Happy New Year, 2012

Out with the old and in with the new! We’ve been here the last half of 2011 and it’s been a good year. The best part came at the end when our immediate family was all here for Christmas. Jess came from Blacksburg, Virginia, on December 13 and stayed two weeks. That was great. I really miss extended family and friends a lot so, thanks, Jess, for getting on that plane even though you had to leave Jake and Emma at the kennel!

Back home in the states, Christmas goes hand-in-hand with bare trees, wintry cold, snow on the horizon and bundling up to go outside but here it’s summer year-round and Christmas pops up when it’s hot with tropical foliage everywhere. Some trees and plants have striking red and green foliage right now and that looks pretty “Christmas- y.”

Oddly enough, the wintry trappings of Christmas that developed in northern climes have been transported here with depictions of a bundled-up Santa pulled along by those ridiculous reindeer and fake Christmas trees with sparkling lights whose intent, originally, was to ward off the wintry dark!

But the generous spirit of Christmas transcends climes and borders and that was brought home to us when a Muslim friend turned up at our door with a little evergreen tree branch that he cut from somewhere way up the mountain just for his Christian friends. Nathan cut it down to size for a table centerpiece. Several weeks ago I got a locally-made crèche with African figures to add to my little “global” crèche collection so that went under the little tree-branch.

We had planned to spend Christmas weekend on the coast in Bagamoyo north of Dar es Salaam but torrential rains washed out bridges and roads in that area. About five thousand people who live in low-lying areas of Dar lost their homes. With more heavy rain expected in the next few days, it’s not likely they will be able to return. The Tanzanian government is promising to help them find other housing, even offering them land far outside the city if they are willing to relocate. I expect the town planners in Dar would be happy to move people out of the crowded city and a flood might look like an opportunity for them – but probably not for the people who are displaced.

We went out west to Iringa when Jess was here. Iringa is high and surrounded by rocky outcrops and mountains. One afternoon we hiked up to some rocks above the town and that’s where we took the picture at the top. There’s a craft shop in Iringa run by the Lutheran church that sells ice cream, chocolate pastries and cakes so we spent considerable time there! We also discovered an Italian Consolatta convent in town that makes wonderful pasta, pesto, ravioli, caponata, jams, and other delights that you can’t generally buy here. We came out of there carrying boxes of good stuff! There’s a Consolatta monastery west of Iringa that makes cheese (wow!!) but it was too far away, alas.

We also spent several days at Ruaha National Park. I really love Tanzania’s game parks. Without them, a lot of these animals would be wiped out by now and Tanzania does a good job of protecting these rare creatures while using money generated from park visitors to help surrounding communities. The night sky in the parks is breathtaking. You get the feeling of being alone on the top of the world surrounded by the widest sky imaginable and the stars just burst out at you from the horizon to top. When we lived in Babati many years ago, there was no electricity at night and I would sit in the backyard and gaze at the Southern Cross and the entire brilliant southern night sky and feel at one with the cosmos. Thirty years later, in every town of Tanzania, it’s too lit up at night to do that.

We saw elephants, hippos, giraffes, gazelles, zebras, water buck, impalas and other animals at Ruaha. Here are a few pictures:

Ruaha allegedly has 10,000 elephants and here are a few of them.

The lions were all focused on their own lives and activities -- paid us no mind. Note the little cub on the left.

And the "Little Prince" baobab trees were all leafed out and everywhere -- forests of baobabs. Loved it!

La Vie Quotidien (Everyday Life)

Things will never settle down into ordinary routine but, after four months, we’ve probably gotten as close to that as we ever will. Most mornings Dave and I are up around 6:30 and eat breakfast together while we talk and check our email and the news. On Monday and Friday morning, Nasifu soon shows up with his basket of fruit and vegetables. Lately that’s included fresh strawberries and sometimes raspberries. I wash whatever we get and store it away. Dave goes off to his office at Sokoine University and I head upstairs to settle in for more research and writing on the abolition movement in the United States. Around nine o’clock the young woman who works for us shows up to do some cleaning and the laundry, make bread, chase monkeys off the rooftop, or run errands as needed. In the afternoon she goes off to town for several hours of class.

