Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Myth: Saving Lives
One random day in the course of my life came this thought out of nowhere that changed my perception about service work all together: there is no such thing as saving a life. At least there is no such thing in the sense I always thought. Everyone dies. It’s that simple. So as aid workers and health professionals attempt to “save lives”, it’s in actuality prolonging a life or improving the quality of life. It’s not such a bold idea or revolutionary thought but until that point, I was entranced by the thought saving a life and finding a means to do so.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Year in Reflection
So far this year, my lucky year of the rabbit according to Chinese astrology, has given me the most amazing experiences. I thank my lucky stars for granting my wish of traveling the world in between finishing graduate school and starting a full time position. I continue to learn and grow as a person and be in awe of the world. Since January, I made the holiday trip back home to New Jersey to reunite with family and friends and then headed for Asia from end of January til March to see cleft lips and palates for the first in India while observing other public health inequities and then reconnected with long lost family in Thailand. April was the month that I was finally able to go to Haiti and meet an already existing family network that I fell into. May was the official end of MPH through graduation and NJ visitors while concentrating on launching Room for Compassion. I spent the month of June in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Tanzania with the greatest honor of carrying out public health/genetic research for Operation Smile and later the multiple programs for Room for Compassion. I still find it hard to believe that I am still at the same age of 23 because I turned this age while in Tanzania last year, changed my viewpoints on life and have since made a return trip to Shirati. So now I find it helpful to reflect and recap on the last 7 months through the following themes:
Culture: Dance, Drink, Food
Every new country is like an island to be explored thoroughly especially in its people and customs. I’m convinced that us Westerners can spend most of a lifetime in another culture and probably still learn from that culture. Food is one of the big pleasures in life for me. I grew up with a father as a Tex/Mex and Chinese chef and a mother that created the most divine Thai food. In college, I was an amateur food critic for the school newspaper and savored (pun intended) every moment. The problem with constant traveling and trying new food, other than the fear of intestinal consequences, is that you eat the most divine food and know that you will never know food that good again unless you returned to that specific region. I ate street food and homemade food in most of the countries I traveled to and albeit some minor diarrhea, it was well worth it. I reminisce about the seafood, noodles, and thai tea in Thailand, paneer and masalas of India, ugali and chips my eye in Tanzania, coffee and homemade food in Haiti. I notice that every country has its own selection of beer and sampling it all is a small adventure on its own from Dos Equis and Corona in Mexico, Saqqara in Egypt, Ndovo, Serengeti, Safari in Tanzania, Guinness in Ireland (best beer ever), Chang in Thailand. I like collecting tea from different countries, if you are ever in my apartment, I would be more than happy to let you sample tea from Tanzania, Ethiopia & Egypt. Dancing is one of my favorite cultural aspects to observe and learn. Back in 2008, I used to dance the night away nearly every night to the salsa and Reggaeton beats in the nightclubs of Guadalajara and even took dance lessons when I returned to the U.S. In Haiti, the GAP kids loved dancing and so did I. I had the most memorable moment while one of the sweet mannered kids, Jean Woody, and I danced in the pouring rain. In India, the one dance I learned looked like beautiful flocking birds as I danced to Hindi music in my sari. I practiced bachata and salsa in the Dominican Republic. I didn’t quite get to learn the Congolese local dances, but did want to. I also like the club scene in LA. In my recent trip to Shirati, I danced the night away at a wedding to Bongo flavor music, cool Caribbean-African sounding tunes.
Roots: NYC, Thailand, Shirati
I half wanted to go back home to New Jersey/NYC area this past Christmas. First, my family doesn’t do the Christmas thing anymore, we used to have trees and families over and presents but since us kids have grown and families have all moved away, putting up the tree is just unnecessary effort in the house. Secondly its cold and I’m coming from So Cal weather. Third, I always find that my maximum time of being home and not getting into an altercation with my mother is about 2 weeks and I was supposed to spend over 3 weeks home. This Christmas was the first in 7 years that I spent fully with my family since I used to spend it with 2-3 different families. My mom, dad, brother and I go to where my parents love most, Chinatown, NYC. It was the place they lived when they immigrated to the U.S. and learned the restaurant business and it’s also an ethnically Asian place, a respite away from our all white town and all white food. On the car ride home from eating and seeing the big NY Christmas tree, something extraordinary happened. I asked to stop by the apartment where my parents began living the American dream and they recounted so many stories for the hour-long car ride back from feeling outcast and homesick in such a different culture to working so hard that they would take naps in cars and be at the restaurant 7 days a week. The next 3-4 hours after that was my Christmas miracle. My parents and I were so enthralled in the conversation of their past that it continued at home, in my bedroom of all places. I somehow found it in my gut while my heart raced to bring up skeletons in our closet that have affected each one of us but never ever said out loud. To my surprise, I acted as a neutral mediator while my parents genuinely and honestly spilled their raw emotions about unresolved feelings, their insecurities and emotional pain throughout the years. I brought up my feelings of not having the soccer sideline supporting parents and sometimes having to grow up faster than I intended but at the same time thanked my back-breaking hard-working parents for everything I have ever gotten from them – unconditional love, sports, braces, Chinese school, freewill to choose my career, car insurance, etc. I was so glad it took everything inside of me to initially bring this up but I knew it then that it was one of those now or never moments. Many hours later, we end up embracing and I know that each one of us has left the burden we’ve been quietly and secretly carrying on our shoulders for the past 20 odd years and that my relationship with my parents would be forever different and their relationship with each other is somehow altered now for the better. I tearfully told them that I will always look back to this Christmas night long after they leave this world. Had we not had this discussion, maybe we would have taken all of our hurt to the grave. Getting to the root of the problem gives you the best chance at solving it.
A few weeks after leaving New Jersey feeling fulfilled and at peace with myself and my family, I headed to India and then Thailand to explore my familial roots. My dad is from Cambodia and fled as a refugee in 1975 to the US. He worked in restaurants and met my mother’s father in New York. After he saw a picture of my mother, my dad was instantly in love and waited two years before being able to leave and return to the US and embarked to Thailand. After 6 months of meeting, when my mom had a boyfriend at the time, they fell instantly in love and had a large wedding ceremony in Thailand and then migrated back to the US. I think about how different my life would have been had my parents chose to stay in Thailand instead. Out of my mother’s family of 7 children, all 4 girls immigrated to the U.S. while all 3 boys stayed in Thailand. As I was thinking about what would life be growing up in Thailand, I wondered about how I would have fit in racially, unlike in Byram, and if I would have ever learned English or if I would be attracted to Thai boys. When I was there, I realized just how different I was being brought up American. My tan skin didn’t go over well with grandma and the culture of skin bleaching and snow white skin. Families are more tight-knit and I think I would have liked that growing up knowing my dozens of cousins and kids my age. I was a little too independent, I noticed, as my grandma fretted about me taking a taxi by myself to the airport and holding my hand crossing the street. If she only could see me roaming around India in a taxi and Tanzania on local motorcycles. In America, you try to get out of the house at 18 and are determined to basically never return back to mom and dad’s basement unless it’s necessary but in Thailand, you stay as long as possible and sometimes until marriage – actually this is similar to upbringing in many countries I’ve seen. Had I been Thai, I would have been more religious and gone to Buddhist temples constantly and probably gossiped a lot more since that’s what my family did a lot of. Point in short, I reaffirmed my hypothesis at how drastically different my whole life would have been. Although my parents have enough money to retire to Thailand and live very well with servants and multiple houses, they choose to stay in the US to battle the cold NJ winters and work 2-3 jobs each. They always said it’s the opportunities in America that you cannot find anywhere else, the American dream.
My third connection to roots was returning back to Shirati, Tanzania. After spending 5 weeks there last summer, I didn’t want to leave and seriously considered skipping a semester of graduate school to stay and cancelling my safari. It felt like going back home to a place where I have this bond and instant connection. The same feeling I felt when I first visited and fell in love with Lycoming College. I’m super indecisive in 90% of my life choices and decisions but not with Shirati. As evidenced by my best friend Kelly referring to me upon my return from Tanzania as “post-Africa Steph”, my time in the village drastically changed me on the inside and makes me strive to constantly be a better person and now I know my life ambitions. To step foot back in the place that started a new chapter in my life was beyond words. All of the different vulnerable areas that I feel passionate about from school sponsorship to microlending and girls empowerment, I was able to engage in during my trip. I again wish I could have stayed much much longer but loved being there for a brief visit.
Empathy/Compassion: Guwahati, Bangkok, Dar-es-Salaam
I never had a particular desire to go to India. It’s not that I have anything against the country or people, it’s just that there were maybe 20 countries I wanted to go to before India and nothing specifically piqued my interest except maybe the Taj Mahal. I’m a firm believer in everything happening for a reason. Three weeks before departing, I learned from my boss that he wanted me to go to India and observe an Operation Smile mission. As the plane landed in Guwahati, I could see and smell the poverty. Unlike normal people, being immersed in poverty excites my closest friends and I, not in a sick sadistic way, but in the way that we know we are going out of our element and will have our life views altered after this experience. This is what happened in India. A lot of it reminded me of sub-Saharan Africa but there were many public health practices much worse. The pollution, latrines, sanitation and water systems were things that at times horrified me and made me realize the work that needs to be done in India. On my last day in Guwahati as I spoke through a translator, a group of children the oldest being no older than 16, said that well water as the thing they wanted most if they had assistance. This moment sticks with me and if possible, I want to return to Guwahati and follow-up. India stole the heart of Kelly in the way Tanzania did to me, she is going back for one year and I couldn’t be more excited and proud of Kelly.
During my time in Thailand, I felt a different form of empathy. I met one Burmese woman working for my extended family. The language barrier prevented me from asking her questions about her life dreams and current circumstances, but I sensed that she was looking for a better life than in Burma and was able to connect with her with very little language exchange. I felt immediate compassion for a begging 11 year old boy while sitting at a restaurant overlooking the pier in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. Luckily, I had two friends able to translate with me, and was touched to learn how hard-working and determined this little boy named David was. He was the income provider for his grandma and younger brother by begging for a maximum of 1,000 Tsh (about 60 cents) a day. David had dreams of becoming a boat captain, which would mean going to secondary school and university. When my friend Castor gave him his cell phone number in case he ever needed anything, David asked if he could receive help buying books for school.
Sometimes the poverty I see in the U.S. and abroad can initially feel overwhelming. And sometimes people feel so overwhelmed by it, they tend to ignore it by walking tunnel visioned past the homeless in New York or LA or ignoring the begging children while vacationing in Cancun. I think that acting on compassion is what defines us, makes us human and lets us reach out to humans that are complete strangers that we will probably never ever see again. Everyone has a different way to do this, whether donating change, volunteering, being involved with long term efforts. I remember arguing with my boyfriend, Matt, while we were in Haiti after I commented that him giving money to an elderly begging Haitian woman wasn’t “sustainable”. I’ve since been learning that sometimes sustainable or cost efficient ways of helping excludes the most vulnerable, namely populations that really can’t provide for themselves. I also personally realized that it’s wrong to criticize an act of good, unless it’s really beneficent with obviously bad long-term consequences (like undermining local economies by providing massive amounts of free stuff or aid).
Inner Peace: India, Thailand, Tanzania
I sought on to many of my recent destinations with the goals of giving to others and trying to empower locals, but my travels also had an unintended effect on me. I somehow became more spiritual. It sort of began when home in NJ and feeling relieved and peaceful after my Christmas miracle. Then in India, Kelly, Minh and I went to different temples and sat through multiple prayer ceremonies. I was introduced to the concept of meditation, something I clearly was aware of but never practiced. Then in Thailand, I visited countless Buddhist temples which all required kneeling and praying among the orange robed monks and magnificent golden statues of Buddha. In Tanzania, the beauty of nature and the smiles of the locals bring a sense of peace to my soul.
When asked, “what’s your religion?”, I usually answer Buddhist. My parents are Buddhist by tradition but neither are practicing or religious. My grandma sort of is, she goes to temples all the time, is superstitious and participates in many Buddhist ceremonies. For awhile, when I was growing up, I wanted to be Christian but for all the wrong reasons. Since most of my friends went to church and Sunday school and I heard about how great it all was, I wanted to join the group. I’ve met staunchly religious people in my time, and liked some more than others. I never liked the “lets knock on your door and convert you” devotees of any religion. Its condescending and imperialistic to impose or force feed a religion. Unfortunately, it’s been done all too successfully...look around the world, it’s clear that many indigenous cultures have been re-wired and sometimes forced to convert to a Western religion. Also horrible are the wars over religion, I mean, if human beings were truly devoted, wouldn’t there be harmony rather than killing? Religious humanitarian organizations that either require you to be of their religion to receive aid or the ones that bring bibles or Scientology principles to “save” souls rather than medicine or life-saving materials to help all regardless of religion is ridiculous. But as a whole, I’ve had mostly positive experiences with very religious and devout people. Many of them are actually very open minded and are respectful of other beliefs or lack thereof. I have many religious friends. I respect the many devoted individuals that stick to their religious principles and not just half-ass their declared religion. I imagine its difficult amongst all the criticism and disdain for faith in many parts of America to stay true to your beliefs. I admire that religious organizations raise the most money and do so much good since it’s an important principle to give, especially to the poor.
I think I’m more agnostic. My belief system initially began from my parents’ beliefs of reincarnation, past lives, soulmates, existence of the supernatural and an afterlife. I like the Buddhist concept of living in the middle line and not gravitating towards extremes. The karmic system in India and Hinduism is appealing to me too as is meditation and calmness. I like the Christian principles of serving others and avoiding the 7 deadly sins. I think there are many more religions that I want to learn about still and incorporate some of their ideals. I notice a similarity that arises between different beliefs. There is first and foremost a belief in an afterlife. A lot of religions admire selfless, giving figures and promote a life of peace.
At first inspired by a sense of calm, tranquility and inner peace within myself as I spend time in nature and become more humbled by situations I see, I realized that it is in this state of existence that is deemed most connected with whatever higher power there is. Many describe it as being in bliss and pure love but all the time. I was told by a Thai monk that meditation and clearing the mind of thoughts is the way to go. I really enjoyed reading about Liz Gilbert’s spiritual journey in “Eat, Pray, Love” and how she sought after this same state of existence through months of meditation and reflection in India. Being in Tanzania and sometimes in the Buddhist temples in Thailand or the tranquil Hindu temple on monkey island in Guwahati gave me this sense of inner peace and made me realize this is what I should seek on a spiritual level. Easier said than done of course, quieting the mind of my very random curious thoughts or not getting agitated ever are not things that I’ve been practicing. In my life, whenever I want to change something about myself which is usually one or two things at all times, I try to focus my efforts from repeating a negative behavior or thought and aspire to be a better person. I’ve realized that after the few months of traveling, being spiritually aware is something that I want to work on.
Culture: Dance, Drink, Food
Every new country is like an island to be explored thoroughly especially in its people and customs. I’m convinced that us Westerners can spend most of a lifetime in another culture and probably still learn from that culture. Food is one of the big pleasures in life for me. I grew up with a father as a Tex/Mex and Chinese chef and a mother that created the most divine Thai food. In college, I was an amateur food critic for the school newspaper and savored (pun intended) every moment. The problem with constant traveling and trying new food, other than the fear of intestinal consequences, is that you eat the most divine food and know that you will never know food that good again unless you returned to that specific region. I ate street food and homemade food in most of the countries I traveled to and albeit some minor diarrhea, it was well worth it. I reminisce about the seafood, noodles, and thai tea in Thailand, paneer and masalas of India, ugali and chips my eye in Tanzania, coffee and homemade food in Haiti. I notice that every country has its own selection of beer and sampling it all is a small adventure on its own from Dos Equis and Corona in Mexico, Saqqara in Egypt, Ndovo, Serengeti, Safari in Tanzania, Guinness in Ireland (best beer ever), Chang in Thailand. I like collecting tea from different countries, if you are ever in my apartment, I would be more than happy to let you sample tea from Tanzania, Ethiopia & Egypt. Dancing is one of my favorite cultural aspects to observe and learn. Back in 2008, I used to dance the night away nearly every night to the salsa and Reggaeton beats in the nightclubs of Guadalajara and even took dance lessons when I returned to the U.S. In Haiti, the GAP kids loved dancing and so did I. I had the most memorable moment while one of the sweet mannered kids, Jean Woody, and I danced in the pouring rain. In India, the one dance I learned looked like beautiful flocking birds as I danced to Hindi music in my sari. I practiced bachata and salsa in the Dominican Republic. I didn’t quite get to learn the Congolese local dances, but did want to. I also like the club scene in LA. In my recent trip to Shirati, I danced the night away at a wedding to Bongo flavor music, cool Caribbean-African sounding tunes.
Roots: NYC, Thailand, Shirati
I half wanted to go back home to New Jersey/NYC area this past Christmas. First, my family doesn’t do the Christmas thing anymore, we used to have trees and families over and presents but since us kids have grown and families have all moved away, putting up the tree is just unnecessary effort in the house. Secondly its cold and I’m coming from So Cal weather. Third, I always find that my maximum time of being home and not getting into an altercation with my mother is about 2 weeks and I was supposed to spend over 3 weeks home. This Christmas was the first in 7 years that I spent fully with my family since I used to spend it with 2-3 different families. My mom, dad, brother and I go to where my parents love most, Chinatown, NYC. It was the place they lived when they immigrated to the U.S. and learned the restaurant business and it’s also an ethnically Asian place, a respite away from our all white town and all white food. On the car ride home from eating and seeing the big NY Christmas tree, something extraordinary happened. I asked to stop by the apartment where my parents began living the American dream and they recounted so many stories for the hour-long car ride back from feeling outcast and homesick in such a different culture to working so hard that they would take naps in cars and be at the restaurant 7 days a week. The next 3-4 hours after that was my Christmas miracle. My parents and I were so enthralled in the conversation of their past that it continued at home, in my bedroom of all places. I somehow found it in my gut while my heart raced to bring up skeletons in our closet that have affected each one of us but never ever said out loud. To my surprise, I acted as a neutral mediator while my parents genuinely and honestly spilled their raw emotions about unresolved feelings, their insecurities and emotional pain throughout the years. I brought up my feelings of not having the soccer sideline supporting parents and sometimes having to grow up faster than I intended but at the same time thanked my back-breaking hard-working parents for everything I have ever gotten from them – unconditional love, sports, braces, Chinese school, freewill to choose my career, car insurance, etc. I was so glad it took everything inside of me to initially bring this up but I knew it then that it was one of those now or never moments. Many hours later, we end up embracing and I know that each one of us has left the burden we’ve been quietly and secretly carrying on our shoulders for the past 20 odd years and that my relationship with my parents would be forever different and their relationship with each other is somehow altered now for the better. I tearfully told them that I will always look back to this Christmas night long after they leave this world. Had we not had this discussion, maybe we would have taken all of our hurt to the grave. Getting to the root of the problem gives you the best chance at solving it.
