Quiztime

These are all examples of suprising things people eat in Tanzania… except one. Go ahead, try to guess:

a. cornstalks
b. bean leaves
c. pea leaves
d. pumpkin leaves
e. tomato leaves
f. raw sweet potatoes
g. termites
h. dirt

Letter (a) saved my life. The other day I went on a long hike to all of the sites for the water project. I started to get dehydrated, but luckily this is the perfect season for migagi, or cornstalks. You pick out a juicy-looking stalk that has failed to produce corn and you munch away on its sugary pulp. It’s like a lame version of sugarcane.

Bean, pumpkin and pea leaves are perfect greens to fry up with some oil and tomatoes. But I’ve never heard of tomato leaves being edible. So the answer is (e).

People eat raw sweet potatoes much like we would snack on carrots. I don’t enjoy them.

Termites are a nice snack, raw or fried. 'Bite them before they bite you' is the only rule.

Dirt is sold in cigar-shaped moulds at the market, and is coveted by Tanzania’s many pregnant women. In some places, I’ve heard, it has become illegal to sell it due to health concerns, but I still see the reddish-brown sticks for sale all the time.

My kaka (that’s older brother in Swahili)

Scanning the herd of wazungu who streamed out from the baggage claim area, I saw a few who, from a distance, could have been my brother. Starting to sweat, I worried about not recognizing him after two years. If I ran up and hugged the wrong mzungu, how on earth would I live down the embarrassment?

But he was the same good old brother, only a fair bit thinner, with a more European style (he lives in London now), speaking with the slightest tinge of a British accent, and throwing in ridiculous words such as “crisps” and “trousers.”

With barely a moment to breathe, we hurried away to the ferry dock and just made it onto a morning ferry headed for Zanzibar. I had heard many things about the island of Unguja (the bigger of the two Zanzibar Islands), from spice heaven, to tourist trap, to rip-off, to paradise.

These were the top ten things that surprised me about Zanzibar:

1. The dhow fishing boats being thrown about on Indian Ocean waves, packed full with as many people as can fit without sinking the boat (much like the minibuses on the mainland), and the fact that net-fishing appears to involve several people actually jumping in the water

2. The irritating inevitability of meeting with street touts wanting to take you on tours for “a good price, as you are my friend”

3. Octopus: yes, it’s rubbery and tentacly, but it’s absolutely delicious

4. Meeting Masai men on the beach who have given up a life of cattle-herding on the mainland to sell jewelry to tourists

5. Chatting with these same Masai salesmen about AIDS and learning that they believe the Masai are immune to it

6. The energy and boldness of our stout taxi driver, whose confidence with the traffic police (demanding to see their identification, a preemptive strike) prevented him from having to give any bribes

7. The beauty of Stonetown, with the windy streets, ornate wooden doors, and many mosques and churches, and the ease with which we got completely lost in it several times

8. The difficulty we had when attempting to find the exact spot Freddy Mercury, the singer from Queen, was born (we found only a poster explaining he was born in Stonetown, but the shopowners dismissed me when I asked them for more details)

9. Mangrove trees: the most amazing part of the trip for me was walking down a boardwalk completely surrounded by mangrove trees with their tentacle-like roots. They’re on a floodplain of an estuary, and when the tide is up they’re immersed in seawater. The seeds are like little spears that germinate first on the tree, then fall down and stick in the mud. We planted a few on our walk.

10. Red Colobus monkeys. They’re bold, they’re adorable, and half the time I was gawking at their cute antics, and the other half I was praying they wouldn’t jump on me. They often jumped right over our heads from tree to tree.

So that was Zanzibar. I can only take so much of being a tourist and having people yelling “Jambo mzungu!” at me, so we headed back to the mainland to begin the journey to my village.
Our return ferry trip was crazy, as we got to sit on the bow, dangling our feet over the edge while simultaneously earning nasty sunburns.


In Dar es Salaam we met up with a friend for dinner, accidentally met a famous Bongo Flavor singer named Banana Zoro, and got caught in a traffic jam with the only female taxi-driver in the city.

