Loliondo is the last place you’d expect a miracle, an area in northern Tanzania so remote that there are no signs of civilization. The roads that do exist are so rocky, any car that ventures on them inevitably suffers at least one punctured tire.
But Loliondo is where a retired Lutheran pastor lives in a one-room mud home near a tree with a miracle cure. In 1991, the Babu (“grandfather” in Kiswahili) had a dream telling him to cure people. He ignored the dream. A few years later, he ignored a second dream with the same message. In 2002, in another dream, he was told to cure people by giving them water boiled with the root of a special tree. The instructions also included a specific plastic green cup. When the Babu awoke, the cup was in his hand. This time he paid attention to the dream.
First he began with the people in his village, but they tended to dismiss his dream and his miracle cure. However, others did not, and word spread gradually. Per the dream’s instructions, the Babu focused on five main diseases: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, HIV/AIDS, and asthma. The dream also told him to charge only 500 Tanzanian shillings for each person, the equivalent of less than 50 cents.
In about February of this year, someone¬—not the Babu—told journalists that he would stop curing people the day before Ash Wednesday (an utterly false rumor). Suddenly the fame of the Babu spread nationally, not to mention internationally. People came in droves. Stories of miraculous cures became the daily story in the news. In one case, a woman with cervical cancer was hemorrhaging so much she had to change adult diapers eight times a day. The day after she took the miracle water, she changed diapers twice. The day after that, none.
Since February, an entire sector of the Tanzanian population has been lined up in cars for weeks at Loliondo. There are now 24,000 people in about 6,000 vehicles, and the Babu has asked for assistance from the government to stop allowing people to come so that he can catch up on the 24,000.
People now come to work and find co-workers absent for days because they’ve gone to Loliondo. Mama Viktor, one of the cleaning ladies at SMMUCo, took her father-in-law. She was gone for three days. When her father-in-law returned with the ability to walk and leap for the first time in years, Mama Viktor turned around and took her mother-in-law.
Besides stories of miraculous cures, there are daily stories of conditions at Loliondo. People in cars wait up to seven days before they are served the miracle water. Some people try to butt in line, and the Babu warns them that the water will not work for them. People are forced to sleep in their cars and relieve themselves outside, creating foul conditions. Yet the flow of people seeking the miracle cure from the Babu has not waned. He works from sun-up to sun-down boiling the tree roots and serving from a plastic green cup.
No one complains of going to Loliondo and not being cured. No one tries to explain the miracle. They only wonder if they can make it to Loliondo before the miracle runs out.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
The Complicated Act of Sharing
At the Mwika campus of Stefano Moshi Memorial University College where I teach English courses, I found my students studying for a phonology test. They had removed desks from the classrooms, put them under the shade of the trees, and quizzed each other over the fine details of tongue frontness, lip rounding, allophones and phonemes.
Joseph, the class representative, called me over and said he had questions. After I clarified more details about the allophones of /t/, Joseph wanted to know if America had as much corruption as Tanzania. This was when I knew they were tired of phonology. I said we did, but probably not as much as Tanzania.
Then I launched into my ever-evolving theory of why corruption is so prevalent in Tanzania. I said to Joseph that corruption begins as a way of thinking that isn’t necessarily bad. In Tanzania, children are taught to share—-share the food, share your clothes, share your bedroom, share the money that you earn to pay for your younger siblings’ school fees. During a test, students share their rulers, their white-out, and their extra pens.
This is a way of cultivating a care for others, but it has a sinister under-side. The other day, I sat on a bus and watched as a secondary school student boarded the bus with a small bag of peanuts. Four of his fellow classmates immediately put their hands out. I could see his whole body droop as he distributed his peanuts to yet another insistent hand, emptying his bag to three peanuts. But if he hadn’t, he would’ve been cast into the outer darkness.
Any adult fortunate enough to buy a car must absolutely give free rides to his or her friends and enemies. And the freeloaders feel no shame, no sense of responsibility in helping to pay for gas. The driver must carry all of that burden because he or she has the car, and the rest do not.
Students must also share the answers on a test. Joseph and his fellow students, though most of them have already taught in secondary schools, are notorious cheaters. Some of those who are tired of sharing, like the boy with the bag of peanuts, sit in the very front so they cannot be disturbed by the person behind them who wants to the phonemic symbol for the “th” in “thy.” When someone becomes president, he--so far, it’s only been “he” in this country as in the States¬—he must share his advantages with his friends who helped him become president.
