From Mathematics to Linguistics...

Cultural differences video link

2009-11-05T10:58:00.000-08:00

The following is a link to a video clip of an interview where a Tanzanian explains his first impressions of Canada. He had been invited to visit Canada when one of my colleagues went on furlough, and had been experiencing life as Canadians are used to living. His surprise at things that we take perfectly for granted made me think about just how much I take for granted. The clip is called 'Mwasembe highlights'

http://vimeo.com/6945700

Cultural differences

2009-10-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me the other day that although I write a lot about my impressions and experiences here in Tanzania, I rarely say much about Tanzanians’ impressions of our lives and cultures, or how I understand their views based on questions that have been asked. Here are a few comments and questions that I have heard to give you some insight into the misperceptions/Tanzanian cultural perceptions of life in the West.

Question 1: I have heard that you (Westerners) have a form of marriage where both parties agree to be married for a time of about 3 years and then are free to leave each other with no legal implications for either party. Is this true?
Notes: I think this might have arisen from someone hearing about pre-nuptial agreements being made. Two people separately asked us about this on the same day during a village visit, so it seems to be a widespread idea that this is what we do!

Question 2: I hear that you do not look after your elderly people like we do, but send them away to be looked after by other people rather than letting them live in your house. Is this true?
Notes: While this was essentially true, they do appear to look unfavourably on the way that we send our parents off to nursing homes and retirement homes rather than looking after them ourselves. While I know the reasons from my cultures perspective for sending elderly people to nursing homes (and having worked in one myself), explaining these reasons to someone from a culture where elderly people are highly respected, I felt my reasons were rather feeble in his eyes! (no offense to anyone with parents/grandparents in nursing homes c:)

Comment/observation 1: I want to live in England/America because everyone there has a good job, and a good salary.
Notes: The grass is always greener on the other side!

Comment/observation 2: there isn’t any crime in America (made to an American friend of mine)

Question 3: Why do you people pretend to come over here doing the work of God when you are only doing it in order to exploit us?
Notes: When I asked further about this, he told me that he was referring to people who come over and pretend to be helping the community and instead are only interested in the gold or precious stones that can be mined in the country and the good work in the community is just a front. I don't know whether he knew any missionaries who did this, but he was convinced that all missionaries have ulterior motives! I was quick to assure him that I didn't have time or energy for a gold mine on the side, even if that was what I came for, and it certainly wasn't!

Question 4: What do you eat in Canada/England if you don’t eat chapattis or ugali?
Notes: The person asking couldn’t believe that we don’t have ugali in England or Canada since it is such a staple food here. People often don’t feel fully satisfied unless they have a meal of ugali once a day.

Here are a few other things that people don’t believe/understand when they hear us talk about our own countries:

That we don’t all keep animals/ farm our own food.
That a couple might not want to have children.
That a woman can reach age 27 and not have a husband or children.
That we keep dogs as pets.
That there aren’t tribes in England, and that English is the mother-tongue of (almost) all the people in our country (obviously excluding non-native Brits c:)

Zinza Genesis dedication

2009-09-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, we made another trip, this time to Mwanza where we stayed for two nights in order to attend the dedication of the book of Genesis which was recently printed in the Zinza language. Getting up early on Saturday morning, we left the Catholic guest house at half past six, and made our way to the ferry terminal. Arriving through the gates, we waited for our turn as we saw the smaller ferry being loaded up. Sadly, the buses seemed to take precedence over our small vehicle, so we had to wait until 8am for the larger ferry to arrive, but eventually we were able to reverse our vehicle onto the cramped ferry before the cracks between vehicles were filled with people (I kid you not, that ferry was packed!) and we set off. Arriving on the other side, we drove onwards along a dirt road to the village of Nyakaliro where the dedication ceremony was being held.

Mwanza ferry

Arriving at the storage barn that was filled with hundreds of seats, we were ushered up to the front where we were seated as honoured guests despite our protestations! Honoured or not, we were rather deaf by the end of the ceremony, having been seated very close to the speakers which belted out music and whatever was said/sung into the mic.

AIC choir

The service started a little late, which was good since we had not been able to arrive for the official start time, but still people were arriving up to an hour into the ceremony. It began with introductions of all the official guests; translators, missionaries, pastors and board members involved with the translation, some of them giving speeches of various lengths, then proceded on with a song from the AIC (Africa Inland Church) choir from the AIC church in Nyakaliro. After this, we were treated to a show of Zinza traditional dancing accompanied by drums and the ululation of many watching women. This was a great experience for me, as I have many times bemoaned the lack of times I have seen traditional African culture displayed in dance or music.

Following this, the AIC choir sang another song and then some of the boxes of Genesis books were danced in up to the front where the mgeni rasmi (honoured guest) cut the ribbon with great ceremony and pulled out a couple of books to stand with them while photos were taken. Many of these books were then gifted to those who had been a part of the translation process in various forms, which took quite a while!

