soapbox, sailors

All last week I found myself mounted firmly atop my high horse and unable to climb down until I finally just fell off as a result of a lot of sailors and too many margaritas (by this I mean 2 total, Mom) at the US embassy. My summary makes the night sound far more debauched than it was, but I did hit the dance floor way too early and way too hard. Before that I’d been slowly simmering in my own self-righteousness and penning wild tirades like this one (careful, it’s long):




(04 September 07) Saturday was the month mark, but I think I missed my culture shock cue. I don’t care what I do or where I go from here on out, but this is my favorite place on EARTH. A lot of people here are already craving comfort foods and yesterday Hannah was bemoaning the distance between her and Gator football, but the only things I really miss are people, and Gainesville’s gotten me used to living without those (save for those three friends I accidentally made there) a while ago. I’ve written everyone who’s given me addresses at this point (Swahili class is as dull as the limits of your imagination will take you) so this might get painfully redundant, but I want to say something about the hardest part of Tanzania - it isn’t cold showers or squatter toilets, but rather coming to terms with being white.

Because here’s the thing - my country (most countries) has robbed this continent blind and left it for dead. A half a century of bad to terrible African leaders with too few exceptions doesn’t erase the fact that white people have been doing much worse for much longer. The only fairly elected leader Congo-Kinshasa (my neighbor to the west) has ever known was assassinated in a CIA-orchestrated coup. Damn commies, right? Except Patrice Lumumba pushed non-violence as a means of effecting change, and his US-installed successor siphoned billions of dollars off of the Congolese economy and became the 4th richest man in the world. Now 80% of that country lives on less than 50 cents a day. 50 cents a day! I lose as much to couches.

AND YET everyone here is so nice. I can’t even explain. The woodcarvers taking care of us in Mwenge and showing such unabashed gratitude, Mama Kaya pulling Elizabeth aside when she was crying from homesickness and just wrapping her up in a silent bear hug, schoolgirls telling us we’re beautiful (which is an entirely different animal). It’s true - we have at least four or five men a day come up to us wanting this or that favor, and some are uncomfortably pushy - but wouldn’t you be? Tanzania isn’t a golden ladder of opportunities - neither is America, but the two don’t compare. And how do I shrug my shoulders and smile apologetically, explaining that no, even though I have this nice iPod and this nice laptop and have five shirts for every one of yours, I don’t really have the means to sponsor this or fund that. A lot of drama just went down because our Swahili discussion leader, Elisha, kept asking to borrow things or if we knew of scholarship opportunities or if we could help him in his search for financial aid to support his higher education. The long and short of it is that he was almost fired because of cultural misunderstandings, and although everything more or less worked out, the fact remains that people see us as moneybags with legs. And it’s easy to see why.

And no, I didn’t personally enslave Africa, but every day I revel in the benefits made possible by the people who did. I’m so impressed by the monumental effort by this nation to forgive and move forward, but if anything that‘s only added to my sense of shame. It’s not that I hate America, or white people, or my life - I love all those things. It’s hard to explain, except to say that I feel like a walking reminder of a whole continent’s extremely painful past. But where in the hell does that kind of awareness get you if you’re still unwilling to change? Because here I sit, happily click-clacking away at my laptop. One of the most memorable things I’ve ever read was a quote by Paul Farmer (the book about him is called Mountains Beyond Mountains, /shameless plug) that basically says that you don’t get to change the world without changing your own life. Real progress means real sacrifice. And I’m not that big of a person yet.

And this is not what was supposed to happen to me in Africa. I was not supposed to get so preachy, flailing my arms and screaming down from my soapbox. The plan was to find some cool, subversive tactics to slowly turn people on to the idea that we need to right some wrongs (or have we meddled enough?), but here I am and I cannot stop myself from wanting to yell at everybody and everything. The shock of my return to America will be much worse than anything I’ve experienced here, because I don’t think I’ll be able to stomach the contrast. And I’m so stupidly irrational, because this is not the stuff change is made of. I don’t respond well to unprovoked attacks on my moral fiber, and no one else should either. I’m just going to sit here and pout and get mad at people for having money. All in a productive day’s work.





ANYWAYS. This weekend wasn’t a change of heart so much as a reminder that things happen slowly, and that being a petulant child doesn’t make me any friends. After stepping onto technically American soil Friday evening and having a really, really good time, I remembered a lot of good things about America and rediscovered my own fallibility, courtesy of “Brickhouse” and a live band. I would not have traded that night for the world. Everyone else in our program left for Bagamoyo, a tiny coastal city just north of Dar, Friday morning, but Hannah and Elizabeth and I stayed behind to take care of some errands and avoid the mess of traveling in such a huge pack. The Indiana girls on the floor above us tipped us off to a party at the American embassy, so we went out to dinner at a really nice Indian restaurant and then hit that up afterwards. As previously mentioned I danced my little heart out with moves to rival Elaine’s, and met a lot of really…nice (i.e. tall, dark, handsome!) people. We’re so used to 8 girls to 1 (highly pretentious) boy that it was nice to be on the flip side, not to hate on my gender or anything. In fact, I love every single girl in my program, and the best part of the night Friday was hanging out with Hannah and Elizabeth and just laughing and talking. Tanzania is not in any way stressful, but it was nice to go home for a little while.

The bus rides to our mandatory cultural excursions have been my favorite part of the mandatory cultural excursions so far because I just sit by the window with my iPod (this is what I’m talking about, awareness with no motivation to change) and watch the countryside. When the three of us stragglers finally got there early Saturday afternoon everyone else was already biking around town in 90 degree heat for some heritage tour, so we sat on the beach and talked to some locals for a while. Some of the children started crying when they saw us, so the women revealed that when children are behaving badly they’re told to straighten up or the mzungu will get them. We’re boogeymen in Tanzania. Which explains why Nyandula, a precious two-year-old at the orphanage, starts screaming every time we enter the room. Actually, that could also be because Hannah, impervious to the “subtleties” of Kiswahili, keeps calling her Ndovu. Which means ugly elephant.

That night we rode piki piki (motorcycles) to dinner. We were riding 11-deep on a two-lane dirt road and literally WEAVING in and out of traffic. It was a lot a lot of fun, and afterwards we watched Tanzania v. Mozambique on the All in the Family retro tv set. What?

So that brings us to this week, registration. Basically, campus is a circus and NOBODY, not even administration, has any idea what is going on. When do we register? Where do we register? When do we move in with our Tanzanian roommates? Why is my name not even on the list to get a room? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, come back tomorrow . Okay…what time should I stop by? I don’t know. This is how all conversations in Tanzania go. So wish me luck with all this and cross your fingers so that I don’t end up homeless. In Tanzania. Because there are few worse fates to befall me. Although I guess I’d probably be in good company (there I go again!).

Happy Birthdays to Andy, Mom, Mallory, Natalie, and Fast Alex. If I don’t have your address, it’s your own fault you’re not getting anything.