Then Joseph complained that no change can take place unless it happens through government mandate. I disagreed. I said, if you’re a teacher, you have 70 students in one class. If you teach them a new way of thinking, you will change how they think. Then they will change how their students think. And after five years, you’ll have changed hundreds of students who will change hundreds of thousands of students. Teachers, I said, have more power than presidents.
But Joseph didn’t like that answer. First, it makes him responsible. Second, it gives him a lot of work to do. I did not tell him this, but the biggest impediment to corruption is accepting that it happens with every individual on a daily basis with the simple act of sharing, whether it’s a bag of peanuts or the answers to a test.
Joseph, the class representative, called me over and said he had questions. After I clarified more details about the allophones of /t/, Joseph wanted to know if America had as much corruption as Tanzania. This was when I knew they were tired of phonology. I said we did, but probably not as much as Tanzania.
Then I launched into my ever-evolving theory of why corruption is so prevalent in Tanzania. I said to Joseph that corruption begins as a way of thinking that isn’t necessarily bad. In Tanzania, children are taught to share—-share the food, share your clothes, share your bedroom, share the money that you earn to pay for your younger siblings’ school fees. During a test, students share their rulers, their white-out, and their extra pens.
This is a way of cultivating a care for others, but it has a sinister under-side. The other day, I sat on a bus and watched as a secondary school student boarded the bus with a small bag of peanuts. Four of his fellow classmates immediately put their hands out. I could see his whole body droop as he distributed his peanuts to yet another insistent hand, emptying his bag to three peanuts. But if he hadn’t, he would’ve been cast into the outer darkness.
Any adult fortunate enough to buy a car must absolutely give free rides to his or her friends and enemies. And the freeloaders feel no shame, no sense of responsibility in helping to pay for gas. The driver must carry all of that burden because he or she has the car, and the rest do not.
Students must also share the answers on a test. Joseph and his fellow students, though most of them have already taught in secondary schools, are notorious cheaters. Some of those who are tired of sharing, like the boy with the bag of peanuts, sit in the very front so they cannot be disturbed by the person behind them who wants to the phonemic symbol for the “th” in “thy.” When someone becomes president, he--so far, it’s only been “he” in this country as in the States¬—he must share his advantages with his friends who helped him become president.
Then Joseph complained that no change can take place unless it happens through government mandate. I disagreed. I said, if you’re a teacher, you have 70 students in one class. If you teach them a new way of thinking, you will change how they think. Then they will change how their students think. And after five years, you’ll have changed hundreds of students who will change hundreds of thousands of students. Teachers, I said, have more power than presidents.
But Joseph didn’t like that answer. First, it makes him responsible. Second, it gives him a lot of work to do. I did not tell him this, but the biggest impediment to corruption is accepting that it happens with every individual on a daily basis with the simple act of sharing, whether it’s a bag of peanuts or the answers to a test.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
The Song of Faith
Every evening, I eat with Edda, the assistant bursar at Mwika, and her husband Godrick. As part of the evening routine, Omega the house girl feeds their baby Faith.
When I first began to eat with the family, Faith at eight or nine months did not mind the evening porridge. But soon she got fussy. She knocked away the spoon, and porridge usually flew in all directions, primarily on Omega. Someone now had to distract Faith while the spoon slid into her mouth.
It would not be Edda. Edda had survived nine months of a wretched pregnancy with Faith with many hospitalizations, anxiety, pain and suffering. Edda made it clear to her husband that for the rest of Faith’s life, Godrick would now have to do the work. She, Edda, was too tired after all of that.
At times, the distracting of Faith during porridge would fall to Omega’s sister Lea, who also lives with the family. She would sing a song called, “Piga makofi,” which means “clap the hands.”
Sometimes Godrick would be disturbed during the meal to see the first five spoonfuls go everywhere else but his daughter’s mouth. Concerned that his daughter would not survive without that porridge, he would rise up and sing and clap. His song, unlike the song of Lea, was created spontaneously and repeated many evenings of flung porridge. If this song had a title, I would call it “Faith.” The first verse is “Faith, Faith, Faith, Faith, Faith, Faith, Faith.” The second verse is “Faith, Faith, Faith, mtoto mzuri (good child). Faith, Faith, mtoto mzuri.” In the third verse, the words of the first are repeated and then Godrick claps his hands and says, “Ah!” in a treble voice. Sometimes verses 1 and 2 are combined. Possibly Godrick has forgotten where he is in the song, but he has distracted his beloved daughter long enough to push that porridge down.
