Warning Contains Nudity

Rich Mzungu

Monday 3 June 2013
Mzungu

James met me unexpectedly last night after I had eaten supper at the parish house.  I asked if he wanted to join me in drinking a beer.  He said he did not drink but would join me.  We first went to his aunt`s house to look for his cousin Stella who could join us.  Stella apparently knew the best social spots for a lively evening but she was not at home.  Only her mother was home.  The mother asked what kind of beer I wanted.  Through James` limited English, I was able to say I wanted to try the beer with the higher alcohol content.  The mother pulled out two empty bottles from beside where she was sitting in the living room and handed me a Kilimanjaro (4.5%) bottle and a Serengeti (4.8%) bottle for me to read the labels.  She then asked for money to go buy beer and bring back to the house.  James and the mother thought I had wanted to drink a beer in the mother`s house.  I tried explaining I had wanted to go to a bar and socialize, possibly a place with English speaking females.  The three of us left walking only 100 meters to a place with loud African music videos playing on a small TV, many children wondering around as we entered and  8 to 10 guys sitting at the bar drinking beer.  The mother and I drunk two Serengeti beers each.  After James said to me directly the bill was 8000.  Tsh 2000 (US $1.25) for each beer for 500 mL (roughly 16 fluid ounces).

Being irritated as James and the mother had EXPECTED me to buy her beer.  The Tanzanian people assume as I am a Mzungu (white man or foreigner) that I have lots of money.  I politely said I do not have extra money to be buying; others must pay their own way.  

This was only the second time I had been asked directly for money since leaving Dar es Salaam.  The other time I was looking for the house of a family whom I had met the previous day near the Ifacara village center.  Sarafina had called 30 minutes prior and had invited me to their house to visit.  I knew I was close while riding my bicycle through the narrow streets apparently passing some of the same locations several times as I tried alternate routes to find their house.  A Muslim dressed man had been walking through the neighborhood and had seen me pass several times while I was looking for the specific house.  The third time I saw him, he put his hands in the air as if to say what are you looking for.  Smiling, he motioned for me to come to him.  He spoke no English as I asked him if he could talk to Sarafina (she also spoke no English) and ask directions to her house.  I handed him my phone as I dialed Sarafina`s number.  He briefly talked to Sarafina, hung up and looked at me quizzically.  I did not think he understood my meaning in asking for directions.  Using my arms, I pointed straight ahead then pointed left, then right then straight ahead again.  The Muslim man finally had a look of understanding on his face as he took the phone from me and redialed the number.  By this time, a friend of his had shown up on a bicycle.  When the conversation ended, The Muslim sat on the bike rack of his friend and motioned me to follow them, hopefully to Sarafina`s house.  After about 300 meters we stopped in front of the Sarafina Guesthouse.  With a big smile on my face, I said no, this was not the right place.  Once again in route only another 200 meters, we arrived at Sarafina`s house.  Before the two left, the Muslim approached asking for money to buy food or a soda.  This I did not mind giving for.  I gave him all the coins in my pocket consisting of 3 coins of Tsh 200 each.  A total of Tsh 600 (US 0.38).  They rode away smiling.

I was sure to make a mental note how to find their house again after later leaving to go home.

Asking for money happened many times a day the two days I spent in Dar es Salaam by mainly the street children (the homeless) among others.  When I first met James in Ifacara, I had explained to him almost immediately I had no extra money to be giving away.  He said he understood.  I had been warned by Father Kayera and nuns from the convent in Ifacara and Mbingu that James has certain mental incapacities.  Even before the warnings by those who knew him, the first few days with James, I could tell he was not completely right in the head as he had problems focusing with a racing mind.

Documentary Production

Tuesday 28 May 2013
Production of a Documentary

I am back in Ifacara now.  The return trip took only 2 hours 20 minutes for the 36 miles, 25 minutes less than the trip to Mbingu last Wednesday.  This trip included six nuns and myself, no mechanic.  I was worried with the rough road there would be a flat tire or some mechanical problem from the rough dirt road between the villages.  Within 30 minutes of the trip, during conversation with sister Senorina, I mentioned my concerns.  Our driver was an elderly nun of about 60 who I had not met.  She has been driving for the convent for over 20 years and had been trained to perform light duty mechanical work including changing tires if needed in route.

During the trip, they stopped to chat with a couple women on the side of the road. After pulling away sister Senorina said the two women were of the Masai tribe.  She explained the Masai were a nomadic people who raised cattle and farmed having a nomadic range throughout Kenya and Tanzania.

The 6 nuns and I were invited by father Kayera to the bishop of Ifacara`s house for lunch.  Fried fish, sautéed pumpkin leaves, ugali (the flour and water mixture), rice and oranges were served.  After explaining my diet, I only ate the meat and vegetables.  I was offered beer, wine, soda or water to drink, drinking only water.  After lunch I had a brief meeting with father Kayera as he wanted to know more about myself and why I was in Ifacara, Tanzania of all the places I could have picked.  I explained to him my desire to have a civil engineering career with relations in environmental or water resources engineering with humanitarian organizations in a developing nations.  He was familiar with the three organizations I mentioned such as USAID, UNDP and World Bank.  