Then we were off on a high-speed safari to Iringa, catching glimpses of elephants and giraffes, and my brother got a chance to try his hand at bus-window bargaining for bananas and cashews using sign-language.

That night my brother (finally) agreed that I was a genius. I had the idea of getting some tandoori chicken and taking it to a place that serves awesome peas and rice, and we feasted.

Then it was off to the village. I’m used to introducing all of my male visitors as “my brother,” so this time I had to stress that he was from the same mother, same father, or from the same belly.
I had to go teach a lesson at the secondary school, so I left my brother at home. When I came back I found he had already made friends and was touring the village. I found him nodding and smiling at people who would chatter away at him in Swahili, or punch out some sentences in English.

A live chicken
We were supposed to go to lunch with some friends of mine. When we showed up they hadn’t prepared the meal, and felt awful about it. So they stuffed a chicken in a basket and told us to go cook it at home. While thanking them profusely, we exchanged dubious looks, but luckily the eldest son and daughter came to help with the slaughter. It was quite an event. The result was something that resembled maktak or chewing gum in consistency, but with a strong chickeny flavor.

The next day we set out on an all-day, work-related hike, where I visited several people I needed to see about the water project and AIDS activities. I met a little woman who demanded,”Gimme a present!” when she saw me, to which I replied “You give ME a present!” in an equally loud and rude voice. I never thought a friendship would result from the meeting, but we ended up laughing and chatting. It turns out she has AIDS, and is brave enough to be open about it, and I promised to help her and others get help from the district government. She’s actually a very strong, kind lady, despite my first impression of her.

The hike was tiring, but along the way we were given little gifts, some roast corn and a gigantic custard-apple. We got home and dug up some sweet-potatoes from the farm, and cooked them up along with sweet-potato leaf sauce. As expected, we had a few visitors, who were delighted to have another mzungu to chat with.

Low-rider
The next day we set out for Lake Nyasa, meeting my friend the taxi driver, Onne, to drive us to Matema Beach. This time there was less trouble with the traffic police, but we never expected it would be a terribly treacherous ride. Just as we turned on to the dirt road about 2 hours from the beach, the road turned to a complete bog. A flock of young men were hanging around, waiting for cars to get stuck and helping to push them through for a small fee. Onne bargained with them, and soon we were off on a side path being pushed through the mucky parts. Having lived here for almost 2 years, I didn’t think that this agreement was anything out of the ordinary, but my brother was getting nervous at the thought of these people we didn’t know leading us through the bush where the possibility of getting stuck was very high. Emerging triumphantly on the other side, we picked up a teacher who was going our way. He said that last week the road was completely impassable to traffic, but he had to take some documents to town. He hired a man to carry him on his back through chest-high water so the forms wouldn’t get wet, but the man stumbled, and they both fell in, submerging the documents. We were lucky to go when we did! We made it to the beach having crossed several rivers in the car and bottoming out from time to time. The nice part was that we had the whole beach to ourselves, as nobody else dared to risk the road.

Matema was beautiful as usual, and telling stories with Onne is always enjoyable. We rode in a dugout canoe to snorkel and look at the fish, but as it has been rainy, the water wasn’t clear. At night we ate fish from the lake, but, just as last time, I “gave back the change.” I guess Lake Nyasa fish just doesn’t agree with me.

On the way out we got stuck, and my brother and I pushed while Onne steered. I fell in the mud, right in front of a big group of secondary students who had refused to help us. Finally we got towed out of that hole, and once again hired some young guys to push us through the detour at the bog. We got stares from everyone once we reached the main road, until we could make it to the carwash.

So my advice to anyone who wants to have a good time is to go into the Peace Corps in Tanzania and then invite your brother to come visit for two weeks.

A change of scenery

It’s official, in July I’m done being a mzungu, but not done being a Peace Corpse! I’m trading in my kofia for a sombrero, Bongo Flavor for Punta music, my shilingi for lempira, and my ugali for tortillas. I’m putting off actually having to figure out what to do with my life for another 2 years. On July 15th I’ll leave Dar es Salaam heading for Tegucigalpa, Honduras as a Protected Areas Management Volunteer.

