This morning, I am teaching Basic Communication Skills to at least 100 students at the Moshi Town campus of SMMUCo. The campus opened last week, a month after classes started.
Three buildings on this campus, a former brewery, are still being transformed from beer-making activity to learning activity: the administration building, the cafeteria/library/classroom building, and a large lecture hall. The other buildings have not been transformed at all. An architect has yet to inspect one building to see if it has potential to be a dormitory.
The streets in this area of Moshi are a fine powdery dust, with large manufacturing enterprises making up most of the activity. Large lorries barrel in and out, stirring up large clouds. The campus grounds are also the same powder. Workers shovel the makings of concrete. Others pound away at old concrete, throwing out more dust. The small act of walking stirs up small billows.
When I dressed this morning, I thought of wearing a handkerchief over my hair. I thought of wearing worn-out clothes that I could easily wash and wouldn’t worry about preserving. If I had goggles and a face mask, I could wear them also. I chose instead a simple wrinkle-free skirt and wrinkled blouse.
The large lecture hall where I teach looks more like an airplane hangar with at least two sides open to the air and sunshine and dust. A chapel service is still in progress when I arrive, so I sit in a seat and discover that there’s a fine layer of dust on the desk, and I imagine that my skirt has nicely removed a layer for the student who takes my place. The evangelist says a final prayer, and I move to the front of the class arrangement. I would call it a classroom but it’s more an island of desks and chairs in a sea of concrete floor, all of them facing a white board.
The white board still has the previous class’s lecture on it. As students begin to wipe off their seats and chairs, I wipe off the white board and realize that really I’m erasing two or three lectures underneath the current one, plus the latest layer of dust. Finally one kind student takes the eraser from me, moves just beyond the hangar, dips the eraser in a water puddle and returns to wipe off the board. Now the board has smeared into it a layer of puddle. Later a second volunteer student will take the eraser to a room in the next building and return with a cleaner, wetter eraser. That will wipe out three layers of letters. And by creating a film of blue and black gray, this latest smearing will give a nice contrast to my blue letters.
Very little can happen in an airplane hangar with over 100 students. Surely the last row cannot read my handwriting mixed with dust, three lectures, and puddle. Surely they cannot hear me shouting above the workers pounding in the unfinished building next to us. Surely the dust already clinging to their fingers, their pens, and papers drives them nuts. Surely they have better things to do than wait ten minutes for me to wipe off the board.
But they have come wearing their finest clothes, the men in pressed shirts and ties, the women in dresses and scarves. Somebody’s perfume wafts pleasantly from the front row.
I am telling them the parable of the talents because I have witnessed two weeks before a pathetic set of student presentations. I tell them that as future teachers, they will be given five bags of talents and they should understand how powerful and life-giving those bags are. Their focus in preparing these presentations should not be fear, but the importance of what they do.
And in saying this, I see them lean forward. Some of the students in the back have turned one ear toward me. After I finish telling the parable, I will begin a painstaking process of writing on the board a sample essay rather than giving them a handout because circumstances discourage me from making over a hundred photocopies. And they will write patiently. The students in back will occasionally stand up to get a better view of what I’ve written on the board. Other students will help the ones beside them by showing their notes. Someone will ask me to explain something again. And afterward, students will come to me with drafts of the next assignment even though I hadn’t finished explaining it.
Next Monday, I will take extra care in pressing my skirt in spite of the dust.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Communication Failures
At SMMUCo, I teach Basic Communication Skills. Since failure is an excellent teacher, I assigned students the task of writing about a communication failure. Here are a few samples that I have modified and added fictional names and place names:
Poor eyesight
A Tanzanian man who worked in the States was contacted by his parents in Tanzania to send money. They needed it to pay the electricity bill which was about to be cut off. At the Western Union station in Tanzania, the parents read back the control number of the receipt to the agent, who told them the number was incorrect and sent them away. After they called their son again, they learned that due to their poor eyesight, they had misread an 8 for a 0. In the meantime, the electricity had been cut off, and the parents now sat in the dark, their poor eyesight reduced even more until the next day when they could return to Western Union with the correct number.
The daughter from Dar es Salaam
Mama Linda received a letter from her daughter Helda in Dar es Salaam, but she did not know how to read. She called upon her neighbor to read it. He then informed Mama Linda that her daughter in Dar had died. Soon Mama Linda’s granddaughter came home and found her grandmother sobbing. Now the granddaughter read the letter and discovered that the letter was announcing Helda would be coming to visit the following week. At this point, the neighbor confessed he too was illiterate.
Thief!
One night in the village of Kirima, a woman shouted, “Thief, thief!” Amani told his son to get up and help catch the thief. Other villagers appeared with sticks and long bush knives. The thief ran quickly but not quickly enough. Villagers soon gave him a royal beating until Amani persuaded them to stop by telling them that they should call the police. But when Amani called the police, they did not answer. When Amani tried again, his cell phone did not have enough battery charge in it and failed to make contact. Upon learning this, the fury of the villagers came upon them once again, and now they beat the thief to death. Having killed the thief, they turned on Amani who fled successfully.
Fire!
There was a fire accident at Majengo. The fire caused much loss because after the villagers called the fire extinguisher, the fire extinguisher was confused about the specific direction to reach the fire. Accordingly, the fire extinguisher used much time on the way to reach the fire, which caused some of the houses and all the property to be destroyed. It would be better for citizens to get different seminars on how they can overcome different accidents regarding their environment.
(Take note that the author has absolutely no confidence in giving a seminar to fire extinguishers.)
Poor eyesight
A Tanzanian man who worked in the States was contacted by his parents in Tanzania to send money. They needed it to pay the electricity bill which was about to be cut off. At the Western Union station in Tanzania, the parents read back the control number of the receipt to the agent, who told them the number was incorrect and sent them away. After they called their son again, they learned that due to their poor eyesight, they had misread an 8 for a 0. In the meantime, the electricity had been cut off, and the parents now sat in the dark, their poor eyesight reduced even more until the next day when they could return to Western Union with the correct number.