A few weeks after leaving New Jersey feeling fulfilled and at peace with myself and my family, I headed to India and then Thailand to explore my familial roots. My dad is from Cambodia and fled as a refugee in 1975 to the US. He worked in restaurants and met my mother’s father in New York. After he saw a picture of my mother, my dad was instantly in love and waited two years before being able to leave and return to the US and embarked to Thailand. After 6 months of meeting, when my mom had a boyfriend at the time, they fell instantly in love and had a large wedding ceremony in Thailand and then migrated back to the US. I think about how different my life would have been had my parents chose to stay in Thailand instead. Out of my mother’s family of 7 children, all 4 girls immigrated to the U.S. while all 3 boys stayed in Thailand. As I was thinking about what would life be growing up in Thailand, I wondered about how I would have fit in racially, unlike in Byram, and if I would have ever learned English or if I would be attracted to Thai boys. When I was there, I realized just how different I was being brought up American. My tan skin didn’t go over well with grandma and the culture of skin bleaching and snow white skin. Families are more tight-knit and I think I would have liked that growing up knowing my dozens of cousins and kids my age. I was a little too independent, I noticed, as my grandma fretted about me taking a taxi by myself to the airport and holding my hand crossing the street. If she only could see me roaming around India in a taxi and Tanzania on local motorcycles. In America, you try to get out of the house at 18 and are determined to basically never return back to mom and dad’s basement unless it’s necessary but in Thailand, you stay as long as possible and sometimes until marriage – actually this is similar to upbringing in many countries I’ve seen. Had I been Thai, I would have been more religious and gone to Buddhist temples constantly and probably gossiped a lot more since that’s what my family did a lot of. Point in short, I reaffirmed my hypothesis at how drastically different my whole life would have been. Although my parents have enough money to retire to Thailand and live very well with servants and multiple houses, they choose to stay in the US to battle the cold NJ winters and work 2-3 jobs each. They always said it’s the opportunities in America that you cannot find anywhere else, the American dream.
My third connection to roots was returning back to Shirati, Tanzania. After spending 5 weeks there last summer, I didn’t want to leave and seriously considered skipping a semester of graduate school to stay and cancelling my safari. It felt like going back home to a place where I have this bond and instant connection. The same feeling I felt when I first visited and fell in love with Lycoming College. I’m super indecisive in 90% of my life choices and decisions but not with Shirati. As evidenced by my best friend Kelly referring to me upon my return from Tanzania as “post-Africa Steph”, my time in the village drastically changed me on the inside and makes me strive to constantly be a better person and now I know my life ambitions. To step foot back in the place that started a new chapter in my life was beyond words. All of the different vulnerable areas that I feel passionate about from school sponsorship to microlending and girls empowerment, I was able to engage in during my trip. I again wish I could have stayed much much longer but loved being there for a brief visit.
Empathy/Compassion: Guwahati, Bangkok, Dar-es-Salaam
I never had a particular desire to go to India. It’s not that I have anything against the country or people, it’s just that there were maybe 20 countries I wanted to go to before India and nothing specifically piqued my interest except maybe the Taj Mahal. I’m a firm believer in everything happening for a reason. Three weeks before departing, I learned from my boss that he wanted me to go to India and observe an Operation Smile mission. As the plane landed in Guwahati, I could see and smell the poverty. Unlike normal people, being immersed in poverty excites my closest friends and I, not in a sick sadistic way, but in the way that we know we are going out of our element and will have our life views altered after this experience. This is what happened in India. A lot of it reminded me of sub-Saharan Africa but there were many public health practices much worse. The pollution, latrines, sanitation and water systems were things that at times horrified me and made me realize the work that needs to be done in India. On my last day in Guwahati as I spoke through a translator, a group of children the oldest being no older than 16, said that well water as the thing they wanted most if they had assistance. This moment sticks with me and if possible, I want to return to Guwahati and follow-up. India stole the heart of Kelly in the way Tanzania did to me, she is going back for one year and I couldn’t be more excited and proud of Kelly.
During my time in Thailand, I felt a different form of empathy. I met one Burmese woman working for my extended family. The language barrier prevented me from asking her questions about her life dreams and current circumstances, but I sensed that she was looking for a better life than in Burma and was able to connect with her with very little language exchange. I felt immediate compassion for a begging 11 year old boy while sitting at a restaurant overlooking the pier in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. Luckily, I had two friends able to translate with me, and was touched to learn how hard-working and determined this little boy named David was. He was the income provider for his grandma and younger brother by begging for a maximum of 1,000 Tsh (about 60 cents) a day. David had dreams of becoming a boat captain, which would mean going to secondary school and university. When my friend Castor gave him his cell phone number in case he ever needed anything, David asked if he could receive help buying books for school.
Sometimes the poverty I see in the U.S. and abroad can initially feel overwhelming. And sometimes people feel so overwhelmed by it, they tend to ignore it by walking tunnel visioned past the homeless in New York or LA or ignoring the begging children while vacationing in Cancun. I think that acting on compassion is what defines us, makes us human and lets us reach out to humans that are complete strangers that we will probably never ever see again. Everyone has a different way to do this, whether donating change, volunteering, being involved with long term efforts. I remember arguing with my boyfriend, Matt, while we were in Haiti after I commented that him giving money to an elderly begging Haitian woman wasn’t “sustainable”. I’ve since been learning that sometimes sustainable or cost efficient ways of helping excludes the most vulnerable, namely populations that really can’t provide for themselves. I also personally realized that it’s wrong to criticize an act of good, unless it’s really beneficent with obviously bad long-term consequences (like undermining local economies by providing massive amounts of free stuff or aid).
Inner Peace: India, Thailand, Tanzania
I sought on to many of my recent destinations with the goals of giving to others and trying to empower locals, but my travels also had an unintended effect on me. I somehow became more spiritual. It sort of began when home in NJ and feeling relieved and peaceful after my Christmas miracle. Then in India, Kelly, Minh and I went to different temples and sat through multiple prayer ceremonies. I was introduced to the concept of meditation, something I clearly was aware of but never practiced. Then in Thailand, I visited countless Buddhist temples which all required kneeling and praying among the orange robed monks and magnificent golden statues of Buddha. In Tanzania, the beauty of nature and the smiles of the locals bring a sense of peace to my soul.
When asked, “what’s your religion?”, I usually answer Buddhist. My parents are Buddhist by tradition but neither are practicing or religious. My grandma sort of is, she goes to temples all the time, is superstitious and participates in many Buddhist ceremonies. For awhile, when I was growing up, I wanted to be Christian but for all the wrong reasons. Since most of my friends went to church and Sunday school and I heard about how great it all was, I wanted to join the group. I’ve met staunchly religious people in my time, and liked some more than others. I never liked the “lets knock on your door and convert you” devotees of any religion. Its condescending and imperialistic to impose or force feed a religion. Unfortunately, it’s been done all too successfully...look around the world, it’s clear that many indigenous cultures have been re-wired and sometimes forced to convert to a Western religion. Also horrible are the wars over religion, I mean, if human beings were truly devoted, wouldn’t there be harmony rather than killing? Religious humanitarian organizations that either require you to be of their religion to receive aid or the ones that bring bibles or Scientology principles to “save” souls rather than medicine or life-saving materials to help all regardless of religion is ridiculous. But as a whole, I’ve had mostly positive experiences with very religious and devout people. Many of them are actually very open minded and are respectful of other beliefs or lack thereof. I have many religious friends. I respect the many devoted individuals that stick to their religious principles and not just half-ass their declared religion. I imagine its difficult amongst all the criticism and disdain for faith in many parts of America to stay true to your beliefs. I admire that religious organizations raise the most money and do so much good since it’s an important principle to give, especially to the poor.
I think I’m more agnostic. My belief system initially began from my parents’ beliefs of reincarnation, past lives, soulmates, existence of the supernatural and an afterlife. I like the Buddhist concept of living in the middle line and not gravitating towards extremes. The karmic system in India and Hinduism is appealing to me too as is meditation and calmness. I like the Christian principles of serving others and avoiding the 7 deadly sins. I think there are many more religions that I want to learn about still and incorporate some of their ideals. I notice a similarity that arises between different beliefs. There is first and foremost a belief in an afterlife. A lot of religions admire selfless, giving figures and promote a life of peace.
At first inspired by a sense of calm, tranquility and inner peace within myself as I spend time in nature and become more humbled by situations I see, I realized that it is in this state of existence that is deemed most connected with whatever higher power there is. Many describe it as being in bliss and pure love but all the time. I was told by a Thai monk that meditation and clearing the mind of thoughts is the way to go. I really enjoyed reading about Liz Gilbert’s spiritual journey in “Eat, Pray, Love” and how she sought after this same state of existence through months of meditation and reflection in India. Being in Tanzania and sometimes in the Buddhist temples in Thailand or the tranquil Hindu temple on monkey island in Guwahati gave me this sense of inner peace and made me realize this is what I should seek on a spiritual level. Easier said than done of course, quieting the mind of my very random curious thoughts or not getting agitated ever are not things that I’ve been practicing. In my life, whenever I want to change something about myself which is usually one or two things at all times, I try to focus my efforts from repeating a negative behavior or thought and aspire to be a better person. I’ve realized that after the few months of traveling, being spiritually aware is something that I want to work on.
7/2/11 Perfect Strangers
In the morning I catch a bus from Dar-es-Salaam headed for Nairobi. I could have taken a flight, but the bus was so much cheaper at 50,000 Tsh ($33 USD). The bus is pretty nice, much nicer than dala dalas. It’s kind of like a coach bus you would take in the states with big seats and overhead compartment storage except there is no bathroom on the bus. I get to the bus station at 6:30am and wait on the bus until it fills up at about 7:30am. I sleep for a good chunk of the ride and commence to finishing Eat, Pray, Love as well as writing a little bit. They overfill the bus, typical, and some people who don’t have a seat actually remain standing for hours or sit on the floor. I marvel at the scenery while driving from Dar to Moshi and Arusha but don’t see Kilimanjaro from the road. I look over at my fellow Tanzanians and wonder how they entertain themselves. Besides a cell phone, nobody has a book or newspaper and they don’t seem to marvel at the scenery like I do. Then I think about how American it is of me, to be on a relaxing long bus ride and still need to neurotically find something to entertain myself.
When we reach Arusha, I ask a man on the bus if I can borrow his cell phone since my half functioning SIM card or phone refuses to allow me to load more credits unless I use someone else’s phone. He ends up sitting next to me and we chat for the next few hours. The man, I forget his name at the moment, is a business man selling beauty products and soap in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. I talk about my work with Operation Smile and Room for Compassion and my new friend is delighted at service work. I always find it easy to make new friends and many times it comes in handy. My new friend helps me get a good exchange rate when we arrive at the border. Some random guys at the Tanzania-Kenya border hand me 400 Kenyan shillings and tell me I need to take this to the Kenyan customs authority since its “compulsory”. So I start walking with it, thinking ok whatever, and the men demand that I give them 4,000 Kenyan shillings for it which they will promptly refund. I told them this makes no sense and try to hand them back their shillings and they say that no, I must go forward with it, its require. I angrily tell them that I’ve been at the Kenyan border several times and have never had to do this and that it makes no sense anyhow to give them 4,000 Ksh for 400 Ksh. After I tell them that I don’t even have that much money in Ksh or USD (which is actually kinda true being a poor mzungu), they finally leave me alone. It’s good to use common sense to avoid scams such as that. Had I been a newby, I probably would have fallen for it. I guess their trick must have worked for them to be constantly at the border making away like bandits with 3,600 Ksh ($45 USD), a significant sum of money if you’re living in poverty or own a tiny business. During the ordeal, my new friend was unfortunately not there, but he did later help me grab a cab at 11:30pm from the bus station in Nairobi to the Mennonite Guest House. I end up staying up all night so enthralled by electricity, hot showers and fast internet.
The next morning around 6:30am, I am jetted off to another mode of transportation, a flight to London and then eventually Los Angeles. I also make friends with the man sitting next to me. He is a Kenyan returning back to his dual business in Boston and Nairobi. We chat for a few hours on the plane ride. I sort of booked the cheapest hotel possible in London which advertised airport transfers. But when I e-mailed the hotel, they apparently don’t have airport transfer and instead recommend taking a taxi from Heathrow to their location past the center of London about 20 miles away. They estimate the one-way taxi costing 40 English pounds, which is actually slightly more than I’m paying for the night. I try to Google Map public transit but it estimates a transit time of 3 hours. I ask my new friend, Peter, about how he is getting back and if he would mind if his friend showed me a cost effective way to get where I need to go. Peter offers that I stay at his friend’s house with his family and after I double check if its alright, I decide to go for it. Peter’s friend Steve is a Kenyan living in London. They happily chat in Swahili as I get in the car and when asked if I mind, I say not at all. To me, it’s comforting and I’m sort of used to it when Fred and his friends were catching up in Swahili and when Pili and Enock converse in Swahili/Luo. Hearing the East African dialect lets me hang on to the last of Africa before returning back to LA and not being able to return for awhile. I love the way Kenyans and Tanzanians laugh. They laugh all the time and heartily about everything. They very much live the hakuna matata lifestyle which is worry-free. I know that the culture is all about hospitality in the mi casa es su casa style of the Hispanic culture and that is why I accepted the offer to stay at a perfect stranger’s friend’s house. When I arrive, there are several families of Kenyans having a barbeque at the condominium. It’s my first time in London outside of the airport and I sit in the backyard eating barbeque ribs with ugali and listening to the moms and dads converse in Swahili while their children, oblivious to Swahili and are first generation Brits, shout and swing on the playground set happily. After the guests leave, I go out to the pub and have a pint of Guinness, I forgot how good it is in Ireland and the UK. Peter and Steve and their friends drunkenly explain to me the culture of Kenyans, some of which I know and others I begin to understand, and are delighted that I know my 5 phrases in Swahili and can count to 10. I wonder how funny it looks, me being the little Asian American girl roaming around the empty streets of London with 5 large Kenyan men. I appreciate Steve and his wife’s hospitality for letting a perfect stranger stay in their home. Steve doesn’t allow me to pay for a taxi to the pub, my Guinness or the chicken wings we order afterwards. He also explains to me that to Africans, it is a blessing to have a guest and that you must dedicate yourself because in turn, you will bless your family and your guest and the world since kindness is circular. I listen to what he says an feel fortunate to be able to spend one more night immersed in the African culture. It’s also funny when the guys talk about cultural differences between Africa and Westerners like how when they hold hands with each other or other men in London, they were shocked to find out how that is perceived as a homosexual act. As I said my goodbyes in the morning while catching a cab to the airport, I genuinely offer my home to them in Los Angeles if they ever came back out to the West Coast and expressed my gratitude in their kindness to a stranger by treating me like family.
When we reach Arusha, I ask a man on the bus if I can borrow his cell phone since my half functioning SIM card or phone refuses to allow me to load more credits unless I use someone else’s phone. He ends up sitting next to me and we chat for the next few hours. The man, I forget his name at the moment, is a business man selling beauty products and soap in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. I talk about my work with Operation Smile and Room for Compassion and my new friend is delighted at service work. I always find it easy to make new friends and many times it comes in handy. My new friend helps me get a good exchange rate when we arrive at the border. Some random guys at the Tanzania-Kenya border hand me 400 Kenyan shillings and tell me I need to take this to the Kenyan customs authority since its “compulsory”. So I start walking with it, thinking ok whatever, and the men demand that I give them 4,000 Kenyan shillings for it which they will promptly refund. I told them this makes no sense and try to hand them back their shillings and they say that no, I must go forward with it, its require. I angrily tell them that I’ve been at the Kenyan border several times and have never had to do this and that it makes no sense anyhow to give them 4,000 Ksh for 400 Ksh. After I tell them that I don’t even have that much money in Ksh or USD (which is actually kinda true being a poor mzungu), they finally leave me alone. It’s good to use common sense to avoid scams such as that. Had I been a newby, I probably would have fallen for it. I guess their trick must have worked for them to be constantly at the border making away like bandits with 3,600 Ksh ($45 USD), a significant sum of money if you’re living in poverty or own a tiny business. During the ordeal, my new friend was unfortunately not there, but he did later help me grab a cab at 11:30pm from the bus station in Nairobi to the Mennonite Guest House. I end up staying up all night so enthralled by electricity, hot showers and fast internet.