My biggest fears are of becoming that annoying girl who is constantly mocked for the phrase “And this one time in Tanzania...” and being socially inept among other Americans who haven’t been immersed in Tanzanian culture for 2 years. I was complaining to my best friend the other day that while my friends back in the states are getting smarter (taking higher degrees, getting challenging jobs), I’m getting dumber (unable to construct sentences in English, forgetting everything I learned in college). He pointed out that it is ok, as I am getting stronger! By the time I get back home I’m going to be a muscle-bound mute much like a cavewoman. I jokes.

I read a book by a deaf Peace Corps Volunteer in Zambia, in which the author quotes that "Peace Corps Volunteers in Asia come back spiritually aware, volunteers in Latin America come back politically and socially motivated, and those in Africa come back drunk and laughing". So expect the arrival of a drunken activist in 2010.

Slow Progress
The village’s jolly nurse and I pedaled our bikes up the hill in the heat of the midday sun, with only a vague clue of where we were headed. We were looking for two certain people and knew the name of the sub-village where we needed to go, but we had to be discrete when asking villagers where the people lived. The nurse rarely leaves the dispensary, as a pregnant mama or a sick person could turn up at any moment, so it was an odd sight to see her riding around in the bush.

On a journey that took us in a few circles, we finally ended up at a small mud house in the forest, where a very kindly couple in their sixties lives. The woman is one of those people for whom a slight smile permanently brightens her face, and the man has an easy flowing way of chatting. The couple is HIV positive.

I was worried that this visit would be awkward, as it was my first meeting with them. It wasn’t. We inquired about farming and kids. The nurse and I teased ourselves about being wimps for having our small farm plots so close to our homes. The couple has to hike far up a mountain to get to their farm, which is losing fertility.

Then we brought the subject around to their health. The man does not look at his wife or address her directly, and refers to her as "my friend." He says "I’m doing all right health-wise, but I don’t know about my friend." This is normal. She is one of his two surviving "friends," and he married her after she had been widowed. They are currently taking ARV’s, and are healthy enough that they had just come from the farm.

We gave them some sugar, salt and soap. They were gracious hosts and sent us on our way with a basketful of fresh corn to roast. We made plans to meet up again. Some places in Tanzania it is relatively easy to be open about having HIV. Not in my area. I’ve tried all kinds of things to get people who know they are positive to come out of the woodwork. Finally the nurse got some names of people and asked them if she could share them with me. I hope it will be a great first step in getting help for those sick with AIDS and getting rid of stigma.

Top 5 reasons why it will be hard for me to leave Tanzania
1. Here tooth-brushing is not confined to the bathroom and does not prevent you from carrying out other activities. You might find someone brandishing a hoe, washing clothes, or cooking with a foamy toothbrush hanging off his lip.

2. Kids are left to their own devices as soon as they are able to control their own bodily functions. I like this philosophy.

3. You can accuse people you barely know of being liars. It’s not nearly as rude as it is in our culture. A good example would be when the bus conductor tells you the price has gone up 500 shillings because the price of oil went up. Then you are allowed to call him a liar.

4. There are convenient and normal phrases to say "welcome," "where were you just now (before coming here)?," "my condolences," and "you have tried your level best." In English these phrases sound awkward/too formal/exchange-studentish, but in Swahili they are more than normal.

5. Bongo Flavor. This is the popular Tanzanian music. Many foreigners find it repetitive, boring, or whiny. But I’m addicted.

Dinosaurs
I started trying to explain dinosaurs to a friend, and before I could mention that they were extinct, he exclaimed, “Oh yeah, there are a bunch of those on the path from here to Kimilinzowo!” After sorting out that that was pretty unlikely, I decided it might be interesting to teach the seventh graders about them.

One of the quickest ways to cause villagers to doubt your truthfulness is to tell people about dinosaurs. The kids were sitting in class on a Sunday, waiting for a teacher to come. A friend of mine had taught dinosaurs before in his primary school, and had come armed with a National Geographic about them. It showed artists’ renderings of what some of the weirder dinosaurs might have looked like: some looking ferocious except for two puny little arms, some with sharp spikes protruding from their shoulders, and others smaller than a rat but with ridiculously long fingers. It felt as though we were showing them pictures of Transformers and trying to convince them that they were real. Whether or not they were convinced, they were definitely amused.