The daughter from Dar es Salaam
Mama Linda received a letter from her daughter Helda in Dar es Salaam, but she did not know how to read. She called upon her neighbor to read it. He then informed Mama Linda that her daughter in Dar had died. Soon Mama Linda’s granddaughter came home and found her grandmother sobbing. Now the granddaughter read the letter and discovered that the letter was announcing Helda would be coming to visit the following week. At this point, the neighbor confessed he too was illiterate.
Thief!
One night in the village of Kirima, a woman shouted, “Thief, thief!” Amani told his son to get up and help catch the thief. Other villagers appeared with sticks and long bush knives. The thief ran quickly but not quickly enough. Villagers soon gave him a royal beating until Amani persuaded them to stop by telling them that they should call the police. But when Amani called the police, they did not answer. When Amani tried again, his cell phone did not have enough battery charge in it and failed to make contact. Upon learning this, the fury of the villagers came upon them once again, and now they beat the thief to death. Having killed the thief, they turned on Amani who fled successfully.
Fire!
There was a fire accident at Majengo. The fire caused much loss because after the villagers called the fire extinguisher, the fire extinguisher was confused about the specific direction to reach the fire. Accordingly, the fire extinguisher used much time on the way to reach the fire, which caused some of the houses and all the property to be destroyed. It would be better for citizens to get different seminars on how they can overcome different accidents regarding their environment.
(Take note that the author has absolutely no confidence in giving a seminar to fire extinguishers.)
Sunday, November 15, 2009
A Passport
This past Sunday I went with Happy, the bursar’s assistant at SMMUCo, and her sister Neema to church. Since it’s impossible to pretend I’m not a visitor, Happy accurately anticipated that I would be asked to introduce myself, as is the custom. But my nickname at Happy’s home is “Sija elewa” which means “I don’t understand.” At times Happy, with hands wringing, announces it’ll take me ten years to learn Swahili.
On the walk to church at 6:45 a.m. Happy reminded me of key phrases I would need. Since I was familiar with these phrases, I rehearsed them a few times mentally, a few times out loud, got them wrong, and Happy corrected me. In a few more steps, Happy led us into the front of the church, five inches from the pulpit. I looked back and saw 400 people facing me.
After the sermon, the congregation filed to the front to give their offering. At this point, the pastor seated at Happy’s right called her over for a five-minute conversation. Happy returned to report that the pastor wanted me to introduce myself. He did not know enough English to help me, and so the two of them decided I would do it myself, but only briefly. The briefly part was Happy’s idea.
I had spent the length of the hour sermon picking out words I recognized, much like chasing butterflies. Neema had brought an English New Testament, so at least I could get the gospel for the day. So when the pastor invited guests to stand up, my only clue was the word “wageni” and the fact that he now stared at me. I stood up, faced the sea of 400 and performed three sentences, mixed with English prepositions, all with confidence. The congregation applauded enthusiastically. As soon as I sat down, Happy let out the air that her lungs held during my three sentences and then collapsed in my lap.
All of that had been thoughtfully orchestrated by Happy. She had helped me rehearse to the point that I was confident when the time came. And she had made it possible for me to reach a congregation who were truly pleased and grateful that I had managed to say something to them in their own language. Maybe it seems like a pocket-sized gesture, but multiply that times 400, and it opens up a whole world.
On the walk to church at 6:45 a.m. Happy reminded me of key phrases I would need. Since I was familiar with these phrases, I rehearsed them a few times mentally, a few times out loud, got them wrong, and Happy corrected me. In a few more steps, Happy led us into the front of the church, five inches from the pulpit. I looked back and saw 400 people facing me.
After the sermon, the congregation filed to the front to give their offering. At this point, the pastor seated at Happy’s right called her over for a five-minute conversation. Happy returned to report that the pastor wanted me to introduce myself. He did not know enough English to help me, and so the two of them decided I would do it myself, but only briefly. The briefly part was Happy’s idea.
I had spent the length of the hour sermon picking out words I recognized, much like chasing butterflies. Neema had brought an English New Testament, so at least I could get the gospel for the day. So when the pastor invited guests to stand up, my only clue was the word “wageni” and the fact that he now stared at me. I stood up, faced the sea of 400 and performed three sentences, mixed with English prepositions, all with confidence. The congregation applauded enthusiastically. As soon as I sat down, Happy let out the air that her lungs held during my three sentences and then collapsed in my lap.
All of that had been thoughtfully orchestrated by Happy. She had helped me rehearse to the point that I was confident when the time came. And she had made it possible for me to reach a congregation who were truly pleased and grateful that I had managed to say something to them in their own language. Maybe it seems like a pocket-sized gesture, but multiply that times 400, and it opens up a whole world.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Clawing hands that pull you down
At tea time, I sat next to Mama Nasari the other day, not necessarily because we could say a whole lot to each other. My Swahili has not moved beyond basic caveman gruntings. Rather, I sat beside her because I learned a few weeks ago that she is envious of the women who have socialized with me at tea time since I arrived in August. These are secretaries, like Mama Nasari, who were part of daily life on campus when no faculty or students were around. At that time, Mama Nasari was on leave and, upon returning, found that others had developed friendships with me as well as greater ease in speaking English.
One day I listened to some of them encourage her to speak with me. But, she said, she felt foolish speaking broken English. Yes, they admitted, and so did they, yet no one made fun of them, and it was more important just to practice speaking English, broken though it was. You can’t get past broken to whole without the broken part. And, they pointed out, one could observe my own enthusiastic Swahili gruntings.
A few conversational topics later, Mama Nasari told me she wanted to learn Excel. I said I could teach her quickly in a half hour, maybe at the beginning of the day. No, she said, that wouldn’t work, she’s too busy at the office. What about after tea? No, she’s too busy, too many interruptions. She suggested I come to her home on a Saturday. I could take the bus, and she has a computer.
Using the bus requires waiting a half hour up to an hour. And then a half hour ride to the bus stand near Mama Nasari, and then a little walk to her housing compound. This seemed a little extreme to me for a half hour lesson on Excel, but I said nothing.
Tea ended and Mama Alfa, who runs the internet café, followed me out apparently with an ulterior motive. As we walked farther away from the administration building, she explained that the real problem was that if I taught Mama Nasari at the college, the other secretaries would criticize her for trying to rise above the rest.