Not much was said or done after that, and the ceremony closed quite efficiently without the need for long drawn out speeches which made me happy! By this time, it was about half past 1, and having had breakfast at 7am I was rather hungry and thirsty (I had stupidly forgotten my water bottle). We were treated to a pilau and meat lunch in traditional Tanzanian style, before we eventually piled back into our cars in order to catch the ferry back.

So, that was my first (and possibly last) experience of a dedication! I thoroughly enjoyed it (despite the thirst) thanks to the good planning that kept speeches to a minimum (Tanzanians are not known for being able to keep speeches or ceremonies short, the last one I went to being a good example, having gone on for 5 hours) and thus meant that the ceremony itself ran smoothly. The dances were a real treat also, and despite my protestations at being placed at the front, it did make for some good unobstructed photography!

Rondo Retreat Centre

2009-09-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

Last week saw my friends and I taking a trip into Kenya for a visit to the Kakamega rainforest. This rainforest (not a tropical one) is located about an hour North of Kisumu, which itself is about 5 hours from Musoma, allowing for the border crossing. The forest itself houses many types of birds and monkeys, including the red tailed monkey, colobus, and blue monkey.

We arrived around mid-afternoon on Saturday, and after a confusion where we thought we might not have actually booked ourselves in for the right dates, we were shown to some very cute rooms set in the main house of the Rondo retreat centre. The centre had a selection of variously sized cottages attached to it, but the main house was a great place for us to stay, allowing us to arrive at the dining room from our bedrooms without even venturing outside! The house itself was very comfortable and neatly kept, in fact we had to remove our shoes before entering, a good policy when the rainforest has a tendency to make shoes muddy.
We arrived in good time for afternoon tea at half past four, something we were happy to learn was a permanent fixture each day, with coffee/tea and cake being brought to wherever you happened to be sitting in the main lounge/verandah. The meals in general were a delight (although three days of 3 full course meals and tea each afternoon meant I wasn’t hungry for most of the meals!), a definite thumbs up!

Afternoon tea

The gardens were really beautifully kept up, looking like they had originally been carved out of the rainforest, which pressed up against the centre on 3 sides, providing plenty of short 10 minute walks, and a few longer 2-4 hour walks. On Monday, we took a guide and went on one of these walks, strolling towards some rapids, and back through groves of guava trees, all-in-all a 3 hour walk. We got to see all three types of monkey on this walk, but birds were more scarce, the best viewing times for viewing them being at dawn and dusk.

On the walk through the forest

On Sunday there was a short service in the quaint little chapel at the edge of the forest in one corner of the gardens, attended mostly by the staff, though it seemed that there were almost as many guests, the whole congregation perhaps totalling 25.

Rondo chapel

The rest of the time we spent lounging around on the comfy sofas, or playing chicken with the rain as we played cards outside until the minute when it started pouring down on us. It was really nice to sit by the fire, and feel cold in the evenings, and be able to snuggle up in bed, something that I haven’t been able to do since I moved to sunny Musoma!

Playing chicken with the rain playing dutch blitz

On the way back, we paid our respects to the Nakumatt in Kisumu (Nakumatt is a chain of big department stores in Kenya, heaven for us shopaholics stuck in small towns where choice of products is almost non-existant!), though were disappointed that the fridges were all turned off, so there was no cheese available. All together it was a successful weekend!

(www.rondoretreat.com)

Proposal

2009-09-10T23:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I walked home from the office, a distance that takes only about 12 minutes. On the way however, I received my second marriage proposal since I have walked that route (which has only been about twenty times in total), as usual, from a complete stranger. This guy was walking in front of me at first, but I overtook him, so he realised I was there and began to follow me no matter how fast I walked (and I walk fast compared to most Tanzanians). Here is the gist of how the conversation went (rough translation of the Swahili as I remember it c:):

Deo: Good evening.
Hazel: Good evening.
Deo: Are you walking home?
Hazel: Yes. (walks a bit faster)
Deo: Where do you live?
Hazel: Nyasho (I vaguely wave in the direction of my house. Nyasho is a very large area which we were already walking in, so saying 'Nyasho' didn't really answer his question)
Deo: Are you married?
Hazel: Why do you want to know? (knowing why he is asking and where he will go with the conversation as soon as I say 'no')
Deo: It is just a question, I would like to know.
Hazel: So your first question to me is not 'what is your name?' but 'are you married?'?!
Deo: And your name is...?
Hazel: Hazel
Deo: My name is Deo. I work as a guard in Makoko. Are you married? Yes, or not yet?
Hazel: Not yet. (really want to lie at this point)
Deo: I want you, I have no wife yet. I have a good job.
Hazel: (stalling in order to not have to answer the question) you work in Makoko? Where are you going now then? Do you live in Nyasho?
Deo: Yes. What do you say?
Hazel: About what? (I know very well what he is asking, just playing dumb c:)
Deo: About what I said?
Hazel: I don't understand (drawing this out as looong as possible before I have to answer)
Deo: what do you think about being lovers?
Hazel: No.
Deo: You are refusing? You don't want to marry me? Why?
Hazel: Because I won't be around in Tanzania for much longer (trying for the diplomatic answer).
Deo: Ok, bye. (Having reached his turnoff, he goes off down his road and leaves me to carry on home)

I wonder what they would do if we actually did say yes to their proposals? Do they really expect us to leap at the chance to accept a complete stranger, who obviously wants to marry a white woman (I mean, he didn't even ask my name at first!)? The mind boggles in trying to understand. I guess they figure that it is worth a try, and they don't lose anything by being rejected. *sigh* The struggles of being single on the mission field!

