sorry for that last post i think it was a little smug.
that said i have another observation- the national parks here- it's a little odd. they seem like islands of international interest and influence- some luxury hotels in the Serengeti go for upwards of $600 a night- The daily entrance fees for the parks are very high- and have just risen-I heard it was to reduce the tourist traffic and environmental impact that comes with it. I think it wasn't the Tanzanian government's idea to raise the fees. It's almost as though the parks are international property, not a part of Tanzania. They are little international islands; I'm not sure who is in charge but it seems like it's not altogether Tanzania.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
We've been having earthquakes lately here! Sometimes 2-3 a day since Sunday. a volcano 500 km away is becoming active, creating the quakes-
so,in any case, a few quick comments about cars, kids and cats:
cars, first; - a pedestrian here has all the negotiating power of a cow- if a car is backing up and you're in the way you'll get a nudge, just like a cow. the other day a car came careening too fast around a sleepy corner, spun up onto the sidewalk and hit a woman who jumped away just in time only to get a bump not a serious hit- the driver came running out of the car and inspected his bumper!, then went to check in on the lady. I asked him if he was drunk, and told him he was dangerous, with bad behavior. Oh don't talk like that mazungu he said.
Kids- Kids here are communal property, not the exclusive property of parents- the other day i was visiting my old home-stay family, and there was a very cute, happy baby i didn't recognize, amongst the other mix of kids, cousins and neighbors- who's this? ah, this is the son of my daughter who lives in Scotland. She came to visit and brought him; she's back in Scotland now, and he'll stay with us for a while. How long? Until he's ready for primary school!
At solomon's complex, there are all sorts of kids running around and it's hard to keep them all straight. There's a set of twins, for one, and a couple of others, who live in the complex with their grandparents. Their mother lives an eight minute walk through the banana grove away. I’m told the kids think it's fun to live with their grandparents, so they just stay there instead. I may not be getting the whole story, but I think it may be just as simple as that- kids bounce around here a lot more than at home. They seem happier for it; more free, and more in the company of all their cousins and friends.
The dogs and cats here are also very free. flea-infested, malnourished, and tattered. But free! it’s so rare to see a neurotic dog or cat. They are contently lounging with all those of their kind alongside the roads and so forth. Never yapping. never jumping or creating a public nuisance- unless of course you come across a pack of them at night, which is another story.
Some volunteers here I know here went on safari and decided to sleep outside their tents under the stars. Those wacky volunteers. They were sniffed by a hyena according to one, and only feet away from some buffalo wandering through. If true, they truly risked their lives! I have to say safari operators are lax on warning tourists to stay in their tents. The safari I went on last year I left my tent in the middle of the night to pee outside, 10 feet away. Back in the tent 20 minutes later I heard lions growling near our tent! They don’t attack tents because they look for a neck, but me out peeing would have made a nice target.
so,in any case, a few quick comments about cars, kids and cats:
cars, first; - a pedestrian here has all the negotiating power of a cow- if a car is backing up and you're in the way you'll get a nudge, just like a cow. the other day a car came careening too fast around a sleepy corner, spun up onto the sidewalk and hit a woman who jumped away just in time only to get a bump not a serious hit- the driver came running out of the car and inspected his bumper!, then went to check in on the lady. I asked him if he was drunk, and told him he was dangerous, with bad behavior. Oh don't talk like that mazungu he said.
Kids- Kids here are communal property, not the exclusive property of parents- the other day i was visiting my old home-stay family, and there was a very cute, happy baby i didn't recognize, amongst the other mix of kids, cousins and neighbors- who's this? ah, this is the son of my daughter who lives in Scotland. She came to visit and brought him; she's back in Scotland now, and he'll stay with us for a while. How long? Until he's ready for primary school!
At solomon's complex, there are all sorts of kids running around and it's hard to keep them all straight. There's a set of twins, for one, and a couple of others, who live in the complex with their grandparents. Their mother lives an eight minute walk through the banana grove away. I’m told the kids think it's fun to live with their grandparents, so they just stay there instead. I may not be getting the whole story, but I think it may be just as simple as that- kids bounce around here a lot more than at home. They seem happier for it; more free, and more in the company of all their cousins and friends.
The dogs and cats here are also very free. flea-infested, malnourished, and tattered. But free! it’s so rare to see a neurotic dog or cat. They are contently lounging with all those of their kind alongside the roads and so forth. Never yapping. never jumping or creating a public nuisance- unless of course you come across a pack of them at night, which is another story.
