25. July. 2010
I feel like I should start this post with “I once had a farm in Africa”.
It looks to be a busy Sunday with a pile of work that needs to get done before this hectic week starts, so I wake up early and do an hour of Yoga. Laying in Shivasina I give thanks to my higher power, my creative consciousness, my spiritual light. I thank my teachers – those that have inspired me, brought me to my knees, kissed me on my lips. I give thanks for the challenges that I have surmounted and grown from. This morning, I was lucky enough to reach that great balance of inner peace and physical exertion.
After my shower, but still in my post yoga calm, I chop up a half a pineapple, some papaya, a few bananas and squeeze some passion and citrus juice over the top. I fix my Sunday morning instant mocha (instant coffee, instant milk, instant chocolate, sugar, cinnamon and hot water). I take my breakfast and a relatively recent Economist that old visitors had left at the house and sit out on the porch to catch up on the worldly events and enjoy the morning light.
After reading about the election in Rwanda, blood diamonds in Zimbabwe, and about halfway through the article on American democrats’ ineptitude to lead in wartime, I start to hear the crackling of fire. It is a pretty common background noise, hardly registering in my brain. It gets a little stronger and I assume that it must be one of the guards cooking some breakfast in the fire pit near my house. When I finish the article, I decide to look down the rocky hill that falls off quickly about 4 yards from where I am sitting. During the dry season, the valley is on fire, the hills shrouded in smoke. People believe (falsely) that burning fields is good for the soil. They also believe that the longer your fire burns, the longer you will live. Or that the ability to light a fire is the hand of God acting through yours (but really, if we are going to get detailed here, isn’t it God’s hand typing with mine right now?). Anyhow, I decide I should at least just check and see if there is a fire getting close to the compound. I walk out to the edge and look over. There is a strong fire, and it is nearly at the foot path about three yards down hill. “Jessicaaaa,” I call to our house keeper “njoo tafadalhi! Haraka!” (come please! Hurry!) she peeks her head out the back door, wearing her apron over her nice church clothes “moto inakuju. Ina karibu!” (fire, it comes. It is close!). She looks over, “Hamnashida” (there is no problem) she says matter-of-factly, totally unfazed. She slowly saunters down the hill to walk along the footpath and examine just how far it goes and to make sure no children are in harm’s way. She pauses occasionally to unhook her skirt from the thistles of the bush. I take the moment to snap a few pictures.
This would be a good time to describe the surroundings. Our compound of three houses and the office is well maintained with the grass cut short. But just past our boundary, which is really just delineated by where short grass meets long grass or sometimes a bush line, is wild, overgrown and dry bush. At the best it is grass to my knee, at worse it is grass to the shoulders and brambly bush.
Jessica returns after her leisurely walk and tells us everything is fine, that it has slowed, and will stop at the footpath. She brushes it off and goes back inside to her work. I am not so easily persuaded. Maybe it is because I am from California where wild fires have claimed my favorite camping spot and nearly taken my family’s homes. When the fire gets this close, we evacuate. But here, in rural Tanzania, there is no fire department to call in to protect your home. Here, if you leave, you lose your home. And so, you fight. I start to think of all of the what-ifs. Of the millions of shillings of highly flammable product we have in our store room. The home that I have grown to love. The 400 artisans that depend on our poorly financed NGO. My livelihood. I decide to knock on the door of Heidi, the founder of my org, who is in town for the month and just ask her what she thinks. Worst case scenario, she laughs at me for being unseasoned, nervous about such a commonplace occurrence. Best case scenario, we save our compound from being burned to a crisp.