Bank card saga

2009-09-01T07:24:00.000-07:00

If I ever thought dealing with banks was tricky when I lived in England, my perspective has changed somewhat now!

The saga of the bank card all began a long time ago as family and I embarked on our mountain adventure on Kili. Clever me thought that putting precious bank card in special hidden pocket of Father's daypack would keep it safe. Clever me was correct, but also forgot about said card at the end of the trek, and so it ended back in England, still very safe in aforementioned hidden pocket.

I obviously was paying great attention to my bank card, because I still didn't realise that it was absent all the way during conference, until I was about to go shopping in Nairobi (and intending to buy a lot of stuff, plus pay for car repairs, i.e. need lots of money). Sadly, it was a week too late by then!

Much more on the ball, my parents posted my card back to me as soon as they realised that they had it. This was about a week before I returned to Tanzania from Kenya (having racked up a stack of IOUs), and since post usually takes a week or two to arrive, I wasn't unduly worried.

Weeks passed.

About 4 weeks later, I gave up, and sent my poor long-suffering mother into Nationwide to ask them to cancel the card. They duly phoned me up from England, asked me information to prove my identity (all of which was known by mother, being such things as date of birth etc, so they could have just asked her and saved the phone bill!) and card was happily cancelled. New card was ordered, but this time I was rather more cunning, and asked for it to be hand-carried back to Tanzania by a friend who was returning a week later. Card arrived safely.

Happy Hazel then went to the bank in Musoma to get money out for the large number of things that she now owed money for, and was very very happy to hear the whirring of the ATM announce that the card was working as it should be.

Two days later, horrendous electricity bill forced Hazel to return to bank (though this time a different one in town) and get more money (the limit is 400,000Tsh and the bill was over that). Bank machine ate card = Hazel wept in despair (bank was closed at the time, having opening hours that as always, only make sense to the bank and not to ordinary working people who cannot get there during normal working hours).

Saturday arrived and I took myself back to the bank, armed with proof of identity and little slip of paper which proved my card had been rudely eaten. Card was returned, and I pranced off on other errands. Money was once again required (for 3 months rent this time) and fearing the Barclays experience, I ran first to the other 2 banks in the town, only to be rejected. So, back to Barclays I went, and sure enough, my card was eaten once more, though somewhat more speedily returned by the long-suffering employees of Barclays, Musoma.

Here endeth the saga of the bank card (or so I hope!).

What happens at church

2009-08-25T01:20:00.001-07:00

I was daydreaming in church the other day (quite easy to do when you have to translate everything in order to understand it, much easier not to listen!) and realised that I have never shared what a church service is really like on this blog before. This is a little snippet of our Sunday services each week at Nyabange Mennonite church.

Church begins officially with Sunday school (for all ages) at 9.30am. This is taken by Mch. Waynse, our pastor, and runs for half an hour, or until he has finished making his points/answering questions. We don't go to this, but usually turn up at 10am, almost always the first people to arrive for the service, and wait for it to begin. The church does have a bell (or sorts, for someone who used to bellring in a proper belltower, I wouldn't call it a very good bell) and rings it to call people to the service. Without fail, there are always people arriving even up to an hour into the service, and space becomes tight quite quickly. For some reason, maybe because people have their favourite benches, people don't go to the logical place to sit, where there is space, but always try to squash others along the row so that they can sit down. The African concept of personal space being different from the English concept means that I often feel rather intruded upon, especially when kids come to sit next to me. No matter how much space there is between me and the next person, a kid will almost always come and sit down next to one of us. When there is a big gap, this means that the kid plonks herself down right next to me, and my neighbour has plenty of space instead. Said kid will then spend the rest of the service alternately fiddling with any jewelery I am wearing, prodding various parts of me, or just gazing at my obviously weird and intensely fascinating face.

But back to the service. Again, without fail, the service begins with at least 2 hymns from the 'tenzi za rohoni' hymnbook. This is a book of Swahili-ized English hymns. Someone gets up at the front to lead the hymns and away we go, following at whatever speed and pitch that person decides we should sing at that week. After this comes a short time of prayer for the service, the first reading (often a Psalm where we join in on every second verse), then often some more tenzi, or a contribution from the choir. Usually we say the "Imani ya mitume" at this time (Apostles Creed), which I have yet to learn by heart, and still have to read from the front of the tenzi book.

Choir songs basically involve us sitting down and watching 15-20 choir members perform any number of their repertoir of songs, which have no doubt been practised again and again during the week. They are very fond of using the keyboard (not actually play it, but use it to provide a beat) and generally will have quite a lot of bass going while they sing. We are always very happy when the power goes out, as their voices are truly lovely, and much better without the 'backing music'. Their dancing is generally very coordinated, and they have a variety of moves which would probably never even occur to us in the West as being something you could put to a worship song. There are two members singing into the microphones and the rest provide the backing.