Priorities
A woman came to my house asking for money. She explained that she needed to buy corn which would then be made into “Common” (vomit-like alcoholic beverage) which she needed to take to a funeral so she could dump it on her deceased relative’s grave. Once I had heard her plea, I reiterated the statement, just to see if she realized exactly how bizarre it sounded. This particular woman seems incapable of talking about anything but sick people, hard work, and a lack of money. She began talking about how hard life was and how her kids had just washed their clothes without soap. When I heard this, I said I would give her the money, but she had to use it to buy soap for her kids, rather than alcohol to dump on the ground.

Scare-human
There is a section of my farm which I just call the “bird-feeder” now, due to the fact that all of my giant sunflowers have been completely destroyed by crows. A friend helped me construct a scare-crow, using some of my old clothes and stuffing them with dried bean-plant residue. The plants are still being attacked, but half of my visitors show up slapping their thighs and saying they’ve just greeted my guard. Most of the time I’m the one who gets startled by the scare-crow when I make my way home in the evening.

Quiz time
What would you consider the weirdest occurrence you might come across in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania?

a. People on the bus asking you if you’re married, and if so then when is your husband’s contract up.

b. People walking for miles and miles along the side of the road completely laden with live chickens which they are taking to sell to expensive restaurants in Dar Es Salaam which pay high prices and pride themselves in serving chickens which have never been transported by car or even bicycle.

c. Grown men hopping like frogs in front of the police station.

d. People walking backwards on Sundays for good luck.

e. Old women spitting on young kids they think are bright or handsome.

And the answer is… well it could be (a) or (c), depending on which you think is stranger. I’ve met several people here who are under the impression that Americans get married for a set amount of time, and after the contract is up, they divorce. I’m not sure where this idea came from, but it may be a product of our high divorce rate. Also you could find people doing a number of degrading things outside the police station, many of them forced to do so until they give in and give a bribe. Letters (b) and (d) are completely made up. I borrowed (e) from my Turkish friend who says that it is a custom there to spit on these people to bring them luck (at least in Ankara).

Dirt Blindness
If your house is constantly clean, what do you have to compare it with? What kind of sense of accomplishment do you get from cleaning up small messes every day?

My strategy is to let parts of my house sink into such a state of clutter that cleaning would better be described as remodeling. It makes me feel benevolent and slightly magical to turn the trash heap into a perfectly decent living area. Then I flit around the house, feasting my eyes on the shimmering concrete, stacks of books, and alphabetized spices (ok, I've never gone quite that far). I pride myself in the fact that my floor is so clean you could eat a peanut off of it (applying the 10 second rule of course). I generally don’t do this kind of drastic cleaning on a whim; it takes a special occasion. I’m like a guy who waits for a wedding to shave off his full-length beard, shocking his friends with the sight of his handsome, long-forgotten chin. Once I get wind of a potential visitor, my first reaction is a deep despair over the state of my abode. Excuses come to mind—vandals, raccoons, tornadoes, witchcraft—but upon realizing the first three don’t exist in my village, and a curse that makes your house dirty would be rather lame as curses go, I’m forced to plan out the work. The trick is to start scrubbing early enough that I have a few days to appreciate the cleanliness of my lair before guests come so that I don’t begin to hate and resent them on arrival for the chaos they bring. It also can’t be too early or I will spend days spraining toes as I leap across the living room on tiptoes and starving, as cooking inevitably messes up the kitchen. Once a grand cleaning has been completed, I usually feel as if it deserves to be noted. For the amount of energy I have expended in the effort, I could just as well have made a wedding cake, built a henhouse, or developed abs of steel (all of which merit congratulations). I used to hope that people would at least comment. Then one day a 14-year-old boy did comment on my clean house, but I just felt patronized. It was as if he had congratulated me for brushing my own teeth or dressing myself. Cleaning is such a part of life here that generally only its absence is noted.

