What is responsibility?

What do you do when someone gives you a story of needing $20 to go to school? When they cannot afford to pay that twenty dollars because they do not have a job? When they do not have a job for reasons that you do not understand completely, particularly in a country and a place where there is so, so much that needs to be done? It is that you need more educated people to bring up everyone else? Is it that the needs cannot be met by people that have not been to secondary school? This seems impossible. There is plenty to do, to fish, to learn, to work as a guide, to talk to everyone until you find someone who will hire you to do something. How can you have an economy that really has no jobs? I could give the Tsh20000, equivalent to twenty dollars, that must be paid in school fees. But do I believe that that is all it costs? Do I hand over my dollars hoping that he will use it to go to school? How do I react when told “All I want is assistance,” and, “If you return and want to take me to the United States, it would be very good”. I am not in a situation to bring someone to the United States, how do I explain, and more so, how do I justify, saying that it is not in my plans to adopt a 25 year old Tanzanian father to bring him to the United States to be educated?
How do I reconcile the fact that I will get on a plane on Tuesday and travel to another country, and another, and another, before going home to a comfortable house where if I choose to, I can turn on the television and forget about Noah in Kigoma Tanzania who would like to go to school, but lacks the dollar? Where if something comes on the news to remind me of him, of his life, I can click my tongue, think that is too bad, and switch the channel to watch some more Friends? After seeing and being in these places, how can I head back to that life, and forget? Or ignore? What kind of human being would that make me? Privileged? Callous? Fortunate? Selfish?
Some of us are born into white, upper class families in first world countries. Others are born into poor black families in third world countries. No one is to blame, but how do we understand the relationship that exists between those two people? It is just luck that the one has easy access to school and enough to eat, and the other nothing? Doesn’t that one have some responsibility to the other? What is that responsibility, and how can it best be met? Is aid enough? What does that even mean? It is just my fortunate lot that I can go away and think no more about parasites and children with inflated bellies? If I cast my lot with those of my own nation, with our shopping malls and gas-guzzling cars, where does that leave everyone else? Does having been born there make it alright for me to choose that scene in which I have a sense of comfort, albeit while I am uncomforted by the known discomfort of others? After these experiences, can that life really be comfortable, or will I forever be plagued by knowing what things I have, and knowing how many other people do not have them? Things that are necessary, key, important, life sustaining? I don’t know. Over and over again, I am faced with situations that make me uncomfortable, make me think, make me wonder. Sometimes they make me wonder why I come out at all, why do I not just stay home and be comfortable and happy in my storybook American life? This happens particularly when I am faced with someone asking me for something that I cannot or will not give, though I know they have as much a right to it as I do. Other times these experiences make me wonder why government does or does not work, what is human nature, can the world be fair? Why is there enough money for politicians to get rich but not enough to send youth to school? Other times it makes me wonder what it is to connect with people, how culture is different, how can I not be upset by people outrightly asking me for things that I could give them, but don’t want to because then I would be without. After all, how important are my sunglasses, or my shoes? I have other access, why am I so loathe to give them up? What right do I have to my four pairs of pants when people here have only one? Or none? What, what is right? How do I understand all of this? What choices can I make? Which ones are right or fair or just? How do you effect change when there is so much to be changed? And deal with knowing you have advantages based on pure luck? Can I turn my back on others simply because they were not so “lucky” as I?

what am i here?

I sit on the floor of my hotel room on a blanket. Ani DiFranco serenades me while I glance from the computer screen to the blue sky outside and to the door on the other side of the room. She sings about life, about figuring things out. Soothing I suppose while I sit here on the floor and try to figure out mine.
One of the things that they don’t tell you prior to this year is the extent of down time that you will have. One can send as many emails as they want to, make as many contacts as possible, and still will be left on occasion with days that are full of nothing. As the typical over active college student, the appearance of days like this in my life has unnerved me, and though I have tried to become accustomed over the last seven months, sometimes I still find it difficult.
I find it particularly so when the joy one might find in going out is diminished by the knowledge that going out means continued harassment. Not that it is so terrible, and I know that people are just expressing interest in me, but I have not being able to walk 500 meters without someone stopping me to talk, then asking for my email address or cell phone 30 seconds later, and being upset when I don’t want to just pass it out. Or leaving notes at my hotel from which they have seen me come out. Or coming and hanging out at the hotel in the hopes that I will walk up and they can continue to try to convince me to go on safari or better yet, to go out drinking with them.
And what the fuck makes talking to someone your property? Sometimes cross cultural communication is just too complicated, when someone asks if you can be friends and that really means that they are putting some kind of unspoken claim on you, meaning that other people on the street shouldn’t come up and talk to you. Which impedes one’s ability to just have a conversation. Which makes any conversation suddenly not about their experience and yours, about talking and sharing, but about being seen with a white woman and claiming her as your girl. Which makes me just a white girl, a symbol, and not a person. I don’t know how to deal with this. Just ranting a little...

