"If you feel discouraged than there's a lack of color here.
Please don't worry lover,
It's really bursting at the seams,
Absorbing everything,
From spectrum's A to Z.
This is fact not fiction
For the first time in years."
- Death Cab For Cutie
February 20, 2009
My Angel Card today was "Risk". I did not feel like taking any though. I did not feel like getting out of bed. To be honest, I have felt a bit depressed lately. Not sure why, but I keep having to remind myself that I go through this in America too. My mom, who seems to be some sort of mind reader on how I am doing despite the distance, sent me "Yes!" magazine and the issue was all about happiness. So I decided to read it. A lot of it was about how living sustainably on the planet and helping others makes us happier human beings. When we connect to each other and the planet we feel good. There was an interesting section about water too. I am not sure why I am so passionate about water- maybe because I am a fire sign and need something to calm me down- but whatever the reason water issues really worry me. We rely on water for everything.
The number of places that you can drink water right out of the tap in Tanzania are zero, not even Dar es Salaam or Arusha has drinkable water without getting some horrible disease. The magazine said that 1.2 billion people on this planet do not have access to fresh water- crazy. Also almost 2 million children die each year due to their lack of access to clean water. In TZ, most diseases are water related from cholera, to dysentery, to typhoid, to schistosomias and more... I have had many questions from America about what I drink here. No, I don't just drink bottled water- I live in a village, remember? In my village we have ravines with streams that run through them. More advanced villages in TZ have a spicket or a well, but still this water is not drinkable. My village has a bad situation with only the ravines. So I decided to do some research for this blog entry. I asked kids and parents how many hours a day the kid spends fetching water. Fetching water is, shockingly, the primary school students job. Answer: about 2 hours a day. This is actually quite remarkable given that most of the kids fetch about 3 20 liter buckets a day and then to haul it up out of the ravines on their heads... Let's just say it would take me a lot longer. Imagine sending a 6-13 year old child into a ravine for 2 hours a day- in America this might be the time you spend reading to your child or they spend watching TV or playing with toys. It is no wonder the children struggle in school.
TZ is a country where people rely heavily on their crops for food and money, but their is no irrigation. The farmers must wait for the rain. (When I say farmer picture a woman. Most of the world's farmers are and in TZ this rings true.) So no wonder people are happy when it rains. We put our buckets along our roof lines and hope the crops are getting nice and wet. To get clean drinkable water there are a few options- boil it at a rolling boil for 15 minutes, filter it through a ceramic filter and two buckets (I can't really explain with out a picture), add bleach to it, or you can add these other expensive chemicals. My method is to boil and then filter with the ceramic candle. I don't like the idea of bleach or other chemicals in my body. I store my drinking water in a bucket. Many Tanzanians unfortunately don't go through all this trouble.
In the magazine they also talk about how a countries GDP has nothing to do with their level of happiness. On the graph, the U.S. is the country with the greatest discrepancy between how rich we are and how happy we say we are. Apparently, we are not very happy people. Of the countries surveyed, Indonesia is exactly our opposite. They ranked happiest with the least amount of money. TZ was not listed, so I decided to do my own informal survey. I started asking my villagers if they were happy. And you know- not one of them said no. It is not that they don't wish for more or know what is out there because they do to an extent. So what is their deal? I ask. You know what? All of their answers were small stuff: I am happy when I am with my neighbors, working outside, sitting down to a good meal, going to church, helping our community... What a great reminder for me.
I am supposed to go teach at the school, so I go but still feel a bit blue. Although I remind myself that I am always happier when I am actually doing something. I now do this thing at school where I just hang out in classrooms without a teacher. With 15 teachers and 12 classrooms you would think that there would always be a teacher present- you would be wrong. So I sneak into a class without a teacher with my finger over my lips so they all don't stand up and greet me in unison. Then I walk around the class just to check what you do in school without a teacher. We look at the one text book they are all huddled around, we draw pictures, we have a bit of fun. I have also started touching them- sounds creepy, but I realized when I reached out my hand initially they would flinch. They probably barely ever receive positive touch. My mom is a massage therapist and she talks about the innate need for humans to be touched. So I rub heads, pat backs and hold hands. Now they seem to like it.
