke talking about telenovelas. Beating can mean a variety of things in Kiswahili, you beat someone in a race, you beat an instrument, you beat your cell phone when you want to call someone, or you beat women and children.

         In a Kiswahili speaking world, devoid of grey area and hypothetical situations, I think back to the Lion King and its incredible improbability. Animals don’t speak. Timone and Pumba’s interspecies-homoerotic relationship would go either completely unnoticed or they would be hacked to death with machetes. If someone else is king, then you are not king. If somebody says differently they are a liar. If he or she is a liar, you should probably beat them, especially if it is a woman. A more likely scenario involves a bunch of rich, culturally insensitive Italian tourists going on safari and getting ripped off by the locals who proceed to get hammered on pombe in the shamba after a hard day of not work. Children’s movies don’t teach you everything. Hakuna Matata, what a wonderful phrase.

 

*I learned that one from my students.

** For example, I asked them to make me a bookshelf nearly three months ago. I would have just built my own, but they want standardized ones for the hostel’s look or something. So far, every other volunteer has gotten one (and to be fair they got theirs after 2 months). It does not take three months to make a fucking cabinet. They also miss measured it once, and another time the simply did not write down the measurements.

P.S. The word for “bell pepper” in Kiswahili is pelipeli hoho

A Few Tales of Idiosyncrasy and Shame

These are just a few stories that I find rather humorous from my stay here. Many of them stem from cultural misunderstanding at which I often find myself the center of. Some are not necessarily stories of either idiosyncrasy or shame, but certainly, the have entertained me and I hope they do the same for you.
There are two places to access the Internet in Hanga, the vocational school and St. Benedict. St. B has only two computers that have access, and they are usually snatched up on a first come first serve basis (usually by teachers, and the students never have the chance to use them, sort of defeating the purpose if you ask me). The vocational school has a wireless hub, so I go there so I don’t steal a computer from a student, and I am able to use mine. This story takes place the one time I have spent any time in the computer lab at St. B, when I was waiting to meet another teacher.
While waiting, I read Infinite Jest, and with such a dense bastard of a book, I did not make much headway because when one sits quietly reading a book in Tanzania, people to not culturally recognize the don’t-bother-me-I-am-reading-a-very-difficult-seminal-piece-of-literature sign blinking in front of one’s head. In one such case, a teacher using the Internet asked me for my help. I rose and went to solve his problem. He had a user name and password that did not mesh with the website he was trying to use. I typed it myself, thinking it was case sensitive, and it, again, did not work. I told him I did not know the answer and maybe that the password to the site had expired. Then I paused. “Wait, what is this site?” It was something like Anastasia .com. I scrolled down a little. “Russian mail order bride!?!?” I half shouted. “You never want to use a website like this.” “Why?” he asked somewhere between cunning and innocent, “what is wrong with this?” It was wrong on so many levels I did not know where to begin. There exists many possible scenarios, both in terms of this man’s opinion and the purpose of this website. For instance, he might be thinking, “What? What is wrong with wanting to buy the marriage of one of these scantily clad Slavic women?” It is entirely possible that he though it was something like a dating service where you procure a beautiful white women as a bride who will take you to somewhere in Europe where everyone is rich and nobody wants for anything. Somehow or another, he must have thought that this was some legitimate way to get a wife (it doesn’t matter who, because she was scantily clad, therefore easy, and white, therefore rich), either some machismo attitude that treats one as a commodity or he thought this was a normal way to get women in industrialized nations. Either one of these leaves me with a greasy, skeezball feeling. Put to the delicate task of explaining this, I could tell him that this website either:
A. Exploits women trying to get out of poverty, and is little better than sex slavery
B. Is some Internet scam
C. Is just a porn site being access by a teacher at a Catholic school during school hours on a school computer
D. Something of dubious repute he is doing other than writing his fucking lesson plans

I tried to explain the first and I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I opted for the second and gave the details of an Internet scam. Note to self, watch this guy like a fucking hawk when he is around female students.


