Life at Amani

After just over a week I have fully settled back into life at Amani Center. The health curriculum is now in full swing and I have also taken on teaching English classes as well. The students are keen to learn about different health topics as most of them have never been taught about the subject formally – all they know is what they have heard from other people in the villages. It has been tough jumping right into teaching after being away for 3 weeks, especially since it is all done in Swahili, but the language comes back surprisingly fast when you are forced to use it to communicate.

It is nice for me because I live in a concrete block house just at the back of the compound near the other staff houses – which means that I only have about a 5 minute walk to the classrooms in the morning. When I am not eating with the students I cook using either a kerosene or charcoal stove, and have a small sink and counter to wash up dishes in. My house used to be a school house for the children of past volunteers. It was equipped to have a teacher living here also, so there is a bedroom and bathroom. The former “classroom” is now a large (and therefore sparsely furnished) living room. The place is a home away from home now, and I feel very comfortable here. My only complaint is the cold shower, every morning it is a test of wills to get under the shockingly cold water; hot showers are by far the creature comfort I miss the most.

I usually go to town once a week and on weekends. To get there it is about a 15 minute walk down a dirt road to the “main” road, which is also dirt. From the turn off I can usually walk about 5 minutes to a small village market area where a dalladalla (minibus) will be waiting, but sometimes it isn’t and then I keep walking until one drives by. On the way to town we pass through a huge cemetery, which is being used for funeral services about 9 times out of 10 that I pass it. This serves as a solemn reminder of the high mortality rate present in this developing country (or as my friend put it in his blog: ICD - Impoverished Cesspool of Oppression; he refuses to use the euphemism “developing country.” Not to worry, ICD is not a put down to the country; he places the blame entirely on colonial Europe). The bumpy dalladalla ride is then usually about 20 minutes (and only costs about 20 cents) to town depending on how often we stop, and then it takes me half an hour to walk to Gangilonga (where our intern house is). So on a good day it will take me about 1 hour to get there, but more often then not it can take 1.5 - 2 hours because of the randomness of life here – that is, the bus breaks down, someone decides to load some livestock/fish/vegetables/furniture/doors/rebar/car motors in, our driver gets in a fist fight with another driver etc. - use your imagination.

In Iringa I can use the Internet, buy food for my Amani house, see wazungu friends, and eat in a restaurant, among other luxuries. Not that I am complaining by any means; the other interns only get to come to town once every 2 weeks, so comparatively I am very lucky. So I have gotten to know and love both aspects of life in Africa, the rural and the urban. Even now I struggle to pick out things that would be interesting to write about because I am so used to everything here; it is amazing how easily strange things become normal. That is why I would like to put forward the request for any questions about life here, suggestions of topics you would like to hear more about, or any other comments in general. It is nice for me to hear from those of you who are reading this as it inspires me to keep writing and gives me ideas of subjects to explore.

Guess Who's Back

So I arrived back in Iringa this past Sunday after a 24 hour journey from Ko Samui, Thailand to Dar es Salaam, via Bangkok and Dubai. I stayed with my Canadian friends Quintin and Sara in Dar for the first night and then Andrew met me on Saturday and we stayed at a guesthouse. On Sunday morning we picked up his parents from the airport and headed to the bus station. We were not sure if we would be able to get around Dar as President Bush was arriving in Dar on Saturday, a fact not as widely publicized in the West as it has been here of course. It is a huge event for Tanzania, as he is the first sitting U.S. president to visit the country, ever. It was quite strange to drive the chaotic and rundown streets of Dar which are now decorated with American flags, giant billboards of Bushs’ face in front of Kilimanjaro, and hand painted cloth signs with slogans such as “We Cherish Democracy,” “We Cherish Human Rights,” and “Tanzania is a Peaceful Country.” Definitely didn’t expect all that when I got back. The even more interesting thing is that over the past 5 months, whenever I talked to people about Bush, they had nothing but bad things to say about him. For example my American friend Paul was constantly harassed by people who called him “mtoto wa Georgi Bushi” (Child of George Bush), and “Georgi Bushi ni kali sana” (George Bush is very aggressive/mean). I heard another time of an American getting stopped at a police checkpoint, and the police officer said to him (in what was probably the only English he knew) “George Bush is an evil creature.” Aside from this I have heard many people talking negatively about the war in Iraq, the hanging of Saddam, and the hunt for Bin Laden. Amazing then, that Bush announces he’s giving the country 668 million dollars for infrastructure improvement and coming to visit, all of a sudden everyone I talk to loves him! Now people are saying how he is very generous and a good president etc. Even the newspapers are jumping on the bandwagon. Before now all I read in the Tanzanian papers were negative stories and editorials about Bush and the American Empire, and now all of the articles are glowing reviews of what he is doing for the country, usually with a one sentence blurb at the end saying something like “Many people are critical of Bushs’ foreign and domestic policy record, but that is always up for debate.” I have been here long enough to know that this is the Tanzanian way in some sense; people desire to avoid confrontation at all costs. Therefore, if something is bothering you about a situation or a person, you would never tell them, you would just act as though everything is all fine and good when the subject comes up. I am going to guess once all the hoopla dies down, people will retain their original views on him, but maybe not. If this really has changed the perceptions of an entire nation, maybe these diplomatic tours are really doing their intended job. I am not going to get too far into my personal views on the subject, as I am not prepared to write a book at this point.