“Hodi” I call into her house. “Is that Rachel? I am in the bath” she replies. “Oh… okay… I was just wondering what you do if the fire gets too close…”, “is it near”, “well I think so”, “I’ll be out in a few minutes”. Ruth and I run back to the hill near my house. The fire has moved quite a lot, and the wind is picking up and it is moving close, it is definitely too close for comfort. “Jessicaaaa! Ina karibu SANA!” (it is VERY near). She runs out, looks down the hill, and without saying anything, runs to the nearest green leafy tree and with one swift movement rips off a young stem with a lot of leaves on the end. I do the same, though, it being a green tree and me being new to this, I struggle a little more. I say an apology to the tree for taking its life. But, I guess the fire would have gotten it anyway. A small sacrifice. She runs towards the bottom of the fire and start swatting it out with the green leaves. Hardcore. Mind you, she is a plump lady still wearing her apron over her Sunday bests. Definitely a sight. I stay top-ward and start mimicking her. It is definitely working! But the fire is faster than my incessant swatting. My mind is thinking, there has got to be a better way, but my survival instinct just keeps swatting. Eventually my leaves wilt off and I am not making much headway with the remaining tree stump and branches, and I realize I am backed against a rock face. I decide to get out and run up to the house to start fighting with buckets of water. About this time, Heidi walks up with her two kids, 3 and 5. We send the kids up to the balcony, yelling at them to stay put. I pass off the bucket and rip down a new green tree to start swatting again. Heidi decides to call for backup, because us four women are having a difficult time keeping the fire at bay. It has now reached the rim where I stood to look down at the fire – about 4 yards from the house, with nothing but dry grass in between. There is even a nice pile of dry trees sitting conveniently near the shack housing our generator and fuel…smart. I am running all over, swatting, calling for water when I hit rough spots, occasionally burning my feet (I am wearing chaco thongs. Didn’t have time to put on proper foot wear…). The smoke is intense. I am trying to breathe out while looking at the fire and breathe in facing away. Not much help. I am short of breath but keep swatting. Eventually we get this part of the fire at bay and head off to the end of the compound to check on it. Ruth stays back with the kids, and Heidi, Jessica and I walk to the end. The flames are big and hot, and moving fast. At this point, facing massive flames and heavy smoke, coughing, I flash back to a Grey’s Anatomy smoke inhalation patient and suggest wetting bandanas to cover our mouths. Manase, our back up arrives, and he and Jessica run off with their trees. Heidi and I don’t think we have enough time to swat out the fire before it gets to the house. I suggest we start digging (firefighters dig trenches right?). She doesn’t think there is time. So we start creating a water boundary. Eventually we call some other people in, and we swat it out, but it is now heading up the hill to the church compound. Heidi calls our friends up the hill to warn them. We keep swatting. Eventually we get it out. Kids come out and marvel at the mzungu female firefighters. We are a sight. We breathe a sigh of relief and head back to the first house to have some water, breathe semi clean air and assess our battle wounds. Thinking that we are safe now that the house is nearly encircled by charred earth, we relax. We take a celebratory picture of the firefighting team. Manase even heads home. We break out some roasted ground nuts and enjoy some homemade coffee icecream I made the night before. We joke around and drink gallons of water.
In about 30 minutes, Jessica bursts in and in frantic kiswa tells us the fire is back, strong, near the last house. Heidi and I, again, leave Ruth with the kids and take off at a run. Immediately we hear the crackling of the fire. Before we see it, we already know we are in trouble. As I run, I think about how my house could have burned down while we were eating icecream congratulating ourselves. When we get nearer, it is in an L encroaching on the house. It has jumped the ground burned earlier and is nearly on top of the house. It is more than we can handle. We call for backup and yell at the people up hill from us to grab a bucket and do something. We are about to lose my house. I run through bush and charred earth, burning my toes and hoping that all snakes have evacuated the area earlier. I swat like I have never swatted before. The fire is intense. The smoke is white-out conditions. Eyes are burning. I have to run out to get some air. We are not keeping up. My foot falls through a hole between two rocks. I keep swatting and hope nothing bites me. They yell at me to stop and reposition at the top. We finally get the big flames out, but it is a double front. It’s relentless! (yes, I actually yelled that) Half of us stay to finish putting out the first fire, and the rest of us go to the other half of the fire. I repeatedly curse these foolish people who light fires. Now that I am closer, I can hear the organ of the church uphill, playing like nothing is happening below. We have now put out the main fires and walk around, slowly, heaving for air, with buckets of water cooling off smoking embers. This time we are really done. Though, there are no news reporters updating the thousands watching on TV. There are no celebrating crowds. Just the calm of knowing we are safe, the pride of having done it with our own hands and the ache of our muscles and the smell of smoke that lingers on our clothes to remind us that it was, in fact us who did it.
Now that the fire is out, I can clearly hear the music from the church. The beat goes on. I joke about how the pious should be thankful for those unholy among them who don’t go to church. We just saved their asses.
Heidi and I don’t waste much time getting to the work we had planned for the afternoon: planning meetings and filling out our application for the World Fair Trade Organization. In a few hours, I am still light headed and just exhausted, so I head home. On my way home, Manase shows me a large snake hanging in a tree that he just killed near where my foot fell through the hole. I ask if it was poisonous. Very, he says. A shudder runs throughout my body that I can’t shake. What an insane life I lead.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Africa's Cup
Lunch today was much more spirited than usual. My neighbor Thomas came into the office, I have not seen him in two weeks, but I greet him with, “Yeah for World Cup starting today!” and a high five. This gets the whole team talking and arguing. Mainly about Brazil or Portugal. This cup, they are in the same group, which promises an intense head to head (June 25th). People here love Brazil, but they also love Ronaldo (Portugal’s star footballer), so there is a bit of a tension. I of course am loyal to Portugal (Santos family heritage). We all battle it out a bit, and then make plans for the opening game this evening. It is a rather uninspiring match up, South Africa v Mexico, but most of us support South Africa for patriotic reasons. All but Thomas. He says he loves football too much to support a team for patriotic reasons. I try to paint the picture of the hope and excitement the cup brings to this continent, and of how devastated we will all be if South Africa looses the first game of Africa’s World Cup. He will hear none of it.
4:30 rolls around and the 8 people going to town to watch the match from Murgwanza converge at the church compound to hitch a ride with the vehicle. There are some new faces, and I begin to ask “Portugal or Br…” they cut me off, “Brazil, of course.” I am most definitely out numbered. I feel myself getting more excited for the games to come.