Weather breasts

Most of the agricultural economists and engineers I have been meeting this month are men. Oddly enough, so are the farmers. It seems that here in Tanzania men are mostly responsible for crops like coffee. Women on the other hand, tend products like maize and bananas. They use the income from these products to handle the expenses of the house. For this reason, it made me laugh when traveling with me Kenyan Coffee Business Adviser guide took me to coffee plantations near a community called Rombo and complained that the sheer number of bananas in the fields was stifling the coffee. Those are some hardworking and determined women, I thought to myself. Planting as many bananas as possible, they increase their incomes to the best of their ability. From the looks of it, they were doing pretty damn well.
It was market day for green bananas. Almost everywhere you looked, women, tall and short, wrapped in traditional kicoy fabrics, meandered balancing huge bunches of green bananas on their heads (the mastery of this particular skill seems to be an inherent trait in women across the world, I am not sure where us American and European women went wrong and feel it is a skill I should work on). They all advanced to numerous trucks congregated on one side of the dirt road, where piles and piles of green, assorted flashes of color as people bustled about, and dust dust dust in the dry air.
Arriving at the cooperative office, we got out of the 4x4 truck and were greeted by a bright eyed group of farmers. Moments later, we all piled back into the pickup truck to visit two model farms. These farmers are hopefully being pulled into an informal network of local mentorship, through with they will disseminate some of the knowledge they have gained through their own innovations to other community members.
At the second farm, I was comically reminded of my place amongst this group of smiley men. We pulled in, and all stumbled over tree stumps until we were in among the flowering coffee plants. As we walked between the closely set rows holding back and brushing branches heavy drops of rain began falling from the sky. I reached the group examining a plant and an old round farmer turned to me, gestured and said something quite involved in Swahili. I nodded. Everyone laughed. (Since my arrival, this situation of me nodding and others laughing is not uncommon, one of the consequences of not speaking the language I suppose.) Cyril, one of the agronomists with whom I have spent the last few days tapped me on the shoulder to explain the punch line. “Hilary, he says that it is raining because you have brought your breasts into the coffee field.”
I looked stunned for a moment and then started laughing. How does one respond to a statement like that? At my laughter, everyone else started laughing again. I asked if that was common logic, was informed that it was, and then told them it made sense; after all, we women are powerful beings.
So I chock this one up to the multitude of new knowledge I have gathered this year. I am becoming a more empowered woman all the time. After all, who knew that I could control African weather with my breasts?

Mama Anna's Gouda Cheese

I got off the stuffed dalla dalla at the sign to the Dik Dik hotel. Shortly, a man came up speaking to me in Swahili. Mercifully, another came up, informing me that this man was looking for the visitor to the Mulala Tourism Program. I nodded that I was indeed said person. Looking around, I saw only women wearing traditional kicoy wraps and other locals crowding this drop off point. I definitely stuck out like a visitor.
I looked into the place where the old land rover’s window should be. There was a clear view into the truck. It looked like an old army surplus vehicle. Its condition revealed the kind of work and conditions in which it has traveled its many miles. As I swung the latchless door open and climbed in, I sat down smiling on a piece of foam encased in a plastic grocery bag. Emmanuel, the 21 year old driver with thick curly eyelashes, a huge shy, smile and the most even, beautiful ebony complexion I have ever seen, pulled an industrial strength rubber band over the door handle, thereby ensuring it wouldn’t fall open as we bounced up the rutted road. I looked down at the plastic gallon container of gasoline that was feeding the engine with a direct tube line. It became my responsibility to hold the tube down into the gasoline to keep the engine going as we bounced up the road. Emmanuel jumped in the right side of the car, turned the key in the ignition which was held in place by metal wires securing it to what remained of the plastic dashboard. He then pushed in a screw which turned over the transmission, and with loud putt-puttering, we were off. We stalled about five times on the way up, and Emmanuel and his brothers spent the afternoon sucking gas through the pipe to try to fix the input.
Mama Anna has a small farm on the slopes of Mt. Meru in Northeast Tanzania. She has two cows, three calves, five sheep, two goats, and honeybees. She also grows coffee, finger millet, and maize. She lives in Mulala, a community of 5,000 people, and is one of six members of the Agape Women’s Group, an organization that together manufacturers cheese (gouda, cheddar, mozzarella, smoked or unsmoked, cream cheese, and cheese curd), as well as honey, jams, and banana wine. The goods labeled “Mama Anna’s Cheese Farm” are available in local supermarkets and by specialty order. It is all made by hand in a small room to one side of her house. There is a painted sign above the doorway: a drawing of a white house in a green setting, and the name Mama Anna. Inside, small wooden frames line one wall, each holding a certificate. One comes from a workshop on milk processing, sponsored by Land o’ Lakes, others certifying the excellent quality of the Agape Women’s Group products in various farmers shows around the country.
Since 1996, Mama Anna, Mama Abu, and the other women have accepted visitors into their homes. People come from all over the world, some alone, some as part of their safari package. They sample cheese, walk to a small viewpoint, have a lunch of rice, curry, chapatti, local tea and coffee. They drink uji, a local porridge made with home grown millet flour. Similar to oatmeal, I add sugar to mine. We suffer from fits of laughter as I try to communicate in broken Swahili and Mama Anna giggles that she cannot understand me. However, we hug and laugh and grind coffee with sticks that resemble small battering rams. We drink locally grown tea and press cheese into metal molds book-ended by wooden blocks. They are wrapped in cheese cloth. We carefully place them on top of each other and balance 15 kilo rocks on top. In this way, the cheese is pressed before it is placed in the aging room. Roasting coffee over the open fire, Mama Anna takes my picture on the digital camera. She cuts off the top of my head, but is laughs sillily at having managed to use this funny mechanism. Her dimples and round face remind me of so many children who scream with delight seeing themselves immortalized on this small screen. Mama Abu explains to me that with her eyes she cannot take pictures. Their brownness is softened by the blue gray ring of forming cataracts around the edges. As we make uji, they inform me that it is a good drink for women while they bleed, and surreptitiously ask me when women begin and end bleeding in Mamericani, America. The two women have recently gone through menopause, and are fascinated to know that the same thing happens in America. Later, laughing, they also inform me that the porridge we are making is good for young men. They shriek as they mime a penis between their legs, explaining through gestures that it works as an aphrodisiac. I am shocked momentarily, and then charmed and touched by the way these women connect with me, by the kind of laughter that women share all over the world and in every situation.
Sometimes you just meet people that make you want to come back. Even after only a few hours, it was difficult to leave Mama Anna’s round smiling face, her lovely children. Anjela taught me the names of all African animals in Swahili as we looked in an old identification guide. Apparently there is no Swahili name for squirrel. Through sharing moments, daily chores, grinding millet, pressing cheese, laughing as we try to communicate through broken Swahili and English, I made friends. This is what traveling is all about, less the big sites, and much more the small moments, the friendships made, the connections that mean after you leave you will imagine particular people and think about what time it is where they live and what they would be doing now. No matter where I go, I will continue to think of Mama Anna’s cheese farm on the slopes of Mt. Meru, smile, and hope against hope that today’s cheese is drying perfectly under the cheese cloth in the shaded aging room. I hope that she and Mama Abu and singing as they prepare the coffee, and laughing at whatever new visitors are there to partake in the joyful routine of their daily life.

