Travel journal - Tanzania trip
January 1, 2005
We just spent the last 3 days traveling halfway around the world getting to here in Iringa. WHAT a trip it was .. the trip from Washington to London wasn=t too bad. When we arrived in London, we hunkered down in a lounge at Heathrow Airport called the Holideck. It had some small Star Trek influence in it=s design, and it was a decent place to get a bite to eat, something to drink, or catch a nap. And that=s precisely what we did: catch a nap between our 2 flights. The lounge was comfortable, and it did have Internet access, so we were happy. David especially so. What=s an American teenager to do without the Internet?
Our two flights to get here were pleasant and quite unremarkable. British Airways fed us relatively well, and we were in medium-grade seats, so we had a fair amount of leg room. But when we got to Dar es Salaam, we were in for the mother of all wake-up calls.
Once we got off the plane at 8:00AM, it was HOT, humid, and unpleasant. The line through customs was long, but the officials were very nice, and we had no problems at all getting ourselves or our packages through the system. HOWEVER, some idiots from security somewhere along the line exposed our cases of computers to wet weather, and many of the laptops were soaked with water. I was, and still am very upset about this. I will look at the laptops later today and see what we can do to bring them all back to life. When we arrived at our final destination of Iringa last night, our comrades here in Tanzania brought the laptops to the Diocese office, so we would have space in our hotel room to walk around.
The trip from Dar to Iringa: how should I describe it? We had hot weather, we saw crushing poverty, we saw human need and lack, all of what you might imagine. When the bus stops somewhere, crowds of people come to the bus trying to sell something to you. Pineapples, roasted corn, bread, water, toys, you name it. When we stopped along the way for a bathroom break, we saw what are considered bathrooms. For men, a wall was the urinal, and a hole in the ground was your toilet. For women, accommodations are even less inviting and less sanitary. Women here in many ways are material possessions, second-class citizens in a third-world country, and are accorded less respect, even in toilet accommodations. The awful smell is absolutely overpowering. And for this, we were expected to pay for the privilege. Joyce says that she will never complain about airplane bathrooms ever again after this last bathroom break. It just isn=t like the Howard Johnson=s on the New Jersey Turnpike.
So what is Iringa like: noisy, crowded, NOISY, poverty-stricken, NOISY, and so on. Our hotel, the Isimila, is luxury-class by standards here. We do have a regular toilet, and we do have a hot shower, but we have to use a mosquito net over the bed at night to keep us from experiencing the joys of malaria. We are near a masjid, or mosque, that calls people to prayer over a BIG loudspeaker at all times of day and night. First call: 4:30AM, followed by morning prayer at 5:00AM. The other times in the day aren=t so bad, and some of the voices are pretty good, but I believe I will stay in my bed and pray, thank you. There are shanty homes and shanty businesses everywhere. I cannot believe that these people actually make any money at all. Everyone looks at me like I am made of American money to be given away liberally to every soul on the street. I am NOT the rich American, and I am not here for any of that kind of foolishness. I am here to do an important job that hopefully will help the next generation of Tanzanians. Still, it is very hard to see all the poverty around you and know you can=t solve all the problems.
I see the people around here, and I just have to wonder what it is that they do that brings any sense of joy or meaning to their lives. They have by our standards no money, little education, no common comforts, none of the Western luxuries (which to Westerners are absolute necessities), and very little to hope for in the way of constructive change or improvement. The children I saw along the side of the road .. what hope do they have for a bright future, instead of a future performing subsistence farming tasks with outdated and ineffective tools? It is just very hard to look at, and know that people live their entire lives this way.
Food: I have never been so aware of my eating habits as I am during this trip. I have to watch everything I eat, not for calories= sake, but for things that might make me deathly ill. This morning=s breakfast: the eggs did NOT look like any eggs I have EVER seen. They were pure white, because the chickens were malnourished. The waiter (if you can call him that) BOILED our milk to make sure it was OK for consumption. No pasteurization, no homogenization, and probably no Vitamin D either. May not have even come from a cow .. can=t drink the water, so we must use bottled water, or other kinds of bottled beverages. Already I am tired of drinking things that may be suspect of making me sick. None of the restaurants I have eaten in here would pass the county=s health inspection test. Nothing has made my skin crawl, and my stomach is only a little upset now, mainly from taking Pepto-Bismol as a preventative measure against food-borne disease. Our doctor, who actually is from Iringa, suggested we do this to protect ourselves. But I am REALLY looking forward to a real steak in a British steak-house in about 3 weeks.
