Debi's entery from June 2016. Road construction

I went shopping and out to lunch with Bernice today. I sort of bought out the stores!  That is how it seems when you deal in shillings!  A 10,000 shilling note is sort of close to $5.00. That is the biggest currency I have seen. That is why a million shillings is such a huge wad coming out of a cash machine ( if the power is on and IF the machine has cash!) 

Shopping here is hard to describe. It takes multiple stops through unbelievable traffic. The prices are in such big numbers that my mind is constantly juggling the math. Bernice is a shrewd shopper. When I am worn out and ready to buy, she says "lets look around."  She finds way better deals!  . 

We got home tonight at nearly 7 PM with so many bags that Don had to help carry on the second trip. His comment was that he was glad we were not paying  for the plastic bags!
I got a non stick sauce pan with a glass lid, a nested set of nixing bowls with air  tight lids,  several nice cooking tools, lots of produce and spices and extra dishes and all kinds of things. It was like Christmas! I also got ingredients to make almond roca!  Let's  see if I can do it in Tanzania!


I failed to tell about our hair raising story the last time I wrote but must do do now to explain the next chapter of drama. On Saturday after we did our tourist thing with Kathy and Chuck, we decided to brave the road home in order to get fresh basil for the casserole I prepared and had sitting in a jar of water. We decided to stop and get that along with two decks of cards and a cribbage board so we could play games with our extra time. We stopped at home, gathered our things and then I encouraged Don to drive down Mianzini Road. He staunchly refused  to drive that way after riding in a taxi and experiencing awful traffic. I told him Linda drives it and at this time of day it should be OK. It would save us time. 


So we started down the mountain. We should have wondered when we encountered a caterpillar chewing up the road. But No!  We were optimistic!  Look! They are fixing the road!  So we continued. Gradually things got worse. There were giant tree stumps yanked out of the ground along with cement curbs in the roadway. We continued. After all, there were no signs warning us to turn back and it was getting so bad that we did not know how to turn around. 
 
At the worst spot traffic was snarled to a stop both directions.  We were snagged on a tree stump and no one could pass. A crowd had gathered on both sides of the road to watch. People were shouting directions to us and Don was struggling to keep our car from dying.  I kept praying for a helicopter to come and lift us out of the mess!  Somehow with the the crowd's help moving giant cement blocks and coaching us on where to go, we made it down to the part that Don wanted to avoid with all that he had within him. I remarked that this part of the road was a piece of cake. I think if anyone is looking for a good nickname for Don, it should be "Mianzini". That road had us shaking in our boots and caused me to drink two beers on arrival at Erik and Bernice's. That is not very Missionary - like...but I don't feel like I fit the mold in a lot of ways!! We never did play cards!  The next day I noticed there was a thin plastic tape blocking off the road. You think???  Honestly!  Don asked me afterward if  I had thought to take pictures. You think!?? Really?!!  I was too busy holding onto my seat belt!  


All that is to explain our next adventure. So there is road construction going on all around us. GOOD!  Maybe things will get better!  However, trees are being chopped down and cement stoops are being  displaced and some houses and shops are being leveled. It looks like a war zone right near us! When I walk, I have to stop and look and wonder at the destruction! 


So, I got home tonight after my shopping spree only to learn that when the construction reached us, they broke a main water pipe. Now we have no idea what this means...how long do we have waster?  hours? Days? Weeks?  So tomorrow when Mebo comes, we will prepare the food I purchased. No worry about laundry. We have to conserve water and fill our containers! See...always an adventure!


I wonder....am I up to this??? Life is HARD here!  Harder than I expected.  I thought the hard part would be knowing how to help, but I don't know how to just live!  

Blog entry from Debi June 2016 Produce

I have a new motto:  NO POWER. NO SHOWER, NO MORE! That means we know how to monitor the temperature of the water in our little bathroom tank. When we have power, we turn on the heat so we have a reservoir of warm water. Then if we need a shower and there is no power we fill several containers from the sink and pour that over ourselves. I was even able to wash my hair with Don's help. We need the electricity to activate the water pump in order to get water out of the shower but we have gravity flow for the sink. This is a big help!
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> The lack of electricity is worse than we expected. We have it only about half the time! I can cook with propane so that is no problem and we have some lights on our battery. After buying a rice cooker and borrowing a crock pot, I now understand why electric gadgets are not very popular here. The worst part about no power is the unpredictability. If we KNEW we would only have power half the time but we knew WHEN, we could work around it rather nicely.
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> Tuesday, June 7:  We are still borrowing the church Land Rover. We have had to take it to the shop twice. Last night Don spent 4 hours from the time he finished clinic until he got home. Logistics are so inefficient!  By the time the mechanic calls him and he calls a taxi and he pays, hours have passed!  I find this frustrating enough that I am in no hurry to add work to my present schedule. I WANT to like it here and it is easier to be good natured when there is less stress. Don was happy to come home to a ready made meal.
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> The cooking is an entirely new experience. Actually the produce is fantastic. The tomatoes and carrots are better than we get at home.  People are selling their garden surplus everywhere. I am sure it is picked at the peak of ripeness. At first I was buying too much at once because without a car I would stock up. Bad idea. My frig is not reliable and things would spoil. Now I leave a lot of produce out of the frig on straw holders. There are several cookbooks that I can use...church cookbooks and missionary cookbooks and African cookbooks. The recipes tend to be highly flavored with spices. Also whatever Linda or Bernice make is always fabulous!  I copy them. Onions and tomatoes and garlic form the basis for many sauces. Vegetables that are plentiful include: tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, carrots, eggplant, zucchini, cabbage, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes and sweet potatoes, bell peppers in every color, and butternut squash. Fruit includes: bananas galore, pineapple, mango (familiar varieties and new ones), lemon and lime, oranges, apples (imported?  Small and tasty). Meat is mostly sold frozen which is OK because a shopping trip is so long that I worry about it when it is fresh. Typically a whole chicken is very small, Not much bigger than a Cornish hen. I cooked a whole chicken in the crockpot yesterday snd got about two cups of meat off the bones.