After the choir sing, someone will get up to do the notices. These always include introductions, and the congregation will be invited to introduce themselves if they are new, or visiting, or have just been away for a time. Usually there are at least 2 people who introduce themselves. Then there is another song from the choir, and the second reading.

My favourite part is usually what follows next, when someone is called upon to lead a 'pambio', a lively song where the congregation respond after each line from the leader, generally with the same response (which means that I have usually got the hang of what they are saying after a few times). Often there are two of these, then we are led into a prayer for the speaker before he comes to preach.

Sermons can be anything from 10 minutes to over an hour long, and it really depends on many factors as to how much I listen to them. Church for us is not in any way a time of learning or connecting with God, doing that in Swahili is very difficult for us, so we generally do it at home after the service. Church for us is connecting with the community, and supporting the church in what ways we can. This means that I am not too worried if I don't understand the sermon, as I know I will listen to an English one later, but I do try even so. Factors that make listening difficult are the clarity of the speaker's Swahili, how loud they speak, how fast, and how many words they use that I don't know. If I listen, then realise that what they are preaching is inaccurate, then I often switch off as well.

After the sermon we have the offering. This involves each side of the church standing up and processing to the front where there is a basket for each side of the church. The choir sings a few songs while this is going on, and after giving someone prays for the offering. The biggest difference in offerings here is that sometimes someone will give an offering of produce, or even livestock, and then it will be auctioned off with the proceeds going into the offering. This is always amusing, as people offer varying amounts for the random collection that is given through this method. We have seen auctioned off such things as peanuts (a whole bag), corn, eggs (I have even bought some of those during church!), okra, a spinach-like vegetable, and even a duck!

After the service finishes, the choir continues to sing as we all process out after the pastor, service leader and preacher and shake hands with each other. This is done by shaking hands with everyone in a line, then joining the line at the end. Generally it is expected that you greet each person briefly as you do this, but that doesn't always happen with so many people to greet! When everyone is out of the church, we are dismissed with a blessing and all say the grace "neema ya Bwana wetu Yesu Kristo, na upendo wa Mungu Baba, na ushirika wa Roho Mtakatifu, ukae nasi sote sasa na hata milele." (May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ...)

After this is a time of greeting people, and being invited to lunch (inevitably every week we get invited somewhere) before we escape back to our car (usually with some passengers wanting a ride to Bweri or town) and go home for lunch. The service takes anything from 1 1/2 hours to the more usual 2 1/2, and even sometimes 3 hours.

My new lesson about my relationship with God

2009-08-19T03:38:00.000-07:00

Again, despite my dislike of the financial requests that I constantly get from friends and 'friends' here in Tanzania, God has brought something to my attention about my relationship with Him through my experiences with them.

Before, I was saying that I realised I needed to spend more time in relationship with God, rather than going to Him for requests only. This time however, I learnt about gratitude after those requests are granted.

Last week, a friend came (having given us notice that he was travelling to Musoma from his village) in order to receive financial assistance from us for his daughter's nursing studies. He had told us the total amount, and we had said that we could help a bit, but could by no means could provide all of the required amount. He said that was fine. The day arrived, and so did he, to collect the money from us. During the conversation that followed, after he had seen how much we had given him (not a particularly small contribution but still only 1/8th of the total) he made a passing comment about how much still remained, and how hard it would be to collect it all. Having gotten used to reading indirect comments such as this, I was rather offended that, while he was outwardly grateful, he expected me to have given more. Reflecting on this later, God brought it to my attention that all of us are so very good at doing that very same thing with Him. We receive good gifts from His hand, and yet we grumble about what we haven't been given, about the '7/8ths' remaining instead of being grateful for what He has given us. In this case too, it is not that God can't afford to give all of it to us (like I couldn't afford to give all my friend was asking for), but that He gives us often just what we need (although often quite a bit more) even if that does not match up to what we think we need. I wonder what else God has to teach me about prayer, gratitude and His gifts through my experience with Tanzanians!

Greetings

2009-08-16T23:49:00.000-07:00

I never really thought about greetings much before I came to Tanzania, and it became such a big part of my social interactions. Here in Tanzania, you are expected to greet everyone with some form of greeting, and often more than one. This always makes it interesting when a crowd of children all want to greet us, as a simple blanket greeting for all of them isn't enough, they all insist on greeting us individually. So, for 3 children, we would each get 'shikamoo' (respectful greeting to an older person), and each have to reply 'marahaba' (reply to 'shikamoo') for every 'shikamoo' then follow it up by greeting them in turn. Thus, it would sound something like this, "shikamoo", "marahaba, hujambo?" "sijambo" x6!