We have a car with the steering on the right side and I’ve learned once again to drive on the left, always looking out for the manic piki-pikis and bicycles that careen all over the road. Once a week or so I’ll go to the large market to pick up veggies and fruit and to one of the small grocery stores that offer a few other things.

On Tuesday morning I often go to Ricky’s Café to chat for an hour or two with other women who’ve moved here from elsewhere. Most of their families hailed originally from England or Scotland but they’ve lived in Africa for generations, either in Malawi, Kenya, Zimbabwe, or South Africa so it’s an interesting group with collective interest in what’s going on in all of those countries and in East Africa generally. But we talk about less important things, too. This week, for example, after I had mentioned my love for a certain BBC show last week, one of them handed me the complete DVD set of Downton Abbey’s first season and promised me the second set at the end of December. The second season won't be broadcast on PBS until January and February so no second season spoiler giveaways shall pass through this blog!

Most weekends Erica and Nathan are here which is always great and sometimes involves a good game of Settlers of Catan on the porch, probably the best game ever. There is one English language church service in town on Sunday, at a tiny Anglican church with an equally tiny crowd. It’s a good service, though. The Tanzanian Anglican priest has thoughtful and inspiring sermons and is most welcoming to all. Dave and I finally tracked down the sole Mennonite church here last Sunday only to discover that no one was there and the church is only a foundation with a skeleton frame but an impressive sign in front. We’ll try going back at a different time and figure out what’s going on.

Several weeks ago, Jan and Paul Swartzentruber from Columbus spent a week with us. It was great to see them both, even if they hadn’t brought out a large stack of magazines! The New Yorker, Atlantic, Harpers, the Christian Century! What a feast. And who knew Jan is a great hair stylist! She cut Erica’s hair and mine too. That was an unexpected treat because getting one’s hair cut here isn’t always easy. Their time with us gave our home a greater sense of being connected to our larger roots.

Here are Jan and Paul with Dave at his office at Sokoine University and the two of them taking a walk in the Rock Garden just up the road from us.

Paul and Jan are experienced bird-watchers and they brought their binoculars and identified the colorful birds that we saw everywhere, even on our front porch. I gained a new-found appreciation for the variety of birds around here and for bird-watching in general. Having them here was a real gift to us and I was sorry to see them go.

Living Above the Wash Line

I didn’t expect to have a washing machine when we came to Tanzania because we never had one either here or in Congo and Uganda. All over Africa clothes are still mostly washed by hand. But small washing machines are available now and our house even has the required plumbing in place.

So the question arose, should we buy a washing machine? A couple of things went through my mind. The machines available are somewhat flimsy. They are subject to import duties of about one hundred percent so they are expensive but not durable.

But the larger question was about energy. Washing machines consume a lot of energy and I didn’t come to Tanzania expecting to leave as large a footprint as I leave in the United States. Washing clothes by hand doesn’t use electricity and, if everyone on this planet begins to consume energy at the rate we Americans do, how sustainable is that?

Here’s the standard "green" method of washing clothes by hand here in Tanzania. Fill a large bucket with cold, soapy water and dunk several pieces of clothing in it. Bend over the bucket and pull up one piece of clothing. Wring it out in a spiral twist, put it back in the bucket to re-soak and wring it out again. Do this over and over until it’s clean. Then take up the next item of clothing and repeat. There will be lots of water spilling around so do this outside on the ground and barefoot. Be sure to bend from your hips because you are going to be in this bent-over position for a long, long time until all the clothes are clean. Tomorrow you will start this whole process all over again.

Of course, I never anticipated that I would be the one doing the laundry by hand. We hire a young woman to work in our house and hand washing clothes is an expected part of that job, a job she knows well because she’s been doing it since she was a small girl.

I gained a bit of perspective on the question of having a washing machine when I watched a short video of a TED talk given by Swedish scientist Hans Rosling. He builds on the concept of living below the poverty line, (i.e., living on less than $1.25 a day) to develop the idea of living below the "wash line.” Only two billion of the seven billion people in the world live in households with a washing machine. That means that five billion people live "below the wash line."