I have seen only glimpses of this in action, but it has incredible power among a group of people who are miserable. Women here are second-class citizens in many ways. I don’t know how it’s fostered exactly but I do know that all of the administrative leadership at SMMUCo is comprised of men. Of the faculty, the large majority is men. And those who serve at the socially lower ranks are women. Men seem to enjoy a freedom from criticism. In a marriage, a woman is expected to serve the husband and not the other way around. A man will leave his wife in his rural village home to care for his parents while he takes a job and a mistress or second wife in a big city.
I do not know how prevalent this is, but it is prevalent enough to have dug a deep pit of misery for women. This misery is intensified when others try to get out of the pit.
Education can be a powerful tool in raising the status of women. But the woman who sacrifices to save for a refrigerator or an education falls prey to the criticism of other women. While women can mouth words of encouragement, they are also capable of dragging another back down. Mama Nasari is therefore terrified of those who will claw at her with words.
After telling me of Mama Nasari’s fear, Mama Alfa turned to me and said, “So what will you do?” I can and will help Mama Nasari learn Excel. I can and will take the bus on a Saturday. But I do not know if my help will give her what she really needs: the courage to rise out of the pit. Each time she allows her fear of petty criticism to pull her down, the fear itself accumulates power and so do the clawing hands.
Mama Nasari could use a prayer for courage and a lesson on Excel. Hopefully the lesson can become another lesson on refusing to give in to clawing hands from the deep pit of misery.
One day I listened to some of them encourage her to speak with me. But, she said, she felt foolish speaking broken English. Yes, they admitted, and so did they, yet no one made fun of them, and it was more important just to practice speaking English, broken though it was. You can’t get past broken to whole without the broken part. And, they pointed out, one could observe my own enthusiastic Swahili gruntings.
A few conversational topics later, Mama Nasari told me she wanted to learn Excel. I said I could teach her quickly in a half hour, maybe at the beginning of the day. No, she said, that wouldn’t work, she’s too busy at the office. What about after tea? No, she’s too busy, too many interruptions. She suggested I come to her home on a Saturday. I could take the bus, and she has a computer.
Using the bus requires waiting a half hour up to an hour. And then a half hour ride to the bus stand near Mama Nasari, and then a little walk to her housing compound. This seemed a little extreme to me for a half hour lesson on Excel, but I said nothing.
Tea ended and Mama Alfa, who runs the internet café, followed me out apparently with an ulterior motive. As we walked farther away from the administration building, she explained that the real problem was that if I taught Mama Nasari at the college, the other secretaries would criticize her for trying to rise above the rest.
I have seen only glimpses of this in action, but it has incredible power among a group of people who are miserable. Women here are second-class citizens in many ways. I don’t know how it’s fostered exactly but I do know that all of the administrative leadership at SMMUCo is comprised of men. Of the faculty, the large majority is men. And those who serve at the socially lower ranks are women. Men seem to enjoy a freedom from criticism. In a marriage, a woman is expected to serve the husband and not the other way around. A man will leave his wife in his rural village home to care for his parents while he takes a job and a mistress or second wife in a big city.
I do not know how prevalent this is, but it is prevalent enough to have dug a deep pit of misery for women. This misery is intensified when others try to get out of the pit.
Education can be a powerful tool in raising the status of women. But the woman who sacrifices to save for a refrigerator or an education falls prey to the criticism of other women. While women can mouth words of encouragement, they are also capable of dragging another back down. Mama Nasari is therefore terrified of those who will claw at her with words.
After telling me of Mama Nasari’s fear, Mama Alfa turned to me and said, “So what will you do?” I can and will help Mama Nasari learn Excel. I can and will take the bus on a Saturday. But I do not know if my help will give her what she really needs: the courage to rise out of the pit. Each time she allows her fear of petty criticism to pull her down, the fear itself accumulates power and so do the clawing hands.
Mama Nasari could use a prayer for courage and a lesson on Excel. Hopefully the lesson can become another lesson on refusing to give in to clawing hands from the deep pit of misery.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Cutting a cake
My African friends here have difficulty believing I can do anything practical. I cannot carry a bucket of water on my head. I do not chop wood for the fire to cook with. I do not mop my own floors (the cleaning staff does it). I do not cook since I don’t have a kitchen. Mostly they’ve observed that I read and write. So when I announced that I knew how to bake bread and a cake, they double-dared me to teach them.
Baking bread and a cake seemed possible here at the college because it has a degree program in Hotel and Tourism Industry, which comes with a classroom full of ovens, stoves, and sinks. Unlike this very convenient set-up, many or most kitchens in the homes here are nomadic. The charcoal or wood-burning container travels from inside to outside as does the cooking pan that rests on top of it. The water is already outside, having been carried by a member of the family from the nearest outdoor tap. And when the meal is over and the dishes are cleaned, all of that moves back inside.
The regular kitchen staff here at the College also work in a large kitchen with plenty of electric stoves (no ovens), but with the frequent power outages, the staff continue to use charcoal burners outside to fry donuts, cook rice, etc.
The three of us—Rehema, Mama Catherine, and I—planned to do the baking on a Saturday when the classroom was free. But we all understood that the plan would only work if God willed it. I’m beginning to understand this. Getting the ingredients for bread and cake was a challenge. I carried sacks with two bags of flour, sugar, baking power, yeast, vanilla on a bus so crowded that I did not have room to carry the bags where I stood, wedged between a hip and a stomach. As is the custom, a polite seated passenger carried the 20-pound bag on her lap, and after 30 minutes, with a deep groan she passed it on to me as I squeezed out of the bus. That was the first grocery shopping trip. The second shopping trip, I was lucky—a bus seat was open.
The key to the classroom was in the hands of a student named Doris, but on Saturday at the appointed time, Doris was nowhere to be found. After texting her on my cell phone, I learned she’d had a family emergency and had to be away. She had arranged for another student to unlock the kitchen.
Then the bus that brought Rehema to campus broke down somewhere after Moshi Town. After an hour of waiting for the bus not to be repaired, Rehema boarded another bus and arrived a half hour after that.