 One meat shop is like Paradise. I love going in there!  You can get stir fry style beef, chicken or pork, minced (ground) meat, steaks, huge chicken breasts and thighs with or without the bone! I love it!  I have also been cooking with a lot of beans and lentils and split peas. It is amazing what is available!

Come to Africa to see our underwear.

This is our washing machine. It looks remarkably like a concrete sink because that is what it is. It is "operated" (as in everything is handwashed) by Mebo, the housekeeper who comes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  It is supposedly by the back door.  Since most of the foot traffic to our house is from the parking area that is in the "back," the back door is functionally the front door.

So the wash gets done three times a week and is hung on twine that is attached to the back porch posts.  Largely at throat level for me, I might add.  It takes 24 hours to dry.  Are you getting the picture? We have our wash hanging on the line right in the traffic pattern to our house 6 days of the week.  Visitors have to literally (in the most literal sense of the word) duck under our underwear to get in the door. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. 

I have to cover for this social faux pas by telling Tanzanian visitors that this is a Washington state/American custom.  Welcome people to your house by hanging out your underwear that they have to duck under when they enter your house.  Sort of like ristras in the American Southwest.* I tell American/European/Australian/New Zealand visitors that it is a Tanzanian custom.

* A ristra is a string of red chili peppers that were originally hung up to dry and were stored this way for use until the next chili harvest.  It gradually became a "welcome sign" that people hang on fences, patios, and entryways. We had them hanging by our front door in Albuquerque.

Great Expectations

I initially thought the drivers in Tanzania were very aggressive.  Now the motorcycle driver's are not aggressive.  They are insane.  I am talking about the car drivers.  They put the nose of their car out into traffic so the highway traffic has to stop to let them in.  Same for making right hand turns in heavy traffic (remember we drive on the left).  I have come to understand those behaviors as being necessary in this large town with somewhere around a half dozen traffic lights in total. One puts the nose of the car out there to "request" entry into traffic with an expectation of benevolence and charity towards other drivers.  This is a hard place to drive so cooperation helps a lot. A braver scenario is passing when there isn't room to pass. The oncoming traffic will slow up to avoid a crash. It is also common to see the passing car straddle the middle of the road while the other two cars move toward the shoulders to create 3 lanes on a 2 lane road. Drivers flash their lights to indicate "please" and "I am making a maneuver to allow you in." For the most part, I don't have Great Expectations of cooperation so I don't nose into traffic much.  Sometimes you just get desperate, though. I doubt I will ever be able to pass head on into oncoming traffic and assume they will avoid crashing into me.

This has nothing to do with my topic but I though a nice photo of a multi-generation herd was more fun than a photo of a traffic jam. Lake Manyara National Park.

Selian Hospital Chapel

My work days have a lovely start. Every morning at 7:30 the staff meets for chapel.The liturgy is matins, Sala ya asubuhi, The chaplains start right on time. The congregation doesn't. The attendance at the start is about a quarter of the attendance at the end which is pretty African.

The speakers are sometimes the chaplains and sometimes hospital staff. They are all inspirational. At least they sound that way, not that I can understand what they are saying. It is all in Swahili so I know about 5% of the words. The typical homily sounds something like, "You .... because ....... this ...... God.......we....three  etc." The ellipses contain 95% of the words.

The reason I like chapel so much is the singing. Imagine going to church where the whole congregation is in the choir.  They sing a cappella harmony. It is fantastic and not like anything I have ever heard anywhere else.  I can't hear 4 parts.  I think the men and women sing the melody or harmony.  Their three part harmony sounds so different from Euro-American harmony.  My musician sons would be able to hear it and know what they are doing differently. I don't know, but it is so African. On top of the harmony, some male or female descants are thrown in.

Some hymns are imports from the German/American Lutheran hymnal.  "Yesu ni rafiki yangu" is "What a friend we have in Jesus," translated into Swahili.  Other hymns are pure African.  Most are sung all together.  Some are antiphonal with the two halves singing different parts.  There was one call and response hymn during communion that a staff member just started singing.  She belted out her flawless soprano part and the congregation would respond in 3 part harmony, of course. It was one of  those exciting, shivers-down-your-spine moments. Absolutely fabulous.

