Kiswahili Confessions - originally published on January 16, 2007

Today, after more than two weeks of living in Dar, I began Kiswahili lessons. Great delight. Not a shining pupil by any means (painful for a language teacher by profession), but I chose a Swahili name (Aisha), practiced greetings, and asked the language tutors many questions. Not easy at first but I caught on somewhat quickly. Problem is, tomorrow I must take off my “student” hat and put on the study abroad director’s hat. I will head downtown to the bank, meet with the on-site coordinator and do paperwork for the first part of class. I'm already skipping class! The second I will attend, and the students promised to catch me up.

Our group has stuck together incredibly over the four days since they arrived, surviving bacterial infection, thievery, Tanzanian bureaucracy, and severe culture shock-induced anxiety. On our way to Jangwani Beach last week I was guiding 14 students in Mwenge market, and a thief dipped his hand in my outside purse pocket, where I’d just put my cell phone. I felt him stealthily make his way into the pocket, and edged away. As he put it in deeper, I clasped my purse tighter ( I was, after all, responsible for the group’s funds), and yelled out, “F***ER!” He jumped and fled. As I hopped into the daladala (where students were awaiting), they shouted, "Our fearless director!”

Otherwise, our social circle is expanding slowly as we get to know people at the university and beyond. P and I went to dinner at Luitfrid’s house; he works at the Food and Nutrition Dept, and is coming to give a seminar for the students. We’ve also already eaten dinner at our neighbhor's place twice – and he fixes a mean mango/pineapple fruit smoothie. He hosts a number of music students who seem to come and go all the time and jumps about campus on a scooper.

Bayamoyo past, Morogoro future

This week has brought my discovery of the Immigration Office (get paperwork stamped and money paid for students’ residence permits), the New Zaidi (lunch in the Asian Quarter of Dar), scarves at Kariakoo (with our neighbors, some Tanzanian undergrads), seminar tonight with our neighbor, M, and his grad student, K, who told, sang and showed stories of Tanzanian music (especially the infamous Wagogo people around Dodoma).

Last weekend it was Bagamoyo, a historical beach town on the northern coast, one hour from Dar. We first visited the Kaoli Ruins, the remains of an Islamic society dating from 13th century. Then we saw the Catholic Mission and Freedom Village, where missionaries were responsible for stopping the slave trade controlled by Persians between inland Africa and Zanzibar. The Caravanserail museum housed former lodging for slaves and traders. At the College of Art we saw traditional dances; on Saturday we shopped around and chased crabs on the beach.

Happy to meet some Frenchies in town, and the mix of Kiswahili and French together is fun! Swimming in the pool is X, a Tanzanian student who works at the French Embassy. I also met a Tanzanian French prof at the University of Dar es Salaam and interpreter. Before she left for Addis Abbaba, to do work with the African Union at a meeting this week-end, we talked about French and Francophone Literature and she said I should meet C, the French assistant and Dr. H, who teaches courses on phonetics and civil servant French. Tomorrow we are having C, who hails from Normandy and has lived in Tanzania for 5 years, over for dinner.

Coming on Friday: a trip to Morogoro, 3 hours away from Dar, and close to the Uluguru Mountains, where some of the oldest forest in Africa exists—the 25 million-year-old Eastern Arc Mountain Chain! It’s home to the yellow baboon, blue monkey, wild pigs, antelopes, the Usambara eagle owl and the Uluguru bush-shrike. We are taking a Hood bus from Ubungo Junction Friday afternoon, to arrive in Morogoro early evening, then going for a hike past a German colonial settlement called Morningside up to Bondwe Peak.

Feminist Institute

At this point in the semester, halfway through the program, I’ve begun to branch out from routine, and acquainted myself with some new people. It’s been advantageous to attend university courses less and leave the UDSM campus more often. Last week I finally saw Salma for the first time since we met during an Amsterdam layover last year. Salma’s the head of the Three Sister’s Foundation, a Feminist activist group she established in Dar. I first saw her last year when I was boarding the plane in Dar for Chicago. She was talking back to an airport bureaucrat, telling him not to harrass her (something about her passport). Her spunkiness was impressive, all the more so because she’s slight in build and modest in appearance. She wears glasses that hide her beautiful eyes and wraps a scarf in a style common on Zanzibar. I didn’t talk to her at first at this time and didn’t see her again until we got off the plane in Amsterdam. Maybe I was intimidated by her strength at first. But I began a conversation when I saw her buying coffee at “Paul” a French Boulangerie, and we talked for 2 hours before boarding our respective flights about her work at the feminist NGO, and her trip to Copenhagen, where she’d been invited to give a presentation at a conference.

