The Lady of the Lions

“Look,” he stopped us dead in our jaunt and pointed to a clearing in the spindly high prairie grass that bore powder-white soda sand. He smiled jubilantly with his brown-flecked teeth and swatted a fly from his forehead. “Lion tracks. And dey are barey fresh.” We knitted our eyebrows; suddenly our casual early morning stroll through the national park savanna seemed to us to have gone on long enough already. Hadn’t we seen enough anyhow? If you count one hyena and one stray warthog. Naturally at this point, I stopped looking for the overly aggressive Egyptian cobras our young guide was just telling us about (“as beeg as your arm”) in the grass and started searching the bushes for lions. This walk was really going swell. But Kelvin, our guide, had that ethereal, possessed look in his eyes that the locals get when talking about the great animals that walk these grasslands, and said with a hypnotized, nonchalant smile, “Lion still here. We heard voice of lion in staff quarters last night.”

Back on the public porch at camp, we were headed back to our canvas bungalow, when she routed us off at the stairs. “And?” she said with an air of mischief in her accent, “how was the morning walk?” She was a white woman from Botswana. Her hair short, blonde-grey and wild as if constantly in the wind. And the strangest color eyes. A piercing, light orange with very small pupils going back into themselves. Her smile, wide with overly pronounced canines. It was as if she could smell the apprehension on us as soon as we made it back to the camp. “we saw lion tracks.” She smiled with one side of her mouth using mostly her right incisor. “Yes. I think she is still around. None of the animals have returned. Normally there are huge herds of them moving through here in the morning.” (and Kelvin told us they were just sleeping…) A lioness had killed a zebra next to camp the night before we arrived, she had told us before we left for the walk. The staff said they could hear the hyenas whooping laugh all night as they heralded the kill. “it was…quite beautiful really.” she said, still with that same not-quite-right smile. We asked her if there were often incidents with the lions. She nodded mysteriously, paused as if out of pious respect to the sacred force being discussed and then reported a few with great animation and wild energy in her eyes. “At my old camp in Botswana, one of them got my guide. He was protecting a client during a hunting trip. The client shot the lion but only wounded it and…it came.  My guide’s gun misfired. He had the gun between him and the thing but it got him all up the arms. After we shot it, you know what I did? I plugged the holes in his arms full of tampons. They expand, you know. When they finally airlifted him, the doctor asked “who has the sense of humor? Lady, you saved his life.” After that they made tampons a requirement for every emergency kit at local camps. And he got to wear the talon around his neck according to African tradition. You can’t wear it if you just shoot a lion. It has to be up close and personal.” Her eyes were aflame now and awake. She turned them toward her holy land, the pridelands before us, their grassy flats empty as if in curtsy to the presence of their tawny queen. And then there was the ridge marking the edge of the Great Rift Valley rising like alter smoke above the fields in the distance. “Its funny, all the tourists laugh about the spears the staff carry with them. Some of them intently request a gun to be carried on walks or at night. They don’t understand that these guys couldn’t hit one with a bullet if it were right in front of them. But a spear or a bow and arrow? One shot, quick like lightning. That’s all it takes. Quite amazing really. That’s the kind of weapon they know best. When I was 14 growing up in the bush in Botswana, my father bought me a gun. We had cattle and the lions used to come through our village and down into our herd and stables. I was so excited, you know. Me and the local guys, we stayed watch that night, me with my gun and them with their old spears. I thought, how much better am I than them, when those old lions come down. Sure enough that night the lions came. And when they did my gun went this way and I went that way. The local guys had them out of there with their spears in a matter of minutes. Har har. They used that story against me for years.”

We were riveted. But our guides weren’t and they made a bit of a stirring behind us as the morning was wearing on. She brandished her canines in the pure joy of telling and opened her eyes a little wider for a moment. “They are smart. They know. They know they are in human territory. They stay out of the way and the Maasai villages as much as they can. And when they cross through here in the night, they generally don’t make a sound. They even know when hunting season starts and ends. I think they can smell the guns.” Her complete possession by this powerful, amber-eyed soul of an animal and the ever-forgiving grass lands it haunted was transparent by now and she appeared almost trembling with the heat of it. Her orange lion eyes contracted in the morning sun as we shook and said goodbye. Even her ears covered with the fur of her fair hair looked to twitch as we walked to the truck. So uncannily similar did she seem to her animal spirit captor that I would have believed her to be a shape shifter, walking dusk and dawn the line between their world and ours. Following the thread of fearful respect that runs between those who share this grassy corridor. Between human and lion, in these parts each will kill the other without remorse and without ceremony. Such is the agreement. But both in silence bow to the might of their opponent. And lay watching one another perpetually through the high grass.