Rosling points out that washing clothes by hand is women’s work around the world. It’s back-breaking work, the kind that keeps girls home from school and mothers too exhausted to spend time with their children or doing other things to improve the family’s livelihood.

Rosling often speaks to large groups of committed environmentalists, people who alter their diet and lifestyle to leave a smaller footprint on the planet. Sometimes, he says, he asks his audience to raise their hands if any of them wash their clothes by hand in order to save energy. Not once, he says, has anyone raised their hand. The most committed environmentalist uses a washing machine.

When he was a small boy, Rosling says, their family got their first washing machine. It saved his mother hours of back-breaking work so that she had time to read to him and his brothers and they all developed a love of reading and learning. In a way, their washing machine gave them a love of books, he says, and helped lift them into a better life. We all need greener washing machines, he suggests, but do we really want to ask other people to forego entirely something that we cannot imagine living without?

The Rosling video is at http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html and it's worth a look.

Well, recently, we got a small, twin tub, semi-automatic washing machine. It requires no special plumbing, only electricity. Yes, we are living above the wash line and I’m happy that no one in our house has to engage in hours of back-breaking work to clean our clothes this time around.

Instead of washing clothes by hand, the young woman who works for us has enough time each afternoon to take classes in town that we pay for in order to build on her primary school education. By the time that she has a home of her own, maybe she will love reading and learning enough to read to her own children and give them a better start in life. If she gets married while we are here, I think my wedding gift to her just might be a small, twin tub, semi-automatic washing machine.

In the Doldrums (with the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone)

Why does it rain? More to the point, why does rain fall here pretty much every day from March to May and then cease from June to September? Why do we have a long rainy season followed by a long dry season followed by a short rainy season followed by a short dry season? It’s hard for me to keep these seasons straight. Spring, summer, winter and fall are what I grew up with and sometimes in East Africa I actually miss winter. But a month (a day?!) of January in Columbus cures me of that.

Seasons here are wet or dry because we live near the equator where winds from the northern hemisphere and winds from the southern hemisphere smash headlong into each other which forces them into the sky for miles where the sun’s heat creates condensation which pours down on us as rain. This convergence of winds from north and south near the equator is called the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and this Zone moves back and forth across the equator region every year over land and sea, all around the earth.

If you hit “play” at this nifty little website, you can see a demonstration of the ITCZ over the continent of Africa: http://people.cas.sc.edu/carbone/modules/mods4car/africa-itcz/index.html.

On land, this weather system produces good rain that fills rivers, helps farmers grow crops, washes the dust out of the sky and makes us all happy. Over oceans, the ITCZ becalms the water and strikes fear in the hearts of those in sailing vessels. Indeed, sailors caught at sea in the becalmed waters of the ITCZ long ago named it “the Doldrums” because, without wind, they were marooned and faced a thirsty death. Part of Samuel Coleridge’s scary poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is set in the becalmed Doldrums: “Water, water everywhere, and all the boards did shrink, Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.”

Right now, the ITCZ is moving slowly toward us from the Sahara and when it reaches us, as it usually does by October and November, it brings short rains that are sometimes called “mango rains” because they produce the juicy mangoes of December. When the Zone passes over us and heads on to southern Africa we’ll have a short dry season that goes into February. In southern Africa, the Zone picks up moisture and then sweeps back up over us fully recharged for the big, boisterous rains of the long rainy season in March, April, and May. After that, as the Zone works its way north again, we'll have a long dry season until it returns with the short rains of October and November.

Farmers try hard to get their crops in at the right time for both short and long rains but, despite the nifty little graphic up there, the rains aren’t so neatly predictable. When they come a bit early, or a bit late, or don’t bring the expected amount of rain, the harvest is meager and that can mean a hungry season as people reduce their food consumption in hopes that their remaining food stocks will last until the next harvest.

During the dry season, dust is a big problem partly because the earth is dry but also because many farmers burn off their fields in preparation for planting when the rains come. Burning off is a quick and labor-saving way to clear land when you have only a hoe. It puts a lot of stuff into the atmosphere, which has its drawbacks, but it gives us brilliant sunsets.

