Village Life

The best way to describe my village life is through Dr. Seuss:



"I am afraid sometimes you'll play lonely games too. Games you can't win 'cause you'll play against you. All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone will be something you'll be quite a lot. And when your alone there's a very good chance you'll meet some things that scare you right out of your pants. There are some down the road between hither and yon that will scare you so much you won't want to go on. But on you will go."



There is no typical day yet for me in the village, but I will attempt to create one through a hybrid of days. Village days I spend mostly in my head- as my inability to communicate gives me ample time to think and process. I have received many emails about what an amazing life I am leading, how I am changing the world, etc.- which I appreciate, however, this entry's goal is to dispel these myths. The blog usually just hits the high points, but this entry will let you know exactly what I am doing most of my days. I should say that for the first three months the Peace Corps really expects nothing out of their volunteers, so it isn't that I am just not working. We are just supposed to hang out and try to survive, so here we go:



I wake up for the final time- after multiple night wakings at 6 am. I wake up then not because I have anything to do, but because it is starting to get light, the roosters are going crazy and I can hear the primary school kids doing their morning chores. So I roll over, and I think "What am I going to do to fill this long day?" (I know this sounds crazy to Americans who work 40+ hours a week and would love a day filled with nothing, but it is difficult to go on and on like this with no schedule.) So I get up. I put on a skirt. I access the damage the rats created during the night. I open the back door to let the wind from the valley blow into my home and it gives my villagers the signal that I am open for "Hodi-ing". Oh to describe what it means to be "Hodi-ed". My "Simplified Swahili" book claims that there is no English equivalent, but I will try. "Hodi" is what you say to announce your presence at some one's home- You say it in a particular voice that reminds me of one my Great Grandmother, Muzzie might use. Tanzanians don't really knock, the Hodi is sufficient. It is customary even to Hodi if you are following the owner of the house inside, you say it as you cross the threshold. The response is always- "karibu" - welcome. What comes with hodi-ing is salimia-ing, which is also a foreign concept to Americans. Salimia- means to greet, but it is really more than that.People will call you just to Salimia, they will come to your house just to salimia. They will ask: how is your morning? Did you wake up peacefully? How is your home? What is your news? All sorts of questions like this must be asked multiple times before you can go on with any sort of other business, and sometimes people just want to ask these questions and there is no business. To Americans, who love privacy, this is a little odd. "Why are you wasting my time?" we think. Since I live alone, they get worried that I am lonely, so I get hodied a lot, which basically just makes it hard to get other things done.



During the hodi hours, I usually try to listen to radio news. Until yesterday, I had listened to the news in German, Japanese, French and Kiswahili. Once with Bob Marley singing "Redemption Song" over the Japanese newscaster- there must have been a cross is station. Oh, shortwave radio, gotta love it. I would listen and pick out "Obama"- and cheer. At least he is doing something, even if I can't understand what it is. Finally, heard BBC Radio Africa in English- all about the market crisis and how America is no longer the world's "Super Power" and I turned it off. Mostly because here it is hard to listen and worry about rising gas prices, and who is a "Super Power" over who. Then I sit and stare for awhile. I am serious. Sure I contemplate some things- "Everyone I know is in bed right now- weird" But mostly, I just space out. Because- I can.



Then, because I am starving and refuse to light the charcoal jiko more than once a day, I go looking for food. This is very easy. I walk through the primary school- salimia some teachers, one of them is bound to invite me home with them to eat. Usually, the teacher is Juster. I know it is ridiculous for an American to be begging for food from a Tanzanian. But eating and sitting together is appreciated here. Juster says, "We are best friends, so we must share." I am going to practice making a cake next weekend on the charcoal fire because Roma and some other volunteers are coming to visit me. Then once I have perfected the process, I am going to have all the teachers over for some cake. After eating with Juster, we sit. I came across this quote in one of my PC books,

" ... People in Western civilization no longer have time for each other, they do not share the experience of time. This explains why Westerners are incapable of understanding the psychology of sitting. In villages all over the world, sitting is an important social activity. Sitting is not a 'waste of time' nor is it a manifestation of laziness. Sitting is having time together, time to cultivate social relations." - Andreas Fuglesang

Being in Tanzania has made me realize more about America and Americans than I thought it would. We feel the need to have noise, to be entertaining or entertained. It is not that we are more active than Tanzanians, because we most certainly are not. But they will visit a neighbor just to greet them and sit with them, maybe for an hour or more, maybe not even talking- just to keep them company. I found all of this silence and sitting really awkward at first. But now it is relaxing- to not be forced to think of something to say in your second language is relieving, to be alone with your thoughts, but still in some one's presence is reassuring. Juster and I sit a lot, sometimes in silence, sometimes exchanging cross cultural information. Sometimes when Juster is not teaching we go walking.



There are six subvillages in my village and so there are many people to meet and greet. I met one of my closest neighbors- who is actually not that close to me since I am on the school grounds. He is an old man, who the villagers believe is a wizard. He told me how my village got it's name from the Kibena word for "Knife". The story goes that the villagers were murdering each other, some were possessed by witches (On a side note: Supposedly there are a lot of "Witches" in my village- Cool, I guess) Anyways, the missionaries came and started calling the village the village of knives- the name stuck. Just yesterday, Juster had a stomach pain that she blamed on witches. This is a big things in this area. I am thinking of doing a side project, that has nothing to do with the PC, on tracking and recording some of these "Magenie/Witch" type stories and writing something about witchcraft and spirituality in this part of Tanzania. Not sure what type of format this writing will take- but I find the beliefs here to be fascinating.