The Cats are out of the Bag

We finished our last days in Bagamoyo slowly and thoughtfully, alongside the friends we had made there. It was hard to believe that it was time to leave - it felt as if we had just arrived. I was still waking up every morning surprised and sticky with sweat before at last remembering where I was. The days with the kids seemed endless, and yet the day we had to leave them jumped up on me before I had any time to prepare for it. The days were dense and the nights dark, as the village was frequently without power.

Yesterday we went to school to teach an English class to the high school and say our goodbyes to the primary kids, now demure and happy as ever under their new Tanzanian teacher, Furaha. We and Furaha had became fast friends upon his arrival. He was smart and soft spoken, spoke meticulous English and was very interesting to talk to. He felt comfortable with us and seemed to enjoy our company, which is not always the case in a place where you are so visibly socially conspicuous on the fringes of a community that is not yours. Along with the privilege that comes with being white and a debutante of the first world order also comes that constant sense of standing outside looking in. The locals keep you at a friendly but protective distance and even when you try, it seems you are always a mzungu first and a person second. And can you blame them? Visit, stay, live here if you like…you will keep on a-knocking at the door and never get past the parlor, which of course they don’t have anyway. This feeling of isolation and the longing to belong runs constant through most of my first month.  Always as if you are outside the screen windows looking in - but language and your color keep you out in the dusk with the power out inside, straining to know what’s happening behind the eyes of Tanzania. Here, you can but wont understand it all. See, you will in pieces and try to remember. Guess, go ahead and try. But know, you can never. Furaha was one of those brave exceptions to the rule. Extremely friendly like most Tanzanians, but with seemingly little or no alternate agenda. A sincere interest in who we were, where we came from. We liked talking to him, comparing cultures, comparing traditions, asking questions. He gave us little insights into his life and we listened hard.

On our last day, we asked him if we could come say goodbye to the kids and he could explain to them in Swahili that we were going away. He agreed and even helped us organize one last class picture. I felt certain that the kids wouldn’t really understand and, just as kids are, would hear the news and move right along - in kid world, permanence doesn’t register as easily and living moment to moment is so much easier as you move from one mango tree to the next. They joyously riled around the camera with giggles as Furaha herded them into a somewhat orderly line. As we took the pictures, they never seemed to get tired of waving at the camera and squealing “bye! bye!”, which would collectively excite them into such a wave of delight, cheering and energy that even Furaha stopped attempting to quiet them. Their little personalities bloomed as usual for the duration of the exercise - funny faces, one pushing the other off a chair, some hiding behind the legs of a teacher. Finally it was time to go. I hugged a few of the kids and a bunch of them mauled me as they like to do, pulling my hands and crowding around repeating “bye! bye!”. Some of them planted kisses on my arms and petted my hair. I was welling up and thought it was best to get out before the sprinklers went off. On my way to the door, there was only one threat left to my game face --my favorite little girl, Josephine, and I was wary not to look her too long in the face to keep my composition. Leaving is just like ripping a bandaid off, right? She hadn’t made a move toward me and had a blank, absorbed look on her face. I thought, all the better that way and tried not to look back.

I trudged across the sandy courtyard heavy hearted and tottering on the brink of tears. But so far so good - I was as bone dry and dogged as the hot sand paving the way home. I made it almost to the school gates when I heard Furaha calling my name, “Kathryn! Kathryn!” (Tanzanians have a hard time pronouncing Kate so I have been introducing myself with my full name to make it easier for them, which they noddingly pronounce as “Kaserin”). I turned to see him standing in the doorway - little Josephine by his side. He motioned for me to come. I was as close to running as I could while walking. May day. May day. Looking at her sad little face my esophagus shrunk at least 3 sizes and I thought my diaphragm would surely rupture to make room for my exploding heart. When I got there she was crying and repeating something in Swahili I didn’t understand, and she wouldn’t return my hug in protest. Furaha was trying to comfort her on the other side. At last he asked - “do you think it would be alright for me to lie to her? To tell her you will be coming back?” The last thread my bastard heart was hanging on to split like a hair in my chest. “Yes, yes of course.” He said something soothing to her in Swahili and at last her little head turned, chin tucked, and she obligingly went inside.

We were soon biding our friend goodbye in the teachers lounge, shaking hands and promising to keep in touch. We told him we hoped for him to come to the U.S. someday or maybe we can come back and visit Tanzania. It was the kind of talk that you hope brightly will come to be someday but that the world would mostly likely swallow up like a fly on its way to the moon. We thanked him for everything and told him to keep us appraised of how the kids were doing. “I’m sorry to call you back today. ” he said, “Josephine, when you left, she cry.” I told him sorrowfully I couldn’t understand what she was saying in Swahili, but that I was glad to hear she was doing fine come lunch time. “She’s fine now, yes.” he said. “She can sense how much you love her.”

