It Is What It Is

I am really going to miss the sound of the doors that I have to open on the way to the bathroom in my house. Especially at night when all you can hear is the crickets and the sound of the creaking hinges, which are magnified in the dark, concrete hallway. It is pitch black and the concrete is cold under my feet. It’s funny, the things that you get used to. The things that become comforting just because they are a part of your routine and they are familiar. 

The extremities here are just mind-boggling. So often, at the end of the day, I find myself so frustrated. I keep telling myself, “You are just looking at it wrong. You are being too negative, you have to look for the good.” In so many ways, life here is like life anywhere. We all want the same basic things:  a place to call home, a place to rest our heads, to have food to eat, loved ones around us, a sense of belonging, a purpose. Those things are real across the board-for most-and it is what unites us. There are just so many other things that get in the way of that common purpose. It is easy to forget that we all just want the same thing. However, I think an unfortunate reality is that more often than not, we have to compete with one another to get those things. Or at least we think that we have to. Especially here. Chasing the dollar is really what it comes down to. I may be wrong, in fact I hope I am…but I think this is one of those situations where you have to admit to something that you really wish wasn’t true. 

This picture is not really for any purpose other than to show a bit of the normal life...

and break up the text!

I had a nice personal revelation tonight at dinner that lightened my mood. I have been frustrated lately and I will go into more detail about those frustrations in a bit because I think that they are important to share. Not so much as a means of venting, all though writing about them did serve that purpose, but more so because I think that they really help paint the picture of what life is like here. Anyways…back to dinner. So I was eating and I started laughing to myself. I was really enjoying this piece of watermelon. I started laughing because it reminded me of my honeymoon phase with the country, when everything was so brand new. It was exciting and romantic and stimulating and mysterious and the fruit was fantastic! Very much like a new romance. So now I have learned some of the faults of my relationship and I am seeing some of the realities of the life that I am living and it isn’t all pretty or fun and I have to figure out how to compromise or else I am going to go crazy and this relationship is not going to end well. I like to leave on good terms. So Tanzania, let’s start over. Let me remember all the things I wrote about you in the beginning. Let’s rekindle this spark.

First things first, though. Let’s clear the air.

So what frustrates me? Well, corruption, for one. It is a word that gets thrown around so carelessly…but here I have seen and experienced the real meaning of it. The police, for instance. They will pull you over to the side of the road and essentially ask you for money. Sure, they may hide the request in the form of a warning about your vehicle, but instead of writing you a ticket for 10,000 shillings that would actually go to the revenue authorities, they accept small bribes of 1000 to 3000 shillings, or whatever. Almost everyone just accepts it! You ask people about corruption and most just laugh, as if, oh…what can you do? I have been told that the truck drivers just drive around with a good stash of 1000 bills because they know that they will get pulled over multiple times and that is all that the police are looking for. It is easier just to pay them off.

Another place that corruption rears its ugly head is in the education system. The majority of public schools are so underfunded with absolutely no resources. The children have no books. There may be one teacher for every 200 students. Also, all of primary school is taught in Kiswahili and then the language switches to all English once they get to Secondary school. So many struggle to understand the language that they merely memorize instead of actually learn. They aren't able to think critically or expand on a topic. This year, 50% of students failed their Form 4 exams, which is the equivalent of our senior year of high school. If you fail that, you can't go on to college. Your education stops. 

I took these pictures at a local school. Some schools are doing a good job, but the challenges are many. Don't take your education for granted!

Notice the hand drawn map on the chalk board

Also, the mail service. My lovely brother and his family were sweet enough to send me a package. Have I received it? No. If I did, I am sure that they would have charged me just to pick it up. That happened to my program mate, Natalie. They wanted around $70 just for her to retrieve it. Why? Because they can. They said something about how she was receiving things that she could have bought here and it was taking away from their economy, blah, blah, blah. Luckily we knew someone in a high position who could communicate with them and we managed to get the package without payment, but Jeesh! Today I did receive a small package in the mail from my friend and I was not asked to pay anything. However, they had unwrapped the packaging! I do not know if they opened the box and looked inside, but come on!