On a completely normal and average afternoon I walked past the hostel with my friend Eva, one of the volunteers from Austria. One our favorite monks, Br. Dominic, one of the young ones and a visitor for Zambia, walked by and we began with the customary barrage of greetings. They are way big into secret handshake type handsakes here. We exchanged ours and when he and Eva did also, she exclaimed something to the effect of “Ow, not so hard.” He then responded with the joke “you have to be strong like a man!*” and then he proceeded to give me another one of our sorta secret handshakes. At that exact moment both Eva and I noticed that during our entire conversation he had been hiding a pink Barbie bag craftily obscured behind his back. A moment of recognition passed between us, and in that brief calm moment, I fumbled in my head for something witty to say, Eva reached into her bag to get her camera, and Dominic began to run toward the monastery at break-neck speed before we could do either. He reacted so quickly that he was half way there (like 20 meters or something) before our gut wrenching laughter could even start.

This is not actually my story, but it belongs to Helena, German volunteer I got closest to, and Br. Marcelino**. Br. Marcelino is like freakin’ Santa Clause. He is this really jolly fellow who is always smiling and just makes you happy to be around him. He often refers to his huge belly as his “obesity.” “I will be back. I run slow because of my obesity.” He is a chef and he got his degree in hotel management in Kenya, and he loves to cook. This makes me like him even more. He is starting a cooking school for local widows and children of widows. He’s awesome. So anyway, he and Helena were talking, and he made the comment “See the fat nun? She was my student.” Helena responded “which fat one?” “Ah, the very fat one. Many of them are fat, but she is the fattest.” We on the volunteer end of things found this incredibly amusing.

We ate dinner, as per usual, one night at the Seminary with our friend Riehner, as well as the other usuals. Riehner, one of our best friends here, is a candidate for the monastery and also just finished his student teaching and is completing his last couple semesters of college***. Another of our friends, William, is in a similar situation and he went back to University of Dar Es Salaam a week or two earlier than Riehner. Both of their English is exceptional and they some of the most qualified teachers I’ve seen here (myself included).
So, at dinner after the day William left, we asked Riehner what they in did in Songea the preceding night. He told us the story, “we ate some food and drank a couple beers, then we got a room and slept together, and in the morning I saw him to the bus station.” The stereotypical, milk coming out the nose sort of laughing ensued. He was rather mortified when we explained the normal English usage of the phrase, and immediately began to correct the misnomer****. We’ve been making fun of him for a couple weeks now, each time taking it the point where he almost gets angry or really irritated, and then not mentioning it again for a couple days.

Fr. Kastor is quite possibly the most ridiculous person I have met here thus far. He’s this larger than life character, and when he enters a room, you know it. One almost always finds him on one of his two cell phones*****. At the Seminary graduation, for instance, I sat next to Kastor and a Peace Corp. volunteer named Amanda. I nudged Amanda and subtly pushed a small stenographer’s pad toward her. It contained a message reading “I think it’s totally legit for us to pass notes because Kastor has been texting this entire time and he’s the primary school’s headmaster.” Andrew has described Kastor as a dude (note, not a dude-bro). He is about the savviest person I’ve met in Tanzania. Keep this in mind. One time, I was drinking a beer with Kastor and shooting the breeze as we waited for some of our friends to come. The topic of discussion shifted to music, and I think I was playing some Bob Marley on my laptop or something (which is just about the only music I have that anyone over here has ever heard of). As we talked about what other music we liked, and Kastor replied “me, I like the music of Celine Dion.” Intrepid readers, you will remember my premonition from the first blog that this countries Celine Dion fetish would be some sort of cruel theme, if you will, a sort of recurring dream that just doesn’t quite want to die, and reminds you of it when you least expect it.
Kiswahili is a funny language. Most cases, instead of creating a new word to deal with a new situation, they will use an old word. That is why, for instance, the word for bird and airplane are the same. Moto means both hot and fire. Kupiga means “beating,” but it can also mean “dial a phone.” You can imagine my initial shock when I saw signs that told you to beat your cell phone. Anyhow one such word is simama, meaning stop. I once asked a person in the village who works at a store to confirm the meaning for me (as she speaks a little English). “Get up?” She said. I immediately though I miss spoke and backpedaled hurriedly and apologetically. Oh, I forgot to mention this woman has no legs. “Hapana, hapana, pole sana******.” I later found out I was correct. It means both “stop” and “get up.” Fucking Kiswahili.
So, another funny Kiswahili story involves a pretty massive cultural fuck up. The word for “corn” is mahindi. The word for Indian is mhindi. Note, I am talking about “Indian” as in the sub-continent variety. For those of you who don’t know, the English they speak here is much more similar to U.K. English. Some in the U.K. still use the supremely offensive term “Red Indian” to refer to Native Americans, and certainly all used it at the time they colonized East Africa. In other words, somewhere along the line, either some pith-helmeted venture capitalist dick-bag, or some supremely ignorant African linguists fucked up. Or both.