We pull up to the Sky Giraffe, one of the two bars in town. By bar I mean a fenced in yard, with thatch roof covering a corner. Thomas has been promising me that they have a HUGE screen, biggest in Ngara. From my previous visits, I only remember a tiny little TV with horrible sound. We enter, and under the thatch structure is a big TV, about the size of most standard American household TVs, and rows and rows of men sitting in plastic chairs. We get some of the last chairs in the back. As it turns out, the one thing Tanzanians will be on time for is World Cup. The waiter in his usual dingy “kiss me I’m Irish” shirt comes around to collect our 300 shilling ($0.25) entrance fee and get us some sodas.
In the US, we would use the World Cup as a great excuse to start drinking beer at 10am. Here it is 5pm on a Friday, and not a single man has ordered a beer. Fantas and Cokes all around. Is this game too serious to drink? I find myself wondering. Being that I am sick and sitting next to the Vicar General of the (dry) Anglican Church, I follow suite and order a Fanta orange. The tension is mounting as we watch the national anthem. My heart is racing along is everyone in the room. The World Cup is officially open. I clap. Alone. It felt strangely anticlimactic. I wanted to yell, this is the World Cup people! Africa’s World Cup!
When we came in, it was clear that I was the only mzungu in the place, but as I looked around, I am also the only woman. So I guess I deserve all of the strange looks I was getting.
For the first ten minutes, Mexico dominates the field with a number of shots on goal. Thomas looks at me gloatingly and asks if I am in his camp yet. I go on about standing by your team, but the guy to my left starts wavering. Everyone seems really reserved. I expected much more excitement and involvement for the first game of this cup, Africa’s Cup. It turns out that I am louder, and perhaps more foul mouthed than everyone in there (I was trying to keep it under control, but it is second nature when the opposition is passing the ball through your defense towards the goal). Mexico scores and we all go silent (or more silent). I bury my head in my scarf and miss the ref’s offsides call, nulling the point. That gets a little rise from the crowd.
Half time rolls around, it is still 0-0. South Africa is on the offense a bit more, but still, nothing too promising. Everyone gets up, and it seems, decided that at this point in the game it is time to drink, they return with beer in hand. Thomas asks again if I am now voting (his word) for Mexico. South Africa has upped their game, I am not making any pronouncements, but it might be a draw.
About 10 minutes into the 2nd half, South Africa is aggressively sprinting down the field with the ball, the ball is expertly passed to the wing, and he shoots up and over the goalie landing with a swish in the upper corner of net. A Qwik Goal as my old coach would have said.
UPROAR!!!! We all shot to our feet, hands in the air, screaming and jumping. YEAH!!! People were literally hanging from the rafters. The joy I felt is difficult to capture. I think a lot of it was relief. It was important that South Africa got the first goal of the cup! We were now in the game for good. The tension was broken, I was no longer the only one yelling at the screen. Everyone was on the edge of their seat ready for them to do it again.
Mexico evens it out. We try to get a few more in, but they deflect off the goal posts. And, just like that, the game ends. Tied up, 1-1. Everyone gets up without saying much and leaves. In a hurry to get some food before the second game starts.
4:30 rolls around and the 8 people going to town to watch the match from Murgwanza converge at the church compound to hitch a ride with the vehicle. There are some new faces, and I begin to ask “Portugal or Br…” they cut me off, “Brazil, of course.” I am most definitely out numbered. I feel myself getting more excited for the games to come.
We pull up to the Sky Giraffe, one of the two bars in town. By bar I mean a fenced in yard, with thatch roof covering a corner. Thomas has been promising me that they have a HUGE screen, biggest in Ngara. From my previous visits, I only remember a tiny little TV with horrible sound. We enter, and under the thatch structure is a big TV, about the size of most standard American household TVs, and rows and rows of men sitting in plastic chairs. We get some of the last chairs in the back. As it turns out, the one thing Tanzanians will be on time for is World Cup. The waiter in his usual dingy “kiss me I’m Irish” shirt comes around to collect our 300 shilling ($0.25) entrance fee and get us some sodas.
In the US, we would use the World Cup as a great excuse to start drinking beer at 10am. Here it is 5pm on a Friday, and not a single man has ordered a beer. Fantas and Cokes all around. Is this game too serious to drink? I find myself wondering. Being that I am sick and sitting next to the Vicar General of the (dry) Anglican Church, I follow suite and order a Fanta orange. The tension is mounting as we watch the national anthem. My heart is racing along is everyone in the room. The World Cup is officially open. I clap. Alone. It felt strangely anticlimactic. I wanted to yell, this is the World Cup people! Africa’s World Cup!
When we came in, it was clear that I was the only mzungu in the place, but as I looked around, I am also the only woman. So I guess I deserve all of the strange looks I was getting.