I can get used to greeting people like this in Swahili, but I find it very bizarre when people insist on greeting me in English. I never thought I could be over-greeted! Every morning, I cycle past kids who like to greet me in English. I am always going too fast to hear if each child says "good morning, madam!" once each, or if they continue saying it until they can't see me anymore, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter. I wish I could teach them that one "good morning" is enough, as I'm sure they think I am rude for only replying once. It justs seems so unnatural to me to say "good morning" to every child rather than doing one "good morning" for them all!

I take a certain delight in correcting the kids as well when they use English. I have often cycled home in the evening to choruses of "good morning madam!" and even the occasional "good morning sir/teacher/class!" I find it quite fun to reply "good evening" to them, and watch them run away in fits of giggles. Still, it is the best way for them to learn!

Swine Flu

2009-08-16T23:29:00.000-07:00

I know this was weeeeeeks ago, but here is the little tale of our swine flu experience in Tanzania.
After conference, we returned to work as usual, arriving home on Monday and back at the office on Tuesday. During that week, I was working closely with one of my teams on sorting out the database of words for that language. At the end of the week, I spent almost a full day at Nyabange, attending the graduation ceremony of some of my friends from the college. As with many Tanzanian functions, this involved a long talk, lots of singing and dancing, and very crowded seating arrangements. That evening, we had arranged for a 'surprise' birthday party for one of our colleagues, so had invited quite a few people over to our house. The lucky ones that came then got to experience the unexpected!

Earlier that week, we had heard that one of our colleagues from the Dar es Salaam office had been diagnosed with swine flu, so naturally we were all a bit cautious with those who were sniffling here in Musoma (having just come back from the conference where this lady must have originally caught it). I myself had had an ordinary cold on leaving Kenya, but wasn't at all worried it was anything but a normal cold. The Tanzanian health service had other ideas, and when they heard from another potential swine flu family here in Musoma that some people at our house had been ill, they all came in force to interrogate us. When I say in force, I mean that there were about 6 of them who arrived in a van with some slogan about AIDs on the side. They came into our back yard, but refused to go any further, and insisted on wearing face masks while they interviewed us from a safe distance. All of us (including the party guests) were required to go outside and be interviewed, and then we were strictly ordered to not leave our house for the weekend!

They came back on Saturday night to do some actual tests, shoving swabs in our mouths and taking our temperature while asking many of the same questions from the night before. This time there were definitely 6 people there, all with the white masks on. Some of them seemed rather useless for the task, but maybe they felt there was safety in numbers! Again, they refused to actually enter the house, and left with a stern warning for us not to go anywhere until we had the all clear.

On Sunday, we had to cancel our usual trip to church, even though Rachel was supposed to have been speaking then, and hang around the house. Normally we have no problem being in our house, but it always seems different when someone tells you to stay, the natural urge to rebel surfaces and you want to go anywhere as long at it out of the house! As it turns out, we were both negative for swine flu (big surprise), but I was impressed by the speed of response from the department of health here in TZ. It was all rather ironic though, having spent all of Friday potentially infecting friends and family at Nyabange college, to be told to stay in our houses after that. It also led to a lot of confusion among some of the Tanzanians who had heard that we had been tested and quarantined. After a while of being asked if we were better, we gave up trying to explain that we hadn't been sick, only quarantined, and told people that we were fully recovered thanks! I don't know what the neighbours thought though, seeing a vehicle coming twice to our house with AIDs written all across the sides, and doctors coming in with face masks!

Kilimanjaro - descent

2009-08-01T12:50:00.001-07:00

View of Kibo peak from about 1 hour down the Marangu route

After lunch, we were allowed a quick snooze of about 2 hours at Kibo huts before we packed up our tents and set off down to the next camp. My poor toes refused to go back into the boots, so I tortured my feet in different places by borrowing my sister’s trainers. That made walking much more pleasant, and despite my tiredness, I found I had enough energy to walk the 3 hours down the Marangu route to the next set of huts. Once there, having joined up with John and Bernice, we ate dinner and quickly went to bed, all feeling pretty exhausted.

Our final camp on the mountain

The final day was spent walking through some beautiful scenery. Once again, we walked through the rainforest region of the mountain, but this time it was for longer, as the side we were walking down got more rain than the North side that we had walked up. My poor feet had been crammed back into the walking boots at the guides’ insistence that we wear proper footwear, but after our lunch break, I gave in and changed back to the trainers, which my Mum had been carrying with her for exactly that reason (thanks Mum!). This made the final stretch after lunch a lot more manageable, though my knee joints were complaining about all the downward flopping I was doing (I was flopping more than walking by this point!), something they had never done on the way up the mountain! I actually preferred the upward climb for that very reason.

The rainforest region we walked through on the way back down

We arrived at our final destination, Marangu gate, sometime that afternoon. Each of us who had made it to the top (my Dad, two sisters and I) received our certificates, we doled out the tips to the porters and guides and then happily clambered into the Tanzania Journeys bus which had been sent to pick us up. So ended our Kilimanjaro experience, and quite an experience it was!