At the classroom kitchen, the Rehema, Mama Catherine and I found an electric mixer, pans, bowls, mixing spoons and more. I texted Doris to ask where the measuring cups and spoons were. Doris texted back to explain that they only measured using a scale, and so I returned to my apartment to find other possibilities. I decided that one of my coffee cups was about the same size as a measuring cup by imagining a measuring cup, something I haven’t seen in three months, and comparing it to the cup in front of my eyes. It seemed close enough to me. So did the non-measuring spoon that I used for stirring tea.
Back in the kitchen, the first step for the bread was to melt butter with milk, sugar and water in a saucepan, but none of the stoves would offer any heat after I turned, pushed, and pulled knobs. Once again, Doris came to the rescue long distance by asking a fellow student to help. The student appeared, turned on a button behind the stove, and soon we were heating up butter, milk, and water.
After finishing the bread dough, we started making the cake. The first step was to cream the shortening with the electric mixer. The electricity went out just as Rehema plopped the butter in the bowl. My mind suddenly moved forward twenty steps to the part where we actually needed to bake the bread and cake. At that moment, I saw everything falling apart.
Rehema saw all of the things falling apart in my mind and announced loudly that we would continue and worry about the baking part later. Really, we had what we needed at the moment: two women accustomed to chopping wood and carrying water who could whip the hard butter into fluffy cream, no problem. After a half hour of whipping, it was good.
At that point, Nickson showed up. Nickson is a third-year student here at SMMUCo who wants to be a gospel rap singer in the States. His first week here, he asked me if I would give him lessons in English to prepare him for his career, and he has faithfully appeared every week. He is the rare kind of student who asks twenty more questions than the teacher. Nickson reviewed the recipe and wanted to know the definitions of “shortening,” “beat,” “yeast,” and so on. Plus each word reminded him of something else he’d always wondered about.
Before we succeeded in throwing Nickson out, we’d arrived at the moment when baking was imminent and electricity was not. Someone who shall not be named said that if the American (Jeanne) went to Mlay, the security guard, and asked to turn on the generator, he would do it. But I did not want to ask for the generator. It’s extremely expensive, and the College struggles to make ends meet. But the shadows were lengthening, Rehema needed to be home before dark, and we’d done so much to arrive at this point.
Nickson accompanied me to translate. Mlay said we had to ask the campus manager. Then he would find Kimbori, another security guard, to turn on the generator.
Getting deeper into unethical waters, I went back to the kitchen to make sure that this request was really worth pursuing.
Absolutely, this was important. I was teaching. Wasn’t teaching how to make a cake important? If it wasn’t important, why had I worked so hard to get there?
I made Nickson go with me to the campus manager’s house, even though the campus manager speaks fluent English. The campus manager was eating dinner with his family and graciously invited me to join his family six times. But when I asked permission to have the generator turned on for one hour, his enthusiasm fizzled. Reluctantly he agreed, and off I went with Nickson, wondering how I would pay for this misdeed. When we returned to the security guard’s station, Mlay was nowhere to be found, Kimbori was off in the village, and so we left a message with the only person there, a student worker.
By now the bread had risen well above the loaf pans, and I punched it down, and it seemed a good time to eat at the dining hall. Through the dining hall windows, I could see Kimbori walk into the maintenance building to turn on the generator after I’d taken three bites of food. I zipped back to the kitchen to heat up the oven.
Both the bread and cake needed to be baked at 375°F. The oven knob had numbers 1-11, most of them faded or invisible. I turned the knob to the random number of 8, zipped back to finish my dinner, and after returning, decided 8 wasn’t hot enough and moved the knob to 11.
Not surprisingly the heat was uneven, and both the cake and the bread developed black blobs on top. Several times during the baking, we shifted pans. The public electricity returned after an hour of expensive generator power. As we pulled the bread and cake from the oven, fully cooked with black blobs on top, we declared it all to be good especially after tasting the layers underneath.
And then it was time to cut the cake. We cut a piece for Kimbori and Mlay who caused the generator to turn on. We cut pieces for the campus manager, his wife and two children. We cut a piece for Doris, one for Nickson. We cut a piece for Esther who had saved us food from the dining hall. We cut some for Rehema’s family and Mama Catherine’s family, one for me. The cake was now totally claimed by all who had helped to make it work, not including the bus drivers and the one passenger who had to carry my 20-pound bags of groceries, or the student who turned on the stove for us. We also excluded the fifty or so students who walked past the kitchen all afternoon, stared at the cake I carried to the various people around campus.
I have now accepted an invitation to teach the same lesson again (God willing), this time using the charcoal stove with a closed box that serves as an oven. If I can get an oven to bake bread at the temperature of number 11, I can surely make a box over charcoal do the equivalent. I also have the comfort of knowing that if the electricity goes out, we will not have to resort to unethical means.
Baking bread and a cake seemed possible here at the college because it has a degree program in Hotel and Tourism Industry, which comes with a classroom full of ovens, stoves, and sinks. Unlike this very convenient set-up, many or most kitchens in the homes here are nomadic. The charcoal or wood-burning container travels from inside to outside as does the cooking pan that rests on top of it. The water is already outside, having been carried by a member of the family from the nearest outdoor tap. And when the meal is over and the dishes are cleaned, all of that moves back inside.
The regular kitchen staff here at the College also work in a large kitchen with plenty of electric stoves (no ovens), but with the frequent power outages, the staff continue to use charcoal burners outside to fry donuts, cook rice, etc.
The three of us—Rehema, Mama Catherine, and I—planned to do the baking on a Saturday when the classroom was free. But we all understood that the plan would only work if God willed it. I’m beginning to understand this. Getting the ingredients for bread and cake was a challenge. I carried sacks with two bags of flour, sugar, baking power, yeast, vanilla on a bus so crowded that I did not have room to carry the bags where I stood, wedged between a hip and a stomach. As is the custom, a polite seated passenger carried the 20-pound bag on her lap, and after 30 minutes, with a deep groan she passed it on to me as I squeezed out of the bus. That was the first grocery shopping trip. The second shopping trip, I was lucky—a bus seat was open.
The key to the classroom was in the hands of a student named Doris, but on Saturday at the appointed time, Doris was nowhere to be found. After texting her on my cell phone, I learned she’d had a family emergency and had to be away. She had arranged for another student to unlock the kitchen.