For the first ten minutes, Mexico dominates the field with a number of shots on goal. Thomas looks at me gloatingly and asks if I am in his camp yet. I go on about standing by your team, but the guy to my left starts wavering. Everyone seems really reserved. I expected much more excitement and involvement for the first game of this cup, Africa’s Cup. It turns out that I am louder, and perhaps more foul mouthed than everyone in there (I was trying to keep it under control, but it is second nature when the opposition is passing the ball through your defense towards the goal). Mexico scores and we all go silent (or more silent). I bury my head in my scarf and miss the ref’s offsides call, nulling the point. That gets a little rise from the crowd.
Half time rolls around, it is still 0-0. South Africa is on the offense a bit more, but still, nothing too promising. Everyone gets up, and it seems, decided that at this point in the game it is time to drink, they return with beer in hand. Thomas asks again if I am now voting (his word) for Mexico. South Africa has upped their game, I am not making any pronouncements, but it might be a draw.
About 10 minutes into the 2nd half, South Africa is aggressively sprinting down the field with the ball, the ball is expertly passed to the wing, and he shoots up and over the goalie landing with a swish in the upper corner of net. A Qwik Goal as my old coach would have said.
UPROAR!!!! We all shot to our feet, hands in the air, screaming and jumping. YEAH!!! People were literally hanging from the rafters. The joy I felt is difficult to capture. I think a lot of it was relief. It was important that South Africa got the first goal of the cup! We were now in the game for good. The tension was broken, I was no longer the only one yelling at the screen. Everyone was on the edge of their seat ready for them to do it again.
Mexico evens it out. We try to get a few more in, but they deflect off the goal posts. And, just like that, the game ends. Tied up, 1-1. Everyone gets up without saying much and leaves. In a hurry to get some food before the second game starts.
Monday, May 24, 2010
UNHCR Ghost Town
Today Pastor took me for a tour around Ngara town. Mainly it was really boring, shaking the hands of important officials and struggling to understand convos in Kiswahili.
As an aside, Pastor wanted to take me to a fancy hotel where important visitors stay, the Africana. It was previously run by UNHCR, it was the compound where all of the aid workers lived during the Rwanda and Burundi crises. It was built of old railroad containers, probably close to fifty little yellow bandas with thatched roofs. There is an open air cafeteria with a stunning view of the valley. The place is in shambles. Vines grow out of the fireplace that used to cast a warm glow over the expats having a drink after a long day at the camp. I can hear the hum of conversation and see the cigarette smoke.
The grounds are beautifully landscaped with equatorial flowers and trees – but everything is overgrown and dilapidated. The grass is two feet tall, the hedges are bushy, there are holes in the thatch roof. It is strangely sad to see that a place once so vibrant is now so dead.
We then go to visit one of the district commissioners whose office is housed in the old UN headquarters for the refugee crisis. The compound is sky blue and white, with white rocks lining the spots for ghost landcruzers. We walk over to see row after row of container offices, a small percent of which are actually being used. It amazes me to think about what was once here. What was once the biggest refugee operation in the world now amounts to a bunch of empty railroad containers.
I should be happy that things have improved enough that Rwandans and Burundians can return home, but I am sad. It feels like a ghost town. This place was built around tragic conflicts, but we have deemed everything good enough, packed up and gone home. Maybe what is so haunting about this, is this feeling that things are not ok. I keep hearing whispers from researchers and journalists, keep seeing buried headlines about the storm that is brewing in Rwanda. Unfortunately, it would fit with historical trends. The Hutus and the Tutsis tend to take turns ruling the country, separated by mass conflict. Some of us wondered if the ’94 genocide was brutal enough, that there was enough lives lost, to make everyone say enough is enough. But, seemingly, some things go deeper.
There is a part of me that resents everyone who left this tumultuous Great Lakes Region feeling like the job is finished. Maybe they didn’t feel that way, just the leadership of the organizations. There is still critical work to be done. Reconciliation is the most important aspect of a conflict and too frequently it receives the smallest amount of time and resources.
After visiting the UN compound, we visit the one remaining functioning project from the crisis. Radio Kwizera, Radio Hope. At the time of the genocide, Rwandese were spread all over the bush and there was no way of contacting them about available food, shelter and assistance. They started a radio station and distributed solar radios to strategic locations. In Rwanda during the genocide, the radio was used as a weapon of war. It was used to dehumanize the Tutsi’s , to notify attackers of Tutsi hiding places. After the radio had been used to further the genocide, Radio Kwizera wanted to show the compassionate side of the media. To make it cliché – to use the radio for good and not evil.
The refugees have returned home now, but Radio Kwizera has not closed its doors. The station is received in Burundi, Rwanda and Eastern DRC. They are using their radio waves to promote peace and reconciliation. The Great Lakes Region is heading into a period of elections in every country. It is critical that people are discussing wide spread participation, informed voting, legitimacy and transparency, peace and unity. There is hope in this radio station. The mere fact that they are still here is a start.
It feels a bit trite to be writing about something that was so devastating to everyone here, especially when I was not. But, I am here now.