The next morning around 6:30am, I am jetted off to another mode of transportation, a flight to London and then eventually Los Angeles. I also make friends with the man sitting next to me. He is a Kenyan returning back to his dual business in Boston and Nairobi. We chat for a few hours on the plane ride. I sort of booked the cheapest hotel possible in London which advertised airport transfers. But when I e-mailed the hotel, they apparently don’t have airport transfer and instead recommend taking a taxi from Heathrow to their location past the center of London about 20 miles away. They estimate the one-way taxi costing 40 English pounds, which is actually slightly more than I’m paying for the night. I try to Google Map public transit but it estimates a transit time of 3 hours. I ask my new friend, Peter, about how he is getting back and if he would mind if his friend showed me a cost effective way to get where I need to go. Peter offers that I stay at his friend’s house with his family and after I double check if its alright, I decide to go for it. Peter’s friend Steve is a Kenyan living in London. They happily chat in Swahili as I get in the car and when asked if I mind, I say not at all. To me, it’s comforting and I’m sort of used to it when Fred and his friends were catching up in Swahili and when Pili and Enock converse in Swahili/Luo. Hearing the East African dialect lets me hang on to the last of Africa before returning back to LA and not being able to return for awhile. I love the way Kenyans and Tanzanians laugh. They laugh all the time and heartily about everything. They very much live the hakuna matata lifestyle which is worry-free. I know that the culture is all about hospitality in the mi casa es su casa style of the Hispanic culture and that is why I accepted the offer to stay at a perfect stranger’s friend’s house. When I arrive, there are several families of Kenyans having a barbeque at the condominium. It’s my first time in London outside of the airport and I sit in the backyard eating barbeque ribs with ugali and listening to the moms and dads converse in Swahili while their children, oblivious to Swahili and are first generation Brits, shout and swing on the playground set happily. After the guests leave, I go out to the pub and have a pint of Guinness, I forgot how good it is in Ireland and the UK. Peter and Steve and their friends drunkenly explain to me the culture of Kenyans, some of which I know and others I begin to understand, and are delighted that I know my 5 phrases in Swahili and can count to 10. I wonder how funny it looks, me being the little Asian American girl roaming around the empty streets of London with 5 large Kenyan men. I appreciate Steve and his wife’s hospitality for letting a perfect stranger stay in their home. Steve doesn’t allow me to pay for a taxi to the pub, my Guinness or the chicken wings we order afterwards. He also explains to me that to Africans, it is a blessing to have a guest and that you must dedicate yourself because in turn, you will bless your family and your guest and the world since kindness is circular. I listen to what he says an feel fortunate to be able to spend one more night immersed in the African culture. It’s also funny when the guys talk about cultural differences between Africa and Westerners like how when they hold hands with each other or other men in London, they were shocked to find out how that is perceived as a homosexual act. As I said my goodbyes in the morning while catching a cab to the airport, I genuinely offer my home to them in Los Angeles if they ever came back out to the West Coast and expressed my gratitude in their kindness to a stranger by treating me like family.
7/1/11 Zanzibar
Enock finally arrives at night and we all spend the night at Fred’s house so that we can go to Zanzibar early. Unfortunately, the ferry does not run on Africa time like everything else, and left sharply at 7:15am. We arrived at 7:20am and had to wait until 9:30am to catch the next ferry to the island that was once an independent country on a 2 hour boat ride. I am glad to be able to pay for Enock and Pili’s ticket, which costs 1/3 of my non-Tanzanian ticket. They have been in Dar many times but never to Zanzibar or on a boat. Sometimes I forget the privilege I was born into and how unfair it was that my friends who were around my age would not be able to afford a $26 boat ride, which is more than even the most educated person in Shirati makes in one day.
Enock is studying marine agriculture, kind of like marine biology with an emphasis on fisheries, so he was delighted to be on the boat. I loved catching up with Enock and Pili. Enock is enjoying his studies and hopes to come back to Shirati and work with the fisheries management on Lake Victoria. Pili is the top of her class at her nursing school but she misses home since is about a 24 hours bus ride away from Shirati. Pili, the headstrong and determined no-b.s. woman, is in love to my delight and her boyfriend is a economics student near Dar named Gerry and I get to talk to him on the phone when he calls like 10x’s a day. Pili and Enock spend half of the 2.5 hour boat ride outside enjoying the wind and rocking of the boat. They are also very happy to see each other again since the childhood friends have not seen each other since last October before leaving for university in Shirati. Unfortunately, the last ferry leaves at 3:30pm and we arrive at about 12pm and spend about a half hour buying a return ticket and waiting in line so we have such precious time on the island. I briefly meet up with some of the mzungus that stayed in Shirati since they coincidentally happened to be in Zanzibar as well. Then the three of us wandered to an old church to learn about the slave trade from a personal tour guide.
Zanzibar used to be a slave trade hub where the slaves captured from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and other East African nations were chained at the neck and forced to Zanzibar. They were then crammed into tiny underground chambers for men and women and without food, water or bathrooms for several days. Once slaves were ready for auction, they were brought out under a big tree and whipped. The ones that cried were worth less since they were not deemed as strong. Men were sold and sometimes a child or two was thrown in for free, an extra incentive for your property. Women were also sold. Leftover children that were not given away were slaughtered and thrown into the ocean since they were considered useless for working and time consuming to raise. Most slaves sold ended up in the Middle East and some slaves were brought from Zanzibar to West Africa. Male slaves were castrated in the Middle East to prevent them sleeping with the slave owner’s wife. Pili and Enock were as horrified as I was as we were learning about this gruesome history and witnessing the small cramped underground chambers and the very tree that the auctioning would occur. Humans are capable of so much good and so much evil. I still can’t imagine viewing slaves as property and not as human simply because of the color of their skin. One priest back during the slave trade days felt the same way. He would purchase the most sick slaves and provide health care and release them. I forget his name, but he eventually built a church after the abolishment of the slave trade and the church sits above where some of the 15 underground chambers used to be. A monument was created in his name as well as the memory of all who perished and suffered during this horrible human rights violation.
As an American, I am always appalled to recently learn of all of these different human rights violations in the past and present and feeling so ignorant for not knowing. It’s not completely my own fault since our media features stories centric to America or the war. Our history books revolve around American history and once deviated to the Holocaust. If the purpose of learning history in public schools is to teach us about the past and not re-learn mistakes, then why don’t we learn about it all over the world. The ethnic cleansing in Rwanda in the 1990’s. The current oppression and human rights violation in North Korea and Burma. The utopian agrarian society model that failed in both Tanzania and Cambodia. I only recently started bringing to reality all of the atrocities in Cambodia from 1975-9 from which my dad fled as a refugee and learned that 25% of the population was slaughtered especially city-dwellers and intellectuals and the survivors were forced into concentration camps. The weapons for this massacre were provided by the US and China. There are also policies that undermined Haiti’s government and development by the French and US. The more I learned about US military history supporting Mubarak in Egypt until his overthrow or involvement in Libya prior to the current situation, the more shocked I am about the infliction of violence and control and how this ultimately makes the poor of the countries suffer while supporting the corrupt. Maybe it is no coincidence our education ignores international history.
Regressing back to Zanzibar, we run and catch the last ferry and Enock and Pili again enjoy their second boat ride. Since today was full of new experiences, I suggest that we try a new ethnic food that neither of them has tried. We rule out hamburgers since both have tried it. Pili is decided on Indian food and Asian food when I bring it up and Enock wants to try that and pizza. To our luck, we enter a sort of food court with 5 fast food places. So it’s definitely not going to be authentic and gourmet food, but it’s a good way for us to try Indian, Chinese, and Thai food as well as pizza and ice cream. I found bottled diet coke and was quite pleased. What a great day in Zanzibar and a perfect last night with my two good friends. We all have to return back to our schools/home tomorrow but know that we will meet again. I know that sadly I won’t be able to return for probably another year or two but promise to come back again.
Enock is studying marine agriculture, kind of like marine biology with an emphasis on fisheries, so he was delighted to be on the boat. I loved catching up with Enock and Pili. Enock is enjoying his studies and hopes to come back to Shirati and work with the fisheries management on Lake Victoria. Pili is the top of her class at her nursing school but she misses home since is about a 24 hours bus ride away from Shirati. Pili, the headstrong and determined no-b.s. woman, is in love to my delight and her boyfriend is a economics student near Dar named Gerry and I get to talk to him on the phone when he calls like 10x’s a day. Pili and Enock spend half of the 2.5 hour boat ride outside enjoying the wind and rocking of the boat. They are also very happy to see each other again since the childhood friends have not seen each other since last October before leaving for university in Shirati. Unfortunately, the last ferry leaves at 3:30pm and we arrive at about 12pm and spend about a half hour buying a return ticket and waiting in line so we have such precious time on the island. I briefly meet up with some of the mzungus that stayed in Shirati since they coincidentally happened to be in Zanzibar as well. Then the three of us wandered to an old church to learn about the slave trade from a personal tour guide.
Zanzibar used to be a slave trade hub where the slaves captured from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and other East African nations were chained at the neck and forced to Zanzibar. They were then crammed into tiny underground chambers for men and women and without food, water or bathrooms for several days. Once slaves were ready for auction, they were brought out under a big tree and whipped. The ones that cried were worth less since they were not deemed as strong. Men were sold and sometimes a child or two was thrown in for free, an extra incentive for your property. Women were also sold. Leftover children that were not given away were slaughtered and thrown into the ocean since they were considered useless for working and time consuming to raise. Most slaves sold ended up in the Middle East and some slaves were brought from Zanzibar to West Africa. Male slaves were castrated in the Middle East to prevent them sleeping with the slave owner’s wife. Pili and Enock were as horrified as I was as we were learning about this gruesome history and witnessing the small cramped underground chambers and the very tree that the auctioning would occur. Humans are capable of so much good and so much evil. I still can’t imagine viewing slaves as property and not as human simply because of the color of their skin. One priest back during the slave trade days felt the same way. He would purchase the most sick slaves and provide health care and release them. I forget his name, but he eventually built a church after the abolishment of the slave trade and the church sits above where some of the 15 underground chambers used to be. A monument was created in his name as well as the memory of all who perished and suffered during this horrible human rights violation.
As an American, I am always appalled to recently learn of all of these different human rights violations in the past and present and feeling so ignorant for not knowing. It’s not completely my own fault since our media features stories centric to America or the war. Our history books revolve around American history and once deviated to the Holocaust. If the purpose of learning history in public schools is to teach us about the past and not re-learn mistakes, then why don’t we learn about it all over the world. The ethnic cleansing in Rwanda in the 1990’s. The current oppression and human rights violation in North Korea and Burma. The utopian agrarian society model that failed in both Tanzania and Cambodia. I only recently started bringing to reality all of the atrocities in Cambodia from 1975-9 from which my dad fled as a refugee and learned that 25% of the population was slaughtered especially city-dwellers and intellectuals and the survivors were forced into concentration camps. The weapons for this massacre were provided by the US and China. There are also policies that undermined Haiti’s government and development by the French and US. The more I learned about US military history supporting Mubarak in Egypt until his overthrow or involvement in Libya prior to the current situation, the more shocked I am about the infliction of violence and control and how this ultimately makes the poor of the countries suffer while supporting the corrupt. Maybe it is no coincidence our education ignores international history.
Regressing back to Zanzibar, we run and catch the last ferry and Enock and Pili again enjoy their second boat ride. Since today was full of new experiences, I suggest that we try a new ethnic food that neither of them has tried. We rule out hamburgers since both have tried it. Pili is decided on Indian food and Asian food when I bring it up and Enock wants to try that and pizza. To our luck, we enter a sort of food court with 5 fast food places. So it’s definitely not going to be authentic and gourmet food, but it’s a good way for us to try Indian, Chinese, and Thai food as well as pizza and ice cream. I found bottled diet coke and was quite pleased. What a great day in Zanzibar and a perfect last night with my two good friends. We all have to return back to our schools/home tomorrow but know that we will meet again. I know that sadly I won’t be able to return for probably another year or two but promise to come back again.
6/30/11 Hope in the city
I am ever grateful to my friend Fred Chacha for happening to journey to Dar-es-Salaam for work perfectly timed at the end of my stay and for allowing me to accompany him. Because of this, I am able to reunite with my friends from last year. Enock and Pili were our translators last year and endured walking 6-8 hours every day in the hot sun to survey hut to hut and accomplish our study. They are both intelligent and talented people currently in university. I was saddened when I found out that they attended school too far away to return to Shirati but then was uplifted when I knew they could make it to Dar-es-Salaam. Another friend, Castor, I met through Melody. Castor studied in Italy with Melody and was once pursuing theological studies to become a priest but now wants to finish his Master in Public Administration.
I reunite with Pili early in the morning and Fred drives us around Dar-es-Salaam. I really like this city. There is as much unpredictable never-ending traffic as LA but it has a friendlier and less of bustle feel than Nairobi. Dar is humid and we can see the Indian ocean as we drive around. Fred, being an incredible friend, goes directly to find that wheelchair I need for Freddy Obote, the 13 year old boy in Shirati crippled from the waist down and will be given a chance to go to school for the first time in his life. I am delighted when we find it. The wheelchair is a little above my budget, but Rashim, a USC medical student has generously offered to cover the difference and personally deliver this wheelchair to Freddy. Fred in Dar will bring this 30+ pound wheelchair with him as a checked bag and lug it all the way to Shirati so that this may be accomplished.
Pili and I wander around Dar and eat some local food before we head over to meet Castor after his class ends at 3pm. After I embrace Castor, he tells me I look African now. It’s true, my arms are quite dark after a month in Africa. The three of us take a dala dala, local mini-bus, to the pier. I sort of chuckle at the fact that I’m a cheap mzungu and end up taking local transit instead of paying for a private car and driver like most mzungus. This always gives me the best moments from banging my head really hard (many times) on a tap tap in Haiti to cramming 6 people in a 3 person autorickshaw in India and to squeezing like sardines into a dala dala filled with about 50 people but seats maybe 20. Another thing that amuses me about Dar is the fact that they have autorickshaws/tok tok things. I find this highly amusing that the same 3 wheeled barely motorized vehicle with mini windshield wipers and plastic roof are found in India, Thailand and apparently Tanzania.
Castor brings us to a restaurant overlooking the docs. We start chattering about the work I’ve been doing in Shirati. Castor is from a rural village in the south of Tanzania near Mozambique. He was able to get sponsored to attend school in Czech and then in Italy to complete his seminary studies. Castor speaks Swahili, English, Italian, Czech and his tribal language. While he was in Czech, he became involved in helping out his home village. He realized that so many talented students were unable to afford secondary school, which costs about $40 a year. He invited some of the most poor students into his home and learned about their lives and encouraged them to help with harvesting a garden to teach the kids some basic skills while working alongside them. He managed to inspire some Czechs to directly sponsor these students and ensures that their tuition is paid for. Since the economic downturn, some of the sponsors withdrew and Castor is no longer in Czech to recruit more. He had asked for the assistance of Melody and I last summer and we liked his cause but never really followed up. Now that we are doing similar things in Shirati and have a website, I am hoping we can partner with Castor to do this noble thing of helping out his home village.
As we were engrossed in conversation, a young boy with a sad face and red t-shirt approaches us and asks for money. How could I possibly be engaged in a passionate discussion about helping educate children and see this boy looking to us with desperation and hope and ignore the situation. I usually don’t give out money anymore, so I instead offered to buy the boy food and a soda which he savored and ate. Through Pili and Castor, I was able to find out that the boy’s name is David and he is in 5th grade and about 11 years old. His father died and his mother went away (possibly ran away) so he lived with his grandma across the channel. He said that he has to beg to be able to feed his grandma, himself and a younger brother. At 11 years old, David is the income provider for his impoverished family. Touched by his story, I inquired about his school, how much did he normally make while begging and what did he want to be when he grew up. David is passionate about going to school and is able to earn about 1,000 Tsh (less than $1 USD) a day begging and save just enough money to pay for uniform and shoes. He said his dream job is to be a boat captain, to which Pili and Castor gave a small chuckle and explaining that this was a very prestigious career requiring university education. I was so impressed by this young boy and his drive and determination. I offered to buy him whatever groceries he needed for his family and asked Castor if it was ok to provide his cell phone number to the boy, which Castor of course agreed. David asked Castor if it would be alright if he called Castor when he needed to buy books for school. I know that Castor will be a perfect role model for David. We brought David on a bus and to the local market to buy 3 kg of rice, 2 kg beans, cooking oil and 6th grade books. As he ran into a crowded dala dala at the end of the shopping, he had the kind of smile on your face where it shines through although you sort of try to suppress it. I no doubt see a bright future for David and tell Castor to let me know when David needs to be sponsored for secondary school, I would gladly contribute.
While sitting in the presence of David a little earlier, Castor told me in English, about a few begging children he met in Dar when he first returned from Czech. He also invited the brother and sister beggars to a nice restaurant and ordered food with them while men in business suits and other professionals looked on. He said the brother quickly ate all of his food while the sister was not touching her food. When he asked why, the brother said that she was saving her food for the grandmother. Castor, obviously touched by this selflessness, of course ordered another entrée to take home to the grandma and the little girl then ate her food. He said he wished he had their contact information and wonders what happened to them. At the end of the day, I know that meeting Castor through Melody last summer was no coincidence and that he will also be a lifelong friend.
I reunite with Pili early in the morning and Fred drives us around Dar-es-Salaam. I really like this city. There is as much unpredictable never-ending traffic as LA but it has a friendlier and less of bustle feel than Nairobi. Dar is humid and we can see the Indian ocean as we drive around. Fred, being an incredible friend, goes directly to find that wheelchair I need for Freddy Obote, the 13 year old boy in Shirati crippled from the waist down and will be given a chance to go to school for the first time in his life. I am delighted when we find it. The wheelchair is a little above my budget, but Rashim, a USC medical student has generously offered to cover the difference and personally deliver this wheelchair to Freddy. Fred in Dar will bring this 30+ pound wheelchair with him as a checked bag and lug it all the way to Shirati so that this may be accomplished.
