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.
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