Over the last year I haven’t had much contact with Salma, but I got in touch with her when I first arrived in Dar in January. While we spoke by phone she unpacked her bags from a long absence—first she’d visited an uncle in Arizone for a month, then she attended the World Social Forum in Nairobi (this is the global forum for NGOs to meet and strategize for the upcoming year, an opportunity to rival/subvert the simultaneous G8 conference of superpowers that meets in Europe).

Over the last 2 months, we’ve tried to get together. Salma lives near Kunduchi Beach (not an easy jaunt from here), so she called me on her way to Mwenge Market (10 mins from here by daladala). I was busy. I called her to invite her to dinner, but, as it turned out, the power failed and we couldn’t cook anything. She took a trip to Zanzibar during the recent Music Festival in February, then stayed there for a few weeks. By the time she returned, her Feminist Institute was about to begin.

She invited me to participate in the institute, and of course I agreed, but we never talked on the phone long enough for me to get a substantial idea of the format or objectives. I was surprised she was so open to my participation, I guess because I was left with a memory as an undergrad doing study abroad in Senegal, when people warned me to stay away from this sensitive topic or activist issue; they said white women’s focus on it tended to piss Senegalese women off.

On Wednesday I took a taxi to the Ardhi House, a 10 minute walk from Mwenge. The Institute had begun a week before, so I was joining on “debriefing” morning, during which the 20 or so women were giving a status report on what they’d learned, enjoyed, found challenging, etc. Since the discussion was in Kiswahili, I had some trouble deciphering it. I got the main ideas, though, esp because they were focusing on emotions and reactions. Some of the exercises were physical, too, with women walking around the room to express their response to the questions Salma posed them. I think they said they were delighted with Salma’s openness, surprised that they had learned so much about feminism, and excited to develop their independent research projects in the next few weeks.

This diverse group comes from many parts of the country: Songea, Mbeya, Kibera, as well as cities like Arusha, Moshi, Dodoma, Dar and of course Zanzibar. Some women are activists, others are academics or teachers. There’s real bonding and solidarity going on, thanks to Salma’s careful planning (women applied to be a part of it, and it was a selective process).

The first day, Wednesday, I just listened. The second day, Friday, I worked with one group of women who had relatively proficient in English. We focused their research ideas and reviewed the basic components of a research paper. By the end we devised a working thesis or two. I shared with them things I’d learned as a writing instructor in the freshmen liberal arts classes, and they seemed genuinely happy (if nervous to get started on their projects). Salma’s doing some really important work here, empowering Tanzanian women personally and intellectually. Some of the research ideas involve reproductive health and family planning counseling for girls 15-18, prostitution, and obstacles to secondary school education. Students were surprisingly open to my suggestions, and I was amazed by their passion and enthusiasm. It’s no small feat for them to write 20-page papers in English (I haven’t really touched on this topic, but most Tanzanians use Kiswahili in school until secondary school, which means they suddenly have to learn and write in English. It makes for a very lopsided proficiency). This week students will propose their research projects to the group, and we’ll give feedback. I also offered to read drafts.

Other acquaintance news: I attended an Alliance Francaise course with Professor Christophe (who also teaches at UDSM), and comes from Normandy. The Tanzanian students in my class are very sweet and I’m sure we’ll get to know each other. P leaves for South Africa on Friday, and I may go to Kipepeo Beach with Kat, an American Rotary Fellow, and a friend of hers for Saturday. There’s a concert Thursday—a Malian musician named Ba Cissoko sponsored by the French Embassy.

Josephine's Knee - originally published on March 15, 2007

Josephine is our 30-something housekeeper. I’ve wanted to write about her for some time now, but couldn’t find the words.