Pili and I wander around Dar and eat some local food before we head over to meet Castor after his class ends at 3pm. After I embrace Castor, he tells me I look African now. It’s true, my arms are quite dark after a month in Africa. The three of us take a dala dala, local mini-bus, to the pier. I sort of chuckle at the fact that I’m a cheap mzungu and end up taking local transit instead of paying for a private car and driver like most mzungus. This always gives me the best moments from banging my head really hard (many times) on a tap tap in Haiti to cramming 6 people in a 3 person autorickshaw in India and to squeezing like sardines into a dala dala filled with about 50 people but seats maybe 20. Another thing that amuses me about Dar is the fact that they have autorickshaws/tok tok things. I find this highly amusing that the same 3 wheeled barely motorized vehicle with mini windshield wipers and plastic roof are found in India, Thailand and apparently Tanzania.
Castor brings us to a restaurant overlooking the docs. We start chattering about the work I’ve been doing in Shirati. Castor is from a rural village in the south of Tanzania near Mozambique. He was able to get sponsored to attend school in Czech and then in Italy to complete his seminary studies. Castor speaks Swahili, English, Italian, Czech and his tribal language. While he was in Czech, he became involved in helping out his home village. He realized that so many talented students were unable to afford secondary school, which costs about $40 a year. He invited some of the most poor students into his home and learned about their lives and encouraged them to help with harvesting a garden to teach the kids some basic skills while working alongside them. He managed to inspire some Czechs to directly sponsor these students and ensures that their tuition is paid for. Since the economic downturn, some of the sponsors withdrew and Castor is no longer in Czech to recruit more. He had asked for the assistance of Melody and I last summer and we liked his cause but never really followed up. Now that we are doing similar things in Shirati and have a website, I am hoping we can partner with Castor to do this noble thing of helping out his home village.
As we were engrossed in conversation, a young boy with a sad face and red t-shirt approaches us and asks for money. How could I possibly be engaged in a passionate discussion about helping educate children and see this boy looking to us with desperation and hope and ignore the situation. I usually don’t give out money anymore, so I instead offered to buy the boy food and a soda which he savored and ate. Through Pili and Castor, I was able to find out that the boy’s name is David and he is in 5th grade and about 11 years old. His father died and his mother went away (possibly ran away) so he lived with his grandma across the channel. He said that he has to beg to be able to feed his grandma, himself and a younger brother. At 11 years old, David is the income provider for his impoverished family. Touched by his story, I inquired about his school, how much did he normally make while begging and what did he want to be when he grew up. David is passionate about going to school and is able to earn about 1,000 Tsh (less than $1 USD) a day begging and save just enough money to pay for uniform and shoes. He said his dream job is to be a boat captain, to which Pili and Castor gave a small chuckle and explaining that this was a very prestigious career requiring university education. I was so impressed by this young boy and his drive and determination. I offered to buy him whatever groceries he needed for his family and asked Castor if it was ok to provide his cell phone number to the boy, which Castor of course agreed. David asked Castor if it would be alright if he called Castor when he needed to buy books for school. I know that Castor will be a perfect role model for David. We brought David on a bus and to the local market to buy 3 kg of rice, 2 kg beans, cooking oil and 6th grade books. As he ran into a crowded dala dala at the end of the shopping, he had the kind of smile on your face where it shines through although you sort of try to suppress it. I no doubt see a bright future for David and tell Castor to let me know when David needs to be sponsored for secondary school, I would gladly contribute.
While sitting in the presence of David a little earlier, Castor told me in English, about a few begging children he met in Dar when he first returned from Czech. He also invited the brother and sister beggars to a nice restaurant and ordered food with them while men in business suits and other professionals looked on. He said the brother quickly ate all of his food while the sister was not touching her food. When he asked why, the brother said that she was saving her food for the grandmother. Castor, obviously touched by this selflessness, of course ordered another entrée to take home to the grandma and the little girl then ate her food. He said he wished he had their contact information and wonders what happened to them. At the end of the day, I know that meeting Castor through Melody last summer was no coincidence and that he will also be a lifelong friend.
6/29/11 Baadae Shirati, Karibu Dar-es-Salaam
My eyes squint to look outside as the car speedily passes by all the scenery. I try to take it all in. The wind blowing up red dirt and my hair collecting it all. The African sun that never fails to amaze me with its pounding rays. I look lovingly at the green grass, boulders balancing on boulders, women carrying large yellow jugs on their heads, clusters of straw and mud huts and feel a sense of inner peace I only receive when I’m here.
Baadae means “later”. Like the first time I left Shirati, I wish I didn’t have to leave again, or at least have another 6 months or something to complete all the work that I need to complete. Karibu means “welcome”. I’ve only ever been to Shirati while in Tanzania and the riches of the country are endless. I excitedly hop on a small puddle jumper in a racetrack-looking airport 2 hours away from Shirati in Musoma destined for the other side of the country in the city of Dar-es-Salaam which is conveniently found on the east coast of Africa and even more conveniently situated 1 hour away from Zanzibar, a once independent country that became a Tanzanian island. I am sad to go, but a little bit relieved that I may get a 3 day vacation from my vacation in Shirati which if you know me as being a workaholic, is not much of a hammock-swinging drunken lullaby two weeks.
Though it wasn’t the best idea work-wise or financially to be taking a 2 week break to Shirati, I couldn’t have made a better choice. Now when I return, about to sign on fulltime to a demanding international research study involving epidemiology and genetics and another study in cancer research, the next safari to Shirati may be later rather than sooner. I would have spent my entire years of vacation and more on this trip alone. My only consolation is that my job will not completely be a cubicle setting – the bane of any global public health worker’s existence. Actually, I am really excited to start working the minute I get back. I planned to arrive on the 4th so that I could maximize the holiday break and start work on the 5th. The research study is in its pilot stages but will eventually involve me managing the collection of genetics and epidemiological surveys from families in developing countries in multiple sites to study the cause of cleft lip and palate for USC and Operation Smile. I’m looking forward to getting my hands more into research, working on public health and of course, traveling internationally to do so.
My mind ponders back to the present. What a profound difference this trip to Shirati was from my last. No longer uncertain of my surroundings, the minute I arrived, I jumped out of the van to greet all of my local friends and then walked to the center of town. I’m not sure if I ever felt comfortable enough to walk around alone last year and was always part of some group, but this trip, I was totally uninhibited and walked where I pleased. I stopped brushing my teeth with bottled water and decided to just go with the sink well water. I ate food at locals’ houses rather than politely make an excuse…and the ugali and fish and watermelon were completely delish. The favorite part was reuniting with everyone from Babu and his sponsor mom to the soccer team and Killion. Rather than being pressed by the ambitious research study that Mel and I designed last year, I spent this trip working on multiple projects, all of them I am passionate about, and having extreme flexibility in plans. I do feel like my work was just beginning and then I have to leave. One thing does sadden me, I wanted to reunite with Junior, a 10 year old boy I met last summer that was severely mentally handicapped, and his struggling single mother that I at first resented and then befriended. I heard his mom moved to Dar-es-Salaam to seek a better job and nobody had her contact info and that she left Junior and her two sons split between 2-3 different extended families. I felt disappointed and guilty for not helping her earlier, if only I knew about microloans last year and could have offered her one or gave her more concrete solutions to deal with Junior’s situation, she wouldn’t have been forced to leave her low paying job in Shirati and leave behind her kids to a city that is a 13 hour car ride away. I know there’s not much I can do now, I wanted to see Junior but he was pretty far away in a village none of my local friends were familiar with. I do know that Junior and his mom profoundly touched my life, their situation breaking my heart and leaving me with a drive to want to do something about it.
I hope to be better about communicating with the SHED Foundation in Shirati, our partner organization in carrying out basically everything. I left SHED with a comprehensive exit plan detailing my wishes to carry out sponsorships and monthly stipends as well as plans for the soccer team. I am also more energized than ever to return and proceed with fundraising and legalizing Room for Compassion. I know I’ll be back in Shirati, until then, baadae.
Baadae means “later”. Like the first time I left Shirati, I wish I didn’t have to leave again, or at least have another 6 months or something to complete all the work that I need to complete. Karibu means “welcome”. I’ve only ever been to Shirati while in Tanzania and the riches of the country are endless. I excitedly hop on a small puddle jumper in a racetrack-looking airport 2 hours away from Shirati in Musoma destined for the other side of the country in the city of Dar-es-Salaam which is conveniently found on the east coast of Africa and even more conveniently situated 1 hour away from Zanzibar, a once independent country that became a Tanzanian island. I am sad to go, but a little bit relieved that I may get a 3 day vacation from my vacation in Shirati which if you know me as being a workaholic, is not much of a hammock-swinging drunken lullaby two weeks.
Though it wasn’t the best idea work-wise or financially to be taking a 2 week break to Shirati, I couldn’t have made a better choice. Now when I return, about to sign on fulltime to a demanding international research study involving epidemiology and genetics and another study in cancer research, the next safari to Shirati may be later rather than sooner. I would have spent my entire years of vacation and more on this trip alone. My only consolation is that my job will not completely be a cubicle setting – the bane of any global public health worker’s existence. Actually, I am really excited to start working the minute I get back. I planned to arrive on the 4th so that I could maximize the holiday break and start work on the 5th. The research study is in its pilot stages but will eventually involve me managing the collection of genetics and epidemiological surveys from families in developing countries in multiple sites to study the cause of cleft lip and palate for USC and Operation Smile. I’m looking forward to getting my hands more into research, working on public health and of course, traveling internationally to do so.
My mind ponders back to the present. What a profound difference this trip to Shirati was from my last. No longer uncertain of my surroundings, the minute I arrived, I jumped out of the van to greet all of my local friends and then walked to the center of town. I’m not sure if I ever felt comfortable enough to walk around alone last year and was always part of some group, but this trip, I was totally uninhibited and walked where I pleased. I stopped brushing my teeth with bottled water and decided to just go with the sink well water. I ate food at locals’ houses rather than politely make an excuse…and the ugali and fish and watermelon were completely delish. The favorite part was reuniting with everyone from Babu and his sponsor mom to the soccer team and Killion. Rather than being pressed by the ambitious research study that Mel and I designed last year, I spent this trip working on multiple projects, all of them I am passionate about, and having extreme flexibility in plans. I do feel like my work was just beginning and then I have to leave. One thing does sadden me, I wanted to reunite with Junior, a 10 year old boy I met last summer that was severely mentally handicapped, and his struggling single mother that I at first resented and then befriended. I heard his mom moved to Dar-es-Salaam to seek a better job and nobody had her contact info and that she left Junior and her two sons split between 2-3 different extended families. I felt disappointed and guilty for not helping her earlier, if only I knew about microloans last year and could have offered her one or gave her more concrete solutions to deal with Junior’s situation, she wouldn’t have been forced to leave her low paying job in Shirati and leave behind her kids to a city that is a 13 hour car ride away. I know there’s not much I can do now, I wanted to see Junior but he was pretty far away in a village none of my local friends were familiar with. I do know that Junior and his mom profoundly touched my life, their situation breaking my heart and leaving me with a drive to want to do something about it.
I hope to be better about communicating with the SHED Foundation in Shirati, our partner organization in carrying out basically everything. I left SHED with a comprehensive exit plan detailing my wishes to carry out sponsorships and monthly stipends as well as plans for the soccer team. I am also more energized than ever to return and proceed with fundraising and legalizing Room for Compassion. I know I’ll be back in Shirati, until then, baadae.
6/26/11 Microloan Excitement
Whenever I feel this rush of excitement and energy after meeting or thinking about work is when I reaffirm that I have found my true calling and passion. This is how I felt just after meeting with Dorothy Kawira, a local nurse who is also the mom of my good friend and translator Enock. Dorothy and her husband Ezra heard about the programs I was working on my short visit to Shirati and started telling me how they were also passionate about poverty alleviation and are involved with a local microloan program. Ezra told me that he worked with a German girl a few years back and met with 10 subvillages and established microfinance in the form of group loans and savings accounts managed by each village subchairperson. The discussion flowed rapidly from there as we talked about the many different models, solidarity groups, Muhammed Yunus, Fonkoze in Haiti and most importantly how he was interested in getting involved with the local effort with the SHED Foundation and Room For Compassion. Ezra gave me a microloan application form that he uses as well as a sort of check book balance sheet. After the hour long lunch invitation and discussion about microlending and a private primary English school they established, I happily walk home alone invigorated by the meeting and counting my lucky stars for finding yet another local person that has experience and passion in microfinance.
After much thinking and a meeting with Josiah and Rosie the other day, it seems to make sense to establish at least 2 or 3 different types of microloans. During the microloan meeting, it was very clear that we had invited to our interest meeting two distinct groups of women: one type were women that were single mothers and ran successful businesses and wanted loans to expand their current model and the second type of women were highly impoverished mothers that had no business experience and no means for occupation. It never occurred to me that we could have such a distinguishment when I pictured my group of “vulnerable single mothers in need of a business loan”. The successful business women were not interested in meager loans of $20 USD in a large group while the second group of women would be more inclined. The first group would have security, collateral, business experience and would very likely pay back their loan. The second group would have none of those things necessarily but are in much greater need of a loan to life themselves out of poverty. Rosie and Ezra are the local experts, but I proposed a 3 step system. The “Apprentice” loan would give inventory valued less than $20 to help train impoverished women individually. The “Entrepreneur” loan would provide small capital between $20-$199 over a short period of time in a mandatory solidarity group of 5 to help women with some business skills develop their own plans. The “Professional” loan would bse loans of $200+ to help the women with successful businesses expand and grow. This system would allow for already capable women to utilize a loan that will financially benefit the program when they return the money and interest.
After much thinking and a meeting with Josiah and Rosie the other day, it seems to make sense to establish at least 2 or 3 different types of microloans. During the microloan meeting, it was very clear that we had invited to our interest meeting two distinct groups of women: one type were women that were single mothers and ran successful businesses and wanted loans to expand their current model and the second type of women were highly impoverished mothers that had no business experience and no means for occupation. It never occurred to me that we could have such a distinguishment when I pictured my group of “vulnerable single mothers in need of a business loan”. The successful business women were not interested in meager loans of $20 USD in a large group while the second group of women would be more inclined. The first group would have security, collateral, business experience and would very likely pay back their loan. The second group would have none of those things necessarily but are in much greater need of a loan to life themselves out of poverty. Rosie and Ezra are the local experts, but I proposed a 3 step system. The “Apprentice” loan would give inventory valued less than $20 to help train impoverished women individually. The “Entrepreneur” loan would provide small capital between $20-$199 over a short period of time in a mandatory solidarity group of 5 to help women with some business skills develop their own plans. The “Professional” loan would bse loans of $200+ to help the women with successful businesses expand and grow. This system would allow for already capable women to utilize a loan that will financially benefit the program when they return the money and interest.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
6/25/11 Sheltered
It’s the shoes. Everyone here is poor to some extent, but it’s the ones without shoes that I notice are the poorest. For a long time, I hardly notice and pay little attention to feet but when I was walking alone in the town center of Kibwana, I look down at the feet of women selling their produce on floor mats on the dirt or children carrying large containers of water on their heads and see their tough beat up feet lacking the soles that my feet have never been without. The more I think about it, the more I notice it. In the ruttiest of huts, the entire family is barefoot tending to animals, machete-ing grass or playing. When I join the local boys or girls for soccer they are all barefoot. I think about trying to be tough or at least relating to their experience but realize real quickly that I won’t even last 5 minutes before stepping on some sharp rock or thorn or scorpion. I look down at my sensitive feet that burn in the hot California beach sand and my roughly pedicured toe nails and see yet another class and socio-economic distinction.
If you’ve ever been to sub-Saharan Africa and worked with locals, you may take funny notice at the secondhand clothing that Africans wear. It’s pretty much the clothes that are not only secondhand and left for the Salvation Army, but it’s the best of the best that don’t get sold. Sometimes you see a Blockbuster or Cracker Barrel employee polo and other times you see pick up lines, neon colored track suits, band camp tee shirts or other obviously unwanted apparel. Growing up, my parents always bought clothes brand new from department stores. I honestly didn’t even know what Salvation Army or secondhand clothing was until like college. Even shopping for clothes at Wal-Mart never really crossed my mind unless it was a t-shirt needed for a sports team fabric painting session. My family was not wealthy, at least not by north Jersey standards. But here was an entire village and possibly country or majority of the continent that lived off of the most used and unwanted shoes, shirts and items. I think it was after being exposed to this norm last summer that I stopped shopping for clothes for myself and if I did buy some, it had to be unbelievably cheap.
If you’ve ever been to sub-Saharan Africa and worked with locals, you may take funny notice at the secondhand clothing that Africans wear. It’s pretty much the clothes that are not only secondhand and left for the Salvation Army, but it’s the best of the best that don’t get sold. Sometimes you see a Blockbuster or Cracker Barrel employee polo and other times you see pick up lines, neon colored track suits, band camp tee shirts or other obviously unwanted apparel. Growing up, my parents always bought clothes brand new from department stores. I honestly didn’t even know what Salvation Army or secondhand clothing was until like college. Even shopping for clothes at Wal-Mart never really crossed my mind unless it was a t-shirt needed for a sports team fabric painting session. My family was not wealthy, at least not by north Jersey standards. But here was an entire village and possibly country or majority of the continent that lived off of the most used and unwanted shoes, shirts and items. I think it was after being exposed to this norm last summer that I stopped shopping for clothes for myself and if I did buy some, it had to be unbelievably cheap.
6/22/11 Microloan Meeting
Today was supposed to be a big day. The coaches were going to meet with the village secretary that will be signing over a plot of land to be the permanent girls soccer field. The boy with the epilepsy disorder and delinquent history was being brought back to Shirati for interviewing. I arranged for a 2pm meeting at the SHED office for all the women interested in a microloan.
The electricity has been functioning at about 50% of the time in Shirati so charging electronics and photocopying have been limited. I was happy to be able to copy more of the Swahili translated Room for Compassion media release forms used for anyone I take a picture or video of. I know that it’s not necessary to use this permission slip but feel that since it’s what you have to do in the US, I should do so here too. Killion and I walk over to the main village office which is a crumbling brick building void of finished floors. The secretary is not in, so we hang around Kibwana for a little bit. We don’t end up meeting with the village secretary about the soccer field but the coaches are very positive about it and think it will happen. They say that the town would like the girls team to be called the Shirati Shooting Stars Girls team if they inherit this field, which sounds awesome to me.