Just now, the rain began beating down on our tin roof even though it's still September. If this keeps up it means that, after several months with hardly any rain, the dust will settle, the air will clear, and the sky will turn as brilliant a blue as I have ever seen.

Morogoro Town

The guide books call Morogoro a “sleepy town,” but that depends on one’s perspective, I suppose. To me, Morogoro seems like a modest-sized town replete with hustle and bustle that never sleeps. It’s not as large as Arusha or Dar es Salaam but it’s a growing town that boasts small traffic jams. One main road runs through the town, east and west. The road east gets you to Dar in about three hours. The road heading west will soon bring you to Erica and Nathan’s home in Mzumbe. After that, the road bends south and in another hour or so just below the Uluguru Mountains brings you to the gates of Mikumi National Park with its giraffes, elephants, zebras, wildebeests, lions, leopards, hippos, primates and birds of all kinds. Beyond Mikumi the road winds through the Ruaha River Gorge and up into the southern highlands on to Mbeya from whence you can continue west into Zambia or turn south toward Malawi.

The hustle and bustle in Morogoro comes from the shops that line the streets everywhere, selling everything under the sun. They are mostly very small stores with much of their wares piled in front on the sidewalk during the day. At night, when everything is stacked back into the shop and the iron gates swing shut, there is hardly any space left inside that little place. We don’t have a single big box store here – we have a million little box stores! This is a nice little store that I go to for household items.

The largest employer in Morogoro is an American tobacco company that raises tobacco in a western region of Tanzania called Tabora. The tobacco is brought here to be processed and then shipped elsewhere to be made into cigarettes. That habit has not caught on here and I seldom see people smoking. Otherwise, Sokoine University where Dave has an office is a major, and far less lethal, employer. Other schools and the many small businesses employ a lot of people in the area, as well.

The Aga Khan Hospital and Clinic in Morogoro is a good place for medical care and pharmaceuticals. The Aga Khan is the title of the head of the Ismaili branch of the Muslim faith. Succession to that title is hereditary in an independently wealthy family and the current Aga Khan is a kind of “Bill Gates,” pouring money into medical care, economic development, and education in East Africa and other areas. An Aga Khan hospital or school is going to have high standards and be open and welcoming to all faiths so it’s not uncommon for Christian parents to send their children to an Aga Khan school. This is the Aga Khan Health Centre where Dave went when he had a high fever a few weeks after we arrived. It wasn't malaria they said and prescribed some antibiotics. The next day he started feeling better.

About thirty to forty percent of the population in Tanzania is Muslim with an equal or slightly higher percentage that is Christian. There is a small but significant percentage that is Hindu, mostly descendants of people who came here from India in the last several hundred years. There isn’t significant religious tension to speak of so far, thankfully. Across sub-Saharan Africa, there is a history of religious tolerance and understanding between Christians and Muslims that goes back centuries. More recently, zealous groups on either side have set out to “convert” the other and this can create serious problems. Much of this on the Christian side has been encouraged and funded by independent religious groups in the United States that view Islam as evil. I find this regrettable and am encouraged by the fact that mainline denominations, including my own Mennonite Church USA, with a long and tested history of working in Africa and other areas, have laid aside divisive tactics like this and try to work together with everyone around common interests.

Nathan Arrives

Erica came out here in June to begin a teaching assignment at Mzumbe Secondary School near Morogoro. Nathan stayed in DC for some weeks where he was working with Thrive DC and training someone to take over his job. After spending time with his family in PA and his sister and brother-in-law in Amsterdam, he flew into Dar es Salaam last week. Dave and I had to be in Dar to get our resident visas then so we picked him up at the airport that morning and drove straight to Mzumbe where Erica was one happy person!