J plays netball, a sport played only by women in Tanzania, akin to volleyball (as far as I understand, although I haven’t watched it). She is also a star gospel singer who’s recorded an album and sings often at area churches. Every time her cell phone rings, it plays a riff from her most famous tune – it’s a lighthearted, cheery one.

J is the guardian of our house, having worked and lived here for over 10 years. In rural Illinois, of course, I don't have a housekeeper, but here she accomplishes all kinds of handy tasks: she changes our sheets, washes the floors, dusts around, orders water, buys household supplies (but not food) and provides essential cultural information. She’s been an enigma for many a director, who have trouble understanding her rhythm. Some have not appreciated her living here; accustomed to privacy, they find her a disturbance and therefore ask her not to spend the night here. Then she makes the 1 1/2 hour commute home each night, or stays with a friend on campus. We thought this was a bit selfish to ask her to do this since we are only two people living in a 4-bdroom house. There have been some minor frustrations at this situation, which I think, largely result from cross-cultural misunderstandings about work expectations. The strangest was when J had to leave for a week when an older sister passed away. As the second eldest sister, J had to travel far to the region of Mbeya, near Zambia, to take care of the funeral arrangements. During her absence, she had her younger sister, Itika, replace her. Since we usually pay J to do our laundry, we thought it appropriate this week to pay Itika instead. But when J returned, she was quite adamant that she should be paid instead of Itika. It took us nearly a day to unravel the cultural logic of her request (she’s the sister who takes care of everyone else, so if she doles out work to her younger sister, then SHE is the one who must be paid). I finally understood her thinking, but found out later that it is not necessarily shared by other Tanzanians.

Last night, J damaged her knee while playing netball. A different sister rushed in during our Wednesday night student dinner to tell us the news, and get some of J’s things to take with her to the hospital. I spied her in the ambulance as it pulled out of the driveway; the pain was wretched, and she came home late last night with a cast on her leg.

This morning she called me in to her room to say that two sisters were coming to do the chores this morning under her supervision, and that one would stay here for a few weeks while Josephine recuperates. Just now they are bustling around the kitchen, boiling water for tea, cleaning up our breakfast dishes (one of her regular assignments, I was told at the start), and washing some rags outside in the courtyard. I know that J’s income is the most considerable in the family. I bet that the sisters depend on it to such an extent that the minute she falls they must come pick her back up again. What is a mere twisted knee in the face of sister power?

Maasailand, beef and boycotts

Even though it's not spring here (no, it’s the rainy season), for spring break the student groupo here headed to the north of Tanzania—on the border of Kenya – on a cultural field trip after our classes ended. We feared our trip would suffer from the weather, but the rain started late—bad for crops but good for us. It’s daunting to describe all our experiences (and this might explain why it’s taken me so long to blog about it); it all went so fast and we learned so much—with each day we spent time with a new ethnic group: the Pare, the Chagga and the Masai. Tanzania is unique from its neighbors because the country has more than 120 ethnic groups. In a Maasai traditional village or boma at the foot of sacred Mount Longido , we listened to a storyteller-guide tell us about Maasai life. The pastoral Maasai, it is said, are one of the only groups who stick to tradition in spite of the pressure to modernize. Even those Maasai who seem to have abandoned their ways, hawking beautiful bead jewelry in Dar markets, lead their cows to graze across highways dressed in the Shuka. We stepped inside one of their dwellings to hear how men are the community leaders, often leaving the village for days at a time to take care of cattle. Women are responsible for house construction and maintenance. We saw few adult men around, and so concluded that they were often absent, in the fields. Usually, tours include a taste of Maasai beef bought in the market, but Rift Valley Fever—transmitted through eating uncooked beef, put a kibosh on that. This disease hasn’t been to traumatic, but it gave us the opportunity to praise vegetarianism to our students!

Not long after returning to Dar, a student boycott of classes started, causing the government to ask all UDSM undergraduates to leave campus without taking their final exams. I can still hear the uproar on campus, the singing of protest songs, and the marching of their feet down paths. I can still the sticks held by some more radical students who guarded classes to make sure other students weren’t breaking the strike. By May 4, students are supposed to submit a letter requesting re-entrance, so they can take their final exams starting May 14. Campus is empty, only foreign students left, hanging out in empty dorms. We ramble around campus and run into a few acquaintances from time to time.