The interview with Harun goes well. The boy has small visible scars all over his arms. He answers the interview questions but is sometimes interrupted by his family correcting what he says. He is coherent and speaks up but at times seems confused. He wants to go back to school and I tell him to send more information about the school in Dar es Salaam to the SHED office about the school name and tuition.
I anxiously prepare for the microloan meeting with a brief agenda. Earlier in the morning, I was able to discuss the lending terms with Rosie and Josiah. We discussed the idea of lending out to a group of 5 women at $20 per woman with a repayment period of 3 months. No details on how often the loan will be repaid or interest rate has yet been publicized. I also run out to buy composition notebooks and pens for the women so they can write notes for the meeting. Killion and I were expecting maybe about 5 women or a max of 10. There was a total of 12 women that showed up with a few of them arriving very late. I briefly introduce myself and Room for Compassion and then talk about how microloans can help women create small businesses. I continue to say that we want to seek out the women with the most financial need combined with the best business plans. The groups are to be set up into five women and the loan will be the responsibility of the entire group so that if one woman defaults, the rest of the group must absorb her loan. The microloan solidarity group will be required to meet weekly and repay either weekly or biweekly, business classes will also accompany this model. After the explanation, the women were given a chance to ask questions and they had a lot of good questions. One woman asked if they could just instead do individual loans rather than group ones, another asked if we could raise the initial loan start since it is very low, there was a concern about what the interest rate would be and a question about how to repay the loan.
After the meeting, Killion and I interview each woman individually about her background and her proposal. Some women had ideas about expanding their current business, selling fish, tailoring and even a butcher shop. It is apparent, however, that some of the women have extensive business experience and success while others have not had any work experience and are in dire poverty. I know we need some way to address this difference. After the meeting, our upcoming objectives are to layout a specific interest and principal repayment table so all of the women can see the schedule as they had requested. I want to leave selection of which women will form the first solidarity group to Killion, Rosie and Josiah. I intend on developing basic business classes for Killion or Rosie to teach every 2-4 weeks, probably about marketing, budget management etc. The microloan program excites me but makes me nervous in case something is blatantly wrong. Most of my experience with microfinance is from reading books and articles so I’m very grateful to have found Rosie who has field experience.
The electricity has been functioning at about 50% of the time in Shirati so charging electronics and photocopying have been limited. I was happy to be able to copy more of the Swahili translated Room for Compassion media release forms used for anyone I take a picture or video of. I know that it’s not necessary to use this permission slip but feel that since it’s what you have to do in the US, I should do so here too. Killion and I walk over to the main village office which is a crumbling brick building void of finished floors. The secretary is not in, so we hang around Kibwana for a little bit. We don’t end up meeting with the village secretary about the soccer field but the coaches are very positive about it and think it will happen. They say that the town would like the girls team to be called the Shirati Shooting Stars Girls team if they inherit this field, which sounds awesome to me.
The interview with Harun goes well. The boy has small visible scars all over his arms. He answers the interview questions but is sometimes interrupted by his family correcting what he says. He is coherent and speaks up but at times seems confused. He wants to go back to school and I tell him to send more information about the school in Dar es Salaam to the SHED office about the school name and tuition.
I anxiously prepare for the microloan meeting with a brief agenda. Earlier in the morning, I was able to discuss the lending terms with Rosie and Josiah. We discussed the idea of lending out to a group of 5 women at $20 per woman with a repayment period of 3 months. No details on how often the loan will be repaid or interest rate has yet been publicized. I also run out to buy composition notebooks and pens for the women so they can write notes for the meeting. Killion and I were expecting maybe about 5 women or a max of 10. There was a total of 12 women that showed up with a few of them arriving very late. I briefly introduce myself and Room for Compassion and then talk about how microloans can help women create small businesses. I continue to say that we want to seek out the women with the most financial need combined with the best business plans. The groups are to be set up into five women and the loan will be the responsibility of the entire group so that if one woman defaults, the rest of the group must absorb her loan. The microloan solidarity group will be required to meet weekly and repay either weekly or biweekly, business classes will also accompany this model. After the explanation, the women were given a chance to ask questions and they had a lot of good questions. One woman asked if they could just instead do individual loans rather than group ones, another asked if we could raise the initial loan start since it is very low, there was a concern about what the interest rate would be and a question about how to repay the loan.
After the meeting, Killion and I interview each woman individually about her background and her proposal. Some women had ideas about expanding their current business, selling fish, tailoring and even a butcher shop. It is apparent, however, that some of the women have extensive business experience and success while others have not had any work experience and are in dire poverty. I know we need some way to address this difference. After the meeting, our upcoming objectives are to layout a specific interest and principal repayment table so all of the women can see the schedule as they had requested. I want to leave selection of which women will form the first solidarity group to Killion, Rosie and Josiah. I intend on developing basic business classes for Killion or Rosie to teach every 2-4 weeks, probably about marketing, budget management etc. The microloan program excites me but makes me nervous in case something is blatantly wrong. Most of my experience with microfinance is from reading books and articles so I’m very grateful to have found Rosie who has field experience.
6/21/11 Amateur
Josiah, a Tanzanian man that grew up in Shirati and went to the states for college and then married Dr. Esther, told me that “sometimes when you learn to drive for the first time, it works ok, but sometimes you can end up crashing.” This analogy was taken as some good advice after I was talking about the different RFC programs, especially jumping straight into microlending and scouting out kids to sponsor. I appreciated his wisdom and eagerly took up his suggestions. The first was to meet with him and Killion and they would help scribe a list of the neediest families in the area to be considered for primary and secondary school. As Josiah mentioned, everyone here is needy of assistance, but you need to find the truly needy. He also then told me that Rosie, the administrative assistant at the SHED office actually has a background in microfinance. I was elated to hear this since being intrigued with microlending, I’ve been longing to start this branch in RFC but am not totally educated on the ins and outs like setting up with amortization tables for principal and interest payments, managing solidarity groups or even what is the ideal amount to start with. For those that are clueless about microfinance as I was until last year, it is the provision of small loans (usually $300 or less) to mostly women so that they can use the loan and start a small business and eventually payback the microloan with interest. Microfinance is one of the most effective means of improving someone’s poverty status while amazingly is financially self-reliant. Once the interest is recouped, the revenue can be used towards other social businesses.
I am planning on holding a meeting tomorrow inviting all of the women we interviewed with Killion last October and some we interviewed just the other day. The point of the meeting is to gather all the women and explain the idea of microloans and have them submit a sort of business plan so that we can choose the most sound plans to fund. Rosie suggested that the best method is to start with a small loan (about $20) and give the women 3 months to repay this loan on a weekly or biweekly basis. She also strongly agrees with me when I suggest that business classes should be held in conjunction to educate the women and ensure success. The women will also be required to meet amongst themselves on a minimum weekly basis.
I spend the rest of the day going into a smaller subvillage across from the airstrip where the girls practice and scout out kids that are in need of school sponsorship. After this, Sarah and I head over to soccer practice at 4pm. I get to give out all those shoes we bought from the market so the girls were thrilled. It was incredible to see this team of girls running around in cleats and sneakers with knee high socks…they looked and played so well! A range rover of a wazungu family pulls over and is excited about the girls team and we have a discussion. The mom is looking for a good sabbatical spot so they drive from Ethiopia to Tanzania and the dad and kids are tagging along for a ride…I thought that was super cool and see myself doing something like that when I have a family.
I am planning on holding a meeting tomorrow inviting all of the women we interviewed with Killion last October and some we interviewed just the other day. The point of the meeting is to gather all the women and explain the idea of microloans and have them submit a sort of business plan so that we can choose the most sound plans to fund. Rosie suggested that the best method is to start with a small loan (about $20) and give the women 3 months to repay this loan on a weekly or biweekly basis. She also strongly agrees with me when I suggest that business classes should be held in conjunction to educate the women and ensure success. The women will also be required to meet amongst themselves on a minimum weekly basis.
I spend the rest of the day going into a smaller subvillage across from the airstrip where the girls practice and scout out kids that are in need of school sponsorship. After this, Sarah and I head over to soccer practice at 4pm. I get to give out all those shoes we bought from the market so the girls were thrilled. It was incredible to see this team of girls running around in cleats and sneakers with knee high socks…they looked and played so well! A range rover of a wazungu family pulls over and is excited about the girls team and we have a discussion. The mom is looking for a good sabbatical spot so they drive from Ethiopia to Tanzania and the dad and kids are tagging along for a ride…I thought that was super cool and see myself doing something like that when I have a family.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
6/20/11 Market Madness: Goats, kids and shoe shopping
Its Monday time, another awesome market day. I know I have a pretty busy day ahead of me. Killion and I bring Babu and Amir (a friend living in the hostel) to the market. Babu is wearing the cutest African outfit. I am happy to see him so well dressed and fed and remember that it was less than a year ago that Babu had the extended abdomen characteristic of starvation or parasites. When we arrive at the market, I know I need to buy 18 pairs of shoes. I also should buy socks for the soccer team but also can’t forget to pick up uniforms for some of the kids I want to sponsor for primary school. I need to remember to pick up food for Teresa just like last week.
I know that bargaining in Tanzania is not like bargaining anywhere else. They hardly drop the price unless you buy in bulk discount and even after then the prices are still high. The nice thing is that unlike in Congo, Thailand, Haiti, Mexico etc, merchants never chase after and harass you until you buy their stuff. I feel bad that I end up spending so much time bargaining and picking out 14 pairs of shoes that I leave Babu to be entertained by Amir. After hard bargaining through Killion, we get a great deal on cleats, sneakers and socks. I liked being able to spend some time with Babu throughout the day and wanted to take him shopping. I ended up purchasing a toothbrush, Swahili reading book, cookies, soccer shoes and soda for Babu. I also relish in the fact that unlike most American 6 year olds, Babu does not ever complain about standing around in the hot sun while I crawl around on piles of shoes and he never once begs to buy everything in the market.
We all walk through the expansive outdoor market and visit the different sections. There is the shoe area, clothing section, rice/beans pile, cassava piles and open field of cows and goats being sold. Amir and I decided that we were going to give goats as a gift for an upcoming wedding we were invited to. I am giddy at the thought of attending a local Tanzanian wedding and even more giddy about bringing a traditional gift. Since we wait til the end of the day to buy the goat, they ran out of female goats, which apparently everybody wants. Amir and I both look at this cute baby goat that’s cow colored and say “aww” at the same time. Then Killion says that the only female goat left has a kid and that for 6,000 Tsh more ($4 USD), we can have both the mom and the kid which happens to be the cow colored baby. So at the end of the market day, I have a goat and a kid, an actual African child, Killion, a huge bag filled with 14 pairs of shoes, 4 school uniforms, a bag of groceries and no ride home since we walked to Obwiri this morning. At first we start to walk back but the baby goat runs amuck, the mom goat tugs and is disobedient to Amir, Babu is taunting the big goat and we have way too much stuff. So then we grab a motorcycle with a red wagon on the back. It reminds me of a Flyer red wagon but grown-up version. After putting both goats in, the baby goat decides to jump out and run around. After nearly getting hit by a car, the baby goat is finally caught by locals that find the whole scenario amusing. The bumpy ride home leads us to the hostel where we tie the goat up and walk Babu to give food to Teresa. I felt pretty accomplished after the market today.
I listen to the pouring rain right now as the electricity is out for the night. Usually I love the rain and always have the urge to run in it or even dance when given the chance after a hot day, but am feeling guilty for enjoying the awesome downpour. I think about how Lucia, Teresa and Anejlina struggling in their huts with the holes in their roof and wonder how they sleep while being rained on.
I know that bargaining in Tanzania is not like bargaining anywhere else. They hardly drop the price unless you buy in bulk discount and even after then the prices are still high. The nice thing is that unlike in Congo, Thailand, Haiti, Mexico etc, merchants never chase after and harass you until you buy their stuff. I feel bad that I end up spending so much time bargaining and picking out 14 pairs of shoes that I leave Babu to be entertained by Amir. After hard bargaining through Killion, we get a great deal on cleats, sneakers and socks. I liked being able to spend some time with Babu throughout the day and wanted to take him shopping. I ended up purchasing a toothbrush, Swahili reading book, cookies, soccer shoes and soda for Babu. I also relish in the fact that unlike most American 6 year olds, Babu does not ever complain about standing around in the hot sun while I crawl around on piles of shoes and he never once begs to buy everything in the market.
We all walk through the expansive outdoor market and visit the different sections. There is the shoe area, clothing section, rice/beans pile, cassava piles and open field of cows and goats being sold. Amir and I decided that we were going to give goats as a gift for an upcoming wedding we were invited to. I am giddy at the thought of attending a local Tanzanian wedding and even more giddy about bringing a traditional gift. Since we wait til the end of the day to buy the goat, they ran out of female goats, which apparently everybody wants. Amir and I both look at this cute baby goat that’s cow colored and say “aww” at the same time. Then Killion says that the only female goat left has a kid and that for 6,000 Tsh more ($4 USD), we can have both the mom and the kid which happens to be the cow colored baby. So at the end of the market day, I have a goat and a kid, an actual African child, Killion, a huge bag filled with 14 pairs of shoes, 4 school uniforms, a bag of groceries and no ride home since we walked to Obwiri this morning. At first we start to walk back but the baby goat runs amuck, the mom goat tugs and is disobedient to Amir, Babu is taunting the big goat and we have way too much stuff. So then we grab a motorcycle with a red wagon on the back. It reminds me of a Flyer red wagon but grown-up version. After putting both goats in, the baby goat decides to jump out and run around. After nearly getting hit by a car, the baby goat is finally caught by locals that find the whole scenario amusing. The bumpy ride home leads us to the hostel where we tie the goat up and walk Babu to give food to Teresa. I felt pretty accomplished after the market today.
I listen to the pouring rain right now as the electricity is out for the night. Usually I love the rain and always have the urge to run in it or even dance when given the chance after a hot day, but am feeling guilty for enjoying the awesome downpour. I think about how Lucia, Teresa and Anejlina struggling in their huts with the holes in their roof and wonder how they sleep while being rained on.
6/18/11 Paralyzed hope
I finally get to work with Killion today. He is the oldest and arguably best translator in Shirati. Mel and I worked with him extensively last summer and he is the one I call on Skype every few months or so to see how Babu and the girls soccer team are doing. My agenda today is to interview families that take care of someone with a disability – both mental and physical. I also mention that I would like to see another new subvillage so we head to one called Michire.
The first family interviewed lives near the Kawiras and SHED hostel where I stay. I heard about a mentally challenged boy that stole money from the SHED hostel and from the Kawiras. The rumor is that he stole on 2 separate occasions and was caught and beaten. Killion suggested we start there and I agree. The boy is named Harun and his mother died a long time ago and his father is a local pastor that is currently studying something seminary related in Kenya. Harun and his stepmother apparently clash and Killion said rumors were flying that she either encouraged him to possibly steal or drove him to steal because of potential mistreatment. At the house, we end up interviewing the stepmother and the boy’s older brother. We find out that Harun suffers from epilepsy and has about 2 seizures a day. When I asked what the family believed as the cause, they said they knew it was a disease and that some people may feel differently in the village believing it could be a bewitchment but they do not listen. Harun was going to primary school but stopped after one year because he was feeling lonely and discouraged after always being made fun of after each seizure. His family said that he displayed aggressive and angry behavior after each seizure as well. They talk about how a good solution for 13 year old Harun, who is currently castaway in another village, would be to send him to a special needs school in Dar-es-Salaam. His father wants to do this but is conflicted between paying for his troubled son or paying for school (his dad is not present during the interview and was currently studying in Kenya). I asked about Harun’s personality and his brother described him as a nice boy that likes to sing, draw and swim. He was always humble and loving before attending school and after being taunted in school, he became withdrawn. I ask about the stealing that Harun recently committed. They say that after each incident, Harun feels like he does not know what he did and willingly cooperates with authorities by giving every detail about the theft and admits everything. The older brother offers to pick up Harun and bring him next Wednesday for us to meet and talk to him. Afterwards, Killion and I discuss the interview and the situation of the boy. I am glad to have such a sympathetic friend and translator. Killion says the boy does have issues and it could stem from problems with the stepmother but that he feels that Harun is inherently good.
We walk in the hot sun for miles and eventually reach the lake. Killion knew of a few families in this area with disabilities. We interview a 36 year old man named Okeyo. Okeyo is paralyzed from the waist down after battling with polio when he was 5 months old. Okeyo’s parents sent him to not only primary and secondary school but also to the University of Udoma. When asked about how we would get to classes and move around, he said that someone would usually put him on their bike and give him rides. He came back to Shirati and learned how to make fishing nets by hand from a friend. He became successful at this and is able to sell fishing nets despite not being able to use his legs. Okeyo is married and has a daughter. We later interview his daughter since she is interested in being considered to be sponsored for primary school. Killion emphasized the good fact that Okeyo’s parents educated him and gave him a chance at a good future. I know that Killion values education by the many stories he tells me and the fact that he works so hard to get all 4 of his kids as much education as they can handle.
We interview two more people and one of the people is a man who used to suffer from epilepsy. Just like Harun, this man said after each seizure he would wake up feeling aggressive. Then at some point in his life, an American intervened and provided him with an anti-seizure drug that he takes once a day and has not had a seizure since. He does not remember the name of the drug but seems very thankful to have found it.