Our faithful and hardworking guides: Arold, Rashid, Didas and Amud

Kilimanjaro trek - final ascent

2009-08-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

On the day after our rest day, we were feeling much better for the most part, and set off across The Saddle in order to reach the camp at the base of Kibo peak. On the way, we came across the remains of a small plane which had apparently crashed a few months previously while carrying some tourists on an aerial viewing of Kilimanjaro, killing all except the pilot. The Saddle itself was rather boring, being rather desert-like in appearance, and having very few interesting features except the two peaks at either side. At this point we had stopped wearing t-shirts only during the day, and had obeyed the guides by donning our woolly hats, as the wind was rather chilly. On our way across The Saddle, the couple who had come with my family had to turn back and go down in order for poor Bernice to recover from altitude sickness. Her husband John joined her, even though he was well enough to go on, so we carried on with just us five Grays and my sister’s friend Beth.

Trekking across The Saddle

Arriving finally at Kibo huts, situated at the bottom of the final trail up to the peak, we all felt rather weak and wobbly, the altitude making us rather more pathetic as we went about the rigmarole of signing in and finding our camp. There were a multitude of tents set up when we got there, but they must have belonged to people climbing to the summit on the day we arrived, as they were gone by late afternoon. Kibo huts, as the name suggests, was the first campsite we had stayed at which had huts for climbers to sleep in. Since we were doing the Rongai route, which had no huts for the main part of it (only when we joined up with other major routes such as Kibo), we had tents every night. Unfortunately, the disadvantages of coming to a place like Kibo huts is that despite the more permanent structures where the toilets were situated, the frequency of use by so many people meant they were rather more dirty.

After a meal and a pep talk from our guides, we all settled down for as much rest as we could before we woke for the summit climb. Every day, either after the evening meal, or breakfast, we were able to top up our water bottles from the water boiled by the cooking crew for our use. This meant the water was warm when we got it, but if we received it the night before, the low temperatures meant that it was pretty cold by morning, and much less unpleasant to drink. Going up the final climb to the summit however, required us to take hot water in our flasks when we set off, plus whatever we could take in a thermos, as water froze easily due to the low temperatures.

Despite planning to set off before midnight, we got going at around midnight, the last stretch to the peak had begun! We were all really bundled up with layers and looked very round and squidgy as a result, it made walking a bit weird. When I set off that night, I had on 3 layers on my legs, three pairs of socks, 4 top layers, a fleece, a duvet jacket and a waterproof mac, plus gloves with inner liners, a neck-warmer and a woolly hat! We weren’t the first to set off that night, we were able to see headtorches bobbing along a few hundred metres above us, but we were not the last either. We set off polepole, and steadily climbed. As usual, I had my ten minutes of pounding heart before settling into the rhythm, but I was surprised when at the first rest stop (after handing off my backpack to one of the guides) I almost completely blacked out. The guides were quick to act as always, and divested me of my waterproof mac and outer gloves, which cooled me down sufficiently to regain my vision. I think a combination of altitude effects and overheating had made me almost faint! Thankfully, I was able to go on after only a little pause, and found it much more pleasant without the outer gloves (I could move my fingers for one thing), though I had to keep my hands in my pockets most of the time. I also found that I began to feel nauseous if I had anything at my throat, so soon the neckwarmer came off, and my duvet jacket rarely stayed zipped up to my chin for long.

On we trudged, taking little breaks every so often, probably about every half hour. Occasionally we would pass some poor victims of altitude sickness, either having a nosebleed, vomiting or being carried back down by guides, but we continued. We made it to the Hans Meyer Cave when my mum decided to not go any further, as she was feeling more nauseous the further she climbed, so we bid her farewell and set off again. At this point, Beth was also not with our party, though at that time we didn’t know if she was further behind with the guide Amud, or if she had given up. By this point, Didas had also left us, as he was feeling ill from something not altitude related. So we were left with Rashid, our head-guide, and one of the porters who had come with us to help out.

The last stretch up to Gilman’s point seems rather a blur in my mind to be honest. We stopped every so often for a water break, and I tried not to look up at the lights bobbing ahead of us which had still not reached the top. Each time I looked and saw them, I got discouraged, as it reminded me how far I still had to go. Still, I had it easier than my Dad, whose shoes had little grip on the shale we were zig-zagging up, and so he climbed 2 steps for every 3 he made as the shale went sliding beneath him. The porter, who had taken the rear position in our little line, managed to sing (not very well) the whole way up, which was slightly irritating for us who were taking about 20-30 steps a minute and were still feeling exhausted.

Sunrise from Gilman's point

Finally we made it to Gilman’s point, arriving just as the sun was rising off to our right. After a brief break where we switched off our head-torches and took a few quick pictures (we were afraid our cameras would seize up with the cold if we left them out. I actually carried mine inside my coat next to my body so it wouldn’t freeze), we carried on the final stretch to the peak. By this time, we were not going steeply up as that part had ended at Gilman’s, but it was really slow going nevertheless, as we all felt lethargic. I tried eating a piece of flapjack during this part of the climb, as I knew I had eaten nothing for a long time, and thought it would help my energy, but sadly even flapjack made me sick unless I took only a miniscule bite every five minutes or so. We kept meeting climbers on their way back from the peak who would encourage us with “you’re almost there, just round the corner!” only to find that their idea of just around the corner was not consistent with ours, every bend revealed another stretch to go up, or down along the ridge before we finally reached the peak. Finally, at 8.10am, we made it to Uhuru peak! We were one of the last groups to arrive there, and definitely the last group to leave the peak (might as well stay for at least 15 minutes since we spent 5 days getting there!). We queued up behind other climbers for our picture to be taken at the summit sign, and gazed around us at the beauty of the scenery around. Off to the right of the enormous glacier (it looked tiny from the base of the peak) we could see Mt Meru poking up through the clouds, and further round than that we could see across the crater that we had been climbing round to reach the highest point.