We did get to the Diocese office, and we checked out the laptops. All were working OK, remarkably. I feel so blessed and relieved to know that all the units are OK. We took the laptops out of the shipping containers and divided them up into piles for the different schools they were going to: Mtera, Image, and Bomalang=ombe. We will see these places all very soon. The only computer-related problem we have had so far was this: we lost several computer mice and a bench meter in transit, due to the cardboard box that the airport luggage-handlers mis-handled. When the box came into Dulles Airport, it was a cube. When it arrived in Dar es Salaam, it was more egg-shaped and badly tattered. Various kinds of tape, none of which we had ever applied, adorned the box. At the bottom was a big hole, presumably through which the mice disappeared. Such is life, I suppose.
I am really tired now. Miraji, my exchange student from two years ago, has been a WONDERFUL host and guide. He took us to one of the restaurants that internationals in this area frequent called Lulu=s. The food was OK, even though shrimp-fried rice has never really looked like what I had this evening. They even had ice cream. David is exhausted, and Joyce is holding up remarkably well. Personally, I am beat from all the walking around Iringa this afternoon.
More tomorrow. Will catch some sleep now. The cantor will awaken me at 4:30AM, to be sure.
January 4, 2005
Haven=t written for a few days. Been busy, and MY laptop has been having issues with the keyboard. Probably got damaged somewhere along the way, but who knows where. I have everyone else=s laptop working OK, but the shoemaker has lame shoes for himself. Oh well. (I eventually did fix the laptop=s keyboard, for which I am thankful.)
We went to church on Sunday with Miraji, and then we went afterwards to meet his family. The church was very warm and receptive to us, even though most of them could not speak English. We were introduced by Miraji to the congregation, and then we sang a song together in Swahili and English. That surprised many of the faithful .. a white American anglo-saxon protestant singing in Swahili in the heart of Africa. We had fun, however, and I am sure that God looked down upon us and smiled. At the end of the service, there was an auction of 4 eggs among the congregation. I have never seen anything like that before in my life .. an auction for 4 eggs to benefit the church !! So what happened .. the winner donated the eggs to us as a thank-you gesture for our coming to Tanzania. So we won 4 eggs at church that day. I was really humbled by that kind gesture. We ended up eating the eggs about an hour later. Miraji=s family hosted us at their home for lunch. It was, by anyone=s standards, a wonderful home cooked meal (and one we sorely needed). We had beef, chicken, potatoes, rice, salad, cabbage, pineapple, bananas, and it was terrific. The restaurants we had been going to in Iringa are OK, but they aren=t ever going to be on the food critic=s list in the Washington Post. Miraji=s family is delightful, and their home is very comfortable by Tanzanian standards. After having seen some of the shacks, hovels and shantys people live in during our trip from Dar es Salaam to Iringa, it was refreshing to see that not everyone is living in abject poverty.
We went shopping in Iringa on Sunday and Monday. It was an eye-opening and sometimes frightening experience. We truly were in no danger, but many people saw the rich-looking white Americans walking around, and immediately took that as a sign to start peddling wares or begging alms. It was a ATurkish bazaar@ in every sense. Clothing, food, art objects, baskets, household wares, everything was there. Lots of Abump and grind of the city,@ as my friend Craig so often talks about. We even went to an Internet café and were able to send emails to people back home. To top that, David arranged to get very inexpensive telephone access via the Internet back to the USA. He called some of his friends, all of whom were probably shocked to hear from him so very far away. We may use his calling card to check in with family at the end of this week, before we go off to safari in Ruaha National Park.
Monday was busy at the Iringa diocese office. We got all the computers divided up for the various schools, and we met the bishop as well. I fixed his laptop (a Dell, just like the ones we are giving to the schools), and we gave him 2 additional laptops for the office to use. He was very happy. If the bishop is happy, everyone=s happy. Of course, while we were there, one of the PCs in the office had to break, and guess who had to try and fix it? It was a Compaq piece of junk, and the power supply died. Fortunately, it was still under warranty, and could be repaired for free, so I was off the hook. We then drove to Pommern on Monday, our first official work destination, after having finished shopping for food in Iringa. Miraji knew a local food vendor that gave us great deals on our provisions for the coming week. We have to buy our own food, because the local churches cannot afford to feed us during our stay. We all piled the into the Land Rover and took off. I thought we=d have this terrible ride on poor roads, encountering all manner of wildlife and strange things. In fact, we had a very pleasant ride. The dirt roads were better than the dirt road to my house. Pommern is a beautiful town way out in the middle of nowhere. It was founded by German lutherans almost 100 years ago. There is a huge guest house here, and we are staying in it. There is electricity for only 3 hours a day, but that is OK. The staff cooks and cleans up for us. Miraji takes care of our personal needs like no one I have ever seen. He is absolutely wonderful. We really are being treated like kings on this trip. There will be lots of pictures from this stop along the way.