Mzumbe town is about a twenty minute drive from Morogoro on a road that runs beside the spectacular Uluguru Mountains. The Secondary School there is a boarding school for high achieving boys from all over Tanzania and Erica and Nathan live in a house near the school. Their front porch looks out over the mountains and there are scenic trails between them and the mountains that are good for walking or running. Here they are on their porch:

Here are the mountains on the road to Mzumbe:

For weeks we’ve been saying, “when Nathan gets here….” or, “wouldn’t Nathan like that,” so it’s great to finally have him around. He was on EMU’s soccer team and so has something in common with people here who all love the sport. Another thing he’ll soon have in common is Swahili because he’s embarking on a crash course in the language and is picking it up with amazing facility.

Nathan is from Johnstown, PA, a town that I don’t know much about except that it had a Great Flood once upon a time that is still harrowing to read about. But, after learning to know him and his family over the past few years, I do know that Johnstown turns out wonderful and fine people and I would love to see more of his family here in Tanzania.

It is really nice and almost unbelievable to have Erica and Nathan nearby and be able to see them often. Now we have to figure out how to get other family members and friends to come and live here. How about it, a certain someone in Blacksburg, VA? What do we have to do to persuade you that this is also a good place to do ground-breaking research in developmental psychology?!

Remember the record-breaking twenty-seven people in one dalla-dalla that I rode in several weeks ago? That record was shattered when Nathan and Erica took a dalla-dalla this weekend. Their first ride together boasted thirty passengers with the conductor hanging from the open side door as they went flying along the Morogoro to Mzumbe road. My twenty-seven passenger load looks paltry by comparison. Perhaps I’ll never see a new record but, when I’m in the next dalla-dalla that is already jammed full and then stops to take on yet more passengers, I won’t complain. I’ll keep my eyes on the prize: thirty-one or bust.

Mosquito Zapper

Mosquitoes are more than just a nuisance here in Morogoro. Some carry malaria so whenever I see one I hunt it down and kill it with our high tech mosquito killer. I went out looking for a conventional fly swatter soon after we got here but didn’t see any so I told a shop keeper what I was looking for. I didn’t know the Swahili word for it so I said that I wanted something to kill mosquitoes and made a swatting motion with my hand. “Oh, we have those,” she said, and pulled down something hanging from the ceiling. It looked like a tennis racket with a Harry Potter-like lightning streak through the strings. Do you want it with regular batteries or rechargeable ones, she asked. I didn’t want a tennis racket, not even a rechargeable one, but I looked closely at the printed material on the wrapping and it clearly said that it killed mosquitoes.

Does it ever?!! It’s the greatest invention since sliced bread and much more fun. Turn it on, press the red button, swing that “tennis racket” at any insect and when it makes contact in mid-air, “ZAP!” You don’t have to wait for the insect to land on the wall. It’s not even a contest. Hear a buzzing around your head? Zap! See a mosquito in the wash room? Zap! See one lurking over the sink? Zap! Is a mosquito on the bedroom wall? Put the tennis racket over that beast and Zap!

I’ve been much bitten by mosquitoes but never had malaria so when I’m here long term I don’t take preventive meds for it. The risk of malaria is fairly low and the side effects of the medication can be problematic. Doxycycline, for example, makes one prone to sunburn. Side effects of other meds range from vivid dreams to mild nausea. When I’m here short term, though, I’ll take doxycycline and put up with the minor inconvenience.

We have a malaria test kit at our house and a dose of the meds, if needed. The test kit is cool except for the part where you have to prick a finger to draw a smidgen of blood. That’s when I want to call in the nurse. Dave had malaria when we lived in Congo back in the late 70s, and it was scary when his temperature shot way up but he felt cold and wanted blankets piled on top of him. At least he could stay in bed. The administration at the boarding school where we taught then made their students come to class every day, even when they had malaria. As a lowly teacher, I couldn’t do anything about it except let my feverish students keep their heads down on their desks and not give them work to do in class.

Malaria is worst in low-lying areas but we are about 2,000 feet above sea level so it isn’t the problem here that it is along the coast. In most of sub-Saharan Africa the land rises quickly as you leave the coast so the inland climate generally is cooler and less malaria-ridden than coastal areas. That’s one reason, much as I love the ocean, I’m glad we live in Morogoro and not in coastal Dar.