Last week Godrick was not around in the evenings. Omega had started to encourage Faith to walk. She also discovered that when Faith was balancing herself, her concentration was distracting enough to feed her. So one evening Omega’s sister Lea plopped Faith far enough away to force concentration. Omega slipped the spoon in, and Faith stumbled towards them, falling into Lea’s arms. After 15 times of this, the porridge was gone.
On Feb. 14, Faith will turn one year. Her steps are still faltering, but in a month, they won’t be. Who will run after Faith with a spoon of porridge?
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Water water everywhere
At the College, they thought I--the only native English speaker on campus--should be the one to teach phonetics and phonology. Phonology is the study of the sounds in English, how you anatomically make them, and the rules about them. It’s not my favorite topic. It resembles science: you have to learn an entirely new set of vocabulary, and by the time you know the topic well, you’ve left out all the words from your previous life sitting dormant on a shelf. But I said, “Sure, I’ll teach phonology.”
The other day my class and I were learning about the “t” sound. (Since it’s been about 20 years since I studied linguistics, I’m including myself as one of the learners.) I was telling students about allophones – variations of a sound. For example, the “t” in “toe” is different from the “t” in “stow.” I told students to put their palms to their mouths and say “toe” and “stow.” The puff of air is less with “stow.” Since my Tanzanian students are game for anything, no matter how silly it looks, forty of us with hands in front of our mouths repeated “toe” and “stow.”
Then I told them about the “t” in “water.” I said while the “t” in “toe” is an aspirated stop, the “t” in “water” is an alveolar flap. With the word “water,” the tip of the tongue touches the ridge on the roof of your mouth right behind your teeth. “Flap” refers to the fact that your tongue does this much more quickly with “water” than “toe.”
Then I pronounced “water” for my students--wadder. Suddenly the room erupted in wadder-wadder-wadder-wadder-wadder. I wrote “wadder” on the board and then “water,” pronounced them one at a time and asked if they could tell which one I was pronouncing. They failed every time.
I had not realized how vital this difference in “t” was -- the aspirated “t” in “toe” and the alveolar flap in “water” --until I first arrived in Tanzania. I had asked for a "boddle of wadder" for the first two days and discovered no one understood me. I told my students this story. Then I heard boddle-of-wadder-boddle-of-wadder-boddle-of-wadder for ten minutes. Then I gave them the native version of “I want a bottle of water” –I wanna boddle of wadder.
With that, I lost all classroom control. They all flowed out of the room repeating, “I wanna boddle of wadder.”
The other day my class and I were learning about the “t” sound. (Since it’s been about 20 years since I studied linguistics, I’m including myself as one of the learners.) I was telling students about allophones – variations of a sound. For example, the “t” in “toe” is different from the “t” in “stow.” I told students to put their palms to their mouths and say “toe” and “stow.” The puff of air is less with “stow.” Since my Tanzanian students are game for anything, no matter how silly it looks, forty of us with hands in front of our mouths repeated “toe” and “stow.”
Then I told them about the “t” in “water.” I said while the “t” in “toe” is an aspirated stop, the “t” in “water” is an alveolar flap. With the word “water,” the tip of the tongue touches the ridge on the roof of your mouth right behind your teeth. “Flap” refers to the fact that your tongue does this much more quickly with “water” than “toe.”
Then I pronounced “water” for my students--wadder. Suddenly the room erupted in wadder-wadder-wadder-wadder-wadder. I wrote “wadder” on the board and then “water,” pronounced them one at a time and asked if they could tell which one I was pronouncing. They failed every time.
I had not realized how vital this difference in “t” was -- the aspirated “t” in “toe” and the alveolar flap in “water” --until I first arrived in Tanzania. I had asked for a "boddle of wadder" for the first two days and discovered no one understood me. I told my students this story. Then I heard boddle-of-wadder-boddle-of-wadder-boddle-of-wadder for ten minutes. Then I gave them the native version of “I want a bottle of water” –I wanna boddle of wadder.
With that, I lost all classroom control. They all flowed out of the room repeating, “I wanna boddle of wadder.”
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Through the metal grate
At the small shop near me, an iron grate set in a large window solidly separates me, the customer, from anything in the shop that I want. Many, and probably most, general stores here bar any customer entrance. All exchanges pass through the holes of that grate.