We are on our way into town for beans and rice on our last night. As we pass the ragga-wood shop fronts, the power throngs once, wavering like a single light bulb hanging in the cabin of an old ship on its way over a wave. Then the town plunges into a familiar darkness. The shop keepers keep on without a peep, and you can hear them scuffling slowly about, retrieving their candles. The speckles of a few dim gas lamps flutter to life and obscure the streets from view by keeping your eyes from adjusting to the dark. Colors of women’s khangas sometimes flash in front of the lamplight and the smell of cassava leaves burning reaches you in the dark. You can hear the entire village moving in the dark behind them, just steps away. I am a ghost here, retracing my phantom steps, hoping that those who have seen my apparition around these parts will remember me. My heart is heavy from goodbye, but too heavy to bring along with me tomorrow on a crowded Dala Dala into Dar. So now its on down the road, an elephant in search of shade through the grasslands. It’s a searching life that is still somehow so full of finding.

Polaroids

It is our last week in Bagamoyo, Tanzania. Three weeks of settling in and the last played out with a bang of activity. We scrape the barrel for every last drop, experience, image, walk, conversation, kitengue purchase. What an incompetent scribe memory is - with only room enough for the most splendid and the most wretched and so little to spare for what’s in between. It bends like copper in the fire around self perception, takes liberties under the interrogation of time and holds no loyalty to anyone. I am afraid that there is nothing sturdy in my human brain to lash those memories to, nothing to make them stay and keep them from rotting away to a few select polariods. Maybe the only way to know them someday will be to trace the way they will have carved me like a canyon, in the red, rough rock layers after all the water is dried up and gone. I hope I will be worthy enough of their then archeological narration. Just a passerby called upon to recite a great chief’s eulogy. What a shame, because there can be so much said about villages like this one and only so much time, only so many words with which to use. For now, these paragraphs and glimpses will have to suffice in the current moment and the rest to fare as best it can when thrown to the dogs of my memory.

Younger Days

Her name is Josephina. She is five years old but thinks she is six. She is missing a front tooth in a row of her tiny baby teeth that, when she laughs, give you the same feeling in your chest as the soft inside of a puppy’s ear flopped up when it sleeps.  A squeeze on your heart as if it were a little ball of foam. She does not speak a word of English, except “teacha”, “toilet” and the universal language of a child’s many facial expressions. And as those go, hers are nothing less than exquisite. She tries hard in class, talking to herself in a hushed voice in Swahili as she diligently copies English words from the board that she doesn’t understand. When she gets tired, one eyelid will droop to almost close and she will sway in the effort of keeping her little head upright while. Her hair is always braided neatly into fuzzy little braids, the tiny tails of which all end in a little flower shape at the back of her head. She has exema or some other kind of skin condition that keep her little fingers in a constant state of roughness and peeling layers of skin. When she is nervous, she tucks her tiny chin in her chest and covers her mouth with her hands, looking up at you with huge center less lemur eyes. When she cries, she merely sniffs quietly and tucks her head away - a sight that could very well kill you on the spot from a weak heart. She does not misbehave often but when she does she responds to your reprimand immediately and sheepishly. Sometimes she is sick at school. And then you will find her lying in the sand outside and she will not come into class when called, an out of character behavior for the little miss Josephina who usually comes bounding in. You cant understand her almost inaudible complaints but she never wants to go home. In Africa, the lines between daily life, sickness and death are thin and skated across without remark. And so you watch her like a hawk but don’t have any cards to play in her favor, because in Africa someone else holds nearly the whole deck and most definitely all the aces. And that person you most likely wont meet again until you’ve played and lost. But the next day she is once again running to meet you  at the gate with arms outstretched and that heart-attacking smile in full beam. To know her, this Josephina, is to wring every drop from your heart loving her and not even wonder if she will remember you when you are gone as she moves precariously toward African adulthood.

His name is MickDadi. Not kidding. That is his name. He is arguable one of the smartest kids in class and one of the most disruptive - isn’t that always how it works. Disciplining him, or trying to, is more tiring than chasing bunnies around a meadow. Getting him to do his work is one thing, but keeping him busy after he finishes with perfect scores and gets to climbing up the shelves and sending supplies crashing down is another. When the new primary school teacher came to teach the other class, he gave MickDadi a talking to in soft but curt Kiswahili. And after that MickDadi came up to all the teachers, pulling our arms saying “I’m solly teacha, I’m solly”. Don’t get to thinking that the chat turned his collar up or made him vanilla. The next day we caught him hoarding crayons under his butt and chasing the other kids with a massive, heavy stick. We are not sure why he does what he does. But when one of the more popular kids stayed behind in class crying because we made him finish his work, MickDadi stayed  back with him, tugging at his arm, stroking his face and soothing him in Swahili. After the kid stopped crying and rejoined his friends in line, he was back to excluding and swiping at MickDadi, who sits at his own table in class alone. We have to put MickDadi in time out a lot. Sometimes its for not doing his work, sometimes for grabbing supplies without asking, sometimes for hitting other kids. Sometimes he does it for attention, sometimes out of boredom, sometimes out of his feeling of exclusion, and who knows why else. A smarter six year old, you will be hard pressed to find all across the world. We wonder what he will grow up to be. Which of his qualities - stubborn, sweet, obstinate, sensitive, sore, or smart- will follow him to adulthood and how they will define his life. When you are a teacher, you can’t separate that long list of qualities into good or bad. Not like you can in business when each has a price tag hanging from its ear. Because each one is both innate and herded through life by from those that surround us. To accept some and deny others would be to excommunicate all of humanity. When MickDadi marches over to Abduli and hits him hard, you should scold him. But hopefully you were watching closely and saw the look of loneliness and isolation in his eyes when Abduli refused to be next to him and hold his hand in a game. Look closely at the kids you know; they will show you on their little diorama stage what you are not seeing in the adults you think you do. So whatever your religion or opinion of human life, I think its obvious that once the lunch bell rings, we are all forgiven. Godspeed MickDadi.