Near the end of the day a storm comes and it starts to pour rain and the thunder and lightning begin. The kids are supposed to be mopping the classrooms, fetching water and digging. The teachers are all in their office. Our school's classrooms are arranged in a "U" shape, so when you stand in the dirt in the center you can see all the doors. The kids all stand under the eaves of the "U" waiting for the rain to stop so that they can go back to work. Water is cascading off the school's roof and forming huge mud puddles in the center of the "U". It decide it is time to use my "Risk Angel". The kids are bored, I am bored. So I kick off my shoes (kids rarely have shoes here) and run out from under the roof waterfall and into the mud and the rain. I scream and dance around a bit in the center in my sensible teacher's dress and then run to the other side. The students are all hysterical. On their faces is the look of "What the #@*$?" I can see them thinking this is not the way they know a teacher and an adult to act. I run back out in the mud with it splashing on my legs and I "Karibu" the kids to come out with me. Yep, that's right, I am making a fool of myself. Soon I have some kids out cracking up while I chase them and dance with them. Soon I have the whole school out there dancing in the rain. Me with 990 students in matching outfit and shaved heads. All I see are white little teeth and hear laughter over the pouring rain- water- in some places we still celebrate it. Tanzanian children are so beautiful, so special, so strong, it is impossible to describe here. So I won't. I will just keep it. Depression and unhappiness cannot exist in the presence of these children. Sharing this part of our lives has changed mine forever. Happiness to me, comes with working on building this bridge of cultural exchange and appreciation. I am soaking wet at home, but warm somehow.
"Yesterday a child came out to wander,
Caught a dragonfly in a jar,
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder,
And tearful at the falling of a star."
-Joni Mitchell
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2 comments:
Brie
I have started to send you a note several times over the past few months but always hesitated to intrude. I lived two years (1976-78) in Dar with my wife and three young children. I was the Cultural Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy, with responsibility for the American Library and the Fulbright program. My most productive work was with junior faculty, primarily in the Economics Dept at the University of Dar Es Salaam. I traveled, both alone and with my family quite a bit, but I did have the advantage of access to a Toyota Land Cruiser. I had spent seven years behind the Iron Curtain doing similar work before I came to Tanzania, but there was little in my experience that prepared me for East Africa. It was another planet, not always a very nice one, but sometimes magic. Nearly 15 years after we left Dar, after he graduated from college, my son decided to be a PCV while he was figuring out what he wanted from life. He spent three years (2 plus an extra) in Niger, working mostly on Guinea worm eradication in a project partially funded by the Carter Center. He met his future wife, who was also a PCV. When they came home, she got her nursing degree and he got his masters in international public health, both at Emory in Atlanta. She worked as a trauma nurse while he got his medical degree at Vanderbilt on a Navy scholarship. They took my granddaughter with them to Pretoria for a year between his third and fourth year in med school so that he could take advantage of an NIH research grant to do work on HIV. He did his internship at Bethesda Naval Hospital in DC and is now ending his second year in Jakarta doing infectious disease research for the Navy. They will be there for 3-4 years. Beats Hell out of West Africa, but they still have lasting strong memories of their life in Niger. After the Navy, they tentatively plan an NGO life overseas (BTW - she is smarter and tougher than he is). I am very proud of my children. I worried that their childhood as dip brats would scar them but each found a unique path to follow (with the inevitable false starts). My oldest daughter has three children and just quit her job as an associate in an international architecture firm to go back to school for her doctorate. She wants a Fulbright in Asia. My youngest daughter has a history degree and is married (again) and managing the award-winning social networking website that links the International Youth Foundation in Baltimore to partner organizations in 20 countries. They all are still invested in the world and its needs and concerns. They all swallowed hard and took chances when they doubted they would succeed. You will carry your village deep within you for the rest of your life. It made me sad and angry and glad to read about your survival of the robbery in Dar. I know how much it hurt to lose things that at least gave you a slim tether to your other world. I never ventured so far outside the circle of the city lights as you and my children have done. You are a very brave young woman and I hope that you are rewarded for your courage and your concern for others. Your account has engaged the friendly attention of a world-weary retired FSO geezer who is pulling for you. Chin up.
George Kinzer
gckinzer@comcast.net
wow what it has to do with post itself? This is strange.fiessemb
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