As an aside, Pastor wanted to take me to a fancy hotel where important visitors stay, the Africana. It was previously run by UNHCR, it was the compound where all of the aid workers lived during the Rwanda and Burundi crises. It was built of old railroad containers, probably close to fifty little yellow bandas with thatched roofs. There is an open air cafeteria with a stunning view of the valley. The place is in shambles. Vines grow out of the fireplace that used to cast a warm glow over the expats having a drink after a long day at the camp. I can hear the hum of conversation and see the cigarette smoke.
The grounds are beautifully landscaped with equatorial flowers and trees – but everything is overgrown and dilapidated. The grass is two feet tall, the hedges are bushy, there are holes in the thatch roof. It is strangely sad to see that a place once so vibrant is now so dead.
We then go to visit one of the district commissioners whose office is housed in the old UN headquarters for the refugee crisis. The compound is sky blue and white, with white rocks lining the spots for ghost landcruzers. We walk over to see row after row of container offices, a small percent of which are actually being used. It amazes me to think about what was once here. What was once the biggest refugee operation in the world now amounts to a bunch of empty railroad containers.
I should be happy that things have improved enough that Rwandans and Burundians can return home, but I am sad. It feels like a ghost town. This place was built around tragic conflicts, but we have deemed everything good enough, packed up and gone home. Maybe what is so haunting about this, is this feeling that things are not ok. I keep hearing whispers from researchers and journalists, keep seeing buried headlines about the storm that is brewing in Rwanda. Unfortunately, it would fit with historical trends. The Hutus and the Tutsis tend to take turns ruling the country, separated by mass conflict. Some of us wondered if the ’94 genocide was brutal enough, that there was enough lives lost, to make everyone say enough is enough. But, seemingly, some things go deeper.
There is a part of me that resents everyone who left this tumultuous Great Lakes Region feeling like the job is finished. Maybe they didn’t feel that way, just the leadership of the organizations. There is still critical work to be done. Reconciliation is the most important aspect of a conflict and too frequently it receives the smallest amount of time and resources.
After visiting the UN compound, we visit the one remaining functioning project from the crisis. Radio Kwizera, Radio Hope. At the time of the genocide, Rwandese were spread all over the bush and there was no way of contacting them about available food, shelter and assistance. They started a radio station and distributed solar radios to strategic locations. In Rwanda during the genocide, the radio was used as a weapon of war. It was used to dehumanize the Tutsi’s , to notify attackers of Tutsi hiding places. After the radio had been used to further the genocide, Radio Kwizera wanted to show the compassionate side of the media. To make it cliché – to use the radio for good and not evil.
The refugees have returned home now, but Radio Kwizera has not closed its doors. The station is received in Burundi, Rwanda and Eastern DRC. They are using their radio waves to promote peace and reconciliation. The Great Lakes Region is heading into a period of elections in every country. It is critical that people are discussing wide spread participation, informed voting, legitimacy and transparency, peace and unity. There is hope in this radio station. The mere fact that they are still here is a start.
It feels a bit trite to be writing about something that was so devastating to everyone here, especially when I was not. But, I am here now.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
My Sanctuary
I am greeted at the Border with big hugs by three of my new staff members. We sit and have a drink overlooking the Rwandan hills and Tanzanian highlands. I am working hard to find a balance where I do not come off as too young, and where they do not feel threatened or tested. They slip in and out of Kiswahili. I can usually understand the gist of their conversation, but I am nowhere near where I was two years ago. My brain is constantly in problem solving mode, trying to bridge the gap over the words I do not know. Currently we are debating which staple food is better, matoke (mashed green bananas) or posho (maize meal). Unfortunately, I am in matoke country.
Before I know it, I have a 12 month multiple entry visa and we are in our Landcruzer whizzing down the tarmac towards my new home. The first short cut is impassable due to the high waters of the river. During low water levels, there is a pulley bridge. Basically a platform that you drive one car on to and the man at the other end pulls it on cables to the other side. So we take shortcut number two. We turn right off the tarmac onto a red dirt road. “If you ever need to get back here, just tell them to take you to the prison” Pastor informs me. I am immediately transported. I had spent the last 20 hours driving through cities and towns on main roads, now I was driving through serious bush. Occasionally we pass through towns. When I say towns, I am being generous. Really they are clusters of homes with the occasional church; they lack shops or trading centers. We crest over hills and get phenomenal views of the Tanzanian highland plains and dive down hills into the bush that is taller than the car. “Karibu Tanzania” says Mama Mpinizle. I breathe deep, not having the words to describe my enjoyment at that moment. Despite all of the beauty, there is a voice in the back of my head asking, “Ngara can’t actually be this small, right?” Eventually we hit another tarmac road and I breathe a tiny sigh of relief.
We climb, and with each minute, the view becomes more spectacular. The wind wafts the smell of eucalyptus through the window. This smell has always meant home to me. The road right off the freeway to my grandparent’s house is lined with Eucalyptus trees, so when I smelled them, I always knew we were close. Pastor points to a town on top of a hill and tells me that is Ngara. I had been told that my house has a porch with an amazing view, so I start imaging that one of the houses I see on the eastern side of the hill is mine, overlooking the amazing valley.