Left, Right, Left

The rains came to our village last night. And it seemed the entire earth cooled under our feet for a few short hours in the early morning. The sun slept in until noon behind an overcast sky and it felt like a huge breath of fresh air. The morning marked two weeks in Africa, and, even walking the path to our full classroom of squirrelly seven year olds, we felt the calm in the cooled air.

We walk the town now with steadier feet. Remembering the turns through the houses on the path home, even at night when the village is in complete moonless darkness. We know the friendly parts of town that always greet us and the kids running up to shake our hands. We know the silent parts of town that simply watch us with serious eyes as we pass. We know the patch of sandy path where the drunks and the gamblers hoot and holler and laugh as we pass, some of them approaching us stumbling and leering but harmless. We pass easily through the narrow market on the way to town, brimming with the hot smell of rotting vegetables and sunning piles of fish and gaurded by the vendors who turn over their produce in their hands over and over to shoo away the hovering cloud of flies all day long. We no longer wake up or cover our mouths at the smell of burning plastic when it wafts  into our window or through our classroom multiple times a day. I even had my first cup of black instant coffee ever - and I drank it like it was the finest champagne I’d ever had. Yeah, I’d say we are getting along nicely --school kids on our arms and friends who come around, all of us together sipping slowly on our lives.

The dogs here all appear to be the same breed, a small, skinny version of a short-haired Shepard of some kind and keeping them as pets is not a usual practice here - dogs make most locals quite nervous. The few restaurants in town sell most of the same stuff - meat kebobs, chicken on the bone, fish soup (broth with a whole fish limply draped into it) and beans and rice. All drinks come in the glass bottle with a napkin to wipe off the lip and they leave you with the bottle cap to keep the flies from falling into your drink. The nights outside are cool, breezy and balmy and we seize them for all their worth with a walk to town, a Tanzanian beer at a dim local thatch hut restaurant under hanging gas lamps or a nice long languid sit out on the front porch watching the massive mango trees shimmy in the dark. After the crucifying sun and hard work with the children during the days, we are reborn at night, swinging through the hours slowly and carelessly before turning in early for an bedtime date with our new fan. Life is so slow and yet so full, exploratory and hot here, it hardly feels like we have time or energy for anything else, even each other. Life, love, work, romance, its all simpler here and the people do it all with casuality and enormous presence. Your family members are partners in getting through life as pleasantly and graciously as possible. Your job or your daily work, just the price you pay for a cool evening of doing nothing in the cool sand in front of your house. Your lovers, vendors in obtaining the things you require and your wives, business partners in survival and what pleasantries you can create in the meantime. The culture allows for the fact that surviving is hard enough with its low expectations and casual turn of phrase. There are of course hierarchies, distinct differences between the cement houses and mut huts, teaching jobs and selling hard boiled eggs out on the heat through the windows of dala dalas, families who speak purposeful English full of effort and send their kids to school with a few different outfits instead of just one and families who don’t send their kids to school at all. School costs money, just like anything else, and cash is king, only granting you entry into the community court when its hot in the palm of your hand.

In this world, your relationship with others morph as your image of yourself and your life do- as in a convex mirror at the circus. Suddenly you aren’t who you thought you were. Your motivations get all garbled like internet automated security codes that only slightly resemble the letters you usually know. The people in your life take on new meanings, new masks, new roles on the stage of your journey even as they stand in front of you. And the questions you normally ask of yourself start asking questions of you. So, like the people in our small village, I try not to get too far out ahead of my sandals on a sandy road. Live the days, Savor the nights and cherish the early morning rains in between.

The kids are alright

Nearly two weeks gone now and it feels like twenty. I can hardly remember leaving new york now, feeling like a bug being carried in a jar, not knowing what the next day would look like but knowing I was going somewhere. My jar tipped over and now I’ve got four rotating outfits, geckos living under my bed and 28 primary school kids that don’t understand English (oh, and I have the WORST sandal tan you’ve ever seen). So like any bug would do, Im just attempting to hack it and trying not to bug out.