Everest Chinese

I sit in front of my room in a white plastic garden chair. The sound of a broom swishing wafts my direction from around the corner, quitting some of the African dust from the concrete sidewalks. The sky, usually a brilliant blue, is overcast, amking the tops of the trees appear fuzzy. It is a sign that we have entered the rainy season early, part of each day for the next month the sky will open up with powerful showers to feed the crops growing in the region. It is hoped that strong rains this year will alleviate the suffering of some 11 million east Africans threatened with hunger if the harvest is bad this year.
Looking around, the small compound that houses Stanley’s restaurant and inn feels like it could be a Chinese garden in china (I imagine, never having been in a Chinese garden in china). There are leafy green plants all over, lovely landscaping around the paths, even as clean clothes dry above them. Perhaps the dripping water from the laundry irrigates the flowery shrubs, thereby providing a function as well as contributing to the charming overall ambience.
The restaurant is decorated with paper lanterns; the larger tables are all equipped with a lazy susan for conveniently passing dishes around a circular table. In the evening, there are candles and a meeting of multiple worlds, as tourists and locals come for a taste of authentic Chinese food in northern Tanzania. Young waiters and waitresses with bright smiles and cornrows bring your food, including a hot cloth to wash your hands at the beginning of the meal. All the while, Mama Nui, Stanley’s ancient mother shuffles along, never lifting her feet allowing herself to be identified moments before she enters any room. She smiles a crinkly eyed smile and speaks to me and others in Chinese, still smiling as I try to answer in English or my pigeon Swahili.
It is the second time that I have made this small place my temporary home, staying enough days to begin to unpack my 5000 cubic inches of belongings. I begin to make myself a home by getting to know Stanley and Mama Nui, Lugasa, the nightwatchman, and the man who sells mangoes off of a push cart between here and the clocktower, which is the center of downtown. All of these things make this small garden, restaurant and room my home place amidst my wanderings.
Downtown, paperboys try to guess what country I come from as they try to sell me The Guardian or the International Herald or USA Today. Cars whiz by and I still have to think twice before crossing the street. While Arusha seems slightly inaccessible at first, it only takes about a day before there are people to say hello to on the street. As any city, it soon makes itself familiar. The head of the African Union, Africa’s nascent response to the EU and international integration, is based here, as is the International Tribunal for Warcrimes of the Rwandan genocide. Just down the road, the market is full of fish from the ocean, from Tanzania’s three giant lakes, of fruit from the surrounding farms, of plastic kitchen wares imported from China. The chorus of voices invites me to buy any or all of these items in Swahili or English. My responses in Swahili prompt the question “Unasema kiswahili?” “Pole pole,” I respond, “kidogo”. Slowly, I say, and only a little. Despite this little, after a month here I am beginning to feel more comfortable, to notice smaller things, to make more friends. To smile more and more, just being here and enjoying the wide variety of the world.