One of my neighbors is sympathetic to my lack of cleaning skills. She knew I was cleaning up, and actually came over to help. She decided, of all things, to wash my buckets. I was under the impression that buckets that had spent their entire short lives holding water and nothing else weren’t in need of a scrubbing. Wrong. I guess sometimes I just don’t even see the dirt. This is ok, as it lends a name to my condition—dirt blindness. It sounds kind of exotic, like I’ve been stranded in the desert too long. I was very grateful for the aid of my neighbor, who is a pro when it comes to household cleanliness. She is the owner of two kids under 10 and a miniature dinosaur who teeters around on two or four limbs roaring and terrorizing the living room. It is his personal goal to knock all items on the floor and drool on them. Still, she somehow manages to erase all traces just seconds after they occur. If Tanzania had a cleaning Olympics, my neighbor would be a top contender. I would be a jealous spectator.

Don’t know beans
When I was little, I made a list of the things I needed to learn in order to qualify as an adult. By the time I was five, the only things left on the list were: learn to drive, lock the front door, and cut my own meat (I hadn’t yet learned about taxes).

I sometimes imagine what my list would have been like were I born a Tanzanian child in a rural village. Most likely I would have given up completely. The list would include: learn to balance half my weight on my head, scrub clothes clean with knuckles using only a cup of water per garment, simultaneously carry a baby on my back and pound grain, learn to winnow wheat or rice without spilling half the load, etc. I still don’t think I have a remote chance at qualifying as an adult here. If I suddenly looked and talked like the neighbor women, I think they’d probably treat me with pity.

I recently realized the repercussions of my eclectic farm (which is a patchwork mix of corn, sunflowers, beans, soy, peanuts, carrots, pumpkins, cowpeas, green peas, potatoes, and more). While I proudly receive praise for my healthy crops and successful intercropping experiments, I also curse myself for planting such a random mix in random places. Orchestrating the harvest is difficult. Then there’s my bean problem—it dawned on me that I don’t really know what to do with them once they’re ready. I know you bring in a tangle of bean plants, dry them, beat them til the beans are free, and put them in a basket and pour them back and forth until all non-bean particles have been excluded. But it’s the little steps that elude me. How long must they dry for? How do you get the beans from the ground to the basket? Once done, do you really have to go to the trouble of sorting the beans by color?

At one point last year, my friend declared me a “black man,” for my ability to cultivate crops. It was a compliment. But nobody has ever called me a Tanzanian woman. That is still way beyond my abilities at this point. Babies handed to me still cry as if I’m the devil, I inevitably get soaked whenever I carry water on my head, and when I cook greens they taste like leaves, not food.

Yesterday I attended a meeting where women were told they had to set a curfew for themselves to get back to their homes. I had to sit on my hands, but couldn’t keep small noises of exasperation from escaping my throat. Finally, one of the women suggested that the men also have a curfew, at which I jumped up and clapped while the men glared at me. This idea was very hotly contested, but in the end, the men said they would set a curfew later. The women must now be home by 8pm to avoid fines. There was also a lot of debate over what punishment a woman must receive should her husband disturb the peace of the village by beating her for not cooking vegetables. Not one of the women questioned that the beating would be warranted. I feel so far removed from this type of submission, that I have to pretend it’s a joke to keep from going mad.

I think if plopped in a village looking and speaking exactly like a Tanzanian man, I’d stand a far better chance of being accepted with my current abilities and tendency to speak my mind.

Peace Corps stresses you should “Greet everyone”
This morning I called out “Hello Grandmother!” when I saw an old woman, and she didn’t reply. I figured she might be deaf. I was about to try again when I realized she was actually just a stump.

Mwalimu Peace Corpse
It happened so gradually I barely realized what was happening. Like someone whose nightly scotch gradually grows in size, going from shot glass to cup to mug, to bottle. One day I just woke up and realized that… I’m a teacher.