Most days, after sending the kids out shrieking and tumbling to the school gate at 4pm, I feel like konking myself on the head for getting us into this. Teaching little kids is kind of like being a doctor I should think, you win some battles and you lose some, but most of the time you lose before you even get a round off because the poor kid doesn’t understand a word you are saying. All the usual teachers’ tools I could remember being effective on me when I misbehaved are out the window - ultimatums, isolation, humiliation, threats, you know, all the good stuff. Without English they cant even call your bluffs, they just sort of sit there and stare at you like you’re a big white polar bear attempting to sell mittens on the beach. And well, you are big and you sure are white. Sometimes you get so tired of pulling this one off of the shelves, putting that one in time out for kicking someone in the face, sharpening a pencil because they chewed off the graphite, calling after the one who is hightailing it out of the classroom in your scariest and most matronly voice, cleaning up spilled Ugi with your skirt, preventing one from impaling the other one with a stick, and peeling them off of every square inch of the place that you forget you actually have to teach them something. Usually I get tired of repeating the only Swahili words I know and resort to just gesticulating wildly with my hands. Sometimes it even makes me feel better to drop in a “ you little brats!” out loud. That’s just about the only time its nice to be misunderstood.

But even with my thoughts of suicide throughout the day, the little guys inspire me. Their social systems are so sophisticated, their personalities so distinct and they are so easily made so very happy. All the while they are murmering in Swahili sweet sounding little words and I am so very sorry I cant understand them enough to catch these little unconscious windows into their lives. Like reading a dream catcher over a small, silent sleeper. What are their parents like? Where do they sleep? Will they ever leave Tanzania? What do they hope for in each coming morning? They are the purest form of good intentions and forgiving them is so easy. After you put them in time out, they still come to rest their heads in your lap and hold your hand and want to sit next to you during duck duck goose. They don’t know you but they love you.  Even if you are different. Teaching school to all these powerful future people wrapped up into small, inquisitive and laughing little packages is the only place I don’t feel like a complete stranger in this country.

Enjoy the Ride

I am sitting on the back of a piki piki--Tanzania’s motorcycle version of a local taxi--sitting sidesaddle in my Konga wrap skirt as we zig zag through the mud huts into town. The night sky is huge and open above, a warm breeze blowing in my face, as we bump up and down over ruts and garbage down the dirt paths of the village. Leaning this way and that with the bike, dodging pedestrians, running cats, bikes who all yield hurriedly when they hear our motor coming. As we emerge from the huts and hit a stretch of open road, the driver says something in kiswahili that I took to mean “hold on”. I do. He revs the engine as the moon makes its grand spotlight entrance from behind a cloud and the sky catches fire with light. Even though I know we aren’t going that fast, for a moment it feels like 100 miles an hour, the dust kicks up and my skirt flies back in the wind. Dark palm trees shiver in the absolving breeze and the thatch roofs border the horizon. The motor mumbles loudly in my ears and I’m thinking - this is so totally awesome.

A Night Walk

The moon full through inky palm leaves and its halo washing half the sky in soapy wash. The dirt streets were empty but shadows were everywhere. Only a few electric light burns, and the town shuffles quietly in total, faceless darkness. Along the roadside, candles burn in rows illuminating ghostly midnight wares for sale--coconut moonshine,  piles of yellow mangoes, tall dark wood carvings-- like small, smoking shrines to the dead carrying Kiswahili prayers in silence to a white-haired moon or burying them in the ash of the burning garbage beside their hut houses. An all hallows eve glow flickers from gas lamps  in dark windows. Shadowy figures move behind dark storefronts, peering out or walking into the street behind us as we move along. The air was stale with smoke from extinguished cooking fires and pyres of burning plastic. All the sunny childrens’ voices and faces are gone from the dirt paths between the houses and without them, swathed in darkness, the colorful town has turned pale on its side in surrender to a very black, uncertain African night.

Back to School

I am walking the long, wide stretch of sand from the teachers quarters to our whitewashed classroom full of primary school kids. Tall palm and other fruit trees line the edges with finger-thin trunks, swaying their leafy tops like the kids do during a song. Two high school kids in their white and maroon uniforms walk by, with a “hello Madam” as they pass. The usual stream of sweat passes down my back and the sun slices through the tree leaves, scattering any oasis of midday shade.   