The last house we see at the end of the day was of Freddy Obote. As we sit and are welcomed by the family, we see 13 year old Freddy who is paralyzed from the waist down. Freddy’s mother died a few years ago and his dad lives and works many hours away. He is cared for primarily by his grandmother and some extended family. He spends just about every day of his life sitting outside the family’s brick home using his arms to lift his body back and forth and sometimes sweeping the corner he stays in. When asked if he went to school, Freddy’s family said that he has never gone to school, not even the free primary school which is located across the street from their house. Killion was visibly disturbed by this and inquired why nobody bothered to enroll Freddy and the family shrugged and didn’t really know the answer. We then asked Freddy if he wanted to go to school and he said yes. We asked if the family would consider Freddy attending primary school and everyone agreed that it would be fine. One uncle suggested that he would probably need a wheelchair so that his fellow students could push him to and from class. School starts back up again on July 11th. I am shocked that a boy that is 13 years old was discouraged from going to free primary school because of his disability and that nobody was opposed to him going to school but nobody was going to take the initiative to enroll him either. I compare the life that Freddy now lives to the life of Okeyo who seems to be better off just by circumstance of having parents that believed in education. I have a feeling that if we don’t help enroll Freddy into primary school, he will spend more years of his life hobbling around his property and unable to utilize his normally functioning brain.
I feel like some of the things that I see and the sad stories I relay do not serve the purpose of disheartening anyone nor feeling that the world is overwhelmingly filled with problems. The reason I tell these stories is that they should be heard. Regardless of whether or not people read about the things that go on everyday or see it in person, the truth is that they are real and occur every single day. I always feel that inaction may be the worst of all reactions. It’s natural to feel empathy towards sad situations, but most are far from desperate or hopeless and the challenge lies in how to address the issue.
The first family interviewed lives near the Kawiras and SHED hostel where I stay. I heard about a mentally challenged boy that stole money from the SHED hostel and from the Kawiras. The rumor is that he stole on 2 separate occasions and was caught and beaten. Killion suggested we start there and I agree. The boy is named Harun and his mother died a long time ago and his father is a local pastor that is currently studying something seminary related in Kenya. Harun and his stepmother apparently clash and Killion said rumors were flying that she either encouraged him to possibly steal or drove him to steal because of potential mistreatment. At the house, we end up interviewing the stepmother and the boy’s older brother. We find out that Harun suffers from epilepsy and has about 2 seizures a day. When I asked what the family believed as the cause, they said they knew it was a disease and that some people may feel differently in the village believing it could be a bewitchment but they do not listen. Harun was going to primary school but stopped after one year because he was feeling lonely and discouraged after always being made fun of after each seizure. His family said that he displayed aggressive and angry behavior after each seizure as well. They talk about how a good solution for 13 year old Harun, who is currently castaway in another village, would be to send him to a special needs school in Dar-es-Salaam. His father wants to do this but is conflicted between paying for his troubled son or paying for school (his dad is not present during the interview and was currently studying in Kenya). I asked about Harun’s personality and his brother described him as a nice boy that likes to sing, draw and swim. He was always humble and loving before attending school and after being taunted in school, he became withdrawn. I ask about the stealing that Harun recently committed. They say that after each incident, Harun feels like he does not know what he did and willingly cooperates with authorities by giving every detail about the theft and admits everything. The older brother offers to pick up Harun and bring him next Wednesday for us to meet and talk to him. Afterwards, Killion and I discuss the interview and the situation of the boy. I am glad to have such a sympathetic friend and translator. Killion says the boy does have issues and it could stem from problems with the stepmother but that he feels that Harun is inherently good.
We walk in the hot sun for miles and eventually reach the lake. Killion knew of a few families in this area with disabilities. We interview a 36 year old man named Okeyo. Okeyo is paralyzed from the waist down after battling with polio when he was 5 months old. Okeyo’s parents sent him to not only primary and secondary school but also to the University of Udoma. When asked about how we would get to classes and move around, he said that someone would usually put him on their bike and give him rides. He came back to Shirati and learned how to make fishing nets by hand from a friend. He became successful at this and is able to sell fishing nets despite not being able to use his legs. Okeyo is married and has a daughter. We later interview his daughter since she is interested in being considered to be sponsored for primary school. Killion emphasized the good fact that Okeyo’s parents educated him and gave him a chance at a good future. I know that Killion values education by the many stories he tells me and the fact that he works so hard to get all 4 of his kids as much education as they can handle.
We interview two more people and one of the people is a man who used to suffer from epilepsy. Just like Harun, this man said after each seizure he would wake up feeling aggressive. Then at some point in his life, an American intervened and provided him with an anti-seizure drug that he takes once a day and has not had a seizure since. He does not remember the name of the drug but seems very thankful to have found it.
The last house we see at the end of the day was of Freddy Obote. As we sit and are welcomed by the family, we see 13 year old Freddy who is paralyzed from the waist down. Freddy’s mother died a few years ago and his dad lives and works many hours away. He is cared for primarily by his grandmother and some extended family. He spends just about every day of his life sitting outside the family’s brick home using his arms to lift his body back and forth and sometimes sweeping the corner he stays in. When asked if he went to school, Freddy’s family said that he has never gone to school, not even the free primary school which is located across the street from their house. Killion was visibly disturbed by this and inquired why nobody bothered to enroll Freddy and the family shrugged and didn’t really know the answer. We then asked Freddy if he wanted to go to school and he said yes. We asked if the family would consider Freddy attending primary school and everyone agreed that it would be fine. One uncle suggested that he would probably need a wheelchair so that his fellow students could push him to and from class. School starts back up again on July 11th. I am shocked that a boy that is 13 years old was discouraged from going to free primary school because of his disability and that nobody was opposed to him going to school but nobody was going to take the initiative to enroll him either. I compare the life that Freddy now lives to the life of Okeyo who seems to be better off just by circumstance of having parents that believed in education. I have a feeling that if we don’t help enroll Freddy into primary school, he will spend more years of his life hobbling around his property and unable to utilize his normally functioning brain.
I feel like some of the things that I see and the sad stories I relay do not serve the purpose of disheartening anyone nor feeling that the world is overwhelmingly filled with problems. The reason I tell these stories is that they should be heard. Regardless of whether or not people read about the things that go on everyday or see it in person, the truth is that they are real and occur every single day. I always feel that inaction may be the worst of all reactions. It’s natural to feel empathy towards sad situations, but most are far from desperate or hopeless and the challenge lies in how to address the issue.
6/17/11 Vulnerable elderly
Ever since learning about Teresa’s situation and realizing that the elderly in many societies are outcast, I wanted to learn more about this special population in Shirati. I know that in the Asian culture, being an elderly person usually endows you with a high level of respect, especially in the familial setting. There is even a different Chinese word for “older brother” vs. “younger brother” which differs from most of the Roman language overall term for brother. I always had to refer to everyone older than me with such a salutation growing up and also serve food or show respects to grandparents before doing so to younger aunts, uncles, etc. Now contrast this with the American culture where every year you gain past your early 20’s is regarded with dread and disbelief. Super old grandparents or parents are considered for nursing homes and not typically revered with great respect.
From my brief understanding, in Shirati, elderly parents are usually independent if the husband is still alive. If the husband has passed away (which happens often and early), the wife can be inherited to her husband’s brother or can be left independently. Most commonly, older parents can rely on their children to help care for them and since the average family size consists of 5 children, this system works pretty well. It seems that once in awhile, typically with older women, if she only bears few children and they either die or move away, she can be left alone defenseless. I wanted to learn if there are other people in similar situations today. So I started with a new translator, Mary, a fellow 23 year old that just returned from college in Arusha. We start in Mary’s subvillage, Obeke, which is a new village that I have not been to.
We interview a total of 8 elderly people in Obeke mixed in with a single mom and parents that want their child to be sponsored for secondary school. Some of the elderly people I interviewed were living with their children and being cared for. The families requested for some assistance to care for their parent or in-law. I meet one woman who is slightly younger at 55 years old named Lucia. She lived in a small hut and had a few friends visiting her. She was paralyzed from the leg down, apparently from a TB infection. Her daughter went away to school and her husband has long passed away. She can’t work and depends on neighbors and friends to give her food which means she does not eat everyday. I asked if she felt lonely and she answered yes. Her main request for help is to fix the straw roof of the hut because the rain enters.
Another woman named Anjelina is 75 years old and living alone. In her long lifetime, she had 5 children die. She used to live with her daughter but no longer does (unclear about the reason). She also sometimes goes without eating and relies on friends and neighbors. Much like Lucia, Anjelina requests to have her roof fixed and possible food and to see a doctor. She tells me that the roof fixing costs about 5,000 Tsh which equates to $3.33. I make a physical and mental note about Lucia and Anjelina and think about ways that RFC can help. Maybe a feeding program. How would the food get there and who would be given the money? Perhaps a neighbor would be given a small stipend to help provide meals for these women every day. And if I keep the cell number or have these women visit the SHED office to verify receipt of meals, this could ensure accountability. But, how will we find funding for this program? RFC has barely any money and Mel and I are not financially comfortable enough to be taking on any more. How will this program be self-sustaining…probably not ever financially since it’s a complete hand-out. Maybe if we have sponsored kids, they can have a small obligation to visit designated elderly. In the end, my thoughts wander back to the fact that I can’t do nothing about this. I know that whenever I am able to return to Shirati, the same women will be facing the same hunger issues unless there is an intervention…this is the part that affects me deeply and makes me realize helping them feels more like an obligation than an extraneous thought.
From my brief understanding, in Shirati, elderly parents are usually independent if the husband is still alive. If the husband has passed away (which happens often and early), the wife can be inherited to her husband’s brother or can be left independently. Most commonly, older parents can rely on their children to help care for them and since the average family size consists of 5 children, this system works pretty well. It seems that once in awhile, typically with older women, if she only bears few children and they either die or move away, she can be left alone defenseless. I wanted to learn if there are other people in similar situations today. So I started with a new translator, Mary, a fellow 23 year old that just returned from college in Arusha. We start in Mary’s subvillage, Obeke, which is a new village that I have not been to.
We interview a total of 8 elderly people in Obeke mixed in with a single mom and parents that want their child to be sponsored for secondary school. Some of the elderly people I interviewed were living with their children and being cared for. The families requested for some assistance to care for their parent or in-law. I meet one woman who is slightly younger at 55 years old named Lucia. She lived in a small hut and had a few friends visiting her. She was paralyzed from the leg down, apparently from a TB infection. Her daughter went away to school and her husband has long passed away. She can’t work and depends on neighbors and friends to give her food which means she does not eat everyday. I asked if she felt lonely and she answered yes. Her main request for help is to fix the straw roof of the hut because the rain enters.
Another woman named Anjelina is 75 years old and living alone. In her long lifetime, she had 5 children die. She used to live with her daughter but no longer does (unclear about the reason). She also sometimes goes without eating and relies on friends and neighbors. Much like Lucia, Anjelina requests to have her roof fixed and possible food and to see a doctor. She tells me that the roof fixing costs about 5,000 Tsh which equates to $3.33. I make a physical and mental note about Lucia and Anjelina and think about ways that RFC can help. Maybe a feeding program. How would the food get there and who would be given the money? Perhaps a neighbor would be given a small stipend to help provide meals for these women every day. And if I keep the cell number or have these women visit the SHED office to verify receipt of meals, this could ensure accountability. But, how will we find funding for this program? RFC has barely any money and Mel and I are not financially comfortable enough to be taking on any more. How will this program be self-sustaining…probably not ever financially since it’s a complete hand-out. Maybe if we have sponsored kids, they can have a small obligation to visit designated elderly. In the end, my thoughts wander back to the fact that I can’t do nothing about this. I know that whenever I am able to return to Shirati, the same women will be facing the same hunger issues unless there is an intervention…this is the part that affects me deeply and makes me realize helping them feels more like an obligation than an extraneous thought.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
6/16/11 Soccer sisters
The morning is pretty uneventful, I was working away on my laptop. For the last few days of being here, I’ve been trying to track down Junior, the boy with the mental disability, and his mom. When I swung by their house the other day, Sarah told me they moved. Today, she asked a few others and people in the town said she actually moved again to Dar es Salaam, the capitol of Tanzania located 13 hours away. Part of is initially sad since I really wanted to see Junior & Mama Junior again, I had such powerful moments with them both that really changed me. Then I think about how their family must be taken care of now, Mama Junior probably has more job opportunities and maybe Junior is enrolled in a mentally disabled school. I ask for a phone number and Sarah says they don’t have a cell. Maybe I’ll never see them again for the rest of my life, but I’ll never forget them.
I learned from the other Westerners here doing malaria research that the incidence of malaria has declined significantly, one source said a 75% drop in cases. The government went house-to-house and sprayed pesticides on the inside of houses that kill mosquitoes instantly, the process is called indoor residual spraying. This occurred in March and they apparently did a great job and offered the service to every household. Another student is here evaluating whether or not Village Life Outreach Project needs to continue distributing mosquito nets and the conclusion is no. I’m thrilled that the spraying has drastically cut down on unnecessary deaths and suffering from malaria. I remember all the sad interview conducted last year and hope that the next generation in Shirati can be eradicated of malaria.
I excitedly prep the donated cleats to bring to the second girls soccer practice. Today the girls are practicing in their normal spot, on the airstrip across the street which is basically miles of pastures with grazing cows and acts as a sort of heli-pad for the private planes that come in a blue moon (mostly an NGO called Flying Doctors which fly surgeons into remote areas). I bring Sarah along to translate for me. As we talk about the soccer team, I learn that she actually played soccer in secondary school in Kenya which is very rare. Sarah also went to a championship game playing soccer. I ask her if she would like to be an assistant coach and was thrilled at the connection. She is interested in learning about payments for being a coach, which nearly everyone in Shirati is looking for a job, and I tell her its more of a stipend and does not pay much but is aimed more for the girls. I ask Sarah if she has a friend and she says yes. My hope was really to start training women under the main coaches so that we can eventually have female coaches.
I conduct mini-interviews one-by-one with each of the soccer girls while giving them a chance to pick out shoes. We distributed about 14 out of the 16 pairs of shoes and wrote down a handful of names that still need shoes. During the interview, I photograph each of the girls and video record Sarah asking each girl a few questions about herself (favorite color, favorite school subject, dream job, # siblings, position in soccer & why she plays soccer). Nearly all of the girls answered “to be physically fit” for the latter question haha. The girls were so ecstatic using their new cleats and pennies rather than running around barefoot and pulling a sleeve down as they have been doing for the past year.
At the end of practice, Niko (the coach) wants me to take a photo with his cute toddler daughter. Niko ’s other daughter is actually on the team, which is a pleasant surprise for me. He tells the girls that I’m the mzungu who owns the team – which I quickly correct him and say not at all. Yes Mel and I did buy soccer balls and some equipment but it truly is the persistence of the coaches and the dedication of the girls as well as support from the community that made the team last. I walk back with the girls and they see my blackberry background which sparks showing them pictures of America and then other places I’ve traveled too. They are fascinated by the different pictures and start playing with my hair. I love how its possible to make even small friendships and connections with these sweet young girls even though we don’t understand each other verbally. As I’m writing this blog way past midnight, the skies are pouring. The rains in Africa always sound so beautiful and give the perfect breeze inside. I’m totally enamored with all of the African natural beauty.
I learned from the other Westerners here doing malaria research that the incidence of malaria has declined significantly, one source said a 75% drop in cases. The government went house-to-house and sprayed pesticides on the inside of houses that kill mosquitoes instantly, the process is called indoor residual spraying. This occurred in March and they apparently did a great job and offered the service to every household. Another student is here evaluating whether or not Village Life Outreach Project needs to continue distributing mosquito nets and the conclusion is no. I’m thrilled that the spraying has drastically cut down on unnecessary deaths and suffering from malaria. I remember all the sad interview conducted last year and hope that the next generation in Shirati can be eradicated of malaria.
I excitedly prep the donated cleats to bring to the second girls soccer practice. Today the girls are practicing in their normal spot, on the airstrip across the street which is basically miles of pastures with grazing cows and acts as a sort of heli-pad for the private planes that come in a blue moon (mostly an NGO called Flying Doctors which fly surgeons into remote areas). I bring Sarah along to translate for me. As we talk about the soccer team, I learn that she actually played soccer in secondary school in Kenya which is very rare. Sarah also went to a championship game playing soccer. I ask her if she would like to be an assistant coach and was thrilled at the connection. She is interested in learning about payments for being a coach, which nearly everyone in Shirati is looking for a job, and I tell her its more of a stipend and does not pay much but is aimed more for the girls. I ask Sarah if she has a friend and she says yes. My hope was really to start training women under the main coaches so that we can eventually have female coaches.
I conduct mini-interviews one-by-one with each of the soccer girls while giving them a chance to pick out shoes. We distributed about 14 out of the 16 pairs of shoes and wrote down a handful of names that still need shoes. During the interview, I photograph each of the girls and video record Sarah asking each girl a few questions about herself (favorite color, favorite school subject, dream job, # siblings, position in soccer & why she plays soccer). Nearly all of the girls answered “to be physically fit” for the latter question haha. The girls were so ecstatic using their new cleats and pennies rather than running around barefoot and pulling a sleeve down as they have been doing for the past year.
At the end of practice, Niko (the coach) wants me to take a photo with his cute toddler daughter. Niko ’s other daughter is actually on the team, which is a pleasant surprise for me. He tells the girls that I’m the mzungu who owns the team – which I quickly correct him and say not at all. Yes Mel and I did buy soccer balls and some equipment but it truly is the persistence of the coaches and the dedication of the girls as well as support from the community that made the team last. I walk back with the girls and they see my blackberry background which sparks showing them pictures of America and then other places I’ve traveled too. They are fascinated by the different pictures and start playing with my hair. I love how its possible to make even small friendships and connections with these sweet young girls even though we don’t understand each other verbally. As I’m writing this blog way past midnight, the skies are pouring. The rains in Africa always sound so beautiful and give the perfect breeze inside. I’m totally enamored with all of the African natural beauty.
