Thank You For Your Patience

Almost two months later, I’m finally back-posting some photos and words about the tour Scott and I took through parts of East Africa. It’s coming along slowly, as I’m having to transcribe from my journal, and it took me a while to finally sort through hundreds and hundreds of photos to find a few decent enough to blog. These are all excuses though from a procrastinating blogger. The posts start on June 27 ("Where It Must Begin") and they should be continuing at, hopefully, a fairly steady pace.

In the meantime, I also have things to blog about from my recent life – a hike through the Monduli Impenetrable Forest, the first party of Orkeeswa teachers, and a weekend excursion to Karatu – which I will get around to at some point.

Love This Photo

Scott was playing some fun trivia game with the Form Ones when this photo was captured by Quinn, the new temporary office manager (who's also our newest roommate). Isaack is the one covering this mouth on the far right. He's one of the most endearing students we have, which is saying a lot since all of them have some endearing quality. The student closest to Isaack is Lota'amgwaki, Lota for short. Lota's demeanor and unfailing happiness will make you smile when you're in the worst mood. I love those two students and I love this photo.

Two Moments

We’re doing Free Writing journals in Form 2. It was introduced back in April when Jenny was around. She wanted the students to have a space and time to write whatever they wanted, their feelings and thoughts, their hopes and frustrations, perhaps even a space to write some short stories. Now that Jenny is gone, I’m trying to keep the journal writing alive by giving them 15-20 minutes during our once-a-week double block to write freely.

We had our double block yesterday and as planned, during the last 20 minutes the students were bent over their exercise books-turned-journals, scribbling away. As I walked around looking over some shoulders, I saw this in one student’s journal:

“Ngoni migration:
Ngoni migration is the movement of people from South Africa. These people originated from the place called Natal. This event took place in the 19th century.
The causes for these people to move from one region to another are as follows:
- Growth of population
- Shortage of land…”

At the next desk over, I saw this:

“The coming of people from Portugal to Africa. Portuguese are the people from Europe in one country known as Portugal. This started in the 15th century…”

I was horrified. What these two students, and perhaps a few others in the class, were writing in their free-writing journals were regurgitated notes from history class.

When Jenny and I had stressed, “You can write anything you want,” ‘anything’ certainly did not encompass notes from other classes, but our students don’t know that. I’ve understood the concept of a free writing journal or the notion of a diary since I was young, when crushes on boys during recess and being mad at my sister for not letting me borrow a shirt were big emotions. But even writing about these trivial things was a freedom of expression that Orkeeswa students have never been granted, taught, or allowed the cultivate, and many of these students are in their late teens, some in their early twenties. What they have been taught is that tests are important and memorizing notes are important. While their value of education is admirable – most of our students’ peers are working in a farm or working as a house girl or taking care of children – sometimes their mindset on it makes me want to bang my head on the wall. But it’s not their fault, it’s the Tanzanian way of education, it’s how it’s done.

After seeing those notes, I realized that I had to further explain what free-writing means. So last night I found two journals I have with me – one that I kept when I was in Barrow and one from my recent travels through east Africa, two very different times of my life. I flipped through the Barrow journal and found scribblings on loneliness, frustrations with work, the cold, a hatred for snow machines, and more loneliness. I forgotten how regularly I had written in my journal, but, thinking about it now, it makes sense – the journal was all I had, the only space to be honest because mostly I was faking it during the rest of the day. And as I recall, I stopped writing in it so much when I realized I was leaving Barrow earlier than expected, when I suddenly started to enjoy my time there.

In class today I read the students excerpts from both journals. I had to explain where Barrow was, that I had been there alone. I was hoping to give them a real life example of a journal, convey to them what a mind can express when given no boundaries, when it’s free. I hope I got through.

This introduces Moment #1 ~
After class, a student Mbayana asked, “Will you make your journal writing a book?”
I explained how turning writing into a book takes talent and money, that someone needs to find your writing good enough to pay you to write and turn your writings into a book. I didn’t go into self-publishing, but covered it by saying, “Turning writing into a book takes a lot of money and talent. You have to be a really good writer,” to which Mbayana said, “You can do it. I know you can.”

**

After we went over the idea of free writing journals, we worked on writing book reports, something we’ve done for the last two class periods.

Moment #2 ~

During teatime, I asked Violet, “Was English class boring today?”
“Yes,” she replied.

Through Translation

We were offered a child yesterday. Not seriously, but the joke between Mary’s aunt, Asnot, and us lasted for a good twenty minutes, a joke that had to be translated from Swahili to English through Mary and Isdori. Our two students sat on one couch, each with one headphone in their ear to try out the radio function of a Vodacom cell phone. Asnot had walked in and sat on a couch across from them while Scott and I were seated on the third couch facing all of them, the furniture forming three sides of a square that outlined the main room in Mary’s mud house.