Our kids are well behaved for the most part, which is suprising given that we don’t know much Kiswahili and have to teach in feeble English, most of which is lost on them. Giddy at the lack of sternness, structure and harsh discipline in our classes (as is often customary in African classes) the kids get distracted quite often, but in the event they can keep their seats they sincerely try hard, searching us with their big dark eyes. They are often quite shy when it comes to being called to answer a question they usually don’t understand in English, but after one gets called up to the board to try an exercise they all are up waving their hands anxious to be called, crying “Madam, teacha, teacha, pick me, teacha!” Some of them know so little English, most of our teaching is done by pointing and imitation. But they are smart, one of them so smart he ends up doing cartwheels and talking to himself in the back during most of the lessons because he finishes so early. Even we have a hard time keeping him busy and preventing him from yelling out the answers for all the other kids.

Their favorite game is duck duck goose. You should see the way they run and flop in the hot sand, grinning these big, garish grins when they get picked. We teachers get selected as goose more often than not, I think because the kids get a huge kick out of outrunning a figure of authority in total silliness. When we do, we always try to pick the silent little ones, heads down who don’t ever expect to get picked. Many of the kids wear the same clothes everyday, or alternate two outfits, and almost all of them look like they are straight out of a goodwill box - gaudy, lacey lime-green eighties dresses with broken zippers, oversized red turtlenecks in the blistering heat, old adidas T-shirts with stretched out necks. Its a reminder of how special an education can be in a little African town like this. The kids are completely and refreshingly unhindered by it and are too smart, energetic and generally joyous to evoke much pity or any other unproductive, well-manipulated first world responses. There is no toilet paper in the bathroom, which is customary in these areas (there is a reason it is polite to only eat with your right hand and rude to use your left). The food is beans and rice or ugali (refined corn flour mixed with water and fluffed) virtually every day of the week for the students. But as far as schools go, this is a luxurious one by local standards, particularly given the fact that there is a working library, a computer lab and mzungu management prohibits the teachers from hitting the children.

Almost a week deep, I knew I’d reach a few points of distinct panic and it seems I’ve hit a pretty good one. The heat in our bedroom soars at night without a cross breeze, augmented now that we are condemned to our bed nets after deciding to go off the malaria medication to save our livers some grief and also to seal off our beds from the nightly jaunt of the cockroaches. But we are paying for it in sweat (lots of it) and sleep, respectively.  The beans, rice and fried food that completely dominate the diet here go from novel to a total nutrient-deficient drag in no time at all. And with a house of 10 people sleeping in three rooms and a room full of primary kids, the pure lack of alone time has been enough to land me smack dap in my first silent breakdown.
And here is that voice in your head, the one you’ve been running from all your life. Telling you you’re way behind on your Kiswahili, you’re not a good teacher, you’re not flexible enough, you cant get comfortable walking in town, you don’t know your way home, you are too overwhelmed by the smells of the markets and the dust and the “mzungus!” shouted at you, if you can’t cool off you are going to scream, why did you come here, what were you trying to prove and why are you so bad at it?? Like a child, standing in the street with dust in her eyes.

The kids make the breakdowns worth having. Watching them try hard and having them run up to your legs and their “teacha, teacha!”s. They are so much work and sometimes you want to send them all home at noon and wash your hands of their shouts, and pushing and backtalk. But somewhere along the way I got bitten by the bug and I somehow look forward to seeing them every day. They make feeling so scared easier to forget.

Midnight Suprise

As most people who have traveled will tell you, its all about flexibility. Sort of like a microcausm of life overall, and generally that means what you expect out of life going constantly awry. Especially when you live in a third world country, every morning is a new roll of the dice. It’s soon you learn that your guts bring you far, but that they only show you the way so you can lose your way. And from there, your only hope is those who will stop for a moment in the heat and help you alongside of a long and dusty road. Get your work done while the power is on. Be as useful as you can when you are needed, because most of the time you aren’t. Enjoy a breeze as you would a very large bonus - with triumph you know cannot last and thus not worth worrying once its spent.

We live in a small room in the school founder’s home with our friends Sylvie and Ian. It has two twin beds and is in the rain shadow of the house, tucked away from the hot breeze coming off of the sea.  Its surprising how fast our fickle bodies forgot the iron chill of new york when we left and got straight to lamenting and carrying on to us about the unforgiving heat--only letting us wring out from the sweat in thin dreams between sleeping and waking. But we adjusted quickly with the help of our new friends and it amazed us how long just a few days felt as they boiled off one by one. I liked to think of it as summer camp. Except we were the only ones who could fly home after a  few months had past.

One night as we all lay dreaming sweetly on our soupy foam mattresses, just around 5am, a flying cockroach roughly the size of Texas landed on Sylvie’s arm. She gasped only slightly and shot up in bed, and after just a small ruckus we reached a sleepy consensus not to turn on the lights - that this was most likely a rogue roach that simply lost his way and most certainly not an assault on our little American camp. More than rattled, I lay in the dark attempting to convince my mind to relax and not loose its head. This was Africa after all. Calm down and go back to sleep, you ridiculous girl. A hiccup, a fluke, an nonpoisonous wrinkle in the fabric of your trip. For God’s sake, chill out and go back to sleep!