6/15/11 Playing with the boys
As a last minute person, I still wasn’t entirely sure of my day’s plans when Sarah, my translator, asks me first thing in the morning. I decide to take a piki piki (a 30 cent motorcycle ride) to Obuere, the area with slightly more shops than nearby Kibwana where it is usually bustling with people on Monday. Since today is Wednesday, there are not nearly as many little shacks and umbrella stores, but I do manage to find what I’m looking for. I wanted to scope out how much tennis shoes cost. Sue collected a bunch of used soccer cleats from soccer teams in New Jersey but I want to be able to supplement more for when we run out or if the sizes don’t match up. Tomorrow the next girls practice will be held so I want to be ready. I printed out media release forms translated into Swahili so that all videos and photos that I take of the kids that will be used for fundraising and website purposes with identifiers will have parental permission just like in the U.S. At the market, I also buy a plastic bag full of food and later walk into the subvillage of Yakina to give Teresa some food. Teresa says some things in Luo but since I went alone, I’m not entirely sure what she says but knows she probably called me a friend, lists the food items in the bag (dga-a type of anchovies, avocado, onions, etc).
In the evening, soccer time comes around. I join the other med students on the field. For every normal day, its only boys that play. I decide to push my luck with the gender difference being the only girl not only on the field but in the spectator section too and see if they’ll let me play. I get picked last when the captains choose out people like during my awkward middle school days in gym class. One boy tells me I’m #7. This does not mean I have a jersey with the number imprinted, but rather corresponds to a specific position…since I’m not sure I just kind of play left midfield, a position I am comfortable with. Today the boys play the full field and I try not to outwardly show my out-of-shape, exasperated shape. Surprisingly, the local boys pass the ball to me more so than most American guys I’ve played with (on the field at the time, in intramural soccer in college or for fun in grad school). I wonder how my girly girl old self would view me now; the one that used to play Barbies well into the pre-teen years (as my friend Jill will still make fun of me for) and preferred Pretty Pretty Princess over creepy crawlers. We actually played the match with an RFC soccer ball, one that I haven’t yet distributed to the team. My team does awesome 2-1 for awhile but eventually ends up losing 2-3. While we are playing, a cute little girl stands on the main road watching us and I say hello and ask for her name. I remember seeing lots of girls watching with great curiosity last year before the first team was established and know there are so many more that want to join still, more work to be done. I look at the gorgeous sunset while we play and wonder why I ever bother to leave. Later that night, there is a lunar eclipse and about a million stars in the sky. My meager attempt to use a tripod and DSLR telephoto lens to capture the sky does injustice to the beauty of the moon and the stars in person.
In the evening, soccer time comes around. I join the other med students on the field. For every normal day, its only boys that play. I decide to push my luck with the gender difference being the only girl not only on the field but in the spectator section too and see if they’ll let me play. I get picked last when the captains choose out people like during my awkward middle school days in gym class. One boy tells me I’m #7. This does not mean I have a jersey with the number imprinted, but rather corresponds to a specific position…since I’m not sure I just kind of play left midfield, a position I am comfortable with. Today the boys play the full field and I try not to outwardly show my out-of-shape, exasperated shape. Surprisingly, the local boys pass the ball to me more so than most American guys I’ve played with (on the field at the time, in intramural soccer in college or for fun in grad school). I wonder how my girly girl old self would view me now; the one that used to play Barbies well into the pre-teen years (as my friend Jill will still make fun of me for) and preferred Pretty Pretty Princess over creepy crawlers. We actually played the match with an RFC soccer ball, one that I haven’t yet distributed to the team. My team does awesome 2-1 for awhile but eventually ends up losing 2-3. While we are playing, a cute little girl stands on the main road watching us and I say hello and ask for her name. I remember seeing lots of girls watching with great curiosity last year before the first team was established and know there are so many more that want to join still, more work to be done. I look at the gorgeous sunset while we play and wonder why I ever bother to leave. Later that night, there is a lunar eclipse and about a million stars in the sky. My meager attempt to use a tripod and DSLR telephoto lens to capture the sky does injustice to the beauty of the moon and the stars in person.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
6/14/11 Old Friends New Teams
I wake up to the sound of a million roosters signifying the break of morning. I almost don’t know what to do with this newfound freedom of plans. Last year, my days were pretty regimented with the goal of walking household to household surveying and needing enough to make the research study relevant. With hours of prep and needing a minimum number of participants, researchers are always consumed. I meet my translator, Sarah, who is a Kenyan and moved to Shirati with her husband and baby a few years ago. I miss Pilli and Enock, my two young translators from last year whom Mel and I formed friendships with. I decide that the first thing I want to do is to take a stroll around the Yakina subvillage, an area I find myself remembering where my friends are in unmarked huts than I realize.
I say “hode (hodey)” in Swahili which means “Hello, can I come in?” as I approach the small round clay hut with a straw patched roof and Welcome scribed with white paint in the corrugated metal door that does not ever fully shut. A very skinny old lady hobbles out and is delighted to see me and Sarah. I love her big smile and whatever she says in Luo, the tribal language of the region. Sarah translates that she says welcome back my friend and that she is so happy to see me. Teresa does not know her age, she suspects she is in her nineties. She is a widow and had one child in her life, a son. Her son died four years ago leaving behind a grandson named Babu. Babu’s mother abandoned the family (not entirely sure when), leaving Babu an orphan inherited by Teresa. I stumbled upon Babu last year as a bubbly kindergarten boy at Zappe Kindergarten when a few of us went to play with the kids. I later in the same day went surveying and met Teresa and was surprised to find the kindergarten boy return back home. He changed out of his neatly pressed required school uniform into rags. His single t-shirt and pants had so many gaping holes that his entire buttock region was exposed. Babu said he was hungry and Teresa said she tried to beg around on Monday, the prime market day, but the only thing she received was a tomato. Heartbroken by the experience, Melody and I sought out short and longer term solutions. We immediately went to the market and filled our bag with vegetables, fried fish and nuts and brought them to Teresa and Babu. We discussed plans on sponsoring Babu and it was suggested to us that maybe if Babu lived with a relative, they could provide more stability and keep up with the energetic 5 year old. So with a monthly sponsorship we wire to the SHED foundation, Babu gets to live with his stepmother sharing a bed, regular food and school supplies.
I had not heard much about Babu from SHED after I left Shirati except that he was doing well. Teresa wanted to take us to see Babu. With her cane and persistent tiny steps, we walked about 1/8th of a mile to Cecelia’s house. During the walk, I ask Teresa about her life. She said that she is still hungry and relies on people to generously give her food to sustain herself. She tries to garden but her age prevents her from partaking in rigorous activity. I asked her how many meals does she eat a day and she responded two meals or sometimes none. I then wonder if there was any sort of business she could or would want to do but she replied that she is unable to work and most jobs in the village require being part of the big Monday market and walking far. I also asked if Babu visited her and he did. I wondered if she was lonely and she said yes. For a chunk of the walk, I was left thinking about what Room for Compassion could do for her. Here was a strong old woman that until last year was raising her grandson but left with the unfortunate circumstance of not having a safety net like others her age to have secure food and shelter. I originally liked the idea of having an elderly persons group to foster unity among the population and maybe have purpose by having the group be responsible for something in the micro-society. I’m not sure of how many are in the elderly population and I didn’t factor in the fact that many were handicapped and even walking was a task. Maybe we can sponsor some elderly people that lost their safety net.
We reach Babu’s house and see all the kids gather around. Babu walks in the front door with a red t-shirt and shorts on. He sees me and is shy. Cecelia beckons him to come over and shake my hand, wince at a hug and sit down near me. I am ecstatic to see Babu and he has grown a little bit. He is apparently at Mkoma primary school but still in kindergarten. I suppose he is a little behind since it would be his second time in kindergarten but am not sure how the system works. We converse in the living room. I see Babu’s bed, the one that Mel and I picked up and transported last year to Cecelia’s house two days before leaving Shirati. We then proceed to take photos and I show Babu how to use my point and shoot camera and press the button to capture pictures. Then I introduce the video option and everyone is wildly giggling and fascinated at videos. I teach Babu how to press the shutter to start and stop the video and tell him to walk around and talk. Cecelia and Sarah and coax him to talk about himself and he wanders around his house to the nearby animals with a huge smile on his face. I let him video and replay his cinematography for about a half hour. We all sit back in the living room and I briefly tell everyone about RFC. Cecelia suggests that maybe if I can help her start a business, that she can include and help out Teresa. I tell her I will look more into the idea of her transporting grains to the market but that we currently have no funding for that department.
The next family I am eager to visit is Junior and Mama Junior. Junior is a boy with a mental disability, his mom claims that he contracted meningitis or another disease when he was a toddler that caused his disability. The 10 year old boy truly touched me last year and I felt that inaction about his life, which consisted of being locked up in a prison-like setting was an unbearable thought. It broke my heart to know on the inside that without any help or intervention, Junior would spend the next 10 years of his life in the same fashion. Outcasted by society, he never left his house or go to school. The lack of resources for the disabled is unfortunate. As I approach Junior’s house, Sarah tells me that they are relatives of hers and starts to describe their all-to familiar history where the dad passed away leaving the mom with 3 boys. I notice the house looks different, the fallen down brick wall that used to be filled with thorns as protection was gone. A few brick layers were laid in the missing wall and now there is only half the wall that is bare. Sarah tells me that the family has moved to Shirati’s center of town.
At 4pm, I run excitedly to the soccer field to reunite with all of the girls. When I arrive on time, there are about 15 girls there. The language barrier prevents me from understanding what they are saying to me except that they are referring to me as mzungu every other word. I already see a transformation in the girls. They all started out wearing their long skirts to practice as is customary for women to wear, even during sports to all wearing pants or shorts. Funny enough, a few of them are wearing boxers. They don’t really have a supply of women’s shorts in the community, especially not tiny fitted ones for forth and fifth grade girls. Niko, one of the coaches arrives from his butcher shop job, and is able to speak English to me. He told me that the girls doubted I would come back. He said they started with 51 back when I was last here and a few dropped out without knowing the reason, he said some thought they would never get shoes they were promised while others said their parents felt that their daughter shouldn’t play soccer and should instead do household duties. I tell the girls that I am so happy to see them and that I always said I would return.
Niko brings my familiar red Adidas duffle but with only 2 soccer balls. Out of the 6 soccer balls Melody and I bought (they were not cheap), 4 of them broke and the only two remaining are the Adidas ones we purchased from Nairobi after we left Shirati. Thank goodness we had sent them back with Pili and Enock or else there would be no balls and potentially no girls soccer team. Niko takes attendance, which he has done at every single practice since we left. Today there are 21 girls. We then run onto the field that was once reserved for only secondary school boys. School is out but the girls and boys soccer teams still continue. The secondary school boys have practice but agree to let the girls and coaches use half of the field. Just before this, the secondary school boys were talking to me right before Niko arrived. I told them I was here to watch the girls play soccer and they all laughed. I said the girls had a coach and they played football to which the boys inquired who the coach was and probably didn’t believe me until Niko arrived.
I am so impressed by the team and the two coaches. Niko has a whistle and uses it to run drills. The girls do sprints, squats, jumping jacks, Indian runs etc. They pass the ball back and forth to the coaches. I was so impressed that Niko knew all of the girls’ name which he also pointed out to me. I stood next to Niko and Alex and would join in on the exercises facing the girls in between taking photos and videos. The 21 girls divide into 3 different teams and scrimmage each other. I am even more impressed that the girls have gotten so good at soccer. Less than a year ago, no female in Shirati knew how to kick a soccer ball or refrain from using their hands. Now, a lot of these girls juggled much better than I could as well as confidently kicking, passing and challenging each other. I loved seeing the friendships between teammates as well as the smiles and laughter. Since the scrimmaging teams don’t have uniforms, Niko tells me they remove their shirts. I was at first horrified, but then saw that he meant the team that lost the coin toss had to pull one sleeve down to show their shoulder and mark that they were a team. I run back and grab a soccer ball that I etched an RFC logo into the night before and change into my cleats and shorts so I can join in. I decide to bring the shoes and rest of the gear at another practice so that I can carry and organize distribution to make sure every girl gets shoes. After 2 hours of playing and practicing, I head back to dinner. I was thrilled to see the other mzungus living in the same hostel coming out and watching the boys and mingling with the girls and then a few of the guys joined the boys secondary team. At the end of practice, I have the girls huddle in and say “One, two, three wasichana!” Wasichana means girls. I never would have imagined in my wildest dreams that the soccer team Melody and I haphazardly threw together in a matter of days would continue and produce such solidarity and joy in the girls’ and coaches’ faces.
I say “hode (hodey)” in Swahili which means “Hello, can I come in?” as I approach the small round clay hut with a straw patched roof and Welcome scribed with white paint in the corrugated metal door that does not ever fully shut. A very skinny old lady hobbles out and is delighted to see me and Sarah. I love her big smile and whatever she says in Luo, the tribal language of the region. Sarah translates that she says welcome back my friend and that she is so happy to see me. Teresa does not know her age, she suspects she is in her nineties. She is a widow and had one child in her life, a son. Her son died four years ago leaving behind a grandson named Babu. Babu’s mother abandoned the family (not entirely sure when), leaving Babu an orphan inherited by Teresa. I stumbled upon Babu last year as a bubbly kindergarten boy at Zappe Kindergarten when a few of us went to play with the kids. I later in the same day went surveying and met Teresa and was surprised to find the kindergarten boy return back home. He changed out of his neatly pressed required school uniform into rags. His single t-shirt and pants had so many gaping holes that his entire buttock region was exposed. Babu said he was hungry and Teresa said she tried to beg around on Monday, the prime market day, but the only thing she received was a tomato. Heartbroken by the experience, Melody and I sought out short and longer term solutions. We immediately went to the market and filled our bag with vegetables, fried fish and nuts and brought them to Teresa and Babu. We discussed plans on sponsoring Babu and it was suggested to us that maybe if Babu lived with a relative, they could provide more stability and keep up with the energetic 5 year old. So with a monthly sponsorship we wire to the SHED foundation, Babu gets to live with his stepmother sharing a bed, regular food and school supplies.
I had not heard much about Babu from SHED after I left Shirati except that he was doing well. Teresa wanted to take us to see Babu. With her cane and persistent tiny steps, we walked about 1/8th of a mile to Cecelia’s house. During the walk, I ask Teresa about her life. She said that she is still hungry and relies on people to generously give her food to sustain herself. She tries to garden but her age prevents her from partaking in rigorous activity. I asked her how many meals does she eat a day and she responded two meals or sometimes none. I then wonder if there was any sort of business she could or would want to do but she replied that she is unable to work and most jobs in the village require being part of the big Monday market and walking far. I also asked if Babu visited her and he did. I wondered if she was lonely and she said yes. For a chunk of the walk, I was left thinking about what Room for Compassion could do for her. Here was a strong old woman that until last year was raising her grandson but left with the unfortunate circumstance of not having a safety net like others her age to have secure food and shelter. I originally liked the idea of having an elderly persons group to foster unity among the population and maybe have purpose by having the group be responsible for something in the micro-society. I’m not sure of how many are in the elderly population and I didn’t factor in the fact that many were handicapped and even walking was a task. Maybe we can sponsor some elderly people that lost their safety net.
We reach Babu’s house and see all the kids gather around. Babu walks in the front door with a red t-shirt and shorts on. He sees me and is shy. Cecelia beckons him to come over and shake my hand, wince at a hug and sit down near me. I am ecstatic to see Babu and he has grown a little bit. He is apparently at Mkoma primary school but still in kindergarten. I suppose he is a little behind since it would be his second time in kindergarten but am not sure how the system works. We converse in the living room. I see Babu’s bed, the one that Mel and I picked up and transported last year to Cecelia’s house two days before leaving Shirati. We then proceed to take photos and I show Babu how to use my point and shoot camera and press the button to capture pictures. Then I introduce the video option and everyone is wildly giggling and fascinated at videos. I teach Babu how to press the shutter to start and stop the video and tell him to walk around and talk. Cecelia and Sarah and coax him to talk about himself and he wanders around his house to the nearby animals with a huge smile on his face. I let him video and replay his cinematography for about a half hour. We all sit back in the living room and I briefly tell everyone about RFC. Cecelia suggests that maybe if I can help her start a business, that she can include and help out Teresa. I tell her I will look more into the idea of her transporting grains to the market but that we currently have no funding for that department.
The next family I am eager to visit is Junior and Mama Junior. Junior is a boy with a mental disability, his mom claims that he contracted meningitis or another disease when he was a toddler that caused his disability. The 10 year old boy truly touched me last year and I felt that inaction about his life, which consisted of being locked up in a prison-like setting was an unbearable thought. It broke my heart to know on the inside that without any help or intervention, Junior would spend the next 10 years of his life in the same fashion. Outcasted by society, he never left his house or go to school. The lack of resources for the disabled is unfortunate. As I approach Junior’s house, Sarah tells me that they are relatives of hers and starts to describe their all-to familiar history where the dad passed away leaving the mom with 3 boys. I notice the house looks different, the fallen down brick wall that used to be filled with thorns as protection was gone. A few brick layers were laid in the missing wall and now there is only half the wall that is bare. Sarah tells me that the family has moved to Shirati’s center of town.
At 4pm, I run excitedly to the soccer field to reunite with all of the girls. When I arrive on time, there are about 15 girls there. The language barrier prevents me from understanding what they are saying to me except that they are referring to me as mzungu every other word. I already see a transformation in the girls. They all started out wearing their long skirts to practice as is customary for women to wear, even during sports to all wearing pants or shorts. Funny enough, a few of them are wearing boxers. They don’t really have a supply of women’s shorts in the community, especially not tiny fitted ones for forth and fifth grade girls. Niko, one of the coaches arrives from his butcher shop job, and is able to speak English to me. He told me that the girls doubted I would come back. He said they started with 51 back when I was last here and a few dropped out without knowing the reason, he said some thought they would never get shoes they were promised while others said their parents felt that their daughter shouldn’t play soccer and should instead do household duties. I tell the girls that I am so happy to see them and that I always said I would return.