The other great thing about singing hymns and liturgy is that the words come at me slower so I can keep with them.  Even the Lord's Prayer is spoken so quickly that I can't mumble fast enough to keep up even with it written right in front of me.

We, the people of Tanzania

The photos are of Wamaasai (the wa- prefix indicates multiple people in Swahili), but there are other tribes in the area.  Waarusha, Wameru, Wachaga. Arusha is a international city so there are people here from tribes all over including Europe and North America. Lots of Waminnesotans.

We, the people of Tanzania, are delightful.  I say "we" since I was born in Tanzania and claim membership in the Wasamba tribe. "Mimi ni Msamba," I say in Swahili.which uniformly generates laughter since the Wasamba are, of course, dark skinned and also short.  Since I am neither of those, my statement is absurd on the surface.  On a deeper level, I do feel a close connection to the Wasamba and Tanzanians in general which is why we are here.

Relationships are very important to Tanzanians. If on the way to a meeting, they meet a friend, they don't say, "Hi. Can't talk because I'm on my way to a meeting" like an American would do (at least I do). They will greet each other and take the time to inquire about how things are going, how the family, kids, work, etc. are going. This is accompanied by a triple handshake - palms, thumbs, palms and then might not let go of the handclasp while they are talking. This friend is important so the friendship and connecting to that friend is more important than being on time.

Debi insists that she can't learn a foreign language and thought that she could get by with eye contact and a smile in lieu of a verbal greeting.  Wrong.  People will greet her.  "Habari za asubuhi?"  "How are you this morning?" The obligatory answer even for sick people in the hospital is "nzuri,"  "good" in English.  If she doesn't respond correctly, they may repeat the greeting and then tell her in Swahili what her response is.  "Sema nzuri." "Say good." Everything comes to a halt until she says "nzuri." People must be greeted properly. People who are sick can say "nzuri" and then clarify what is wrong or tell you that things are not good by saying, "nzuri kidogo." "A little bit good."

Having to constantly haggle over prices in stores and the market drives most foreigners crazy. I, for one, want to pay a reasonable price and get on with my day like I would in the USA. "How much are the carrots?"  Where is the relationship there? It's nonexistent. Instead, you need to greet them and ask about how they are and how their day is going before getting around to inquiring about prices.  The initially stated price will be too high and needs to be rejected.  With further discussion, you arrive at a price you can both live with.  The problem is this takes time and often the difference is less than a dollar so you need to talk a long time to save a small amount of money. I am incorrigibly American so find this process excruciating. My claim to being Msamba is weakened.

As I travel down a road, I am constantly being greeted.  Children holler in English, "Good-a morning.  How are you?  I am fine." Adults also greet me, often in Swahili, which makes for a short conversation since I can't say much after the initial greeting. They will call out, "Habari za asubuhi. Pole na safari, mzee."  "How are you this morning? I'm sorry about your trip, old man." It is polite to show sympathy to a traveler.  It shows great respect to address a man as "old man." They are mistaking the increasing streaks of platinum blond in my brown hair as having gray hair so while I know they are being polite, it still sounds strange.  My Msamba-ness is stretching thin.

Tanzania the Beautiful

So far, I have blogged about the dramatic, smack-you-in-the-face differences in life here. All of that is related to Tanzania being on the low end of the wealth spectrum. (The rankings that I looked at used GDP as the measure. I suspect that GDP doesn't capture the woman sitting at the side of the road on a blanket selling tomatoes.) That is what you initially see so dramatically.  Under that veneer is another kind of wealth. Tanzania is wealthy in the beauty of the land and the beauty of the people.

Taking pictures of the people is complicated for multiple reasons (and no, they don't think taking their picture captures their soul) so I have a lot of animal pictures. Here are photos from my recent family reunion.  By happy circumstance, 5 of the 6 siblings were in Tanzania at the same time minus the post-operative one. One of our excursions was to Ngorongoro Crater National Park. We stayed in a luxury tent site where you sit around the campfire pictured here and tell about the last year The tents are these huge arrangements with king-sized beds. It's the dry season so the grass is brown except near water. While most herds are species specific, the wildebeest and zebra hang out together due to their symbiotic sensory relationship. The zebra have sharp eyes and act as the watchdogs, err, watchzebra. Cheetah are fast enough to easily catch a zebra or wildebeest, but once they catch one, they aren't big enough to take down anything older than a young calf. Cheetah are not into catch and release so they hunt gazelle and impala which are more bite-sized for them.  But we digress.  The zebra are on the lookout for African lion, King of the Jungle that doesn't actually live in the jungle. What wildebeest bring to the pairing isn't sight or brains (The guide characterized them as "no-brains.").  They do have a keen sense of smell and can lead the herd to where the water is.

A combination of instinct and the faint smell of distant water lead 1 1/2 - 2 million wildebeest and around 1/2 million zebra and other animals including carnivores on a 1,800 mile circuit from the southern Serengeti to southern Kenya and back.  The big pack is up north now so what we see in the crater are the nonmigrating wildebeest hanging out there - kind of like Americans retiring and moving to Florida.

Next time, the people.