All of us at Uhuru peak

Going back down was a lot faster than coming up, naturally. I didn’t particularly like the downward part after Gilman’s point however, as my poor toes got jammed into the front of my boots at almost every step. The guides went down quickly, scree-running for long stretches then sitting down to wait for us to catch up before setting off once again down the face of the mountain. I was definitely the slowest going down, and arrived in camp last with the guide who had stayed behind with me, but only after we had been met, about half an hour from the bottom, by porters with a flask of fresh juice for us. Bliss!

Kilimanjaro trek - ascent part 1

2009-08-01T12:36:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the loooong silence on the blog front. I think my computer is upset with me for leaving it behind when I went on holiday, so it has been giving me problems.

Well, the first thing to do an update on is the Kilimanjaro climb. Yes, we did indeedy manage to climb up to the roof of Africa! But I am getting ahead of myself. First, I flew out to meet my parents, arriving in Moshi, the town closest to Kilimanjaro itself, and near to Kilimanjaro International Airport, about 4 hours before they did. I did look into the option of catching the bus there, but with the addition of the park fees I would have had to pay for travelling through the Serengeti and Ngorongoro, it actually worked out to be only a little more expensive to fly! Anyway, so after a year and a half, I saw my family again. It was slightly odd, as it didn’t feel like it had been that long, and everyone was much the same as they were before – sometimes I forget that even if I have changed quite a bit in the time I have been out here, it doesn’t mean that everyone else has too!

After spending a day in Moshi recovering from the flight (well, I don’t think I needed much recovering after a flight of about 1 hour, but my poor family had had a much longer journey!) we finally set off on Friday 26th for the Rongai gate on the North side of the mountain, close to the Kenyan border. Joining us on the trip was an English couple who were about the same age as my parents, John and Bernice. They had had the stress of a delayed bag which had all their climbing gear in it, and which had arrived only 10 minutes before we left for the mountain!
After arriving and having a packed lunch, we set off. Walking up that first stretch seemed much the same as walking in English hills might, except for the black dust which poofed up at every step, and the good old African heat which made us all lovely and sweaty. We were constantly told to walk ‘polepole’ (slowly), even though we were very able to go a good deal faster. We were to hear a lot of ‘polepole’ in the next few days, and once we reached the higher altitudes we were happy to comply, but for the first day it was rather annoying to be forced to go so slowly!
We reached the first camp, simba camp, after about 3 or 4 hours of walking, and were happy to see that our porters had arrived well ahead of us and had set up tents for us. With all 24 or so of the porters, our camp was rather large and noisy, but our tents were set off to one side and we even had our own mess tent for our evening meal and breakfast. We were happy to hear that we would get bowls of wash water after each climb, and each morning too, we had picked up quite a bit of black dust from our walk up!

View from Simba Camp to Kibo peak

The chef and his assistant outdid themselves each day on our meals. We were constantly amazed at the things they manage to prepare for us on the trek, everything from fried chicken to toasted cheese sandwiches and omelettes every morning. They were very insistent on our drinking lots of water, and even sneaked water into our meals with soup every day (I couldn’t face soup for a while after!) and slightly watery porridge each morning. Water was taken from streams and purified by boiling, so there was plenty for us each day, plus hot drinks with every meal – we were spoiled! Sadly, as we got higher in altitude, our appetites seemed to collectively diminish, but they always tried to ply us with food and drink and were always very careful to make sure we told them about headaches/diarrhoea or any other symptom of altitude sickness we might have been experiencing.

After spending a night at simba camp, we set off bright and early at 8am the next day, walking up up up, first to a lunch stop, then to our next camp, about 7 or 8 hours of walking in total. We were, of course, required to go polepole, so I never seemed to feel any ache in my legs the next morning, despite the distances I was climbing. Each night we took it is turns to sleep in either the nice green tents, or the slightly narrower and older orange tents. This night it was the turn of Julia and I to sleep in the orange tent, so we had quite a cozy time of it that night. We soon learnt about the thieving birds that flew around the camp as one of them made off with our bar of soap from the entrance of our tent and ate it! Nights were getting colder as we went up, and I soon started to curse my stupidity in only bringing flip-flops as my spare shoes, flip-flops and socks are a rather uncomfortable mix.