Father Kayera drove me to the parish guesthouse.  As he approached the left side of his truck to drive, I instinctively went to the right side as a passenger.  He had gone to the right rear door to open for me to place my backpack inside.  He looked at me strangely, laughing, saying this is not America as I immediately noticed my error seeing the steering wheel where I thought I was going to sit.

As previously discussed last week before my departure to Mbingu, father Kayera said he could give me room and board in exchange for volunteering with a project.  He later took me to meet the parish priest.  Upon talking with him and telling him my aspirations and having roughly 11 more nights in Ifacara, we discussed the possibility of designing a documentary with photos and videos using my camera to show to various religious and governmental organizations in the US for fundraising opportunities.  My first candidate to show such a documentary could be to the Unity church I joined in Greensboro last fall. Some of the members whom I had gotten to know were eager to hear about my trip and asked if I could do a presentation upon my return to the US at the end of the summer.

So far, I have hesitated to take any pictures due to the rampant abject poverty I have seen since leaving Dar es Salaam. I have been warned by some local people about taking photos.  I had researched, before leaving North Carolina, taking pictures of the general population could be very offensive and potentially dangerous, so I have refrained.  I mentioned my hesitation to father Kayera and the parish priest.  They are going to provide me various individuals including themselves to take me to the many humanitarian projects happening in the district over the next 11 days.  Locations may include people`s houses, water supply systems (hand pumps), schools, mental hospitals, HIV/AIDS clinics, the leprosy clinic, retirement centers, agricultural areas.  This is going to be very interesting and enjoyable to be able to be escorted to various places to document things I have seen as others will be able to see also through the lens of my camera.  

I have been situated in a simple room in the parish compound with meals provided on a schedule.  This close to the equator, I think only 6 or 9 degrees south, the sun has minute variations through the seasons with time between the rising and the setting of the sun.  The sun rises around 0630 and sets around 1830 year round.  Tanzanians use a different clock than in the US or other countries I have been to.  The beginning of day light, say 0600 is 0000 in Tanzania time, therefore 1200 noon is considered to be 6 hours after the beginning of the day or 0600, evening 6 pm is 12 o`clock Tanzanian time and midnight in the US is 1800 or 6 pm, and 2400 is back to the beginning or first light of the day.  In US time my schedule for meals will be breakfast at 0700, lunch at 1200 and supper at 1830.  In Tanzanian time the meals are served at 0100 for breakfast, 0600 for lunch and 1230 for supper.

During the evening meal at the parish center, I learned the inhabitants of the guesthouse were all priests of the Catholic Church 200 meters south of here.  They all had come to Ifacara to study various professions, several of them learning to be doctors of general medicine while others were doing research of equatorial diseases such as malaria and typhoid.  All 8 of the priests witting at the supper table spoke English.  I was thankful to be eating something completely different than a variation of a three egg omelet for breakfast, lunch and supper.

I ended my evening walking for about an hour through the village along the main road and a couple of side streets.  Sister Senorina had warned me about walking around at night and the dangers of me being a Mzungu (foreigner).  She asked if I was afraid to be by myself after hearing some of the dangers which could happen to me such as being harmed or robbed by the poor local inhabitants or taken hostage by the Muslims from my known associations with the Christians.  My response was that I could not be afraid of venturing out alone although I could be diligently and acutely aware of my surroundings and the people.  I said I was here to learn about the culture and its inhabitants, not to be sheltered with the fear something bad could happen.

Londo Primary School

Monday 27 May 2013
Londo Primary School

I slept late this morning waking at 0800 for breakfast.  I do not believe they have ever had a guest with as strange a diet as mine.  The kitchen staff has been very accommodating on my protein and vegetable diet.  Each meal has consisted of free range chicken egg omelets, usually with onions, tomatoes and carrots.  The omelet is accompanied with a side dish of sautéed pumpkin leaves at every meal except two where the veggie was sautéed cabbage and this evening, okra in a tomato sauce (very delicious) with a whole cucumber.  Sometimes a meat is served, small bits of chicken or beef.  A bottle of water is included in every meal.  

After breakfast, I mentioned to the kitchen staff I would be eating in the village for lunch.  Riding sister Mech`s bicycle into town, I passed a thatch roofed open walled hut with a pool table underneath.  I turned around approaching the hut.  Two Tanzanian`s were playing with 12 others sitting on homemade benches under the thatched roof watching the game of either 8 ball or 9 ball.  One asked me to join, pointing to the bench for me to sit and watch, probably the only one who spoke very little broken English.  After watching half a dozen games, the same asked if I knew how to play and if I wanted to play a few games.  Of course I said yes.  Their pool hall was within 30 feet of the dusty road with an occasional farm to market truck hauling plantains or rice.  During the hour I was there, 3 herds of cattle were being driven by a couple farmers toward the direction I had come from.  After winning 2 of 3 games, I gave them a TZS $1000.  The pool table was of a commercial type with a coin slot to drop the balls for each game. As I started walking away, not expecting any change, the English speaker approached me with my change of 800.  The total cost for 3 games had been 200 (13 cents US).