Some volunteers here I know here went on safari and decided to sleep outside their tents under the stars. Those wacky volunteers. They were sniffed by a hyena according to one, and only feet away from some buffalo wandering through. If true, they truly risked their lives! I have to say safari operators are lax on warning tourists to stay in their tents. The safari I went on last year I left my tent in the middle of the night to pee outside, 10 feet away. Back in the tent 20 minutes later I heard lions growling near our tent! They don’t attack tents because they look for a neck, but me out peeing would have made a nice target.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
finally some shots! above are the fields near our farm, mary digging, william our top consultant harvesting, below is a farmer group with their new compost pile. there's another of our trainer javasson making compost, there's elly with the theif, solomon and i walking down a road, mary with her son,elly's mom with her grandson and neighbor kids, a few of us in a banana beer shack, several of the beautiful hills i always rave about, a couple of waterfall shots for good measure,cute kids- one sneaked in of kilimanjaro though i wasn't actually there- i can't see the photos as i list them, so i think you can figure which is which. there are a few posts interspersed as well!
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for some reason the internet has smiled upon my picture uploading today, so i'm putting on as many as i can. I have been staying at solomon's place while he's in zanzibar and i think about how to deal with my fleas at home. i am hoping to employ the idea of crop rotation. by removing their biggest feeding source, myself, they will die off naturally without my needing to spray anymore chemicals. i do love being at solomon's place. it's a complex of families renting rooms around the main house where the family who are the landlords live. all within a gate, which is the only way even modestly living locals feel safe from thieves. within our gates out back, though we are only a 40 minute walk up the hills from town center we have three cows and several chickens and roosters. most of those renting the rooms share the one outhouse and one bathing stall. you duck the cow to enter the outhouse. the people are some of the nicest i've met here - so warm and enveloping= taking me in as their family/neighbor- all the kids politely call out shikamoo mzungu to me everytime they see me. several of them like to come in and play in my place while i cook on the kerosene stove- they like it even better if solomon is there-= when they get too tiresome i say now it's study time, hand them a swahili english book and they stop right away and settle on the couch to sound out words. i figure they get a lot of play time, but not actually a lot of study opportunity. kids here are like sponges for any sort of teaching effort. they adore it if i help them to read or scratch out arithmatic equations in the dust- anything
the parliament has just passed a new budget where they raised the tax on petrol. they called it a poor-friendly budget because the lowered the cost of kerosene. however by raising the price of petrol the price of everything that the poor depend upon has gone up overnight. my dala dala ride which was 3 hundred shillings is up to 4 hundred, and because the farmers transport their produce via dala dala the price of vegetables has also gone up. my friend working on his house suffers the price of cement going up. It's a very unpopular budget- i hear absolutely everyone grumbling about it. I hear in dar people are protesting more openly, refusing to pay the fares on dala dala and so forth, but here in arusha everyone complies. a bit polite. i wonder about the revolutionary history of tanzania because it seems everyone is too polite to object to anything, and also mostly extremely disinterested in politics, unlike the kenyans when i;ve gotten to nairobi.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
a little bit of a rant
The music here, Swahili hip hop/ pop / 'Bongo (slang for Dar es Salaam)Flava' is so feel-good! Everyone's listening to the same music all the time. It's not like there's 20 different radio stations. that could seem a bit sinister radio control, but we're all listening to the same songs on the dala dala and everywhere else all the time- all tapping our toes to this or that same catchy tune - It's Uniting! That said, the black panthers who've lived here in exile since the 60's and the community that has grown up around them are soon to launch a free radio station which ought to be very refreshing and educational.
Lately I've been feeling a little like a grumpy colonialist, here are some thoughts:
The garden plans and the Nursery plans have lives of their own. We want them to become companions.
When you are directing too much and not allowing people space to stretch and exercise their legs you can feel that you are the only one providing forward energy. The minute you let up, the ball stops rolling.
For example we went through the entire garden bed by bed determining what was in each bed, what had been before, and what was next to come. I left it in the hands of our shamba (farm) manager who i had compiled it together with, as i got busy with other activities. A week or two later i revisited to find no info had been communicated to the shamba worker, several beds had been planted with no relation to our plans, and what had been planted in nursery had no connection with what we'd put on paper. It's as though we did the garden planning just as an exercise, without any connection between planning and actual planting.
A car that stalls, a conversation that halts. That's what it's like. And the planning conversation is halting- i guess that's my red-flag that we're not on the same page. Like this morning we're going along writing down the expected harvest dates of each bed,'Innocent', a brilliant young recently graduated horticulturist, and I.
So I ask,
"what's the expected harvest date of the 1st bed?" he tells me.
"what's the expected harvest date of the 2nd bed?" he tells me.
"what's the expected harvest date of the 3rd bed?" he tells me.
"the 4th bed?" I ask- he looks at me blankly. "4th bed what?"
as though it's too much to expect he's thinking along with me; he's just answering questions.
I know this is a classic colonialist quandary and i'm in the role of the colonialist getting frustrated with those 'silly locals' -there's a flaw in our dynamic not in him, but i'll say it's a steep learning curve for us both sometimes, and meanwhile it's exhausting!
