Thursday, April 29, 2010

the affair

Weather- The rain is here, seriously. It has not stopped in three days, there are floods everywhere and the city is a sodden mess.

Swahili Word of the Week: Nakupenda- I love you

Special Shout Out: Happy Birthday DAD! You are hands down the best dad in the world and I love you so…

The Affair

No, for all you expecting juicy details about a lover, alas the affair is with TZ not with a man.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a lovely birthday party last week where we chartered a 120 foot, 100 year old schooner. She was a true beauty, many G & T’s at sunset, delicious dinner and then dancing under the star all in the Indian Ocean. LOVELY. While on the boat I met a lovely soul, she and I philosophized about life in TZ. She had read a book called the four stages of culture shock. She thought moving to a foreign country (especially a developing one) was like a relationship. The first three months were the honeymoon period, everything is exotic, new and exciting. The second three months you are settling in, you become comfortable and enjoy it. The third stage you hate everything. The traffic, the noise, the fumes, how slow everything moves and that takes you to the fourth stage. This is where you are truly comfortable. You see the good, bad and the ugly but you take it all in and live your life happily. For those of you that don’t know I have decided to stay for a year. It seems only fair that I make it to stage 4 so I am going to give it a try, though seriously, the project I am working on needs a person on the ground, I am learning a lot and I am liking this shake up of my life a bit. I am so far following the plan and have moved nicely into stage 2, not looking forward to stage three.

I have become to analyze Tanzania in this affair I am having with her. The rain has come this week and it seems to have washed away all the masks and bandages Tanzania wears; she is now showing herself with all her wounds and vulnerabilities. The rain has been incessant and with it has come chaos. Tanzania is stuck between desperately trying to become a modern nation while having little of the infrastructure, governmental support and planning to get it there. I will use traffic as an example because it rules your life here. Tanzania (at least Dar) has a middle class that can afford to buy cars. The roads were built when Dar was a city of 1-2 million, we are now close to 6 million. Roads have not been improved, the public transportation is not really public, it is uncomfortable and not consistent. Finally the ministers don’t have to deal with the traffic. You see them block huge amounts of roads so that they can drive their black Mercedes through the traffic while the rest of us pay dearly for the roads being cleared. Traffic is AWFUL but the rain has taken it to a whole new level. Dar roads functions barely in the sun, with the rain and the floods it stops, literally. Yesterday it took me 3 hours to go 25km. Huge surges of people marched along the roads with water up to their knees, there is no drainage, the dirt roads now have 3-5 foot puddles, taxi’s, dala dalas and pedestrians try desperately to get around. The lack of traffic laws that are always in place (quote from my taxi driver “I don’t worry about traffic lights, no one is going to stop me anyway) seem to become anarchy in the rain. Gridlocks like I have never seen were in every junction. I have to say that I was a little smug when I biked to my local Indian store, talked on the phone for an hour, shopped, ate some dhal and then returned and the same cars were in the intersection. Go Bikes. But it is sad that Tanzania is stuck and I hate to say it but I do not see a solution happening anytime soon. It has made me appreciate urban planning. That being said, they say true love is loving something for its faults, wounds and vulnerabilities. Even after my long traffic days, a quick bike around my neighborhood let me witness my community building stepping stones through newly formed lakes. My local chip seller took my hand so I could balance on them as I marched across. This made me smile and fall in love all over again.

Job is going very well. Started on some new activities, working with many nurse leaders on curriculum development, working on a national standardized HIV course for all tutors and looking into placing skills labs in the nursing schools (right now nurse students practice their first skills on their patients, YOUCH!)

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Life, Friends and Cheese

Swahili Word of the Week: Safari Njema- safe travels

Weather: Cooler and the rains have arrived. Torrential downpours that last 20-30 minutes, flooding streets, and making for the walk home in flip flops a laundry nightmare. All my clothes have mud specks flipped up the back.

Special Shout Out: Mum and Ronnie. Thanks for the mail. Such a treat to get good old snail mail. I loved it!


Life, Friends and Cheese

Coming up to my 3-month anniversary in Dar and Tanzanian (April 23rd) I have had a little flashback to my early days and also a flash forward to life that is. On first arrival I was taken in by TZ’s kindness, change of pace and exoticness. Now three months down the line I have become more blasé and lost a bit of perspective of how life is different here. I have got into a somewhat routine. I have made friends, I can fill my time quite easily. I understand my job, I feel that I am doing a good job and work well with all my colleagues.
This week we had a mobile library training for our librarian managers and librarian assistants. My perspective on time, as I mentioned before, has been taking a beating. Things move so slowly here! A training that should be one day is 5 (though I got it shortened to two). I am keeping my fingers crossed that librarians will be up and running when I do site visits in 1 month (both are around a 16 hour bus ride away, lord help me!)

In essence, I have become very comfortable here and ultimately happy. I have become used to power outages, that generally 9 out of the 10 channels on TV are in Swahili, that crossing the road is a Russian roulette every time, that I am constantly damp with sweat, that buying produce is either from the guy on the bicycle with baskets on the back piled high with veggies and fruits OR men on the sidewalk with small piles of tomatoes, chilis, peppers, eggplant or lychees. I am used to no cheese.

Nothing like a little trip to change some perspectives. Last weekend I went up to Nairobi and then Nanyuki for a visit with my African Family. For those that haven’t heard the stories of how my parents met the de Boers and the Campbell/Duckworth clans, ask me sometime. It is a bookworthy story. I am blessed to have them out here and they showed me a weekend to remember. It was so nice to be among people who knew me well, to be able to relax, let my hair down and be. In previous visits to Nairobi I had seen at as an African city, with its busyness, street stalls and traffic. After living in Dar it was suddenly a Mecca. They had coffee shops! With real coffee! Nakumatt grocery that sold everything under the sun! Thump bought me blender, my cooking life in Dar will forever be changed. And Fi took me shopping for all sorts of excitement including a fitted sheet so I won’t wake up twisted in a flat sheet with my face pasted to my polyester mattress. It was a haven of excitement. I was lucky to be able to go birding with expert, hike up parts of Mt Kenya with gorgeous views, clean air and great conversations (and see a cool chameleon), play tennis and have some lovely conversations and laughs with friends. Coming back to Dar from Nairobi took another adjustment. But coming back was nice, when I walked in the door it was good to be “home”. Not only that, I imported a shocking amount of cheese from Nairobi, this paired with the box of wine that I constantly have chilled in my fridge gave me great excitement this week after coming home for work. Can you overdose on cheese? I don’t know, but if you don’t hear from me in awhile you’ll know why!