I am disappointed as we fork off down a small road, seemingly down into the valley. Pastor greets everyone we pass as they stare at the Mzungu in the front seat. In about 10 minutes we pull off into the compound. It is not the traditional compound in that it does not have a fence, but it is four houses spread out across the ridge of a hill. The last one in is my house.
From the outside, the house is very unsuspecting. It is a simple L shape with gray cement walls. The front view is a bit of a letdown. There is a huge water catchment with pipes and hardware, and a few windows. Nothing to write (or blog) home about. Pastor unlocks the door and welcomes me to my new home. The front room is empty, just red cement floors and an empty shelf. Disappointing, I thought the house was fully furnished. I slip off my shoes and walk down three stairs. My jaw drops. To my left is a full kitchen with dark wood cabinets and countertops, a full sink, full fridge and a gas stove and oven. And a sky light. In front of me and stretching out to my right is the dining room, office and living room, complete with a fire place. Windows line the walls. The furnishing is a mix of rustic and modern with African art, ceramics and woven crafts decorating the space. There is a small TV, DVD player and sound system accompanied by a vast DVD collection and a shelf full of books on Africa history, politics, and some top notch literature (maybe I didn’t need to bring those thirty some-odd books, but better safe than sorry!).
Between the office and living room there is a door that leads to my porch. I step outside to see sweeping views of the Rwandan hills and the river valley floor. I am in shock. I am giddy. I try to keep my cool while my coworkers help me bring my stuff inside, but I am bursting with excitement and disbelief. This is totally a house I would dream about living in. Oh, wait, I do!
The hallway is lined with skylights. My room is at the very end, the eastern wall is lined with wooden doors for closets and storage. The northern and western walls have 3 windows lighting the room beautifully. In the center is a double bed with a light down comforter, draped in a white mosquito net. There are many thoughts running through my head, but the most prominent is, man this sure beats my twin bunk bed that I could not sit up in and that was too short, forcing my feet to angle over the foot board and get tangled in my mosquito net.
There is a full bathroom, shower, hot water heater, the works.
There is a garden outside, that, in my future life I will visit with my kitchen knife, selecting romaine lettuce, French beans, cilantro and papaya for my dinner.
My coworkers are eager to get home, as it is 6:30pm on a Friday. We say goodbye and make plans to go to the weekly market that just so happens to be on Saturdays. As they drive off I let out a giddy scream, do a little dance and just revel in my new home.
This house just demands a nice glass of red wine. So I scour the kitchen, and what do I find…I bring my glass of cab and the letter from my predecessor and settle into the couch on my porch to watch the sunset. The light wind rustles the leaves of the faithful eucalyptus trees. The east is orange and the hills below blue in the fading light.
…
The founder of my organization is married to a UN worker who was here working in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide and the ongoing instability in Burundi. Currently they live in Thailand, but they keep this house as their home as it is where their kids were born, and it is heaven. They come home once a year for a month and allow the Director to stay in the house the rest of the year. I marvel at the idea that someone who keeps such a beautiful house would hire me to lead her organization and say a little thank you to the United Nations. I sip my wine.
Photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rksantos/HowDifferentLifeCanBeLifeInNgaraTZ#
Before I know it, I have a 12 month multiple entry visa and we are in our Landcruzer whizzing down the tarmac towards my new home. The first short cut is impassable due to the high waters of the river. During low water levels, there is a pulley bridge. Basically a platform that you drive one car on to and the man at the other end pulls it on cables to the other side. So we take shortcut number two. We turn right off the tarmac onto a red dirt road. “If you ever need to get back here, just tell them to take you to the prison” Pastor informs me. I am immediately transported. I had spent the last 20 hours driving through cities and towns on main roads, now I was driving through serious bush. Occasionally we pass through towns. When I say towns, I am being generous. Really they are clusters of homes with the occasional church; they lack shops or trading centers. We crest over hills and get phenomenal views of the Tanzanian highland plains and dive down hills into the bush that is taller than the car. “Karibu Tanzania” says Mama Mpinizle. I breathe deep, not having the words to describe my enjoyment at that moment. Despite all of the beauty, there is a voice in the back of my head asking, “Ngara can’t actually be this small, right?” Eventually we hit another tarmac road and I breathe a tiny sigh of relief.
We climb, and with each minute, the view becomes more spectacular. The wind wafts the smell of eucalyptus through the window. This smell has always meant home to me. The road right off the freeway to my grandparent’s house is lined with Eucalyptus trees, so when I smelled them, I always knew we were close. Pastor points to a town on top of a hill and tells me that is Ngara. I had been told that my house has a porch with an amazing view, so I start imaging that one of the houses I see on the eastern side of the hill is mine, overlooking the amazing valley.
I am disappointed as we fork off down a small road, seemingly down into the valley. Pastor greets everyone we pass as they stare at the Mzungu in the front seat. In about 10 minutes we pull off into the compound. It is not the traditional compound in that it does not have a fence, but it is four houses spread out across the ridge of a hill. The last one in is my house.