Then the bus that brought Rehema to campus broke down somewhere after Moshi Town. After an hour of waiting for the bus not to be repaired, Rehema boarded another bus and arrived a half hour after that.
At the classroom kitchen, the Rehema, Mama Catherine and I found an electric mixer, pans, bowls, mixing spoons and more. I texted Doris to ask where the measuring cups and spoons were. Doris texted back to explain that they only measured using a scale, and so I returned to my apartment to find other possibilities. I decided that one of my coffee cups was about the same size as a measuring cup by imagining a measuring cup, something I haven’t seen in three months, and comparing it to the cup in front of my eyes. It seemed close enough to me. So did the non-measuring spoon that I used for stirring tea.
Back in the kitchen, the first step for the bread was to melt butter with milk, sugar and water in a saucepan, but none of the stoves would offer any heat after I turned, pushed, and pulled knobs. Once again, Doris came to the rescue long distance by asking a fellow student to help. The student appeared, turned on a button behind the stove, and soon we were heating up butter, milk, and water.
After finishing the bread dough, we started making the cake. The first step was to cream the shortening with the electric mixer. The electricity went out just as Rehema plopped the butter in the bowl. My mind suddenly moved forward twenty steps to the part where we actually needed to bake the bread and cake. At that moment, I saw everything falling apart.
Rehema saw all of the things falling apart in my mind and announced loudly that we would continue and worry about the baking part later. Really, we had what we needed at the moment: two women accustomed to chopping wood and carrying water who could whip the hard butter into fluffy cream, no problem. After a half hour of whipping, it was good.
At that point, Nickson showed up. Nickson is a third-year student here at SMMUCo who wants to be a gospel rap singer in the States. His first week here, he asked me if I would give him lessons in English to prepare him for his career, and he has faithfully appeared every week. He is the rare kind of student who asks twenty more questions than the teacher. Nickson reviewed the recipe and wanted to know the definitions of “shortening,” “beat,” “yeast,” and so on. Plus each word reminded him of something else he’d always wondered about.
Before we succeeded in throwing Nickson out, we’d arrived at the moment when baking was imminent and electricity was not. Someone who shall not be named said that if the American (Jeanne) went to Mlay, the security guard, and asked to turn on the generator, he would do it. But I did not want to ask for the generator. It’s extremely expensive, and the College struggles to make ends meet. But the shadows were lengthening, Rehema needed to be home before dark, and we’d done so much to arrive at this point.
Nickson accompanied me to translate. Mlay said we had to ask the campus manager. Then he would find Kimbori, another security guard, to turn on the generator.
Getting deeper into unethical waters, I went back to the kitchen to make sure that this request was really worth pursuing.
Absolutely, this was important. I was teaching. Wasn’t teaching how to make a cake important? If it wasn’t important, why had I worked so hard to get there?
I made Nickson go with me to the campus manager’s house, even though the campus manager speaks fluent English. The campus manager was eating dinner with his family and graciously invited me to join his family six times. But when I asked permission to have the generator turned on for one hour, his enthusiasm fizzled. Reluctantly he agreed, and off I went with Nickson, wondering how I would pay for this misdeed. When we returned to the security guard’s station, Mlay was nowhere to be found, Kimbori was off in the village, and so we left a message with the only person there, a student worker.
By now the bread had risen well above the loaf pans, and I punched it down, and it seemed a good time to eat at the dining hall. Through the dining hall windows, I could see Kimbori walk into the maintenance building to turn on the generator after I’d taken three bites of food. I zipped back to the kitchen to heat up the oven.
Both the bread and cake needed to be baked at 375°F. The oven knob had numbers 1-11, most of them faded or invisible. I turned the knob to the random number of 8, zipped back to finish my dinner, and after returning, decided 8 wasn’t hot enough and moved the knob to 11.
Not surprisingly the heat was uneven, and both the cake and the bread developed black blobs on top. Several times during the baking, we shifted pans. The public electricity returned after an hour of expensive generator power. As we pulled the bread and cake from the oven, fully cooked with black blobs on top, we declared it all to be good especially after tasting the layers underneath.
And then it was time to cut the cake. We cut a piece for Kimbori and Mlay who caused the generator to turn on. We cut pieces for the campus manager, his wife and two children. We cut a piece for Doris, one for Nickson. We cut a piece for Esther who had saved us food from the dining hall. We cut some for Rehema’s family and Mama Catherine’s family, one for me. The cake was now totally claimed by all who had helped to make it work, not including the bus drivers and the one passenger who had to carry my 20-pound bags of groceries, or the student who turned on the stove for us. We also excluded the fifty or so students who walked past the kitchen all afternoon, stared at the cake I carried to the various people around campus.
I have now accepted an invitation to teach the same lesson again (God willing), this time using the charcoal stove with a closed box that serves as an oven. If I can get an oven to bake bread at the temperature of number 11, I can surely make a box over charcoal do the equivalent. I also have the comfort of knowing that if the electricity goes out, we will not have to resort to unethical means.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
A Slippery but Insistent Hand
In the book of Matthew, chapter 5, Jesus delivers a series of laws that aren’t particularly pleasant, one of which is, “Give to him who begs from you.”
When Jesus wants to dish out a nuanced message, he serves the finest. In the parable of the talents, he tells the guy who buries his talent in the ground, “For to everyone who has, more will be given, but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” If someone has nothing, how can you take anything more away? Clearly the message here plumbs well beyond earthly laws of cause and effect, adding and subtracting. And that’s the nuanced message.
The law about giving is glaring sunlight in its simplicity. Jesus doesn’t say, “Give only to the people who will actually improve their lives with the money that you give them.” He doesn’t say, “Don’t give to the guy whose breath registers a blood alcohol level that’s lethal even just to smell it.”
Every time I take a walk in the village of Masoka, I am asked for money. Little children yell, “Mzungu! How are you, Madam? Geeva me mahney!” Old women point to their stomachs, then mouths and put out their palms. One woman grabbed my hand and refused to let go until I tore it away. If that woman could speak English, she could give a message as simple as Christ’s: “You’ve got money, I don’t, that’s not fair. Now make up for it by giving me what you’ve got in your pocket.”