Niko brings my familiar red Adidas duffle but with only 2 soccer balls. Out of the 6 soccer balls Melody and I bought (they were not cheap), 4 of them broke and the only two remaining are the Adidas ones we purchased from Nairobi after we left Shirati. Thank goodness we had sent them back with Pili and Enock or else there would be no balls and potentially no girls soccer team. Niko takes attendance, which he has done at every single practice since we left. Today there are 21 girls. We then run onto the field that was once reserved for only secondary school boys. School is out but the girls and boys soccer teams still continue. The secondary school boys have practice but agree to let the girls and coaches use half of the field. Just before this, the secondary school boys were talking to me right before Niko arrived. I told them I was here to watch the girls play soccer and they all laughed. I said the girls had a coach and they played football to which the boys inquired who the coach was and probably didn’t believe me until Niko arrived.
I am so impressed by the team and the two coaches. Niko has a whistle and uses it to run drills. The girls do sprints, squats, jumping jacks, Indian runs etc. They pass the ball back and forth to the coaches. I was so impressed that Niko knew all of the girls’ name which he also pointed out to me. I stood next to Niko and Alex and would join in on the exercises facing the girls in between taking photos and videos. The 21 girls divide into 3 different teams and scrimmage each other. I am even more impressed that the girls have gotten so good at soccer. Less than a year ago, no female in Shirati knew how to kick a soccer ball or refrain from using their hands. Now, a lot of these girls juggled much better than I could as well as confidently kicking, passing and challenging each other. I loved seeing the friendships between teammates as well as the smiles and laughter. Since the scrimmaging teams don’t have uniforms, Niko tells me they remove their shirts. I was at first horrified, but then saw that he meant the team that lost the coin toss had to pull one sleeve down to show their shoulder and mark that they were a team. I run back and grab a soccer ball that I etched an RFC logo into the night before and change into my cleats and shorts so I can join in. I decide to bring the shoes and rest of the gear at another practice so that I can carry and organize distribution to make sure every girl gets shoes. After 2 hours of playing and practicing, I head back to dinner. I was thrilled to see the other mzungus living in the same hostel coming out and watching the boys and mingling with the girls and then a few of the guys joined the boys secondary team. At the end of practice, I have the girls huddle in and say “One, two, three wasichana!” Wasichana means girls. I never would have imagined in my wildest dreams that the soccer team Melody and I haphazardly threw together in a matter of days would continue and produce such solidarity and joy in the girls’ and coaches’ faces.
Homecoming to Shirati, Tanzania
For the past 11 months or so, I have been dreaming of the moment where I return to the place that not only stole my heart but forever changed me. If last summer had a song on infinite replay it would have been “Karma Police”, particularly the line that goes “For a minute there I lost myself, I lost myself..” to describe how I almost didn’t follow my true calling in life to instead pursue a career of financial stability and ultimately a meaningless path. I laugh at myself about how nervous I was departing the US to Tanzania. Another year wiser, I now know better than to believe all the horror stories told to me, particularly of those that have never even visited the places I went.
The bus ride from Nairobi was great. Fred, a local and friend from last summer, did end up at the Mennonite Guest House when I landed and we left at 7am. The bus interior was quite nice. A coach bus with disco red velvet lined seats, floors and ceiling. The overhead even reminded me of a plane. There was a light and switchable air ventilator. There was even a TV on the bus playing music videos of first Bongo flavor (a Kenyan/Tanzanian favorite mimicking a cool Caribbean mix) and popular American hip hop. Right after Rihanna’s music video played, Chris Brown’s ironically played. It was the same song that I had watched him perform live about 2 months ago on a taping of Dancing with the Stars just 2 days after he angrily threw a chair at the mention of his past abuse towards Rihanna. The only thing missing from the nice bus was a bathroom. There was 1 bathroom stop which women and men scurried to bushes to relieve themselves and quickly hurried back to the bus that would certainly leave without them. During the 9.5 hours of traveling, I make zero stops to the bathroom. After countless 5 hour road trips to NorCal and driving across the country, I learned to train my bladder as if one would train a puppy not to poop at the wrong place or time. Basically, I drink little to no water until I know I’m about 2 hours away. It works everytime.
Halfway through the bus ride, a man enters our bus and begins preaching or maybe talking in Swahili. He does this for about an hour or two. A similar tactic is used in Haiti where a man stays on the public bus all day long and talks and talks and talks and then sells whatever he is selling. The first Kenyan man to do this on the bus, I don’t mind. His voice is easily overpowered by the music from my headphones. The second guy to talk/preach sounded like Freddy Cougar with strep throat. I might have preferred nails on a chalkboard to his horrific raspy tone that not even the loudest music setting can drown out.
I look up at the scenery between falling in and out of sleep and reading “Eat, Pray, Love” and salivating over the Italian food depicted in the novel. My heart is lightened by the baby blue sky sprinkled with cirrus clouds and the dark red soil below. I get giddy at the sight of a Masai man walking down a corn field with his back towards the bus and his beautiful cape flowing in the wind. I wonder how my life would have been had I been one of the little kids playing outside of their mud hut home oblivious to the Western world. Our bus passes by a huge market with at least 10 rows of umbrella food stands that are manned by women. We also pass by a small truck that must have taken a sharp turn and completely flipped on its driver side. I wonder if the driver was still alive and the cause of the accident. Last year, on our way to Shirati, the driver nearly misses a small child that hastily decided to run across the street as a speeding van was approaching and misjudged the speed/distance calculation that comes with experience.
Nine hours on bus pass by. I anxiously wait at the visa booth in the Tanzanian border patrol station wondering if they will harass me like last year about how I was actually a volunteer and not a tourist vacationer which would require a more expensive work visa. I get my passport stamped back. The one patrol police says something to Fred in Swahili while looking at me. I think he wants me to stay in Tanzania longer. I slip out of the station to the taxi awaiting Fred and I and exclaim with excitement that I was not charged the $100 visa fee! I almost wanted to say something inside but did not just to see how far I could go before they realized their mistake. I guess I kind of stole, and stealing is wrong, but I am very broke and probably (definitely) shouldn’t even be spending money to sojourn out to Shirati but this is probably my last chance for at least a long while.
Even though nearly 10 hours have passed while in transit to our final destination, I am still surprised at how fast we are approaching Shirati. We drive in the taxi on dirt roads for an hour on Utegi Road until more and more familiar landmarks pass by. Its Monday market, I forgot that the awesome overcrowded market where people from all distances would come to buy produce for the week occurred today. I imagine how a café would do in the Obuere area which is where the market and several wooden shack stores reside. I saw a tea café with small tables for two and a rustic sign saying tea café on the ride from Kenya…I thought of it as the Starbucks of whatever dinky town we were passing by. Maybe a laid back and luxury expenditure would fit well in the area, afterall, everything runs on Africa time. I also tell Fred my other business idea for the Shirati area, an ATM machine. There are tons of mzungus (white people) that volunteer in Shirati every summer and are in constant need of cash and the nearest ATM is 2 hours away with a maximum withdrawal of about $260 per day.
At long last, the sedan taxi pulls over in front of Dr. Esther Kawira’s house. She is the American doctor that fell in love with a Tanzanian man in Indiana and after much debate on her husband’s side, they got married and raised 4 kids in Shirati. I greet her husband, Josiah and gave him a big hug and the remark I continued to give everyone else that I saw, “I told you I’d come back!” We go to the SHED hostel where I spent my time living in Shirati last summer. A local woman runs and shrieks when she sees my face and embraces me to the point of almost lifting me from the ground. Its Cecelia! She is now apparently nicknamed MamaBabu after she took in Babu, the kindergartender being sponsored by Room for Compassion. I ask how Babu is and how Teresa Aneti (Babu’s very old grandmother) are doing and she says they are both good. To my surprise, there are other mzungus at the hostel. I get a room with four beds all to myself. I later find out that it’s the bat room…5 bats were killed last week. I make my way around to meet other public health professionals, medical students and a ton of undergraduate U of Cincinnati students. Most are here working with Village Life Outreach Project, another fantastic organization that does many things including successfully building a health center in a remote region and apparently plans are underway for a new school. I walk with a few girls to the center of Kabwana, the mini town center of Shirati. I stop in my tracks at the sight of the humungous red sun setting and realized how much I missed it. We stay an hour drinking soda out of glass bottles and talking to secondary school soccer boys and walk back. I stare up at the cosmos and see how different the stars look in the Southern hemisphere. The familiarity of the village makes me feel like this is home and I’m finally back.
The bus ride from Nairobi was great. Fred, a local and friend from last summer, did end up at the Mennonite Guest House when I landed and we left at 7am. The bus interior was quite nice. A coach bus with disco red velvet lined seats, floors and ceiling. The overhead even reminded me of a plane. There was a light and switchable air ventilator. There was even a TV on the bus playing music videos of first Bongo flavor (a Kenyan/Tanzanian favorite mimicking a cool Caribbean mix) and popular American hip hop. Right after Rihanna’s music video played, Chris Brown’s ironically played. It was the same song that I had watched him perform live about 2 months ago on a taping of Dancing with the Stars just 2 days after he angrily threw a chair at the mention of his past abuse towards Rihanna. The only thing missing from the nice bus was a bathroom. There was 1 bathroom stop which women and men scurried to bushes to relieve themselves and quickly hurried back to the bus that would certainly leave without them. During the 9.5 hours of traveling, I make zero stops to the bathroom. After countless 5 hour road trips to NorCal and driving across the country, I learned to train my bladder as if one would train a puppy not to poop at the wrong place or time. Basically, I drink little to no water until I know I’m about 2 hours away. It works everytime.
Halfway through the bus ride, a man enters our bus and begins preaching or maybe talking in Swahili. He does this for about an hour or two. A similar tactic is used in Haiti where a man stays on the public bus all day long and talks and talks and talks and then sells whatever he is selling. The first Kenyan man to do this on the bus, I don’t mind. His voice is easily overpowered by the music from my headphones. The second guy to talk/preach sounded like Freddy Cougar with strep throat. I might have preferred nails on a chalkboard to his horrific raspy tone that not even the loudest music setting can drown out.
I look up at the scenery between falling in and out of sleep and reading “Eat, Pray, Love” and salivating over the Italian food depicted in the novel. My heart is lightened by the baby blue sky sprinkled with cirrus clouds and the dark red soil below. I get giddy at the sight of a Masai man walking down a corn field with his back towards the bus and his beautiful cape flowing in the wind. I wonder how my life would have been had I been one of the little kids playing outside of their mud hut home oblivious to the Western world. Our bus passes by a huge market with at least 10 rows of umbrella food stands that are manned by women. We also pass by a small truck that must have taken a sharp turn and completely flipped on its driver side. I wonder if the driver was still alive and the cause of the accident. Last year, on our way to Shirati, the driver nearly misses a small child that hastily decided to run across the street as a speeding van was approaching and misjudged the speed/distance calculation that comes with experience.
Nine hours on bus pass by. I anxiously wait at the visa booth in the Tanzanian border patrol station wondering if they will harass me like last year about how I was actually a volunteer and not a tourist vacationer which would require a more expensive work visa. I get my passport stamped back. The one patrol police says something to Fred in Swahili while looking at me. I think he wants me to stay in Tanzania longer. I slip out of the station to the taxi awaiting Fred and I and exclaim with excitement that I was not charged the $100 visa fee! I almost wanted to say something inside but did not just to see how far I could go before they realized their mistake. I guess I kind of stole, and stealing is wrong, but I am very broke and probably (definitely) shouldn’t even be spending money to sojourn out to Shirati but this is probably my last chance for at least a long while.
Even though nearly 10 hours have passed while in transit to our final destination, I am still surprised at how fast we are approaching Shirati. We drive in the taxi on dirt roads for an hour on Utegi Road until more and more familiar landmarks pass by. Its Monday market, I forgot that the awesome overcrowded market where people from all distances would come to buy produce for the week occurred today. I imagine how a café would do in the Obuere area which is where the market and several wooden shack stores reside. I saw a tea café with small tables for two and a rustic sign saying tea café on the ride from Kenya…I thought of it as the Starbucks of whatever dinky town we were passing by. Maybe a laid back and luxury expenditure would fit well in the area, afterall, everything runs on Africa time. I also tell Fred my other business idea for the Shirati area, an ATM machine. There are tons of mzungus (white people) that volunteer in Shirati every summer and are in constant need of cash and the nearest ATM is 2 hours away with a maximum withdrawal of about $260 per day.
At long last, the sedan taxi pulls over in front of Dr. Esther Kawira’s house. She is the American doctor that fell in love with a Tanzanian man in Indiana and after much debate on her husband’s side, they got married and raised 4 kids in Shirati. I greet her husband, Josiah and gave him a big hug and the remark I continued to give everyone else that I saw, “I told you I’d come back!” We go to the SHED hostel where I spent my time living in Shirati last summer. A local woman runs and shrieks when she sees my face and embraces me to the point of almost lifting me from the ground. Its Cecelia! She is now apparently nicknamed MamaBabu after she took in Babu, the kindergartender being sponsored by Room for Compassion. I ask how Babu is and how Teresa Aneti (Babu’s very old grandmother) are doing and she says they are both good. To my surprise, there are other mzungus at the hostel. I get a room with four beds all to myself. I later find out that it’s the bat room…5 bats were killed last week. I make my way around to meet other public health professionals, medical students and a ton of undergraduate U of Cincinnati students. Most are here working with Village Life Outreach Project, another fantastic organization that does many things including successfully building a health center in a remote region and apparently plans are underway for a new school. I walk with a few girls to the center of Kabwana, the mini town center of Shirati. I stop in my tracks at the sight of the humungous red sun setting and realized how much I missed it. We stay an hour drinking soda out of glass bottles and talking to secondary school soccer boys and walk back. I stare up at the cosmos and see how different the stars look in the Southern hemisphere. The familiarity of the village makes me feel like this is home and I’m finally back.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
6/12/11 Going Solo
As I sit here on the plane somewhere thousands of feet in the air in between DRC and Kenya, I attempt to unwind and sip chai tea. Departing from Kinshasa airport was a taxing experience and I thought I had my share of airport fun. Nine security checkpoints, one member of my van deciding to take a photo of the airport and then caught by the police for his illegal act but later having the camera returned, delaying of my flight twice and bribing the ticket counter lady with American candy to lower my excess bag fee (ok not really, I had to get rid of 9 kilos so the candy weighed 1kg but she did take off 4 kg). I realize that I have some certainty about where I am headed. I pat myself in the back for reserving the room for tonight far enough in advance to get a shared room at the Mennonite Guest House, where I stayed in Nairobi for some of the time last year though my flight delay might leave me without the prearranged taxi from the airport. I’m kind of wishing I was that diligent about planning how to get to Shirati. Last year I paid a small chunk for the private van that took us all to Shirati and then a large chunk for the private car that took Melody and I back. This time, running on no budget, private car is out of the question. I have to face the local bus. The one that will take 10+ hours, have only Swahili speakers, breaks down quite consistently, keep on constant guard of my stuff (which is a small mountain) and don’t accept food from strangers (like one unfortunate American who was drugged and had his stuff stolen). I sort of arranged for an escort from Shirati to help me from Nairobi but realized I never received a confirmation for tomorrow…so either all is set and well and I’m on a limb.
Besides the logistics of how to return to Shirati, I know that I have needed to. Since I was 7 years old, I’ve longed with a deep desire to traverse continents to Africa and perform some sort of meaningful service work. I finally realized that dream last year with a research grant from USC to carry out a small self-designed study with Melody. I fell in love with it all, the research, walking house-to-house, the warm, friendly locals, the bottled sodas, and beauty of African nature. Mel and I haphazardly started a few programs days before leaving without much foresight into how we would sustain them. These included sponsoring an orphaned kingergartener with school assistance, shelter and food, starting the first girls soccer league in the area and malaria prevention education. Somehow these programs continued in our absence through wire transfers, e-mails and Skype calls every few months. It has been a little shy of 1 year since I nervously left LA to immerse myself for 7 weeks in the most poverty-stricken area I have seen yet. Towards the end, I did not want to leave and made a promise to come back. Originally, I imagined this fun trip where Mel and I with a few of our friends and boyfriends would return and work on building our programs together. Life happens and no one else was able to go so I shrugged and prepped for a solo trip. It can’t be that bad right? I travel alone all the time and meet up with others. The bus does intimidate me quite honestly. I know after this experience of spending the next 3 weeks alone (mostly) will only help me grow. I admit I will miss having that moral support when making ethical decisions or experiencing the most amazing moments with Melody like seeing the girls soccer team for the first time or reuniting with Babu.
Besides the logistics of how to return to Shirati, I know that I have needed to. Since I was 7 years old, I’ve longed with a deep desire to traverse continents to Africa and perform some sort of meaningful service work. I finally realized that dream last year with a research grant from USC to carry out a small self-designed study with Melody. I fell in love with it all, the research, walking house-to-house, the warm, friendly locals, the bottled sodas, and beauty of African nature. Mel and I haphazardly started a few programs days before leaving without much foresight into how we would sustain them. These included sponsoring an orphaned kingergartener with school assistance, shelter and food, starting the first girls soccer league in the area and malaria prevention education. Somehow these programs continued in our absence through wire transfers, e-mails and Skype calls every few months. It has been a little shy of 1 year since I nervously left LA to immerse myself for 7 weeks in the most poverty-stricken area I have seen yet. Towards the end, I did not want to leave and made a promise to come back. Originally, I imagined this fun trip where Mel and I with a few of our friends and boyfriends would return and work on building our programs together. Life happens and no one else was able to go so I shrugged and prepped for a solo trip. It can’t be that bad right? I travel alone all the time and meet up with others. The bus does intimidate me quite honestly. I know after this experience of spending the next 3 weeks alone (mostly) will only help me grow. I admit I will miss having that moral support when making ethical decisions or experiencing the most amazing moments with Melody like seeing the girls soccer team for the first time or reuniting with Babu.
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