The Princess and the Pizza

I usually love books and movies that depict a sense of novelty in the seemingly familiar and mundane. The main character of the book, A Man Walks Into a Room, which I just recently finished, has a type of amnesia that wipes out his memory from age 12. He can recall with vivid clarity his adolescent crush, but cannot recognize his own wife. I have watched documentaries on Hmong people and on the Lost Boys of Sudan, in which turning on a light by flicking a switch, using a flush toilet, or buying meat at a grocery store are totally new experiences. I’ve often thought that my own family must have experienced such sensations when they first landed in America.

Since coming to Tanzania and working at Orkeeswa Secondary School, I’ve seen with my own eyes the sort of wonder, awe, and potential fright that comes with being exposed to – what to me are – ordinary things. I can see through my students the sort of novelty that I probably at one time in my life felt, but never fully expressed.

The students at Orkeeswa have spent their existence in the Tanzanian bush in a Maasai village, living in bomas, which are dwellings made of sticks, mud, and cow dung. They don’t have electricity. They don’t have running water. Besides the school, most of the students live a traditional Maasai life, which involves fetching water and firewood and herding cows, among so many other ways of life that I know absolutely nothing about.

When I first started the newspaper club back in early February, I taught the students how to use a point-and-click digital camera. For most, if not all, of them, it was their first time holding one. They had trouble with the concept of holding the camera still while pressing the shutter button or the fact that they could control what they saw in the viewfinder by simply moving their hands. I was more than pleasantly surprised when Suzanne, a form one student who was the photographer for the first issue of the Orkeeswa Journal, took the camera after only getting one lesson on it and came back with some quality photos (if you haven’t already, please check out the photo attached with the story, Faces of Orkeeswa Football, in the first issue of the school newspaper, which is posted in the previous blog entry. That was all Suzanne). When non-newspaper students ask if they can use my camera, I happily turn it over. When they’re in possession of this little piece of technology, they walk around with confidence and it’s more than just the item itself, it’s that they know how to use it. One of my favorite things is letting students loose with the camera for an hour and seeing what they come back with. There are a lot of posed, glamour-shot type photos and of course the crooked, blurry variety.

This past weekend, some of the teachers took four female students to Arusha for lunch and a trip to the movie theater. This was the prize for winning Orkeeswa Idol, a talent show event I organized last term. Big Rose, Nengai, Jackline, and Eliapenda had practiced every chance they were given, were chosen by the judges during the competition as one of the top three teams, and then overwhelmingly won the audience vote. This was back in April so for weeks they’ve been asking about their grand prize trip to Arusha, rightfully so. All of the students have been on various field trips out of the village with the school – to Snake Park and to Arusha several times for different sports events at other schools, the Mama Africa circus, and for World AIDS Day. But they, of course, still get so excited when the opportunity arises to go to Arusha. What was exciting about this particular trip was the chance to go to a movie theater, something none of them have ever done before.

The movie theater in Arusha is located in the Njiro shopping complex, which is just like any shopping complex in the states. There’s a nice courtyard in the center with dark stained tables and green umbrellas surrounded by restaurants serving pizza, burritos, Indian food, burgers, and salads. There’s a coffee shop on the second level, various shops selling movies, electronics, and clothes, and a grocery store that could be located in any American city. Suffice it to say, the Njiro shopping complex is for people of a more Western persuasion.

The girls were told they could wear whatever they wanted, meaning they didn’t have to wear their school uniform. Jackline and Big Rose came wearing khangas (patterned pieces of cloth that are worn by Tanzanian women in so many ways – as skirts, head wraps, capes, the list goes on and on), which they quickly shed to reveal jeans underneath. Eliapenda and Nengai were decked out in what appeared to be their Sunday finest – skirts and tops that shined. Eliapenda was even wearing heels. They carried purses and all four of them sucked identical red lollipops.

Scott and I were responsible for driving the girls into the big city and we were meeting Melissa, Jeff, and Jenny at Njiro, who had already bought the movie tickets and pre-ordered lunch. They had searched for some kuku na chipsi (chicken and fries, a staple in Tanzanian cuisine) but couldn’t find any so ordered pizza instead, basic cheese pizza. The girls had never seen nor eaten pizza. They all asked what it was made of and were hesitant when it first arrived to the table, Jackline the most hesitant. The other three ate two pieces, but Jackline’s first bite, if you could call it a bite at all, was Jackline’s last. She reluctantly held the pizza in her hand as she saw the rest of us do, put part of it in her mouth and quickly retreated her hand, her face contorted in disgust. She didn’t touch it again. Thankfully, we had also ordered fries, which she familiarly munched on and stayed quiet for most of the meal. In fact, all four of the girls didn’t say much during lunch. I had imagined endless gabbing and smiles and excited eating, but I think there was just so much newness surrounding them – the atmosphere, the food, the obvious tilted ratio of white people to black people. I guess it was a good thing that there wasn’t too much talking; we only had ten minutes to eat before the start of Disney’s The Princess and the Frog.

Scott had tried explaining to the girls that the movie screen was bigger than the classroom walls, although I don’t know if the girls even got the concept of a movie screen. But there it was before them as we walked into the theater, shuffled into our row, and sat down in cushioned seats. All four girls sat together while the teachers and staff filled in the row on either end. They watched the giant screen holding bags of popcorn. When the iconic Disney castle appeared before the movie, it occurred to me that these girls have lived a Mickey Mouse-less life, haven’t been tainted by the dream of a Prince Charming, or tormented by Cruella De Ville. The demons in their lives are in the very real form of pregnancy, becoming orphaned from HIV/AIDS, and forced marriages.

I was sitting next to Big Rose who’s the oldest of the four of them. She’s in Form Two while Eliapenda, Nengai, and Jackline are in Form One. I was lucky to witness Rose’s moments of uncontrollable laughter, her speechless shock and confusion. At one point during the movie, she asked me to explain a part of the movie, which I did. She showed signs of understanding and quickly turned to her other side to relay this understanding to the other girls. For an hour and half, these four students were able to experience a world in which people turn into frogs, people kiss frogs, animals can play musical instruments, where everything ends happily ever after. It was glorious. Their eyes remained peeled on the giant screen the entire time, and at various times during the movie, each one of the girls would be sitting forward, their bodies angled in eager anticipation for what would happen next.

When the movie ended, we all walked back into the light of the day. Jeff, Jenny, Melissa, and I asked questions of the girls to gauge how much they enjoyed it, how well they understood the story line, but again, there wasn’t too much we could get out of them. They all said they liked it but didn’t elaborate.

We ended up having to wait a while in the Njiro shopping complex for our rides back to Monduli and the village. So we all sat back down around a wooden table with a green umbrella. The skies were turning grey. I let the girls loose with my camera and watched as they took turns posing and holding their gazes still for picture after picture after picture.