My shop is run by a young man who’s about 20 years old. In the rooms adjacent to the shop, his mother, father and sister come and go, cook, clean and do other living. But this boy runs the shop from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. every single day. The exception is Christmas and New Year’s Day when his sister helps him run the shop from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. This explains why the clerk returns my greetings when I approach the grate with heavy lethargy. When I tell him what I want–matches, soap, green Christmas wrapping paper, sugar, oil–he rises from his chair sloth-like. I don’t know if sloths rise but if they do, they look like this clerk. When I ask for a half kilo of sugar, he retrieves a wrinkled piece of wax paper and lets it flutter onto a metal scale, then plops metal weights on the other side of the scale, and pours the golden brown grains of sugar onto the paper. Three sugar grains before the scale drops down, he stops pouring and begins to shake the sugar onto the paper. The instant the scale has dropped, the shaking stops, and he lifts the wax paper by two opposite corners, pouring the sugar into a bag from a third corner.
Even though ten customers have arrived and shouted out their requests–I want a cigarette! I want a bar of soap! You didn’t give me the right change last time!–he moves through the weighing of sugar just as slowly as when he began. To assert their position in line, each customer thrusts his hand through the grate waving money at him. The customer returning an empty soda bottle shoves that through the grate.
But while the customers and their demands with their thrusting hands are gathering like thundering clouds, the clerk is sorting in his mind who he can get rid of quickly and whose demand will take time. The soda bottle comes first, the cigarette comes second. The right change will take some thinking, calculating and jousting.
Requests for cooking oil or kerosene are usually last on his list because those, like the pouring and weighing of sugar, take time. Though the customer has brought her own container, the shop clerk has his own standard measuring containers–a soda bottle for the oil and a beer bottle for the kerosene. With a small metal dipper, he pours the oil from a large drum into the bottle through a funnel. Not one drop of either oil or kerosene is spilled onto the floor. (He does not work for British Petroleum.) After he’s poured the liquid into his soda or beer bottle, he pours it into the customer’s container, usually a left-over jug of oil bought a year ago. Both the clerk and customer deliver the jug, which usually doesn’t have a lid, through the grate at the only angle it will fit without spilling a drop.
When the bread man delivers 25 loaves of bread on his bicycle stacked sky high with milk crates full of bread with more loaves tied and swinging on the crates’ sides, each of those 25 loaves is passed one at a time through the window grate. The clerk could let the bread man through the back door to deliver ten loaves at a time, but he doesn’t.
In this way, we do our small shopping.
My shop is run by a young man who’s about 20 years old. In the rooms adjacent to the shop, his mother, father and sister come and go, cook, clean and do other living. But this boy runs the shop from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. every single day. The exception is Christmas and New Year’s Day when his sister helps him run the shop from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. This explains why the clerk returns my greetings when I approach the grate with heavy lethargy. When I tell him what I want–matches, soap, green Christmas wrapping paper, sugar, oil–he rises from his chair sloth-like. I don’t know if sloths rise but if they do, they look like this clerk. When I ask for a half kilo of sugar, he retrieves a wrinkled piece of wax paper and lets it flutter onto a metal scale, then plops metal weights on the other side of the scale, and pours the golden brown grains of sugar onto the paper. Three sugar grains before the scale drops down, he stops pouring and begins to shake the sugar onto the paper. The instant the scale has dropped, the shaking stops, and he lifts the wax paper by two opposite corners, pouring the sugar into a bag from a third corner.
Even though ten customers have arrived and shouted out their requests–I want a cigarette! I want a bar of soap! You didn’t give me the right change last time!–he moves through the weighing of sugar just as slowly as when he began. To assert their position in line, each customer thrusts his hand through the grate waving money at him. The customer returning an empty soda bottle shoves that through the grate.
But while the customers and their demands with their thrusting hands are gathering like thundering clouds, the clerk is sorting in his mind who he can get rid of quickly and whose demand will take time. The soda bottle comes first, the cigarette comes second. The right change will take some thinking, calculating and jousting.
Requests for cooking oil or kerosene are usually last on his list because those, like the pouring and weighing of sugar, take time. Though the customer has brought her own container, the shop clerk has his own standard measuring containers–a soda bottle for the oil and a beer bottle for the kerosene. With a small metal dipper, he pours the oil from a large drum into the bottle through a funnel. Not one drop of either oil or kerosene is spilled onto the floor. (He does not work for British Petroleum.) After he’s poured the liquid into his soda or beer bottle, he pours it into the customer’s container, usually a left-over jug of oil bought a year ago. Both the clerk and customer deliver the jug, which usually doesn’t have a lid, through the grate at the only angle it will fit without spilling a drop.