I’d been in denial for a while. What started as a couple of harmless school clubs gradually spilled over into several classes. You take on one class, and soon it’s “I’ll just take one more before noon. That’s it. I know my limits. I can stop anytime.” When you wake up and go straight to school, give lectures and exercises, grade papers all day, and live your life by the “bell” (actually a rusty wheel hung on a tree that kids hit with a mallet), then you’ve got to eventually accept the truth.

Once you start you can’t quit. You worry about whether the kids actually understood what you said about the renal vein, and whether they care about the main crop of Sri Lanka. You find yourself trying to snap out of the teacher voice with your friends. You constantly have chalk on your hands, in your hair, and, inexplicably, on your butt.

If I were a normal Tanzanian teacher, I’d be carrying a stick wherever I went. Instead, I’m armed with only my knowledge of kids names, which I say with my most evil angry teacher-voice when they are being noisy. For now, that’s working. But at any point they could realize there’s no threat of punishment and decide to eat me alive.

Winter, summer, spring, fall… such generic terms
Tummy-trouble season is over. Clothes-never-dry season is over. Scrape-muck-out-of-your-orifices-after-bike-rides season is over. Farm-morning-until-night season is over. Eat-giant-unripe-peaches-pretending-they’re-apples season is over.

It is sideways-rain season. It is tall-crop season. It is pear and roast-corn and fresh-bean and flamboyant-mushroom season. It is warm-morning season. I like this season.

Sadly I’ll only see one more season here in Tanzania. I call it frozen-morning, custard-apple, dust-in-your-nose, haul-your-water season. Wherever you brush against any plants, your clothes get coated in “dog decorations,” long thin black seeds that grab on like Velcro. People call me a hick for always being covered in them. They say it must be because when I decide to go somewhere, I march there in a straight line, through farms and fields, ignoring all obstacles.

Each season here has its good and its bad, so you have to learn to love the good.

I think I’m turning Tanzanian, I really think so
Emerging from the forest with a bag full of roots on my head, a hoe, and another bag of edible mushrooms, I felt more Tanzanian than some of my villagers, or at least more village than some of my villagers. People were asking me what I wanted with lidupala, a well-known local tuber that can be used as a pesticide for maize-munching bugs called luhoma, when there was chemical pesticide readily available at the store. I pointed out that this was free, and better for the environment, and probably wouldn’t slowly give me cancer.

Lacking a mortar and pestle, a friend of mine helped me beat the tubers into a pulp with a club and soak them overnight. The next day we scooped cupfuls of the substance and poured some into the tops of the infected corn plants, watching the milky liquid spiral down the stalks. I imagined the screams of the little earwig-like monsters as the fatal tsunami hit.

As a mushroom-picker, I am a complete flop. I was lucky to be with a skilled mushroom expert, adept at choosing only edible mushrooms. He had nearly filled a bag with little red and yellow mushrooms, before I found my first- a tiny shriveled pink specimen, which I insisted we take as it might be my only find of the day. Most of the rest of the ones I found were deemed inedible. We managed to get enough mushrooms for a very decent meal for 2 and a cat.

A failing system
The state of the primary school is dreadful. There are over 600 students, 7 different grades, and supposedly 7 teachers. There are supposed to be at least 17 teachers for this number of students. You are lucky to find even 4 teachers at school in any given day, and I’d have a heart attack if even 3 were teaching in the classrooms at the same time. Two of these teachers are perpetually drunk, and go to work only when they get bored with drinking. One of them was just beaten to the brink of death by a former teacher for “preferring someone else’s wife,” although he has 5 of his own. If he recovers, it is unclear whether his kidneys will work again. Two of the other teachers just took their national high school exams, and pretty much gave up teaching classes so they could study. The husband of one of the teachers lives 5 hours away, and she often visits him and, understandably, takes her time in getting back to the village. The kids are in class most of the time without a teacher. The 7th grade kids are forced to go to school on Saturday and Sunday, when the teachers can find time to work with them. I am going to start sitting in on some classes and might help teach science or math if I start to feel comfortable. I am also working with the priest to try and set up a library so that kids can study on their own.