Anyhow, I should say that it is great to be back in Africa, I have realized that the people here must be some of the friendliest, most welcoming, and most hospitable people in the world. I love that conversations constantly strike up between strangers, and people really have a “we’re all in this together” mentality. It is a stark contrast to the Western individualism that we experience in Canada and other countries, where people avoid contact with strangers at great length. We have a lot to learn from this worldview, as I think that Westerners may be much better off if we willingly tried to adopt more of a collective mentality. One statistic that I find irrefutably illustrates the backwardness of our culture is the fact that studies show that nearly one third of the population of North America is on antidepressants. That is over 100 million people on our continent alone. The numbers are less for Europe but they are climbing steadily. Now is it just me or is it crazy that the most privileged, enlightened, richest group of people with the highest quality of life ever experienced on this planet is depressed, presumably about their life situation? Doesn’t this indicate that there is something wrong with the current world order? I meet people everyday that are paid less money per year then we spend on one meal in a nice restaurant. Logic says that these are the people who should be jaded, cynical, and worn-out concerning the problems of life, but to the contrary, these people are by far some of the happiest people I have ever known. They revel in the simple things, a hard days work, dinner with the family, being in good health for one more day; in the West, people are so indoctrinated with ideas that material wealth brings happiness, but it is consistently shown in studies that wealth and happiness do not correlate, in fact, in some cases they have been shown to be inversely proportional (that is, the richer one is, the less likely that person is to report themselves as “happy”). My theory is that, in the history of humans, we have always been living day to day, that is, struggling to meet our basic needs of food, water, and shelter. Now, only really in the past 100 years, we in industrialized countries have found ourselves with all of our needs met, and plenty of spare time to fill up. Sometimes that time is used productively, but often it is not, and when that happens, people start to really question life. Why am I even here? What is my purpose? Who really needs me? These questions can sometimes lead to great things, but often people begin to feel useless and get into a downwards spiral, filling their lives with negative influences which only serve to exuberate the problem until they declare that they “need help” and thus turn to antidepressants or other means. So, what can we do about this? I am not going to pretend to have all the answers, but I think just realizing how lucky we are, not just to have all of our basic needs met, but also for the opportunities we have to find fulfillment in life though higher means. Some examples of what I am talking about include: spending quality time with family and friends, spiritual development, health and fitness, intellectual development, connecting with nature, charity/volunteering, various hobbies, etc. It is easy to say all of this and much more difficult to do, I know. Many of you may have heard of the new bestselling book “the Secret,” and I want to point out that there is a reason why this book is so popular – all that it says in a nutshell is “positive thinking is good”. It may seem humorous that such a simple notion can be created into a multimillion dollar book and movement, but that it has been so successful illustrates the state of our society. People feel that they need to be told what is right before they can act on it themselves. I know that the book has positively changed many people’s lives, and that is great, but do we really need someone to tell us that if you set goals and work towards them they will be fulfilled? Isn’t this inherent in human nature? It is by this maxim that our species has accomplished so much, and will continue to do so into the future. Well now reaching the end of this I assure you that I wasn’t planning this entry to turn this way but hey, sometimes spontaneous ideas are the best ones.