*Unlike many people here, Dominic is not some machismo douchebag in the slightest. He was just being funny.

** And who I miss very much.

*** I think that’s how you spell his name. On a side note, people here have this weird penchant for giving their children Anglo-Saxon and Latin saint names. It’s kind of the opposite of the states where, many African Americans have African first names and like Johnson or something for the last name.

**** Keep in mind that homosexuality is just about the biggest taboo around here. In fact, I believe it is illegal.

***** It actually is cheaper to have two cell phones here because of the way the providers compete against each other and often, they times do not enable the other company to use their service towers. But still.

****** No, no, very sorry.

Home Sweet Hanga

So, you may be asking yourself, “self?,” “what is Anthony’s home in Hanga like?” Well, I have just the ticket to ease your long-suffering mind. I am, in fact, capable of telling you about these things. So sit back, pour yourself some chai bora, or kahawa, and plant your ass firmly in a comfy chair adjacent to your computer screen.

I am ostensibly from the mid-west. Unlike many places in the United States, when you are on the street, you generally wave or say hello to people, particularly if they are old. This sort of thing simply does not happen in other places in the U.S. particularly in big cities where if you greet someone they think you are panhandling, intending to mug them, or a Scientologist proselytizing or something. Even being used to greeting people you have absolutely no interest in talking to, I was not prepared for the East African greeting fetish. If you see someone you need to greet him or her. If you don’t, it’s, like, way impolite. Not only that, but you don’t just say a simple “hi.” There is an entire greeting lexicon of which you might need to say several. Each greeting has its own response and which greeting you use depends on the situation, for example:

Greeting
Response

Habari za asabuhi      Nzuri (usually), safi*, salaama, (misspelled and not often used)

Habari za mchana
Habari za gioni
Habari gani
Habari yako
Habari za sacizi
Habari za kazi
Habari za kwamka
Habari zema
Habari na wewe
Habari leo
Mambo Poa, Shwali, Bomba Safi

Mambo Vepi
Hujambo Sijambo

Jambo Jambo 

Shikamo Marahaba**

Mnzema Mnzema
(there is one involving Jesus that you say Christi, but I don’t remember)

(I dunno, but I think it also involves Buddy Christ)
(On a side note, I made this nice table in Microsoft word that didn't transfer to the blog. Bupkiss.)

I’m sure I misspelled some of those. And these are just the ones I remember, there are certainly more. The usage of these greetings varies based upon the time of day, the status of the person you are talking to, which party said something first, etc. The next step in the process involves asking the person where they came from and/or are going, like the parent of some pubescent. This particularly annoys me, as sometime I would like to remain anonymous. I understand this is a friendly, welcoming cultural element, but it does, in fact, annoy the living shit out of me half the time. It especially irritates me because these greetings are all essentially variations on the exact same thing, and one greeting and answer would completely suffice. But, there you have it. As a cultural ambassador I have to do my dead-level best to be polite, understanding, and not a raging asshole to random people on the street. It is a major part of day to day life here, so for the most part I have become accustom.
For those of you who are not aware, and perhaps, think that I am just “somewhere in Africa,” I am, much more specifically living in Hanga village in Tanzania, near the city of Songea. Here comes the nuts and bolts explanation part that isn’t particularly interesting. There will be no witty quips or obscure cultural or historical references for the next few paragraphs. Sorry. I’m not that clever. So, the place itself, physically, consists of a village of around 500-600 permanent residents, Hanga abbey, the monastery I live next to, and four boarding schools, Hanga Seminary (where I spend the most time), St. Benedict’s Secondary School (where I teach also), Hanga Vocational School, and St. Lauret’s English Medium Primary School.
The monastery in its operation reminds me a bit of a medieval monastery in respect to its observance of Benedictine discipline and obedience (I also think the part about the vow of poverty is a little fuzzy), and its complete self-sufficiency. They have well maintained gardens and chickens, goats, and pigs walk around everywhere eating trash. There are a number of the monks who I have come to really like, though a few are rather more sketch. At first I always ate at the refectory at the monastery, but now I usually eat at the Seminary. When we eat at the refectory, it is usually us white folk, a couple brothers and a few sisters who are guests. Some of the sisters are incredibly warm and welcoming and help us learn Kiswahil, etc. Others are decidedly more aloof. One interesting cultural idiosyncrasy, Tanzanians consider getting fat a good thing. Obesity displays one’s status and demonstrates the fact that they have a good diet and implied wealth. When we tell them that every third advertisement in the U.S. involves losing weight, they have a hard time believing this. “What does it mean to be fat in the U.S.?” They have a hard time believing us when we say people think you are unhealthy and lazy. So if you have the means, you eat alotta food with the intent of getting huge. It is usually the aforementioned aloof nuns that have the epic waistline, and this case I feel okay about holding certain American opinions. At one point, I used the term “dada-zilla***.” As you all know, the budding foodie in me takes my cuisine very seriously. With that in mind, I really hate not having the capacity to cook for myself, especially when I eat the same thing every day (see freshman year of college for reference). I don’t know if it is all of Africa or just East Africa, but people do not have any problem eating the same thing every day. In fact, they view it as a good, stabilizing thing. So, every day our diet usually can be broken down as such:

Breakfast: Always bread, some days eggs and a pottage stew, and rarely mandazi (kinda like less sweet cake doughnut) and this sort of gross French toast stuff.
(Keep in mind that I don’t currently have a working alarm clock and I usually get to breakfast late so all there is left is bread)
Lunch and dinner: Always- Rice and ugali****
Boga (all greens are referred to as such, but usually there is something more similar to bitter collards or kale)
Meat (usually pork, but sometimes beef or chicken)
Sometimes- Beans, peas, cabbage, cooked banana, salad, and tomatoes
Occasionally (usually on Fridays) Fish
Always- either papaya or bananas
Having listed that, the quality of food at the seminary is much better, and the variety is a bit better. The merits of the food aside, we simply enjoy the company better (that is to say we love the people at the seminary). That, and there are never nunzilla incidents. I was not here for this one, I’d like to point out. Andrew and Julia, a volunteer from Austria, ate at the refectory one day, and at one side of the table four nuns passed around a dish of fried bananas. They proceeded to take every single one, leaving only a half. Instead of passing it down, the particularly heifer-esque one took the last half before she had finished consuming her three. I would liked to point out, now that we lhave learned more Kiswahili, they seem to like us much more. The other huge qualm I have relates to the waste of food. Usually food, and a decent amount gets thrown away after meals. You would think, in a country with so many starving, they would cook less, or, like, keep it out for a while for people who are late (like the do at the seminary). It does, very much, bother me when people around here (and certainly not primarily the monastics) have this sort of American-like sense of entitlement. At least the feed their animals with the food.
One of my favorite places in Hanga has to be Hanga Beach. When I first arrived, some of the German volunteers teased my startlement and said “oh, yes, and there is a beach where they serve cocktails…” During the dry season, one could hardly hazard to call Hanga Beach a proper sort of beach let alone something that rests upon some sort of body of water, though I am assured the water level climbs steeply during the rainy season. Hanga Beach consists of a stilted platform that stretches over a seasonal lake that overlooks the mountains and forest in the distance. From a reasonably comfortable gap in space the place looks really quite idyllic. However, every time I walk onto the thing I have premonitions of a swift, untimely death. Clearly built with out any sort of safety regulator measures, Hanga Beach is the most ramshackle, hobbled together structure I have ever set foot on. The bridge out to the platform looks like something conceived of by the set designer for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and built by the extras to cut down on overhead costs. Nobody seems to share the incredible apprehension I feel every time I go there. Keep in mind that due to poor childhood nutrition, my beer gut, and the fact that I usually have a backpack with books on, I usually have at least 30 pounds on anyone else who goes there. They basically took randomly shaped rough-hewn logs and nailed them together. I step every time with trepidation, some boards move, some creak, most threaten to crack any moment, and none are pressure treated. Large visible gaps commonly appear where a more stable structure would have wood, and the guard rails sag, broken to the side of the walkway in several places. There is one spot where it noticeably drops lower when you step on it. Having said that, it is peaceful and quite and altogether wonderful otherwise.
So, I suppose I need to clear up a bit of a misnomer. I do not actually live in a monastery, but in the monastery guesthouse*****. The guesthouse is this damn silly project. With this sort of “if you build it they will come” strategy, the monastery, somehow, thought it would be a good idea to build a 100 room guesthouse. To put this in perspective, Hanga, a place with zippo in the way of tourism and like 600 inhabitants, built a substantially larger guesthouse than St. John’s, a monastery that has hundreds of people come out of the woodwork for homecoming and stuff******. Only the first floor in four of the eight or so units is complete. Instead of building one section and following though to completion, they build the first step of the whole thing. So, instead of making sure an entire section of the building was completely functional, the finished it in a piecemeal fashion, not dissimilar with the long uncompleted houses along the road that never came to fruition. One of the monks commented, “you can tell it was made in a hurry. The builders really have no sense of craftsmanship and taking pride in their work. Coming from the American standard, you-work-your-ass-off-to-the-nub in construction. Here you might have half a dozen people standing around talking while one person works. My old foreman would have absolutely reamed their asses. I honestly could do a better job (and in some of the tasks, have done better) myself on a lot of the stuff. It’s often simple things like cutting PVC pipe (one of the easiest things to saw) to the correct size, or having some sort of checklist for every room. We have been making endless jokes about the place. I’ll probably have to write a completely new blog entry to cover how silly the place is. Luckily, also, Br. Polycarp is doing an excellent job of whipping the place into shape The finished parts are very nice.. I have my own room with a bed, a desk, and the extravagant luxury of my own western-style toilet. I did not expect this, but I am certainly most glad. The toilets here (or choo) consist of a dry hole in the ground surrounded by a porcelain bowl of sorts that one squats over. It connects directly to sewage pipes and never quite stops smelling like a portapottie. I have yet to see toilet paper in one of these contraptions, but there usually is a faucet with a plastic jar. I have yet to work up the courage to ask if they pull some sort of bide-esque maneuver, or they simply go without. But I digress. So the really weird thing, the shower and toilet are in the same room with no sort of divider. So when I take a shower the entire bathroom floor floods and remains wet for hours. This means I need to take of my sandals lest I spread mud everywhere.
I promise the next blog entry will contain more entertaining stories (and I’ll start it sooner). One thankful thing, there are fewer goodbyes to say then hellos. Kwaheri means goodbye but I’ve hardly ever heard someone say it. Usually people say aya or badi, or both. This leads to fairly uncomplicated exchanges. Hello. How is the morning. Good. How is the day. Clean. How is the work. Very Clean. I am going to study Kiswahili at the seminary. Yes, later.