That woman would be simply correct. Is that what Jesus meant with “Give to those who beg of you”? Here’s what I know: giving out of a sense of guilt doesn’t make me feel expansive toward anyone, let alone love.
I once asked Happy, the bursar’s assistant at SMMUCo, if she ever gave to the people sitting or lying on the sidewalk in Moshi Town begging for money. For these people, their disability is visible: eyes that are milky white, legs missing or misshapen. Happy said if she happened to have some coins, she put them in the cup provided.
But very simply, I do not have the money to make a meaningful difference in the lives of the people on the sidewalk or those yanking my arm. Yet, guilt doesn’t make me feel expansive toward anyone. Yet, I have; they don’t, and Christ said I should give.
Perhaps the simple command isn’t meant to even out any unfairness. At some point, I had the idea that when I took a walk in the village, I could bring some coins with me, like the offering I take to church. I had five coins. I had no idea who I would give to until the young guy came along with three friends asking for money for a drink. I didn’t ask a drink of what, I just gave. Then there was a child who wanted my mahney. Then there was the man with the bullhorn who advertised some local political meeting. I came up from behind him, and as he saw me, he hollered through the bullhorn, “Ah, Mzungu! Karibu!” (European! Welcome!) As we walked together, he asked (without the bullhorn) if I had money for a soda. His throat was dry. I gave him my last two coins, and he told me it wasn’t enough to buy a soda. He was very forgiving when I told him that was all I had left. We visited a little while. My two coins gave him no soda, no reversal of fortune. There was just the dust of the road and the rest of the walk home.
I’m not sure Christ’s simple sentence always means money either. On a walk through the village of Masoka, I met up with a gazillion children walking home from school. They rushed to greet me and then said, “Geeva me mahney.” Even if I had mahney, I didn’t have enough to divide a gazillion ways, but that didn’t discourage any of them, and they turned to walk beside me, shoulders and heads surrounding me. I struggled to find a place in the road to set my feet with each step, but gradually we found our stride as a swarming, walking whole. I also had nowhere to put my hands, and so I took the two hands half an inch from mine already and held them. Since I had no Swahili sentences to utter and they’d already run out of their English ones, we walked in silence.
Soon a bus came, and we all ran to the banana trees for cover. After the bus passed by, we searched for each other as the dust settled. The two girls whose hands I held before now took my hands again, as though it were their rightful place. Occasionally the hands would slip from sweat, but they would not let go. I wonder, who did the giving?
Here in Tanzania, I watch people give without being asked to do so, saving the recipient the indignity of having to ask. It’s simply an act of compassion.
I sat with Happy one day at the security gate while she waited for students to register. The guard brought us both overloaded plates of food. Happy had been watching a girl just outside the gate selling bananas. She hadn’t eaten all day, and now Happy scraped some of her food onto another plate. The girl refused the food three times, but when the food was set before her, she ate.
For Happy, giving is a daily practice as ordinary as breathing. And yet it allowed her to see the girl’s need. I only understood this when I went to visit Happy at her home. Of her family, I knew she lived with her mother and a sister. When I sat down to eat, the neighbor boy was called to the table. He seemed to know exactly where he stood in the pecking order: after Mama Happy, after Happy, after Happy’s sister Neema, and definitely after me. But the family made sure he ate, and he was included in the conversation. I found out later that he regularly ate with the family because his stepfather was abusive. Since Social Services isn’t an option, he found a sanctuary in Happy’s household.
Later, another young woman arrived and helped herself to food—Happy’s cousin Dora. When Dora’s parents became disabled with AIDS, Happy’s mother brought her and her twin sister into the home when they were two years old. Mama Happy worked a very small shop selling basic goods, but she journeyed to Dar es Salaam to collect the girls and provide for them indefinitely in spite of an income that would not have been enough to support three or four children. At age 20, Dora is now finishing her last year of secondary school. (Her twin returned to the parents when she was five.) I have not met a household that didn’t have extra children or relatives folded into their lives, and I can only wonder whether they ask themselves if they have enough income and space in the home to do so.
Like the affection of a child that seeps through a slippery but insistent hand, the command to give is simple yet loaded with mystery. The complexity waits to be discovered by the Christian pilgrim in daily life with daily giving.
And while I can only make up answers about what Christ was thinking or intended, I do have the certainty of plentiful opportunities to give, I have an unnuanced command from Christ, and I look at giants everywhere who give as though it were simply the folding of a hand into another.
When Jesus wants to dish out a nuanced message, he serves the finest. In the parable of the talents, he tells the guy who buries his talent in the ground, “For to everyone who has, more will be given, but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” If someone has nothing, how can you take anything more away? Clearly the message here plumbs well beyond earthly laws of cause and effect, adding and subtracting. And that’s the nuanced message.
The law about giving is glaring sunlight in its simplicity. Jesus doesn’t say, “Give only to the people who will actually improve their lives with the money that you give them.” He doesn’t say, “Don’t give to the guy whose breath registers a blood alcohol level that’s lethal even just to smell it.”
Every time I take a walk in the village of Masoka, I am asked for money. Little children yell, “Mzungu! How are you, Madam? Geeva me mahney!” Old women point to their stomachs, then mouths and put out their palms. One woman grabbed my hand and refused to let go until I tore it away. If that woman could speak English, she could give a message as simple as Christ’s: “You’ve got money, I don’t, that’s not fair. Now make up for it by giving me what you’ve got in your pocket.”
That woman would be simply correct. Is that what Jesus meant with “Give to those who beg of you”? Here’s what I know: giving out of a sense of guilt doesn’t make me feel expansive toward anyone, let alone love.
I once asked Happy, the bursar’s assistant at SMMUCo, if she ever gave to the people sitting or lying on the sidewalk in Moshi Town begging for money. For these people, their disability is visible: eyes that are milky white, legs missing or misshapen. Happy said if she happened to have some coins, she put them in the cup provided.
But very simply, I do not have the money to make a meaningful difference in the lives of the people on the sidewalk or those yanking my arm. Yet, guilt doesn’t make me feel expansive toward anyone. Yet, I have; they don’t, and Christ said I should give.