Powdered-Milk Guitar

When I was growing up in Barrow, Alaska, I waited excitedly for my birthday or a holiday which would warrant a splurge on real milk. With a gallon of milk costing about $7, we instead bought giant boxes of Milkman powdered milk, which came in bright orange boxes with a picture of a young brunette with a milk moustache, looking ecstatic to be drinking the stuff. I choked down a chalky cup every night with dinner, wondering how that little girl on the box gained so much enjoyment from hers.

Here in Tanzania, I spend a large chunk of my monthly allowance to feed my addiction to powdered milk. It adds the necessary substance to a mug of chai, or a bowl of rice pudding. Suffice to say my relationship with milk powder has turned 180°. A can of the stuff costs about 6 dollars US, and I go through about 2 of those per month. I have built up quite a stash of the cans.

I left one can outside my house after planting some seeds that I had stored in it. A seventh grader who stopped by told me not to leave it there or it would be stolen by someone who wanted to make a guitar.

A guitar!? Cool, I said. Why don’t we make one? In fact, why don’t we do it as an environmental club session on recycling?

So I became the student. They poked a hole in the side of the can, and drove a stick into it. Then they poked a hole in the bottom of the can and fed a string through it, and tied the other end of the string to the stick. It has only 1 string at this point (but we could add more), but the pitch can be altered by increasing tension on the stick. One of the kids was a pro at plucking the makeshift guitar. I’m still working on it and planning my debut in the primary school.

Saloon
The barber nervously admitted that he’d never cut mzungu hair before. I had finally decided that I couldn’t live 2 years in Tanzania without enjoying the services of a hair saloon (it just sounds exciting, doesn’t it?). This one bragged that it specialized in “all types of hair.” I thought it was safe.

I explained I wanted about two inches off. I should have explained that this was 2 inches from my entire head of hair, evenly. The barber deftly whipped a cloth across my shoulders, grabbed a lock of my hair, and poised his scissors about 7 inches from the end. “Two inches!” I screamed, just seconds before the damage could be done. He wiped the sweat from his brow, repositioned his weapon, and hacked off 2 inches. Then there was an awkward pause, and he asked “should I continue?”, as if I seriously might be satisfied with this and walk out. He continued to grab random locks of my hair and lop off a couple of inches, pausing now and then to ask if he was done. I was tempted to ask just to borrow the scissors. Once my hair was roughly 2 inches shorter, and I’d gotten him to trim some missed spots, I freed the man from his drudgery. I was relieved that not too much damage had resulted, but a little disappointed at the lack of action at the saloon.

Burn
When my environment kids finished their little experimental garden, I noticed that the little Tupperware I had given them filled with sunflower seeds to plant was empty. I realized it was a dumb move to give them the whole container if I wanted the extra ones. I wasn’t mad—how could I be when some of these kids hadn’t eaten since the night before? But I told them I needed everyone who had eaten seeds to raise their hands immediately so I could rush them to the clinic. I told them I’d sprayed the seeds with pesticides, and we’d have to hurry up and get them treated. A few of the kids, looking rather worried, tentatively raised their hands, while the very clever ones realized it was a trick. When I admitted my fib, they fell on the ground laughing.

No More Zombies
The kids in my sex ed class shocked me last class. When I arrived, a shy but creative student had a greeting he had prepared to take the place of the normal comatose recitation. (See Saturday, Feb. 2 - Zombies entry)

“Gail Norton (clap, clap), AIDS and youth (clap, clap, clap), we are learning (x3) each and everything, YEAH!”

At first my name was pronounced so strangely that I didn’t recognize it, but once I did, I nearly choked on my own saliva. I still find it startling when I receive this little cheer session, but have learned to take it as a much-needed confidence booster before a class I still get nervous about teaching.

In the previous session three boys had volunteered eagerly to prepare a skit to perform in front of the class. I hadn’t talked to them since they had agreed, and I was convinced they had changed their minds, and were too shy to perform a play about misconceptions about sex and pregnancy for their peers. Boy was I wrong. These kids attacked the play with such enthusiasm, adding their own style and details, down to hilarious walks, that we asked them to perform a second time. I can’t wait until the next skit.