I=m getting ready to go down to the classroom area in a few minutes and tend to a few things on the computers there. We sent these computers over to Tanzania two years ago, and most of them are still in good shape. Some need minor repair or routine maintenance, which I will do while I am here. My battery in the laptop is running low, so I will write more later.
January 6, 2005
Yesterday and today have been busy days. I am happy to report, though, that the primary objectives for the Pommern leg of our trip have been accomplished successfully. I stayed up late last night until about 12:45AM reghosting the 12 laptops back to their original state from 2 years ago. Now all 12 laptops are exactly the same, and contain the exact same software, and are all in 100 percent working order. Further, the classes for the lab managers we held these past few days went very well, and I feel like we did what we set out to do. The teachers seemed excited about the prospect of using computers in their schools for the very first time, and they even laughed together with me. That was good. I feel that they learned a fair amount during these past three days, and that is good. However, no teachers showed up from the school at Bomalang=ombe. Rather disappointing, seeing as that=s the first school we will outfit with new computers.
I had dinner at Reuben=s house last night. Talk about a deep cross-cultural experience. He lives in a very small house near to the school in Pommern. He showed me all the courtesy that would be shown a foreign dignitary. David came with me, as did our guide Miraji. We ate chicken and potatoes (which is the standard fare everywhere), drank Fanta Orange soda pop, and made jokes about a bunch of things. We enjoyed the food and the company, and Reuben especially seemed to enjoy having me in his house, rather than the other way around. I believe it was his way of saying Athank you@ for having stayed in my home, and it was a good time to be together with him. I will miss him when we leave today.
A member of the Tanzanian parliament came to meet with me and the leaders of the Pommern school today. It was a very productive meeting, and we were able to impress this woman with the work we are doing. Hopefully it will go a long way towards cementing and growing some international relationships. We certainly made a bunch of friendship points by bringing lots of IT equipment over here for free. Everyone hovered over the MP .. I just treated her as a colleague, and I think she appreciated that. We=ll see what springs from this meeting today.
We left Pommern in the early afternoon, right after a HUGE rainstorm. The drive to Bomalang=ombe was very beautiful, but we also saw lots of poverty and destitution. Something about seeing families barely making a living from subsistence farming is really depressing. The combination of such beauty and such poverty is really mystifying to me. But when we got to Bomalang=ombe, we came upon the place we are going to stay .. absolutely 4-star accommodations as compared to where we have been staying. It=s an Italian guest house with a living room, dining room, nice bedrooms, and REAL toilets that really work and flush. It is clean, bright, comfortable and pleasant. And all for $8.00 per person per day for two days. Being able to sit on a real toilet for the first time in several days was almost a religious experience. Perhaps we can get a bit of rest in the next few days. A large number of children are singing in some kind of gathering outside. It is really remarkable. Their voices are absolutely unbelievable. You wouldn=t see that in PG County anywhere ..also a large number of adults are singing in a church next to our building. They sound terrific. They could teach me a thing or two.
General impressions about the trip so far .. We have come a very long way, and have done some very interesting and important things in a very different kind of place. Our work has gone so far without any major hitches at all. I thought I lost my backpack on the way from Iringa to Pommern, but it was found quickly. From this small incident I realized how very tied I am to western culture, mainly because my laptop and my shortwave radios are in that bag. I am listening to the Voice of America as I am typing this journal entry, and I have relied on the BBC during most of my trip to stay informed about what is happening at home and in the rest of the world. From what I can see, the tsunami disaster is still the biggest story in the news, even 10 days after it happened. But really: if I were completely out of touch with the rest of the world, what would it hurt? While I am here in the Athird world@, must I be constantly tied to the first world? Must I be connected to the information society collective all the time, and what does it gain me to be this way? Can=t I just live today and enjoy Africa without reaching back across the ocean? I will have to think about that a bit ..