I'll have some pictures posted sometime in the next couple days.

* On a side note, safi can mean good or clean, so a literal translation for a greeting might be, “Matters of the Morning?” “Clean.” “Matters of yourself?” “Clean.” “Matters of the work?” “Very Clean.”
**So I really hate the use of this one, unlike the others which merely annoy me. Fr. Francis (who actually went to St. John’s for his masters) explained the origin of the greeting. Only children greet adults like this. So, students of American history know well the slave trade between West Africa and America and the Caribbean. What you might not know is that in East Africa, Arabic countries purchased the slaves. Fr. Francis indicated that these slaves received even worse treatment than their Western counterparts. Slaves would say shikamoo before kissing their masters’ feet. Few know the history of the greeting today, but it still leaves a pretty unsavory taste in my mouth.
*** Dada is Kiswahili for sister.
**** Ugali is sort of porridge/paste stuff. It’s more refined and much stiffer than corn meal porridge and has a consistency fairly similar to unfried polenta, but again much more fine.
***** So in reality, not too far from it.
*****Okey, so it’s not that dumb. When the government finally complete the highway though the (traditionally more poor) south, there will be a marked increase in tourism in the area. Also, a few conferences, usually religious or educator related, that have taken place there. There is a need for the guesthouse, but 30 rooms would have sufficed.

DO NOT FEED THE BABOONS

This very well may be the first solitary and rested exhalatory (I think that’s a word, but Microsoft word disagrees with me) moment I’ve had in the past 5 days. Maybe that’s not true, but it does not feel like my lungs have been filled with much but so many shakings of dust*.
I suppose I must start this way, because, in a way, it was the start of the whole thing: British Airways fucking rules. I have never made too much fuss about my birthday, but having it in an airport just plain sucks. Yet, lo and behold, British Airways to the rescue! On the first flight I watched “The Hangover” (hilarious), and “Vicky, Christina, Barcelona” (it was pretty good, I guess, but after it was over I found myself asking “so?” I suppose in his old age Woody Allen has lost his ability to self-edit. But then again, I am more self-indulgent myself). The radio stations had the new Eels album and a myriad of other things that you would never find on any American airline. They also had a huge movie library of current films and classics such as “the Sting” and “North by Northwest.” On the second flight I watched, “Flight of the Conchords,” and “Doctor Who.” Oh, and there was also unlimited gin and tonics and bottles of wine. I didn’t have to even play the birthday card in order to get free shit. I love my life. British Airways, where have you been all my life.