Right around the part where I was counting my breaths and forcing my way into meditation, a roach arguably the size of Oklahoma (or certainly Kansas at best) flew onto my cheek with a flutter of its huge papery wings. By my estimation, it took me approximately one fourth of a second to be on my feet on the bed, whimpering and carrying on like an old lady. We were under siege! The lights came on and these unnaturally overgrown, inky brown, wiggling roaches seemed to be perched on every wall, flanking our small beds and ready to run us right out of town.

Ian killed the few we could see with a flip flop and we had no choice but to settle back down to sleep, leaving the lights on. Something had to be done. We’d been sleeping without mosquito nets in order to let in the thin breeze from the ceiling fan. But between the mosquito bites and now the brigade of cockroaches, the nets went back up. I had stupidly ordered Scott and I single nets from REI, thinking we would be in dorm beds. Silly me. The nets were small for even one person, and draped hot mesh all over your head all night. We figured we manage with one. And as we all settled in to bed the following evening into the nuclear night air, scott and I realized how grossly we had underestimated this set up. The net was inches from our face and draped heavy and black over our bodies - not much good for preventing bites. Not only that, but as we squeezed in close together, the net had a greenhouse effect and I thought for sure we would smother each other to death in the heat. As we lay there panting like hot dogs on the grill, it was one o those moments when you were deciding whether to laugh or cry. I chose the former and pretty soon I was in stitches with giggling. What a hilarious, silly sight! All laughing aside, we barely made it through the night with only our pure and unabashed dislike for large cockroaches to keep us from jumping ship and tearing down the net for a breath of fresh air. It was the longest I’ve ever held my breath - for a whole nine hours! Judging from the cool, collected and capable travellers that surround us, its unclear if we were really cut out for this. Two sweaty, plucky city kids want to go on holiday in an African village and end up sweating bullets and holding in travellers diarrhea huddled under a single mosquito net to escape some night roaches. I don’t have to be African to find that just totally, friggin hilarious.

In the Bag: Arrival in Bagamoyo

We have arrived. Down the hot and dusty roads. Past both laughing and stormy faces. Under a scowling hot sun. And what a landing it was!

After an overnight flight to Nairobi and a bright, hot little puddle jump, we arrived in Dar at 9am in the morning. The sun was low but already molten and we sweat through our clothes before we even reached customs. After securing our Visas in a slow-moving, craggy little customs office, we finally walked out into a blistering, swaying Tanzanian morning.

I had not been feeling well the last 12 hours of flying and turned up weak and a little worse for the wear. We had been introduced via email to a friend of a friend who we had been told would greet us at the airport. As we arrived reluctantly prepared to venture a try at Kiswahili to negotiate on an inflated mzungu price for a  cab, our new friend was waiting smiling at the doors. We were so glad to see his friendly face we almost fell all over each other. Over 30 hours of travel dissipated instantly into euphoria as he drove us through Dar, dodging skirted jaywalkers carrying bananas on their heads, bicycle carts, old buses or “dala dalas” full to the brim with glistening faces and severe eyes. Our friend Omar spoke in a slow and lovely accent, explaining every sight as we passed , and we all laughed out loud at the crazy Tanzanian drivers, listless policemen and throngs of people  casually crossing the road without hurry or apology. We arrived at his house, a beautiful, sandy-colored home with a leafy garden, a spacious white interior and…air conditioning! We sunk into comfortable chairs with glasses of clean cold water thinking we had died and gone to heaven. A fan cast its steady, beating shadow across the white walls. Omar was having breakfast prepared for us. I thought for sure I was the luckiest person alive.

Omar, a native Tanzanian, a stranger when we arrived, became an instant friend. He had an unassuming sense of humor and extensive knowledge about just about everything in Tanzania. He insisted kindly on driving us all the way to our destination, coastal Bagamoyo, along with his brother in law to be who was visiting. As we drove the paved but ribbed road up the coast, our unslept eyes could hardly absorb all the things we saw. If only every snapshot could live forever in my mind. Shanty markets with full wooden walls stacked with fruit, fabrics, and other wares. Buckets upon buckes of newly ripened mangoes for a dollar or two a bucket. Children running joyously in bare feet in citrus colored dust. Dark faces and long bodies lounging in the shade of doorways watching the traffic roll by. Tattered sheets for doors waving in the hot breeze. Men at work in the sun hammering, sawing, whittling or hauling goods in the sun. Each side of the highway was like a cut right down the middle of an isolated, bustling African village, with giant mansions belgoing to foreigners and a few very wealthy locals looming empty in the background.

When we at last arrived in Bagamoyo, we set out to find out village school, Nianjema. To do this, Omar would simply flag someone down from the car window every half mile or so and ask, after an extensive greeting in Swahili, their take on directions to the school. Many renditions, corrections, beautiful Swahili words and small detours later, the car bumped down the dirt road to the school past curious eyes.