When the bread man delivers 25 loaves of bread on his bicycle stacked sky high with milk crates full of bread with more loaves tied and swinging on the crates’ sides, each of those 25 loaves is passed one at a time through the window grate. The clerk could let the bread man through the back door to deliver ten loaves at a time, but he doesn’t.
In this way, we do our small shopping.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Shine
The guest for dinner that evening was named Shine (pronounced SHEEnay). He was a third-year Bachelor Degree student who had sticks for limbs; the largest part of him was his smile. It wasn’t my home we were having dinner at. Edda, the bursar at the Mwika campus, and her husband Godrick serve as my hosts every evening, my own house lacking cooking equipment. Edda introduced Shine as the minister of housing for the students, and I wondered why the student government needed a housing minister.
I also wondered how one might put more meat on Shine. So did Edda. She heaped his plate with cooked bananas and stew until Shine’s eyes became larger than his smile.
It turns out Shine had the monumental task of finding housing for degree students. Ever since the government of Tanzania restructured its loan program last year to provide more loans to anyone majoring in education, the Mwika campus has been inundated with degree students. Instead of 35 education students, Mwika now has 250, but doesn’t have resources and time to build on-campus housing.
Shine’s job was to go from door to door in local villages and ask if people would be willing to rent a room to a college student. Very likely not everyone would say yes although many would want the extra income. This meant Shine would have to knock on many more doors than 250. This, I thought, was not a good way to add more meat to Shine. He would dissolve into thin air. But Shine had already found rooms for 75 students. Perhaps he had begun the week a clothes-size larger.
The next morning I saw Shine on the main road on the back of a friend’s motorcycle, venturing out to knock on more doors, still smiling.
I also wondered how one might put more meat on Shine. So did Edda. She heaped his plate with cooked bananas and stew until Shine’s eyes became larger than his smile.
It turns out Shine had the monumental task of finding housing for degree students. Ever since the government of Tanzania restructured its loan program last year to provide more loans to anyone majoring in education, the Mwika campus has been inundated with degree students. Instead of 35 education students, Mwika now has 250, but doesn’t have resources and time to build on-campus housing.
Shine’s job was to go from door to door in local villages and ask if people would be willing to rent a room to a college student. Very likely not everyone would say yes although many would want the extra income. This meant Shine would have to knock on many more doors than 250. This, I thought, was not a good way to add more meat to Shine. He would dissolve into thin air. But Shine had already found rooms for 75 students. Perhaps he had begun the week a clothes-size larger.
The next morning I saw Shine on the main road on the back of a friend’s motorcycle, venturing out to knock on more doors, still smiling.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Practicing English
I did not know what my students and I would talk about at lunch, but I figured if we had nothing to say, we could at least eat.
I have learned that the opportunity to practice speaking English with me elicits two responses: terror and delight. This group of first-year Diploma in Education students had been thrilled the week before when I asked them. So thrilled they were sure that Mama Somebody who runs the off-campus canteen would bring the food to us in our classroom. It seemed a huge inconvenience for that mama, so I nixed the idea, especially after Malekea, the guy who sits in the back of the room where the sun beams the brightest, shook his head. Of the 12 or so students in the room, his feet were solidly on the ground.
I could’ve planned topics for discussion, but that seemed like work. Plus, if I plan things, it limits the possibilities of what can happen. (I do not apply this same rule to my classes, though I have abandoned parts or all of my plan after discovering students didn’t understand something critical.)
What did we talk about on the dusty road to Mama Somebody’s canteen? Njau wanted to know how I could expect to teach English and learn Kiswahili at the same time. Based on the fact that he asked this same question 26 times, I decided he really wasn’t interested in my answer; he wanted to practice asking the question. By the time we hiked up the steep short hill to the canteen, he was still asking that question, and suddenly and fortunately, he disappeared.
Outside the front door, Mama was serving food from steaming tables. Inside were about three coffee tables and one tall bar table. Ten of us joined the 3 or 4 people who weren’t expecting to practice speaking English while they ate. Neither was Mama Somebody, judging from her own startled look.