I had taken a few pictures during the primary school tour on Friday.  One of the teachers asked if she could have the photos for her class.  Without thinking, I asked if she had a memory stick or flash drive to load the digital files onto…Huh, what`s a memory stick? She asked.  The school of 442 has no water system or electricity.  Sister Mech and I rode our bikes to the next larger village and had found a place to print a photo from a photo shop.  The photo shop, being run by a generator with a computer so I could view which photo to print, had an electric photo printer capable of printing a maximum 5” by 7” quality photo for a cost of 5000 (US $3.00).  After hearing the cost, I only printed the best one photo.

I returned to the school this afternoon on my way back to the convent.  The school had already let out for the day.  Friday, the teachers (all female) had told me they lived in the small houses in the center of the school yard and for me to stop by anytime.  I was invited in teacher Gama`s house.  She was cooking dried beans and ugali.  Ugali is nothing more than a boiled paste of flour and water cooked until thickened.  In my trips through the villages, I have seen the ugali being scooped up in small amounts by hand then partially dipped into a vegetable or bean mixture, then eaten.  I politely declined her invitation to eat with her saying I had just eaten at the convent.  I had lied as my true reason for not eating was the high carbohydrates of the ugali.  The ugali was being cooked on a small coal burning stove on the concrete floor.  After removing the ugali from the fire, she excused herself to let the other teacher know a visitor had arrived.  Within a few minutes, teacher Maria appeared.  They were both very happy to see the photo sister Mech had taken of the two teachers and I in one of the classrooms.  Maria invited me to join her in tutoring several of her students in Swahili which began at that moment.  The three students were waiting as Maria and I arrived to the classroom.  

With English being taught in the Tanzanian school system, the majority of students are studying to become trilingual.  The students initially arrive at school knowing one of the 120 tribal languages and are then taught the national language Kiswahili and also English.  Between tutoring the 3 pupils in their Kiswahili, giving them writing assignments, Maria then would also tutor me with a vocabulary list and simple phrases of Kiswahili while the students quietly did their tasks.  As each student (2^nd and 3^rd grade) approached for their writing to be critiqued, Maria would stop with me and focus on the children.  We continued our tutoring lessons for an hour and a half until the sun set.  

With no light switches to turn on, the day ended as darkness approached.

Gravity Water System

Sunday 26 May 2013
Gravity Water System

I was given the day off today.  A bicycle had been loaned to me by sister Mechtilda.  She is the plumber of the convent compound.  She told me she was excited to be taken away from her daily plumbing duties to give me a tour of the two surrounding villages the other day.  Her current plumbing job was to dig a ditch for a water line connecting the dispensary building to a new x-ray building under construction for the future hospital.  She left yesterday to take a trip to Dar es Salaam for a plumbing seminar.  She explained to me contractors were hired to drill bore holes for drinking water.  Without proper supervision, the drillers did not drill the bore holes deep enough, making the wells go dry as the water table decreases during the dry season.  The seminar in Dar es Salaam will educate her on how to make sure the drilling is done properly to ensure the wells are drilled deep enough to obtain water year round.  

During the several meals we ate together, sister Mech would help me with my Swahili while I helped her with her limited English.  For example, we were eating supper at 2100 Thursday night when she said “the day before tomorrow, I will go to Dar es Salaam for a plumbing seminar”.  She did not understand my laughter.  I began to explain to her the day before tomorrow is the same as the day after yesterday, or today.  She learned the day after tomorrow and the day before yesterday.  She helped me with my numbers to 20 along with various eating utensils and table implements.

Sunday evening, I had a meeting with the mother general, the retired mother general and sister Senorina, the head counselor.  The convent compound has future plans of bringing in gravity fed piped water from the Udusungwa Mountains National Park, in the vicinity where their hydropower comes, but from a different river source.  The sisters showed me a three phase project which includes phase 1 of constructing the intake system and water treatment system, phase 2 of 250 mm piping 12 km to the convent and the villages, and phase 3 consisting of the distribution system.   Their costs for the 3 phases are US $910,000 of which they have asked for funding from various sources including the Rotary Club of Tanzania, other sister country Rotary Clubs and Rotary International.  

Prior to the meeting, I mentioned having teachers in the US who were familiar with grant writing to seek funding from the US government to fund humanitarian projects in developing nations.  They liked my ideas of possible alternate means of financial support to reach their intended fundraising goals.  Coming back to Tanzania to assist in the convent`s water engineering project could be a possibility after graduation as I pursue the Fulbright Scholarship.

Currently, there is no engineering project in Mbingu at the convent for me to volunteer with.  I decided to go back to Ifacara and volunteer with father Kayera with a wastewater drainage system the technical school is working on.  I am leaving Tuesday morning with Sister Senorina and six other nuns on the same treacherous road which took 2 hours 45 minutes for 36 miles of travel.  I had intended on volunteering at the orphanage again on Monday but the sister general said I could take the day off and do as I please.