Okey. Just pause for a second, I’m listening to “I’d Rather Be Riding Bike.”

Okey, back.

We arrived in Dar Es Salaam and Br. Jerome, the guestmaster in Dar, picked us up. I thought Europeans were crazy drivers (see blog entries from Ireland for reference), I thought Pete Williams was a crazy driver, I though my sister was a scary driver. This was before I set foot in Africa. I could determine virtually no traffic laws (excepting, sometimes, the side of the road they drove on). No traffic lights. No distinction between road and sidewalk. Bicycles, racks stacked high with eggs and other produce, weaved between traffic jammed vehicles and running pedestrians. Dilapidated junkers and lemons speed along side brand new SUVs. Some buses, new and plush, filled with tourists making their way to exotic Zanzibar. Others were little more than converted cargo vans, filled by bodies pressing rush hours home. Many of the busses toted slogans referring to the owner’s respective deity or religion. God is Good. Allah is Able. Barack Obama. Whomever. Well, I suppose they need it.
The city, the air smells. But not in the bad way, more like in the real way. That is to say, the aromas of thousands of cook-fires and smoldering garbage hung thick over everything. Every pleasing and disgusting odor hyper extended the senses. Banana flowers and open septic pits. The closest place I can think of that I have been is Juarez, but even then, there are fewer paved areas in Dar. Many of the buildings consistted of concrete and corrugated steel sheets with a varying degree of structural integrity (though in the city center, most of the buildings are many storied concrete Soviet-Blocesque structures) Twenty somethings with cell phones and Man U jerseys walked past decaying hovels under a billboard with a brand new awning stretched across it advertising some sort of techy novelty. It is such a weird mix. I mean, like, seriously, I though men in suits only walked next to goats in Monty Python skits and shit.
At the time I spoke no Kiswahili, so it was particularly overwhelming**. You can buy anything on the street. Now, we are not talking American-style hot dog stand and guys selling counterfeit Coach bags and Rolexes from trench coats. Not even the dude in front of the Twins stadium yelling, “tickets, tickets,” in hope of scalping together enough cream to later that night free-base some cocaine. Literally, it’s not like they have, like, a shopping mall where pubescents congregate about and spend their allowance. Anything. Sugar cane stands, fried chicken, watches, knives, all sorts of clothing, cell phones, you name it. There are even young kids walking around selling cigarettes like your film noir saucily flirtatious young broad that has a bit part***. Though I do not understand an ever-loving word of Kiswahili as if it were the Queen’s, it all sounds suspiciously like “holla, holla, hollah.”
That night a couple of the brothers took us (and a couple really cool Germans that were staying at the guest house) to an outdoor pub where there was a live band, for a beer. The smell of meat roasted on a long grill and Sportsman cigarettes permeated everything. There was a live band. This was awesome. The music sounded quite similar to comparable pseudo-dub sorta stuff that you might here in the background of Cool Runnings, minus John Candy and a rolling apparatus hastily constructed with some pallets (actually, there was probably some kids playing with something comparable at that very moment). Also, I suppose, the music would not terribly out of place at a trustafarian-jammy-festival-function. Well, actually, there were a couple deviations. They seem to favor this high-pitched, shrill, almost tonal more than falsetto, whine that actually sounds really cool when sung in harmony. There was one thing that I found simply amazing after years of helping run or running concerts and events. People weren’t talking obnoxiously loudly over the music. Now I’ve been to just about every sort of venue, punk basements, tired college shows, bars, festivals, big venues chucky-jam full of hipsters, and I can tell you this: the only concerts I have ever been to where people generally consistently pay attention to the music include
A. Basement shows
B. Symphony, Orchestra, or Opera performances
C. A concert where the band is just-that-good-no-matter-where-the-venue-is
D. The Kilwa Road Pub in Dar Es Salaam (thus far the only bar on the list).
It was incredibly refreshing. People just watched the music and/or dance. And there was even beer involved. I was floored.
On a brief side note, the beer (mostly of local manufacture) are all pints, that is to say 500ml. However, unlike my previous experience with the most glorious imperial or other pint, the beer has 4.5-5.5 percent alcohol, as opposed, say, to 4.3% stout in Ireland. It also runs roughly 1300-1400 Tanzanian Shillings (tsh). 1300 tsh is roughly one U.S. dollar $ bill, y’all. In other words, I could already see my new found status as a responsible, respectable, authority figure and educator of some repute, rapidly whisked away to the wayside (read: gutter).