Almost steaming in the heat of the afternoon, the school was a series of small white buildings around an open courtyard. A few school elders lounged on the stairway. They knew little of our arrival and so we were glad to find Sylvie and Ian, our starcrossed friends who had been at the school for four months, in a classroom doorway. Ian and I had gone to high school together, and by seeing a random, chance posting on facebook about the school, had discovered a few months earlier that we and our significant others were going to volunteer at the same little school in Africa. Sylvie and Ian had helped us prepare by email and their blog posts, and they would prove to be great friends and vital resourcse for introducing us to African life. Sometimes, when you decide to dive a bit to deep into a pool where you cant see the bottom, life appreciates the gesture and throws you a lifeline. They were unmistakably ours.

We got settled into the home of the school’s founder, Charlie in the spare room with Sylvie and Ian. The house is cement and white, with open screen windows, whirring fans and small lizards legging their way up the walls outside. After a good 20 minutes of starting at each other blankly and sweating in the living room, Sylvie and Ian took us down the twisting path into town for some mango juice.

In African villages, the paths wind right through and all around people’s homes and dust yards. Some can afford cooler cement block houses but most are outside of their mud huts with thatch roofs cooking over a small fire. After a few days, we have begun to get used to the spectacle that we cause every time we travel anywhere down these paths, past peeping eyes, children’s laughs and a wide variety of faces, greetings, and grunts. Most often, the children will up from their play and get to peeping with wide eyes, jumping up and down chanting “Mzungu! Mzungu! Mzungu!” (meaning, white person). We respond with smiles and  “Mambo” (whats going on), and the local reply is “”Poa” (cool). “Mzungu!”’s will come flying at us, even from unseen children shouting from windows. The adults will address us politely with Swahili hellos and sometimes Karibu, welcome or you are welcome here. Some glower at us, some mutter insults in Swahili or jest at us . But every time, even badly disguised in local Konga skirts or mumus we are much like the traveling circus!

Over the last few days , Ian and Sylvie have shown us African life. Scott and I have struggled to adjust to the heat, which never leaves you with a dry brow or a cool morning in the height of the African summer. But we are beginning to manage and with Ian and Sylvie’s wonderful guidance, we have been doused in African language, culture and comings and goings. We visited the beach, ate at local huts, drank Tanzanian beer, lounged out on the porch in the evenings with the mango trees rustling to our conversation. Yesterday, they took us for lunch at the home of an African family, who graciously cooked rice, beef and beans for us, prompting and helping us through our Swahili. Ian and Sylvie’s Swahili is quite good after their months here and they have learned fast. Scott and I on the other hand just stared blankly and smiling at the mother, who spoke no English but spoke to us kindly and repeated her questions slowly for us, allowing us to repeat every syllable, while her children translated in English. We ate with our hands of course, although occasionally forgetting to only eat with our right hands as is customary. They were patient with our awkward Swahili greetings, asked us things about where we were from and poked fun of us good naturedly. We took pictures of all of us together in the living room and Scott taught one of the sons to use the camera, which he took to like a pro and wanted to carry it around proudly with it around his neck.  “This day, I like it very much.“ The father said, patting us on the backs and telling us not to bother calling before we come visit, as we are always welcome there. Their son was one of the students at the school and Sylvie and Ian finished showing him how to send an email on their laptop out in the yard under a thatch hut. A small crowd of village children gathered, most of them not knowing what they were looking at but patiently gawking at the small computer screen and squeezing in to see.
After the computer lesson, the father asked if we would like a walk to the beach. Of course we could not refuse and so in lines of two or three we wound our way through the villages and down to the beach, each member of the family paired with one of us in engaging conversation. As I chatted with the son who was a student of Nianjema in slow English, he reminded me softly when a pikipiki (a motorcycle) would approach us to get off far to the left on the small dirt roads as the pikipikis have priority and can be very dangerous to pedestrians. His younger brother who was about five walked spritely in between us as we walked away from the setting sun. He had not learned English, so he could not understand me but I occasionally addressed him anyway, just to see him smile at me happily, satisfied to walk with us attentively into this cooling African afternoon. I heard Scott talking about Africa behind me with the father. We twisted and turned on paths through the village that we might never feel comfortable enough to venture by ourselves, and from time to time I thought we were going to walk right through the cooking fire of one of the neighbors. The locals watched silently as we passed, the Maela family and their Mzungu friends. As we got closer to the sea you could feel it in the breeze, lifting the heat off of your skin just enough for you to notice, and the palm trees thickened, edged with the setting sun. The older son and I continued our conversation as we neared the beach, with the youngest in between us. Just when I had forgotten the heat and realized how special this afternoon was, the youngest reached up and took my hand - and held it, with arm stretched up above his little head as I was much taller than him, all the way to the sea.