I’m not sure how to sign off the Arusha chapter now that I have left. As I flip back through the moments that make up the past three months in Tanzania, I can see that some days I accepted my standard dinner plate of rice and beans with the ebullience of a human Grumpy Cat, and other days I was hoeing in to ugali and stew with my hands, congratulating myself on embracing the African spirit; a poster girl for #yolo. So what do I take from my time in the Tanz? When so much happened in only a few brief months, it’s a tsunami of people and events to compute, impossible to summarise into a one-pager.
From the highs of Mount Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater rim, to the heartbreaks of holding the hand of a tiny orphan with HIV/AIDS, I certainly depart my volunteering experience with at least a few new competencies, and a great deal of perspective. It would be hard not to. Plonk a gal from the East coast of Australia into the ghetto streets of East Africa; my eyes were wide from dawn to dusk. In 90 days, I encountered topics that had only ever existed in newspapers for me. From the Maasai culture and widespread practice of female genital mutilation, to domestic abuse, rape, murder, corruption, sexually transmitted diseases, maternal and infant mortality, gender inequality, road death, bombings, black magic, prostitution (OK you get the idea). I got the entire smorgasbord of developing country issues. And this was on top of all the predicted but unnoteworthy blackouts, water shortages, medieval technology and below-average bowel health. Each day was an emotional bender, and the tales we would swap over a few sundowners were consistently bewildering.
I'll pluck one story from a fistful of comparable tales. I attended a small gathering one Saturday evening at a friend's place in Njiro, a bunch of volunteers and locals listening to Voice of the Streets (angsty Afro beats) on a small screen. We were sipping on Savannah ciders and chewing on qat with cinnamon flavoured gum (a revolting combination), when we were told that our local friend Simo was in a horrific car accident and pronounced dead at the scene. Only 26 years old, it was a complete tragedy, and his devastated family was called to the morgue. As the body was pulled out for identification, and the sheet peeled back, his parents' grief suddenly turned into shock... They noticed his foot had started to twitch. Simo was alive! The hospital paid his family a sum of money to keep the miracle out of Tanzania's Daily News, and Simon made a quiet recovery, albeit with a hectic scar down one side of his face. After the accident he was renamed Lucifer (although I think the correct Biblical reference should be Lazarus), but hey, T.I.A.
Working with groups of women in microfinance taught me a lot about the female plight, in more ways than expected. In late June, we hosted a Women's Health workshop at a local hospital, where we offered seminars on sexual health and free individual medical consultations. Over lunch, the ladies shared some of the ingenuities for survival as a lesser sex that they have crafted over the generations. Like proper ‘secret women’s business’ that you can’t google or read about in any World Health Organisation report. Like ways to sneak birth control after you've delivered nine children. Or how to fake virginity. It appears that men descending from every tribe - Sukuma, Maasai, Chagga, all of them – want, and expect, to marry a woman whose nether regions remain untouched at the time of marriage. It's a cultural thing, non-virginity is a deal breaker. Yet for many (perhaps the majority of Tanzanian lassies), this is not realistic. Not to say they are overly promiscuous, just that amorous relations tend to be a part of human nature, and by the time the brides-to-be are betrothed, they may have experienced a liaison or two. Or slightly more. Mothers (once young fiancées themselves) are acutely aware of this, and have developed a topical solution to reinstate their daughters’ purity. Yes, it is allegedly common practice for young brides to apply a strong concentrate of lemon juice and special herbs to the affected areas. The desired effect can be translated as a ‘shrivelling’ of the vicinity, which apparently men really go for, and no suspicions are raised.
So I'm clearly struggling to conclude the recent months in any form of meaningful wrap up. And as you can see, a Facebook album would not really fly either. I'll leave it as TBC for now, and follow up with Kwaheri: Part 2 after I've had more time to digest (in Zanzibar). Baadaye!
From the highs of Mount Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater rim, to the heartbreaks of holding the hand of a tiny orphan with HIV/AIDS, I certainly depart my volunteering experience with at least a few new competencies, and a great deal of perspective. It would be hard not to. Plonk a gal from the East coast of Australia into the ghetto streets of East Africa; my eyes were wide from dawn to dusk. In 90 days, I encountered topics that had only ever existed in newspapers for me. From the Maasai culture and widespread practice of female genital mutilation, to domestic abuse, rape, murder, corruption, sexually transmitted diseases, maternal and infant mortality, gender inequality, road death, bombings, black magic, prostitution (OK you get the idea). I got the entire smorgasbord of developing country issues. And this was on top of all the predicted but unnoteworthy blackouts, water shortages, medieval technology and below-average bowel health. Each day was an emotional bender, and the tales we would swap over a few sundowners were consistently bewildering.
I'll pluck one story from a fistful of comparable tales. I attended a small gathering one Saturday evening at a friend's place in Njiro, a bunch of volunteers and locals listening to Voice of the Streets (angsty Afro beats) on a small screen. We were sipping on Savannah ciders and chewing on qat with cinnamon flavoured gum (a revolting combination), when we were told that our local friend Simo was in a horrific car accident and pronounced dead at the scene. Only 26 years old, it was a complete tragedy, and his devastated family was called to the morgue. As the body was pulled out for identification, and the sheet peeled back, his parents' grief suddenly turned into shock... They noticed his foot had started to twitch. Simo was alive! The hospital paid his family a sum of money to keep the miracle out of Tanzania's Daily News, and Simon made a quiet recovery, albeit with a hectic scar down one side of his face. After the accident he was renamed Lucifer (although I think the correct Biblical reference should be Lazarus), but hey, T.I.A.
Working with groups of women in microfinance taught me a lot about the female plight, in more ways than expected. In late June, we hosted a Women's Health workshop at a local hospital, where we offered seminars on sexual health and free individual medical consultations. Over lunch, the ladies shared some of the ingenuities for survival as a lesser sex that they have crafted over the generations. Like proper ‘secret women’s business’ that you can’t google or read about in any World Health Organisation report. Like ways to sneak birth control after you've delivered nine children. Or how to fake virginity. It appears that men descending from every tribe - Sukuma, Maasai, Chagga, all of them – want, and expect, to marry a woman whose nether regions remain untouched at the time of marriage. It's a cultural thing, non-virginity is a deal breaker. Yet for many (perhaps the majority of Tanzanian lassies), this is not realistic. Not to say they are overly promiscuous, just that amorous relations tend to be a part of human nature, and by the time the brides-to-be are betrothed, they may have experienced a liaison or two. Or slightly more. Mothers (once young fiancées themselves) are acutely aware of this, and have developed a topical solution to reinstate their daughters’ purity. Yes, it is allegedly common practice for young brides to apply a strong concentrate of lemon juice and special herbs to the affected areas. The desired effect can be translated as a ‘shrivelling’ of the vicinity, which apparently men really go for, and no suspicions are raised.
So I'm clearly struggling to conclude the recent months in any form of meaningful wrap up. And as you can see, a Facebook album would not really fly either. I'll leave it as TBC for now, and follow up with Kwaheri: Part 2 after I've had more time to digest (in Zanzibar). Baadaye!
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RICE AND BEANS, YOU ARE OFFICIALLY ON HIATUS
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