After the primary school lets out, I get my favorite visitor- Katherine. She is my only child friend so far in the village. She is seven, but looks no older than five. Petite as a little ballerina, she reminds me of a dark little thumbalina in her tattered dress. She has small white baby teeth, a shaved head (Like all P. School students) and a voice so squeaky and high it sounds like it could break glass. Katherine comes to my house alone and greets me in a rural fashion. First, she curtsies and lowers he head. Then she raises her hands up and I kneel so she can touch her hands first to my head and then to my heart, while saying in her high little voice "Shikamoo!"- which literally means, "I will hold your feet." This greeting comes from colonial times but is now the respectful greeting for someone older or in a higher class than you are. I respond with "Marahaba"- I accept. I had a really hard time with this greeting when I first came to Tanzania. Not giving it to people who are older than me, but receiving it from people, because I knew it's origins and people give it to me who are much older than I am because I am white. I think it is sort of awkward even when children do it- because I have respect for them as well. My host siblings would give me that greeting every time they saw me. What it really comes down to is that in Tanzania, not everyone is equal. I have realized that this is something that is fundamentally instilled in all Americans- "Liberty and justice for all", or equality.

Anyways, I am convinced that Katherine is the bravest child in my village, as she is the only child who comes to the white woman's house alone and walks right in. The rest of the children who I see are frightened or embarrassed, but not Katherine. At first I didn't know what to do with her. I left the door open and worried her parents would be concerned with where she was and why she was hanging out with this strange adult- but than I realized that this is not America. People here trust, they don't check up on their kids, they don't worry about kidnappings, etc. So I shut the door, gave her a lolly pop, made us some hot chocolate and made my first child friend. I got down the box of crayons and some paper, thinking that I would have to coax her into drawing, but hardly. She drew and drew and sang and sang as she drew. This gave me an idea. Kids here are not encouraged to play or be creative or to express much. So, project one: I am going to create a girls group, almost more for myself than for the girls, because let's face it: I need some friends and something to do. Why girls? They have life a lot harder here than boys, and being a woman it will be easier. It will start out slowly and casually, with Katherine maybe one day a week coming to my house after school. Soon once other kids are more comfortable with me and see what a good time she is having more of her friends will come. My ideas so far are doing small activities together- writing and illustrating stories, working on homework together, teaching each other Kiswahili and English, doing yoga in my courtyard, baking, or gardening. I also have this pen pal idea that I need to work the kinks out of. I want to match these girls up with some girls in the states, then they can write to each other about their lives and issues that girls are facing worldwide. I would translate the letters, therefore practicing my Kiswahili. Might need help getting American girls interested, but I know the girls here would love to receive letters from America and practice their writing. It would be very small scale, but I would hope that through these activities we could start to talk openly about health, self esteem, spirituality, sexuality, what it means to be a woman in Africa, while playing and creating. The thing that I am most fearful about in starting this is my lack of language- I just keep telling myself it will come.

After Katherine leaves, I have a few hours until dark. I finally light the charcoal jiko- even though it takes me 4-6 tries and I have to get down on my knees and blow on it. I take one of the buckets of water that some primary school child has fetched for me and put it over the jiko to heat up a bath. As it heats, I start sorting rice and beans- pulling out the bad one, the rocks, the bugs. Than I cut tomatoes and onions to add to the nightly concoction. After the water is hot, I put dinner on the jiko and then haul the water to the courtyard to bathe. I bathe as well as one can in the village, and have started to bathe more often, as I have heard that cleanliness will keep the jiggers (Who lay eggs in your feet) away. Then as dinner continues to cook, I read or write or text other volunteers- "What are they doing?" or "When are we meeting in town?" I light the candles for light and the fire for warmth- I lock and close the doors and pull the jiko inside. I sit and think how fun it would be to eat this dinner with someone, to play cards, to enjoy the fire. I think about my parents, who I hope can visit, and picture how impressed they will be when they come and see that I can cook dinner over a fire. But I am alone, and when it comes down to it, all we really have is ourselves- so I see what I have to offer. I eat dinner out of the pot and then boil drinking water to put through my filter. I think of home- I try not to think of home- I think of this present moment- I think of what I need to do immediately next to stay comfortable, to stay healthy, to stay sane, to stay here. So I distract myself, I write, I read, I listen to my ipod.

Is it 8.30 yet? This is the time that I make myself stay in the living room until. It is. I brush my teeth, blow out all the candles except one in my room and go in. Inside the bedroom the moon in blazing through the windows, lighting up the valley below. I almost don't even need a candle the sky is lit up naturally. Nights in Africa are long. It gets dark around 7 pm and since we are on the equator, it doesn't get light again until after 6 am. Nights are also really loud, not loud in the American sense- when your village only has one car which is usually broken down it is hard to have "Traffic noise". But loud in a foreign sense: bugs chirping and chiming together, People talking, laughing, singing, drumming, animals moving about, rats and bats having a party in the ceiling boards, a bushbaby wailing in the dark, the house settles and the tin roof creaks. The worst nightmare for a light sleeper/insomniac. Can I sleep? Will I ever fall asleep? I only have to wonder once, because living in Tanzania is exhausting. But my sleep is fitful as my dreams are filled with garble I don't understand, black and white people mixing, scenes from Lake Oswego, from Eugene, from Kilosa, from Njombe. Where am I? Who am I? In my dreams I look down- my hands are black, but my arms are white-