From the outside, the house is very unsuspecting. It is a simple L shape with gray cement walls. The front view is a bit of a letdown. There is a huge water catchment with pipes and hardware, and a few windows. Nothing to write (or blog) home about. Pastor unlocks the door and welcomes me to my new home. The front room is empty, just red cement floors and an empty shelf. Disappointing, I thought the house was fully furnished. I slip off my shoes and walk down three stairs. My jaw drops. To my left is a full kitchen with dark wood cabinets and countertops, a full sink, full fridge and a gas stove and oven. And a sky light. In front of me and stretching out to my right is the dining room, office and living room, complete with a fire place. Windows line the walls. The furnishing is a mix of rustic and modern with African art, ceramics and woven crafts decorating the space. There is a small TV, DVD player and sound system accompanied by a vast DVD collection and a shelf full of books on Africa history, politics, and some top notch literature (maybe I didn’t need to bring those thirty some-odd books, but better safe than sorry!).
Between the office and living room there is a door that leads to my porch. I step outside to see sweeping views of the Rwandan hills and the river valley floor. I am in shock. I am giddy. I try to keep my cool while my coworkers help me bring my stuff inside, but I am bursting with excitement and disbelief. This is totally a house I would dream about living in. Oh, wait, I do!
The hallway is lined with skylights. My room is at the very end, the eastern wall is lined with wooden doors for closets and storage. The northern and western walls have 3 windows lighting the room beautifully. In the center is a double bed with a light down comforter, draped in a white mosquito net. There are many thoughts running through my head, but the most prominent is, man this sure beats my twin bunk bed that I could not sit up in and that was too short, forcing my feet to angle over the foot board and get tangled in my mosquito net.
There is a full bathroom, shower, hot water heater, the works.
There is a garden outside, that, in my future life I will visit with my kitchen knife, selecting romaine lettuce, French beans, cilantro and papaya for my dinner.
My coworkers are eager to get home, as it is 6:30pm on a Friday. We say goodbye and make plans to go to the weekly market that just so happens to be on Saturdays. As they drive off I let out a giddy scream, do a little dance and just revel in my new home.
This house just demands a nice glass of red wine. So I scour the kitchen, and what do I find…I bring my glass of cab and the letter from my predecessor and settle into the couch on my porch to watch the sunset. The light wind rustles the leaves of the faithful eucalyptus trees. The east is orange and the hills below blue in the fading light.
…
The founder of my organization is married to a UN worker who was here working in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide and the ongoing instability in Burundi. Currently they live in Thailand, but they keep this house as their home as it is where their kids were born, and it is heaven. They come home once a year for a month and allow the Director to stay in the house the rest of the year. I marvel at the idea that someone who keeps such a beautiful house would hire me to lead her organization and say a little thank you to the United Nations. I sip my wine.
Photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rksantos/HowDifferentLifeCanBeLifeInNgaraTZ#
Thursday, February 4, 2010
The Cost of Knowing
I am in the kitchen cooking, drinking and listening to music. I hear Eileen open the door, and before I look at her I ask cheerily, “How was your day?” She turns the corner into the kitchen and I see it on her face. I see the mental and emotional exhaustion that comes from seeing kids living on the streets because their uncles can’t afford to take them in, women working on the sex market to feed a family left by the father, people bed ridden from curable diseases because they can’t afford the treatment.
My good friend Eileen is visiting, she wanted to do a photo project in the developing world. Last minute, I throw together a gig for her, excited that I get to spend a few weeks with an old friend. I would describe Eileen as a world traveler, and definitely someone I have always wanted to travel with. When connecting her to this orphanage for street kids in one of the many large slums of Kampala, I did not even think twice about whether it would be too much. She can handle anything. And, as it turns out, she can.
But those first few nights, after her initial exposure to the slums, it was disarming to see the tears in her eyes; the confusion, disappointment and helplessness. I pour her a glass of whatever I’m drinking, and we go sit on the roof to hash it out. She tells me about the people she had met, where they came from and the lives they now live. The things she saw as she walked through the slum. Overarching everything was this sentiment of this is just one orphanage, in one slum, in one city, in one country. She wanted to do something about it, but was at a loss.
As she talks, I don’t feel much except for her sorrow, the tragedy of the transformation she was going through from seeing this other part of the world. I feel bad that she now has this madness inside her. What I didn’t feel was sorrow for the kids, or the sick, or the hungry. What she was feeling was so raw, and I had none of it left inside of me - at least not in that form.
As she goes off to bed, I remain on the roof and wonder about this. When did I go from crazy college student shouting at the top of her lungs to get one person to know about what Darfur was, let alone care about it, from the personal breakdown I experienced after returning from Malawi – my first developing world travel— to this person, who can hear some of the most devastating stories, and not even feel the tug of a heart string or a turn of the stomach. How does such a transformation occur?