Scott and I decided to visit the homes of some of our students yesterday. This involved walking out of Monduli town toward the village, getting off the main road, walking on some narrow footpaths past dried out corn fields, and hesitating a moment before deciding which direction to go next. It was during this hesitation that Isdori called our name. Bingo – we had found a student, and once you find one, more will follow.

When we first saw Mary, who lives near Isdori, she was outside doing dishes. As soon as she saw us, she stopped and invited us into her home. From the six and a half months that Scott and I have spent here, Tanzanian hospitality is one of the things we’ve become very familiar with. It’s unwavering without being pushy – the goal is to make someone “feel free,” which is the equivalent to feeling at home, ‘mi casa es su casa.’ And sometimes, it is capable to feel free within someone else’s home, more so here than I’ve experienced elsewhere. It’s harder though when there’s an audience. During our visit at Mary’s, several kids, four of whom were Mary’s cousins, entered the room to stand quietly and be spectators.

Asnot is Mary’s 30-year old aunt. Through translation, she asked us many questions, including, “How long have you been here?” When she heard the answer, the followed up with, “Then why don’t you speak more Swahili?” Like the majority of Maasai women, Asnot’s head is shaved. She was wearing a green striped sweater and a couple of rubegas bunched and wrapped around her waist. Her smile and sparkling eyes looked younger than her years would claim; the only sign of her age came from two lines that formed on her face when she smiled, lines deep and well traced. Her neck, wrists, and ankles were adorned with tiny beaded pieces of Maasai jewelry. Asnot sat content on the couch, her hands clasped on her lap, eagerly asking us question after question.

“Do you have kids?” No. “You are getting older in age, why don’t you have kids? You can have my baby if you want.” Here’s where the joke began. When she first said it, Mary and Isdori laughed, and when it was translated, Scott and I laughed even harder – the sort of short laughter that’s meant for something incredulous. Asnot was smiling, too, but she quickly followed the joke up with this question, “But do you really want my baby?” At one point she even called her ‘baby’ to us, who was in fact a nine-year-old child and who quickly ran away after being told that Scott and I were taking her away. We explained that we wanted to travel more before we returning to the States, getting settled and having children. “When that time comes,” said Asnot, “I will give you a baby.” She commented that she already had three children, which is all she had planned for, but for us, she was willing to have a fourth.

With each translation from Asnot to Isdori (who’s also called Mandela around the village as he was born the year Mandela was released from prison) and Mary to us, Asnot smiled and waited eagerly for the meaning to get through. She apologized for not having anything to offer (earlier at Isdori’s house we were given pilau for lunch, coffee afterwards, and then left with a bag of beautiful fresh brown eggs. At another boma visit a few months ago, I had to force warm goat milk down to be polite); she hadn’t known we were coming. Then Asnot said that since now were friends (and she had offered us a baby), Scott and I would have to plan a return visit so she could give us some gifts. Once this was translated and as graciously accepted by us as possible, Asnot looked me up and down to figure out what she should bead for me – an anklet perhaps?

At one point, Asnot asked, “Do you have anything to ask me?” There we were, this Maasai woman asking us question after question, and I – the once-reporter – was drawing a blank. Perhaps it had to do with the process of translating or perhaps it had to do with her frankness, which put us on the spot. I’ve been in that situation before with one of my co-workers, a local teacher, Victor. We had gotten into a conversation about my time spent in Barrow and he was asking me a lot of questions. When the conversation was coming to an end, I was about to rush off to attend to something else at school, but his request stopped me immediately – “Now you ask me questions.” It’s the sort of thing I’ve often thought in my own head when I’m involved in a one-way conversation – usually I’m on the questioning side – but I’ve never verbalized it. With Victor and Asnot, the request to be questioned was said plainly, not obtrusively. Scott and I mainly asked questions about her being a mother, about her kids. At any given moment, I have a hundred questions in my head concerning Maasai life since I know so little about it, but for some reason they didn’t seem the right questions to ask when you’re sitting in a student’s boma on a Sunday afternoon.

After some time, Asnot had to excuse herself. It was time for her to go to the water tap and fetch water, a common chore for Maasai girls and women. Her exit led naturally to our own departure from Mary’s house. As is Tanzanian culture, Mary walked us out the door, onto the dirt road, and continued a short ways with us before saying goodbye. On the way, we passed the water tap, which was crowded with women and girls, empty buckets and jugs. We saw Asnot mixed in the crowd. We waved to her again. Later, we would see Asnot at the busy Sunday market in Monduli town and would accidentally almost pass her by without acknowledging her had she not stopped us to exchange greetings.

Isdori took this photo. Mary, one of our Form 2 students and whose house we were visiting, is the tall girl standing on the left. Four of these children are Mary's cousins. The rest were the spectators in the room. When this photos was taken, Asnot had already gone to the water tap so she's not pictured.