Perhaps the simple command isn’t meant to even out any unfairness. At some point, I had the idea that when I took a walk in the village, I could bring some coins with me, like the offering I take to church. I had five coins. I had no idea who I would give to until the young guy came along with three friends asking for money for a drink. I didn’t ask a drink of what, I just gave. Then there was a child who wanted my mahney. Then there was the man with the bullhorn who advertised some local political meeting. I came up from behind him, and as he saw me, he hollered through the bullhorn, “Ah, Mzungu! Karibu!” (European! Welcome!) As we walked together, he asked (without the bullhorn) if I had money for a soda. His throat was dry. I gave him my last two coins, and he told me it wasn’t enough to buy a soda. He was very forgiving when I told him that was all I had left. We visited a little while. My two coins gave him no soda, no reversal of fortune. There was just the dust of the road and the rest of the walk home.
I’m not sure Christ’s simple sentence always means money either. On a walk through the village of Masoka, I met up with a gazillion children walking home from school. They rushed to greet me and then said, “Geeva me mahney.” Even if I had mahney, I didn’t have enough to divide a gazillion ways, but that didn’t discourage any of them, and they turned to walk beside me, shoulders and heads surrounding me. I struggled to find a place in the road to set my feet with each step, but gradually we found our stride as a swarming, walking whole. I also had nowhere to put my hands, and so I took the two hands half an inch from mine already and held them. Since I had no Swahili sentences to utter and they’d already run out of their English ones, we walked in silence.
Soon a bus came, and we all ran to the banana trees for cover. After the bus passed by, we searched for each other as the dust settled. The two girls whose hands I held before now took my hands again, as though it were their rightful place. Occasionally the hands would slip from sweat, but they would not let go. I wonder, who did the giving?
Here in Tanzania, I watch people give without being asked to do so, saving the recipient the indignity of having to ask. It’s simply an act of compassion.
I sat with Happy one day at the security gate while she waited for students to register. The guard brought us both overloaded plates of food. Happy had been watching a girl just outside the gate selling bananas. She hadn’t eaten all day, and now Happy scraped some of her food onto another plate. The girl refused the food three times, but when the food was set before her, she ate.
For Happy, giving is a daily practice as ordinary as breathing. And yet it allowed her to see the girl’s need. I only understood this when I went to visit Happy at her home. Of her family, I knew she lived with her mother and a sister. When I sat down to eat, the neighbor boy was called to the table. He seemed to know exactly where he stood in the pecking order: after Mama Happy, after Happy, after Happy’s sister Neema, and definitely after me. But the family made sure he ate, and he was included in the conversation. I found out later that he regularly ate with the family because his stepfather was abusive. Since Social Services isn’t an option, he found a sanctuary in Happy’s household.
Later, another young woman arrived and helped herself to food—Happy’s cousin Dora. When Dora’s parents became disabled with AIDS, Happy’s mother brought her and her twin sister into the home when they were two years old. Mama Happy worked a very small shop selling basic goods, but she journeyed to Dar es Salaam to collect the girls and provide for them indefinitely in spite of an income that would not have been enough to support three or four children. At age 20, Dora is now finishing her last year of secondary school. (Her twin returned to the parents when she was five.) I have not met a household that didn’t have extra children or relatives folded into their lives, and I can only wonder whether they ask themselves if they have enough income and space in the home to do so.
Like the affection of a child that seeps through a slippery but insistent hand, the command to give is simple yet loaded with mystery. The complexity waits to be discovered by the Christian pilgrim in daily life with daily giving.
And while I can only make up answers about what Christ was thinking or intended, I do have the certainty of plentiful opportunities to give, I have an unnuanced command from Christ, and I look at giants everywhere who give as though it were simply the folding of a hand into another.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Tailor
Time and again, I have found myself waiting. Sometimes I know what I’m waiting for—a bus, a signal to do something, an event to begin. Other times, the waiting, which begins as ho-hum, minute-ticking endurance, snaps into high drama, leaving me with a case of whiplash. This was the case when Happy, the bursar’s assistant, and I waited on the porch outside the tailor’s shop on a Tuesday morning at 9:00 a.m.
Happy had wanted me to have a kitenge, a traditional skirt and blouse that requires sophisticated tailoring. One woman cannot borrow another’s kitenge, no matter how similar they are in weight and shape. We’d gone to the tailor on a Saturday with fabric that Happy had bought for me. “Fundi” is a Swahili term for a skilled worker that includes not only tailors but also electricians, plumbers, landscapers, and so on. Despite knowing her tailor for a year, Happy doesn’t know his name. It’s a Muslim name, she said, Haji or something like that, but she only calls him “Fundi.”
On one wall of Fundi’s shop, two large posters featured photos of women in about sixty variations of kitenge, and I got a little dizzy after looking at forty. Along another wall, pinned to a string were dresses already sewn, and we looked at some of those, plus some that Fundi was pulling out from a mystery pile. Helda, the provost’s secretary, also happened to be in the shop, and suddenly the choosing turned into a group activity.
“What about this?”
“No, I don’t want to show that much bosom!”
“What about this?”
“Will I be able to walk in that?”
“Of course!”
After Fundi opened a large hardbound notebook, he took my measurements, recorded them and quickly drew the style of dress I’d chosen next to my measurements. Using scissors large enough to perform surgery on a cow, he cut off a tiny snip of fabric and taped it to the page. The dress would be ready in three weeks, which he also recorded along with Happy’s name and cell phone number.
Three weeks later, Fundi called Happy to tell her that the dress would be ready a day later, Tuesday morning. So we waited on the porch at 9:00 a.m. Across the street another dressmaker’s shop displayed a white confirmation dress hanging on the store front with shades of red dust creeping up the hem. Happy wanted to know if I’d worn one of those for my confirmation. I learned then that Lutherans in Tanzania wear white confirmation dresses, similar to the ones worn by Roman Catholic girls at their first communion. A few shops down was something called “Chinese Restaurant.” I asked if there were any Chinese in Moshi, and Happy said no, why did I ask? I pointed out the restaurant name and asked if they at least served Chinese food. “No,” she said, “it’s just a name.”