Maybe it comes in realizing your own capacity. In knowing that even if I gave a kid lunch today, he will still be hungry tomorrow. Even if I paid for the woman’s medical bills, she would still return home to sleep without a mosquito net or eat vegetables washed in sewage. At some point in the past, it became too much for me. Everything is interconnected and it is impossible to take it all on at once. There is a switch I flipped a while ago that enables me to live this life without that madness. I move through Kampala in a sort of tunnel vision – I listen without hearing, I think without absorbing, I walk without seeing, I live without feeling. I need to un-flip this switch, at least occasionally.
At some point I learned that a great deal of damage has been done out of the fear, sorrow and guilt of the privileged. In the face of our impotence to change these matters we hastily throw money at it, we have this need to give tangible things. But in the long run, what does it solve? Tomorrow a tourist is going to come and see the exact same sights, and try the exact same thing, and all it really achieves is a sense of dependency on part of the poor and an ease of the conscience for the tourist.
I choose instead to focus on the positive power of people here. I am constantly coming into contact with people who are taking action into their own hands. They are not waiting on handouts from foreigners, they are done relying on the government, instead they are coming up with creative solutions to their community’s problems. Even better, I found an org that empowers people to do just that.
Gregory David Roberts after experiencing a moment of profound human darkness says this, “There is a truth that’s deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever and the reality from perception. Were helpless, usually, in the face of it, and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn’t help us to love the world; but it does prevent us from hating the world.”
I am here now. Some of my colleagues would say I have seen too much for a twenty-five year old. I have seen things that would make a person give up on the world, give up on humanity, but knowing what you know, understanding this truth I find it impossible to give up. I have met people that will turn a heart cold, and experienced things that have eaten away at my love for humanity, but there is a reward to living this life; meeting those people who will save it, if only in their small corner of the world.
My good friend Eileen is visiting, she wanted to do a photo project in the developing world. Last minute, I throw together a gig for her, excited that I get to spend a few weeks with an old friend. I would describe Eileen as a world traveler, and definitely someone I have always wanted to travel with. When connecting her to this orphanage for street kids in one of the many large slums of Kampala, I did not even think twice about whether it would be too much. She can handle anything. And, as it turns out, she can.
But those first few nights, after her initial exposure to the slums, it was disarming to see the tears in her eyes; the confusion, disappointment and helplessness. I pour her a glass of whatever I’m drinking, and we go sit on the roof to hash it out. She tells me about the people she had met, where they came from and the lives they now live. The things she saw as she walked through the slum. Overarching everything was this sentiment of this is just one orphanage, in one slum, in one city, in one country. She wanted to do something about it, but was at a loss.
As she talks, I don’t feel much except for her sorrow, the tragedy of the transformation she was going through from seeing this other part of the world. I feel bad that she now has this madness inside her. What I didn’t feel was sorrow for the kids, or the sick, or the hungry. What she was feeling was so raw, and I had none of it left inside of me - at least not in that form.
As she goes off to bed, I remain on the roof and wonder about this. When did I go from crazy college student shouting at the top of her lungs to get one person to know about what Darfur was, let alone care about it, from the personal breakdown I experienced after returning from Malawi – my first developing world travel— to this person, who can hear some of the most devastating stories, and not even feel the tug of a heart string or a turn of the stomach. How does such a transformation occur?
Maybe it comes in realizing your own capacity. In knowing that even if I gave a kid lunch today, he will still be hungry tomorrow. Even if I paid for the woman’s medical bills, she would still return home to sleep without a mosquito net or eat vegetables washed in sewage. At some point in the past, it became too much for me. Everything is interconnected and it is impossible to take it all on at once. There is a switch I flipped a while ago that enables me to live this life without that madness. I move through Kampala in a sort of tunnel vision – I listen without hearing, I think without absorbing, I walk without seeing, I live without feeling. I need to un-flip this switch, at least occasionally.
At some point I learned that a great deal of damage has been done out of the fear, sorrow and guilt of the privileged. In the face of our impotence to change these matters we hastily throw money at it, we have this need to give tangible things. But in the long run, what does it solve? Tomorrow a tourist is going to come and see the exact same sights, and try the exact same thing, and all it really achieves is a sense of dependency on part of the poor and an ease of the conscience for the tourist.
I choose instead to focus on the positive power of people here. I am constantly coming into contact with people who are taking action into their own hands. They are not waiting on handouts from foreigners, they are done relying on the government, instead they are coming up with creative solutions to their community’s problems. Even better, I found an org that empowers people to do just that.
Gregory David Roberts after experiencing a moment of profound human darkness says this, “There is a truth that’s deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever and the reality from perception. Were helpless, usually, in the face of it, and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn’t help us to love the world; but it does prevent us from hating the world.”
I am here now. Some of my colleagues would say I have seen too much for a twenty-five year old. I have seen things that would make a person give up on the world, give up on humanity, but knowing what you know, understanding this truth I find it impossible to give up. I have met people that will turn a heart cold, and experienced things that have eaten away at my love for humanity, but there is a reward to living this life; meeting those people who will save it, if only in their small corner of the world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)