Or Mary, our great farm worker takes her son, 'Good Luck' to the doctor this morning, leaving us volunteers and trainers a bit stalled on the shamba as we can't find the machete we need to chop up materials to prepare the compost pile. Mary comes back a few hours later just as I'm leaving and says oh, no problem, I'll bring it!. Where is it? I ask, wanting to avoid the situation in the future. I'll bring it! From where? Turns out it's at her house as she was using it and forgot to return it to the shamba, 'cool?' she says- "no, not cool!" i reply and march off feeling like an uptight mzungu, to the dala dala. "see you tomorrow!" she calls out cheerfully.
On the dala dala I cram in with the throngs of women and others returning from market- On Wednesdays is a huge women's market in Tengeru- the village of our shamba. It was some mzungu's idea to sponsor stalls and space for a women's market. Unintended consequences being that many smaller thriving markets up in the surrounding hills died as everyone began instead trecking to Tengeru. Finally enough people disboard the dala dala that i score a proper seat in the back. Aiming to talk to no one as i'm exhausted from my morning. No such luck. The woman next to me is a teacher from Dar who 'loves friends'. In spite of my attempts to be cold by the time i reach my drop-off she's sure i'll be welcoming her as my guest in America. This is a day i'm ready for Tanzania-Light so I treck to my pizza-cappucino place and order a nutella crepe for lunch. I have an interesting re-occurant flea infestation problem with my room. Latest opinion targets the cat who had kittens up on my tin roof as the culprit. I sprayed once inside, but if they are multiplying on the roof and dropping down it may be time for a different approach. Just so you know life is not always all cheerful conversations about flip-flops over here!
Lately I've been feeling a little like a grumpy colonialist, here are some thoughts:
The garden plans and the Nursery plans have lives of their own. We want them to become companions.
When you are directing too much and not allowing people space to stretch and exercise their legs you can feel that you are the only one providing forward energy. The minute you let up, the ball stops rolling.
For example we went through the entire garden bed by bed determining what was in each bed, what had been before, and what was next to come. I left it in the hands of our shamba (farm) manager who i had compiled it together with, as i got busy with other activities. A week or two later i revisited to find no info had been communicated to the shamba worker, several beds had been planted with no relation to our plans, and what had been planted in nursery had no connection with what we'd put on paper. It's as though we did the garden planning just as an exercise, without any connection between planning and actual planting.
A car that stalls, a conversation that halts. That's what it's like. And the planning conversation is halting- i guess that's my red-flag that we're not on the same page. Like this morning we're going along writing down the expected harvest dates of each bed,'Innocent', a brilliant young recently graduated horticulturist, and I.
So I ask,
"what's the expected harvest date of the 1st bed?" he tells me.
"what's the expected harvest date of the 2nd bed?" he tells me.
"what's the expected harvest date of the 3rd bed?" he tells me.
"the 4th bed?" I ask- he looks at me blankly. "4th bed what?"
as though it's too much to expect he's thinking along with me; he's just answering questions.
I know this is a classic colonialist quandary and i'm in the role of the colonialist getting frustrated with those 'silly locals' -there's a flaw in our dynamic not in him, but i'll say it's a steep learning curve for us both sometimes, and meanwhile it's exhausting!
Or Mary, our great farm worker takes her son, 'Good Luck' to the doctor this morning, leaving us volunteers and trainers a bit stalled on the shamba as we can't find the machete we need to chop up materials to prepare the compost pile. Mary comes back a few hours later just as I'm leaving and says oh, no problem, I'll bring it!. Where is it? I ask, wanting to avoid the situation in the future. I'll bring it! From where? Turns out it's at her house as she was using it and forgot to return it to the shamba, 'cool?' she says- "no, not cool!" i reply and march off feeling like an uptight mzungu, to the dala dala. "see you tomorrow!" she calls out cheerfully.
On the dala dala I cram in with the throngs of women and others returning from market- On Wednesdays is a huge women's market in Tengeru- the village of our shamba. It was some mzungu's idea to sponsor stalls and space for a women's market. Unintended consequences being that many smaller thriving markets up in the surrounding hills died as everyone began instead trecking to Tengeru. Finally enough people disboard the dala dala that i score a proper seat in the back. Aiming to talk to no one as i'm exhausted from my morning. No such luck. The woman next to me is a teacher from Dar who 'loves friends'. In spite of my attempts to be cold by the time i reach my drop-off she's sure i'll be welcoming her as my guest in America. This is a day i'm ready for Tanzania-Light so I treck to my pizza-cappucino place and order a nutella crepe for lunch. I have an interesting re-occurant flea infestation problem with my room. Latest opinion targets the cat who had kittens up on my tin roof as the culprit. I sprayed once inside, but if they are multiplying on the roof and dropping down it may be time for a different approach. Just so you know life is not always all cheerful conversations about flip-flops over here!
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