It's hard to believe another week has gone by already. After I posted my last blog post, I split up with my girls and braved the city of Arusha all by myself. They were headed to a market, and I decided I was finally confident enough to spend some time wandering solo. The city really is pretty chaotic, so I was quite pleased to find that I was acclimating to things as quickly as I was. Crowded, polluted, smelly at times, lots of commotion and plenty of unwanted attention... not to mention the traffic, which is a whole 'nother level of crazy. I made some small purchases and tested my Swahili in a few shops, which really helped boost my overall confidence. One flycatcher began following me for a while, who told me his name was "Pili Pili" (which is Tanzanian hot sauce), and I was only able to shake him off by ducking into Africafe-- Arusha's version of Starbucks. Very posh in comparison to it's surroundings, and a very established "mzungu" hangout, Africafe is complete with American style breakfasts, coffee that is actually brewed (as opposed to instant), and sit down toilets! Pili Pili left me at the door, and I was saved.
Saturday night was actually a blast. Ebony's lack of control in talking to strangers paid off when she met an American woman at a local market some weeks ago-- the woman apparently had a very nice house in Sekina and had planned to go out of town that weekend... so she gave Ebony the keys! It was like a vacation, complete with showers, a kitchen with a gas stove and running water (as opposed to wood fire stoves and bucket baths in our homestays), an MP3 player and DVD player, the works. This was more of a treat for the girls who had been here a while, but it was lots of fun cooking and bonding as a group. We stopped at a local stand and bought a giant mango, a pineapple, 10 tomatoes, an onion, bell pepper, and a few carrots, all for 2,000 tsh (less than $1.50 USD). Hallelujah, we seriously had a feast. After a lazy morning the next day I took a dala dala back to my homestay where Karen helped me do my laundry by hand. As soon as we hung it up to dry it began to pour of course, so the next day I packed a sack of wet clothes for my first village training.
We met at the GSC office on Monday morning and set off for Longido. GSC partners with two organizations- Partners for Development (PFD) and the Canadian Food Grains Bank (CFGB). So when we volunteers head out to a village, which we do virtually every week, we are with one of the two. Molly and I were assigned Longido village with PFD, and I learned that we were assigned to do a follow up training in no-till agriculture. As you might remember, my orientation week was spent learning BIA agriculture. Well, apparently I did my entire training with CFGB, and they do BIA. So Monday morning I found myself headed to a village to teach something I had no prior knowledge of. Yes, a little uncomfortable.
GSC also recruits local college interns to act as translators for us volunteers who do not speak Swahili. Molly and I each had one intern, who also had no prior knowledge of the material. This week turned out to be a little tricky, because our village was almost entirely populated with Masaai people, very traditional herdspeople who have no history with farming... and don't speak Swahili. I became very nervous at the thought of teaching something I knew very little about, to people who I knew very little about. Our first day, we met the group of Masaai women (no men, which is apparently common) and set a time to meet the following day. This process was entirely in Swahili, translated into Masaai. My "translator" didn't take much of an interest in me and I was pretty much lost the entire time.
The following day I learned that we usually do some classroom sessions at the begining, but since the women only speak Masaai, we would spend the week doing practicals... over, and over again. No-till agriculture is extremely simple, and in my opinion the best option for Masaai people. As you might have guessed, you don't have to till the soil, so it makes sense if you have a lot of land (double digging a field, as BIA has you do with garden beds, would be impossible) and it requires little construction or maintenance. An introduction to farming, perhaps. The woman from PFD who was with me to lead the trainings, Ana, is probably my age or slightly older, and a very competetive person. I learned very quickly that I was there to observe and lend a hand digging holes when it was convenient. She taught the trainings entirely in Swahili, and if I wanted to know anything that was going on... let alone the concepts behind this style of ag... I better know how to ask questions. It was completely disheartening. Many times I would ask to help, and she would brush me off and say, "No, I'm not tired yet." She clearly considered me to be more of a burden than a help. My "counterpart," the intern, quickly turned on the Tanzanian machismo attitude and spent the training barking orders either at me or the Masaai women, or "fixing" the inferior holes we had dug.
The rest of the week looked a lot like this. Thursday Ana left for the training without me, which they do at different participants' houses, so I stayed behind in the village to do the food drying training with Molly and PFD staffmember Tom. It was a great day for them- the participants showed a lot of interest and a bit of a crowd developed as they were building two new food dryers mostly out of local material. The idea here is to be able to preserve food from the rainy season to rehydrate and use during the dry season. We dried carrots, greens, onions, and potatoes beautifully.
I was incredibly grateful for Molly to show me the ropes and teach me how she's learned to cope with the program's issues. It was interesting for her to hear my thoughts as I go through it for the first time, because she hadn't realized how much she had just gotten used to being neglected. We would often get frustrated that even though everyone with PFD speaks English, it was never spoken during down time or meals, so we began speaking Spanish together as an outlet to have our own private conversations. It turns out Molly had studied Spanish for as long as I did through school, so we've had a lot of fun speaking a combination of Swahili and Spanish.
The other thing that hugely impacted my experience was the warmth of the Masaai women. I had been told that the Masaai can be much more reluctant to receive us and our trainings, because they are historically pastoralists, so I wasn't sure what the attitudes of the participants would be like. I think I must have had a lost puppy dog look going on... I was so obviously out of my element that they seemed to fall in love with me, even though we did not speak the same language. A couple women in particular would greet me (and only me) with giant hugs in the morning. At the end of a training on the second day, one woman insisted that I stay for chai, while all the other women and PFD crew waited. She then took my water bottle from my hand, placed a simple wire ring on my finger, and held my hand the 20 minute or so walk back to our meeting place. They were all remarkably sweet and welcoming, it was so touching. By Friday I had developed this really bizarre outbreak of itchy red bumps around my right wrist, and all the mamas fussed over them and rubbed them throughout the day. They remain pleasantly itchy today, and I think I may have spotted a couple new ones, so I am afraid it might be a reaction to something about that ring. Quite disappointing, because I love it so much, but I'm hoping to figure it out quickly because they're killing me!!
Sadly, this weekend is Ebony's last couple days here in Tanzania, so we're doin it up big time. This morning Molly's friend Rogers took us on a guided hike on Mount Meru, which led us to Napuru Waterfall in the middle of the rainforest-- breathtaking. We munched on some wild red berries he showed us were edible on the way there and back, and had lunch at his mama's house on the way down, which was in the middle of their shamba (farm). Really sweet people. Tonight we're going out for drinks, and tomorrow we'll go to a circus that's in town!
So all in all, the week had it's ups and downs. This all comes wrapped up in the package of plopping down in a foreign culture and way of life, so I'm setting out to learn how to deal. While I do think some of the issues with my program are things that should be discussed with the appropriate people to handle them, I also know that I will encounter all kinds of clashing personalities and organizational idiosyncrasies no matter where I travel on this earth, so it's my job to learn and grow as a human and figure out how to handle all types of situations appropriately.
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