Another one for the list, as long as I am at it: Immigration. We sent in all of our necessary papers well in advance for our residence permits. They said our photos had to have a blue background, not white. So we took pictures with a blue background. They said it was too dark, so we took another set of pictures. They almost refused those too. We didn’t hear anything for months. They acknowledged that they received what they needed. However, a few weeks later they said that they had lost our files. This is how the bureaucracy works here. It is so hard to get anything done. Thank god we have competent people working on our behalf. The people here see it too. They are also frustrated. But how do you solve such big problems when they are the result of the system that is in place?  It is not only the system, but also the people that are running it. 

There is no system for trash removal or recycling, so people just pile it up and burn it in the streets. 

Okay, I have to do one more, because it has really stuck with me. The other day we were in Moshi. A nice town about an hour away. We went specifically to visit this artist who specializes in a specific style of painting, called Tinga Tinga. We had met him previously and were walking to his shop. We were getting close; literally a few hundred meters away, and a man approaches us to “help us find our way”. This is common when you are walking anywhere in a bigger town. Normally you exchange a few nice greetings in Swahili, you say ‘no thank you’, and they leave you alone. This guy continued to walk with us, acting so helpful, so we just laughed and walked with him because we were going in the same direction. He wanted us to go to his friend’s shop, which was a few doors down from Kimambo, the man we were visiting. We told him that we were only going to our friend’s shop. We thanked him and even gave him a little money. Well, the whole time we were in the shop, he stood in the doorway and glared at us. Both Natalie and I told him that he didn’t need to wait for us and thanked him for his time. When we left, he followed us. He continued to hassle us and got more aggressive and unpleasant. Austin was talking to him and I could hear him getting more aggressive, so I stepped in. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I had had it with this guy. I was stern with him and just asked him what he wanted and told him that we never asked for his help but that we gave him money anyway and that he needed to leave us alone. The whole time he was glaring at me and then he snarls, while staring in my eyes, “Women in my culture do not rise above the men.” I actually thought that he was going to hit me. That phrase though…that has stuck with me. That attitude is the root of the gender inequalities and gender roles, which are very strong here. I have been asked many times why I am not married and why I don’t have children. A woman is not seen as a woman until she has had a child. Of course there are men here who love their wives and their daughters, but the stereotype of a woman’s role in society is so incredibly evident and ingrained in the culture. It just makes me feel so sad and so infuriated at the same time. It makes me want to never get married or have children and become wickedly successful just to spite them…but I won’t let them get the best of me.

There are too many other beautiful things to be had......

So, I apologize if this post was more geared towards the negative side. I am trying to show a bit of both sides. This is what I am learning. I don’t know…maybe on my month of solo travel, I will have all sorts of amazing, eye-opening, heart-opening experiences that disprove all of what I have written. I hope so. I want to believe in the goodness of others. Life is just very different here. They have grown up with different realities than I have. That has inevitably shaped how they relate to their world. It is perhaps something so deep that I will never be able to understand. I can theorize about it, but I will never be able to relate on a core level. I know that poverty, extreme poverty, has a lot to do with it. Maybe everything? I am a foreigner in a foreign land with a foreign language with a foreign culture and I am just trying to make sense out of it all. It’s still pretty cool that I am here. Sometimes I just stop and say to myself, ‘holy crap, I’m in Africa.’

There is a saying that I have been contemplating lately:

“Our calling is where our deepest gladness and the world’s hunger meets.”

                 -Frederick Buechner

Travel sure is a good way to explore things of that nature. 

Here's a picture of me for my beautiful parents. The whole reason I started this blog in the first place because they are too cool for facebook!

There is a certain type of freedom and chaos here that is really beautiful. It is hard to put my finger on, but it flows through the veins and it is a subtle feeling. If you are able to give yourself to it, it is really intoxicating in a mysterious way. 

All right Tanzania, let’s fall back in love. Ready. Set. Go!