I wasn’t sure about the canteen’s serving system. People were clearly going out to the mama and ordering what they wanted. Bongole was eating rice and meat with sauce. Joseph was eating rice and banana stew. I announced I wanted rice and meat. I stood outside thinking there was a line of people waiting to order and collect food right by the steaming tables and Mama Somebody. But no, Bongole told me to sit down and after a while, the food was brought to me. (I’ve discovered if you don’t know the main language spoken in a country, events appear surprising, fraught with either divine mystery or frustration. Today it was mystery.) All of this was part of a whirlwind of excitement. Bongole, sitting beside me on the bench against the wall, launched into a series of statements about not knowing the local tribal language, he was from the southern region of Iringa, and so on. When I asked him how long it took him to travel to Mwika, he said he didn’t understand the question. Irambo, sitting across from him, did. But Irambo had a mouth full of rice and meat. And apparently, judging from the silence in the room, he was the only one who understood. So we waited.
When Bongole finally explained that it took him 14 hours to travel to Mwika, three other students began to argue, calling him a liar. Bongole, an excitable guy to begin with, could not be contained in his space on the bench. I had to tell him to be quiet three times in English and finally when I said it in Kiswahili, he stopped. Kissima, sitting at the bar table, explained that she had just made the trip from Moshi Town to Iringa and it took her ten hours. After sorting out the details, it was revealed that neither Kissima nor Bongole were lying.
From there we hopped around topics. By the time we had walked back to campus, I was explaining how our large buses in the States have toilets--I used the word “latrine” because they’d just learned it that day. Temba wanted to know where the poop went. How much were people paid to remove the poop? Bongole said he would never do such a job. Kissima said he would if he were paid good money.
At that point, our roads diverged, mine to my apartment, theirs to their next class. Next week, I will write down Mama Somebody’s real name.
I have learned that the opportunity to practice speaking English with me elicits two responses: terror and delight. This group of first-year Diploma in Education students had been thrilled the week before when I asked them. So thrilled they were sure that Mama Somebody who runs the off-campus canteen would bring the food to us in our classroom. It seemed a huge inconvenience for that mama, so I nixed the idea, especially after Malekea, the guy who sits in the back of the room where the sun beams the brightest, shook his head. Of the 12 or so students in the room, his feet were solidly on the ground.
I could’ve planned topics for discussion, but that seemed like work. Plus, if I plan things, it limits the possibilities of what can happen. (I do not apply this same rule to my classes, though I have abandoned parts or all of my plan after discovering students didn’t understand something critical.)
What did we talk about on the dusty road to Mama Somebody’s canteen? Njau wanted to know how I could expect to teach English and learn Kiswahili at the same time. Based on the fact that he asked this same question 26 times, I decided he really wasn’t interested in my answer; he wanted to practice asking the question. By the time we hiked up the steep short hill to the canteen, he was still asking that question, and suddenly and fortunately, he disappeared.
Outside the front door, Mama was serving food from steaming tables. Inside were about three coffee tables and one tall bar table. Ten of us joined the 3 or 4 people who weren’t expecting to practice speaking English while they ate. Neither was Mama Somebody, judging from her own startled look.
I wasn’t sure about the canteen’s serving system. People were clearly going out to the mama and ordering what they wanted. Bongole was eating rice and meat with sauce. Joseph was eating rice and banana stew. I announced I wanted rice and meat. I stood outside thinking there was a line of people waiting to order and collect food right by the steaming tables and Mama Somebody. But no, Bongole told me to sit down and after a while, the food was brought to me. (I’ve discovered if you don’t know the main language spoken in a country, events appear surprising, fraught with either divine mystery or frustration. Today it was mystery.) All of this was part of a whirlwind of excitement. Bongole, sitting beside me on the bench against the wall, launched into a series of statements about not knowing the local tribal language, he was from the southern region of Iringa, and so on. When I asked him how long it took him to travel to Mwika, he said he didn’t understand the question. Irambo, sitting across from him, did. But Irambo had a mouth full of rice and meat. And apparently, judging from the silence in the room, he was the only one who understood. So we waited.
When Bongole finally explained that it took him 14 hours to travel to Mwika, three other students began to argue, calling him a liar. Bongole, an excitable guy to begin with, could not be contained in his space on the bench. I had to tell him to be quiet three times in English and finally when I said it in Kiswahili, he stopped. Kissima, sitting at the bar table, explained that she had just made the trip from Moshi Town to Iringa and it took her ten hours. After sorting out the details, it was revealed that neither Kissima nor Bongole were lying.
From there we hopped around topics. By the time we had walked back to campus, I was explaining how our large buses in the States have toilets--I used the word “latrine” because they’d just learned it that day. Temba wanted to know where the poop went. How much were people paid to remove the poop? Bongole said he would never do such a job. Kissima said he would if he were paid good money.
At that point, our roads diverged, mine to my apartment, theirs to their next class. Next week, I will write down Mama Somebody’s real name.
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