We didn’t stay very late, as Andrew (oh, in case you don’t know, he’s my college roommate, friend, compatriot, co-volunteer at Hanga, and the responsible one) and I needed to awaken at 4:45 in the woeful A.M. to get to the bus station. Our bus was scheduled to leave at 6:00 A.M. It was scheduled to arrive at 4:00 P.M. This is what I expected. Lest we forget, I’m in b-fing Africa. We are on African time (similar to what, once, my friend J-Dubz in Atlanta referred to as CP time). Br. Jerome navigated us through this absurdly crowded, not to mention pre-dawn, bus station. And then, we found our steed. The Super Feo express. For those of you of the Spanish speaking persuasion, you will find this both amusing and prophetically accurate. We spent two hours in the bus terminal. There was no semblance of direction. Each bus jockeyed for a good position, and crept toward spaces they could not hope to squeeze through. I felt as though one dude in a neon reflector vest would have gotten us out of there and hour and a half more rapidly. I did not mind too much. I mostly people watched. There were dozens of hawkers all trying to sell various good through the bus windows, or sometimes coming onto the bus itself. They held loaves of white bread and doughnut like things (which I later learned are called mandzi). They propped crates of hard-boiled eggs with a strange whitish powdery substance covering them on their head or hefted racks of sunglasses or watches with upraised arms. Also sorts of snacks available at the finger tips. That is, at least, for those who knew how to ask for them other than with a series of points and grunts that would inevitably lead to getting ripped-off. Roast corn on the cob, peanuts, sodas and bottled water. However, I did not want any of these things. I think Andrew had similar ideas. I did not eat a blessed thing on that bus ride, except for some peanuts. I knew this to be the better option. Better, than waiting in mortal terror that I would be hit with bout of ass-shaking tremors launching ICBM rockets out of multiple orifices on a bus where there was neither a toilet, nor a way for me to ask anyone where the hell I could defecate. Further, the thought of being left at some rest stop in rural Tanzania like some troglodytic creature in a tanning booth did not sit particularly well with me.
After about 2 and a half hours or so, we finally hit the outskirts of Dar. The relatively well-maintained city center could not compare to the shantytown on the periphery. This is where the real poverty happened. Every single building was ramshackle. The ditches teemed with thin plastic packing strips, cardboard, food waste, and other refuse with animals and barefoot children walking amidst it. There is no such thing as road-side garbage collection in Tanzania. If someone does take care of the rubbish, they burn it in a chlorofluorocarbon-ariffic swirling mess of blackish smoke and flickering ashes. Some of the buildings consisted of a patchwork of corrugate metal sheet scraps cut into irregular shapes. Other buildings had a sort of wattle and daub-like construction with dried mud clinging to a half woven, half jammed into place wicker and reed with red earth irregularly chinking the crevices. I saw little pavement to speak of. Sometimes buildings, complete or not, employed poured concrete or cinderblocks. Some corner store-ish buildings had hand painted Tigo or other cell-phone brand advertisements painted across an entire wall.
As we progressed, the view looked a bit less sequestered and desperate. Still, gas stations constituted the only new or well-kept structures. The further west we got from Dar, it seems people favored fired mud-brick construction. Many buildings still seemed half finished, and some long neglected with trees and things growing in the middle of never laid floors. I later found out that people would build as they raised capital instead of waiting until they could afford the whole thing. I guess this is the African equivalent to over-running your credit cards and accumulating many cars on cinder blocks. Grassfires proliferated all along the road either for the ever-present slash and burn agriculture or irresponsible hunting practices (you know furry animals running from a fire are grouped in one place and therefore easier to shoot with things). Andrew and I didn’t talk for most of the bus ride, I was a bit too busy getting used to all the mind fuck. That, and I needed to pee really badly.
About at the midpoint into the trip we began to drive past national park land. The roads became noticeably cleaner. I think that had something to do with the fact that the Tanzanian economy is mostly based on cash crops and tourism, and the anti-littering laws were actually enforced in places where that would be endangered. This shit was indeed quite crazy. All of a sudden, I was, like, holy shit, there’s a giraffe. Now a zebra. A bunch of gazelle or impala (I suppose it doesn’t really matter). My mouth fell so wide agape I felt as though a tsetse fly buzz in there at any moment. Finally to top it all of, an elephant stood no more than 5 meters from the roadside, and out from under my view obscured by the bus, an elephant calf ran out of the ditch literally feet away from the bus. We weren’t the only doe and dewy-eyed folks on the bus, locals, too, pointed and gawked. Suddenly, I began laughing uncontrollably. A dented road sign bearing the seal of the Tanzanian Ministry of Something-or-other in all majuscule letters crossed my vision:

DO NOT FEED THE BABOONS

The sheer fact that baboon feeding warranted enough consideration, and it was a pressing enough issue, that one of the few road signs I saw the entire journey addressed the matter nearly made me urinate on my sticky, cracked vinyl seat. Indeed, there were, in fact, many baboons along the road in various stages of red-bottomed poo-flinging. I wonder if they are a hazard comprable to deer in upper Midwest, or perhaps they more like bears at camp sites. Or, maybe they just want to visit unforgiving ruckus with prehensile tails upon an ill prepared pith helmet and khaki clad populace.
This was quite possibly the most uncomfortable bus ride I have ever been on (and I rode Greyhound through Alabama). The seat was seemingly broken and my head could never quite be supported no matter how I rested it. Our seats were also situated directly over the wheel well, so the twisty, bumpy, Tanzanian mountain roads jostled us about so violently that we could not even think of sleep, lest we be thrown several inches out of our seat (I am not exaggerating in the slightest). It took a couple weeks for the cricks in my neck to recover (also not an exaggeration).
We finally arrived in Songea around 9:00 P.M. where also long suffering Br. Theodore picked us up. When we informed him that we had not eaten, he informed us that we would get some food. This was most wonderful to hear. We got chicken and rice (wali na nyama ya kuku) and boga (a sort of generic term for all mixed greens, mboga being plural). I jokingly suggested that we should get a beer too, but Br. Immediately acted upon the comment and took us next door for a not so cold one (bia ya moto being warm). While sitting in the sorta-bar sorta hang out spot where the staff sat around watching T.V., we opened out beer and joined them in lounging. It was a music video marathon. A Celine Dion music video marathon. The workers were glued to the thing. Remember how I said they like high pitched singing here? Well, they most certainly do. Do you also remember the program/sketch “Alvin and the Chipmunks?” You know how when you speed up a playback (by, say, playing a record a the wrong speed) it makes the voice higher pitched? Some industrious Tanzanian sound engineer jimmied the speed on every single song making it both slightly faster and higher in pitch. About 5 or 6 videos played over the time we drank my beer. I came to a horrible wretched realization. Not only is Celine Dion evidently one of the few wildly popular non-hip hop English speaking acts, but, all of her songs employed a higher pitched voice and sped up-tempo. They didn’t just do a greatest hits thing, but they played songs that I had never heard of. I mean, the freakin’ Quebec-release-only-back-cataloge-shit. Slowly it dawned upon me, this would be some sort of sick, black comedy, recurring theme through-out my stay here. Fuck.

East Africa, here I come. Don’t drink the water, don’t fornicate with the locals, and above all, don’t feed the baboons.



*Note, I did not finish this entry until many days after I wrote the first paragraph.
** Now, I speak about as much as a retarded 4 and half year old with a speech impediment, and probably a hair-lip for good measure.
***Though the kids do not resemble the bit-part actor in any physical manner, respectively.

Post Script: Blogspot does not have the font I normally use, Futura. This sucks.

One Last Thing To Do Before I Leave...

Shawn

It broke my heart to leave the city. But it broke my back and broke my will.
But, my home I will remember, and people more important still.

If broken glass could rust,
These Bodies, These sums of moments

Buttsies and Whiskeys
Bridges and Basements
Jag-off and Jag-oves

So many days and bits
So many nights with nothing in particular to amount to
Unless we decided it did.
“Sleeveless and Side burned All Summer Long!”

“I’m Punk as Fuck”
So you were.

So it goes.

Go Light

So it begins. I'm moving to bum f-ing Africa. For the most part, the home town has died. At least, it won't be the same. I'm ready to go. So keep reading, true believers.
Stay together, Know the Flowers, Go Light.