Soon someone not Fundi appeared and unlocked the shop. Happy exchanged Swahili words with him, and we moved from the porch step to the bench inside. There was more waiting, and Happy texted someone on her phone and then later called. At about 10:00, the tailor appeared, looking very tired. He shuffled over to a sewing machine next to Happy and murmured something. Without shifting or changing posture, Happy launched into a rapid-fire speech full of artillery. Fundi’s head drooped. Possibly he looked at the floor strewn with scraps of fabric or possibly his eyes looked at nothing. At one point, Happy fell silent, the air clearing of smoke. I thought the speech was over, but no, she was only re-loading. Occasionally she seemed to require an answer from Fundi who could only mumble until Happy forced him into answering his feeble excuse clearly and loudly.
When her fury had spent itself, I did not need Happy to tell me that the dress was not finished. But I wondered how far the fundi had gotten. Possibly we could stay in town for a while longer. When the fundi retrieved the fabric and unfolded the piece whole, I realized he hadn’t even started. So much for having the kitenge finished Tuesday morning.
I was puzzled by the fundi’s behavior. He had struck me as someone with integrity the time before. Clearly he loved his work, charged reasonable prices, and made sure he gave himself time to do good work. I thought it odd that he looked so tired at 9:00 in the morning. Then I remembered that the fundi was Muslim, and this was the month of Ramadan, a month of spiritual discipline much more intense than the Christian Lenten season. Muslims cannot eat or drink from sun-up to sundown during this month. Though they eat at night, some or many Muslims do not have much energy to function during the daylight hours.
Happy agreed that this was the case with the fundi, but she wasn’t going to forgive him for telling her that the kitenge was ready when it wasn’t. I had spent two hours either waiting or traveling on a bus to meet Happy in town, Happy had spent half an hour on a bus to meet me, plus we had waited another hour at the fundi’s shop staring at a non-Chinese restaurant.
We left the fundi, his head still hanging. In four more days we would return, the fundi would give a quiet speech of apology, and Happy would tell him that the dress looked bad. Because I can’t speak Kiswahili, I would be unable to assure the fundi that the kitenge was exquisitely made and fit like a glove. Instead I would only say that Happy was a liar, and the dress looked good.
Happy had wanted me to have a kitenge, a traditional skirt and blouse that requires sophisticated tailoring. One woman cannot borrow another’s kitenge, no matter how similar they are in weight and shape. We’d gone to the tailor on a Saturday with fabric that Happy had bought for me. “Fundi” is a Swahili term for a skilled worker that includes not only tailors but also electricians, plumbers, landscapers, and so on. Despite knowing her tailor for a year, Happy doesn’t know his name. It’s a Muslim name, she said, Haji or something like that, but she only calls him “Fundi.”
On one wall of Fundi’s shop, two large posters featured photos of women in about sixty variations of kitenge, and I got a little dizzy after looking at forty. Along another wall, pinned to a string were dresses already sewn, and we looked at some of those, plus some that Fundi was pulling out from a mystery pile. Helda, the provost’s secretary, also happened to be in the shop, and suddenly the choosing turned into a group activity.
“What about this?”
“No, I don’t want to show that much bosom!”
“What about this?”
“Will I be able to walk in that?”
“Of course!”
After Fundi opened a large hardbound notebook, he took my measurements, recorded them and quickly drew the style of dress I’d chosen next to my measurements. Using scissors large enough to perform surgery on a cow, he cut off a tiny snip of fabric and taped it to the page. The dress would be ready in three weeks, which he also recorded along with Happy’s name and cell phone number.
Three weeks later, Fundi called Happy to tell her that the dress would be ready a day later, Tuesday morning. So we waited on the porch at 9:00 a.m. Across the street another dressmaker’s shop displayed a white confirmation dress hanging on the store front with shades of red dust creeping up the hem. Happy wanted to know if I’d worn one of those for my confirmation. I learned then that Lutherans in Tanzania wear white confirmation dresses, similar to the ones worn by Roman Catholic girls at their first communion. A few shops down was something called “Chinese Restaurant.” I asked if there were any Chinese in Moshi, and Happy said no, why did I ask? I pointed out the restaurant name and asked if they at least served Chinese food. “No,” she said, “it’s just a name.”
Soon someone not Fundi appeared and unlocked the shop. Happy exchanged Swahili words with him, and we moved from the porch step to the bench inside. There was more waiting, and Happy texted someone on her phone and then later called. At about 10:00, the tailor appeared, looking very tired. He shuffled over to a sewing machine next to Happy and murmured something. Without shifting or changing posture, Happy launched into a rapid-fire speech full of artillery. Fundi’s head drooped. Possibly he looked at the floor strewn with scraps of fabric or possibly his eyes looked at nothing. At one point, Happy fell silent, the air clearing of smoke. I thought the speech was over, but no, she was only re-loading. Occasionally she seemed to require an answer from Fundi who could only mumble until Happy forced him into answering his feeble excuse clearly and loudly.
When her fury had spent itself, I did not need Happy to tell me that the dress was not finished. But I wondered how far the fundi had gotten. Possibly we could stay in town for a while longer. When the fundi retrieved the fabric and unfolded the piece whole, I realized he hadn’t even started. So much for having the kitenge finished Tuesday morning.
I was puzzled by the fundi’s behavior. He had struck me as someone with integrity the time before. Clearly he loved his work, charged reasonable prices, and made sure he gave himself time to do good work. I thought it odd that he looked so tired at 9:00 in the morning. Then I remembered that the fundi was Muslim, and this was the month of Ramadan, a month of spiritual discipline much more intense than the Christian Lenten season. Muslims cannot eat or drink from sun-up to sundown during this month. Though they eat at night, some or many Muslims do not have much energy to function during the daylight hours.
Happy agreed that this was the case with the fundi, but she wasn’t going to forgive him for telling her that the kitenge was ready when it wasn’t. I had spent two hours either waiting or traveling on a bus to meet Happy in town, Happy had spent half an hour on a bus to meet me, plus we had waited another hour at the fundi’s shop staring at a non-Chinese restaurant.
We left the fundi, his head still hanging. In four more days we would return, the fundi would give a quiet speech of apology, and Happy would tell him that the dress looked bad. Because I can’t speak Kiswahili, I would be unable to assure the fundi that the kitenge was exquisitely made and fit like a glove. Instead I would only say that Happy was a liar, and the dress looked good.
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