Maybe I should say a little about the guides who were leading us on our trek. Each of them was very friendly, though Didas was definitely the joker of the bunch. We would never believe anything he said, as he was usually making it up, but his humour was very welcome and he was good fun to talk to. Also helping us as assistant guides were Arold and Amud (not sure of the spellings of any of these names!), and the leader and head guide was Rashid. Two of these guys had actually come from Zanzibar originally, moving to the Kilimanjaro region because there are no mountains on Zanzibar. They were all very well trained, even down to being diligent at picking up rubbish from the mountainside to throw away later, and all of them knew a lot about the wildlife of the region. One of the things that I remember most though, is the way that they told us refer to our toilet breaks. In order to make it less embarrassing talking about needing to go to the toilet while on the trek, we were instructed to say that we were going to ‘send a fax/email’. This was a really handy way to talk about such things, and it kept up amused for days after the trek too.

View across the clouds over Kenya

Snack break

On the following morning, we had another longish trek to the next campsite, at Mawenzi Tarn huts. This was a little detour from the direct route up to the summit, but took us to one of Kilimanjaro’s other peaks, Mawenzi peak, which was much more interesting to look at than Kibo peak. We were to spend a day at Mawenzi, acclimatising to the altitude by walking up another few hundred metres then coming back down to sleep again. It was quite a welcome break for some of our party, as they had begun to get headaches and/or diarrhoea, and most of us had lost our appetites. On the day we arrived at Mawenzi, we saw our first snow on the mountain, and we definitely noticed the cold each evening as the sun went down. We felt a bit pathetic every time we ventured out of our tents to go anywhere, as the altitude meant that we were puffing like steam engines after walking only about ten steps! It definitely took about ten minutes walking each morning to get into the rhythm of the walk, and to get my poor heart in gear to pound a little more energetically than usual.

Mawenzi Tarn huts campsite

Wake up call

2009-06-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

How would you feel if it seemed someone was friends with you for money? Here in Africa, friendships and money are very related, and that is often hard for us Westerners, trying to fit into the culture. Since teaching at the Bible school, I have had many very genuinely needy friends who often ask for money, but there is one person in particular who seems to always need help. I am not always sure of my responsibility in friendships here, where I expect to be asked for money, but not sure how often is 'normal', and am not always sure when to draw the line. I doubt any of my genuine friends mean to ask too much, but this one friend seems to ask me for money every time he sees me, or texts me (about once or twice a month). After a while of this being the case, I have got a bit frustrated; it makes me feel like an ATM! He said he was coming to see me on Friday, and I knew there was a financial motive for his coming, so I was naturally rather reluctant, and dreaded the moment when I would have to deal with it. "I would never behave like that to someone", I thought, "It just isn't fair!"

I tell you this, not to rant about this guy, but to help you stand in my shoes as I share this revelation with you: the truth is, I do treat someone like that. Someone who deserves so much more. Someone who, unlike me, never gets tired of meeting with such a demanding person, despite my endless requests while we are spending time together. This weekend, I was woken up to that truth, to the parallel between this man's requests of me, and my prayer life. What a slap in the face to realise that when I come before the Lord, and dump my wants/needs (or mostly other people's) at his feet, without really spending time with Him, I am treating Him just as I so dislike being treated. What a reminder, that first and foremost we should be in relationship with Him. What a priviledge it is that we have that opportunity, and what rudeness I have shown in coming only with demands! I hope that you can say your prayer life is better than mine was, but if not, I hope this little illustration has woken you up just as it did me. We have such an opportunity to know our Lord, why are we wasting it?

What a difference

2009-06-10T23:44:00.000-07:00

I have probably mentioned, countless times, how much I dislike being called "mzungu" when I am walking or cycling around Musoma. For quite a while now, my method of coping with this being yelled (most often than not) at me has just been to ignore the people who were yelling at me, unless they were actually greeting me as well, so saying "good morning, mzungu" rather than just "mzungu". I realised that this isn't a particularly great way of dealing with it, but I also found that if a kid was chanting "mzuuungu, mzuuungu, mzuuungu" (they actually have a rhythm when they chant this, crazy, eh?) then even greeting them in Swahili won't stop the chanting, so why bother? I find myself more receptive to the 'cute' kids, the ones who are so obviously delighted to see me each morning, and actually come and wave at me, but still it gets on my nerves.

So, what was the difference this morning? I asked God for grace. I asked that He would help me to be gracious to all the kids who were greeting me, and rather than immediately getting frustrated, that I would greet them politely back. Sure, it still bothers me, but I found that as I rode to work this morning, I found all of the greetings were 'cute', that the kids most of the time (there are a few who try to be annoying) were just very excited to see me, and all wanted to greet me. Before, I found it so easy to be irritated because someone is excited that a white person is riding by their house, when that is not a loving attitude at all. I have no right to squash their excitement, just because in my culture, mzungu isn't a very acceptable greeting, as in this culture it is nothing bad, and is often respectful. After all, they don't have any other way to address me, since they don't know my name, and no way of knowing that "mzungu" is offensive to me. It is true that I would still much rather be greeted by name, or even with 'dada' (sister), but I should remember to pray for grace each morning, at least so that I can show God's love by my attitude towards these kids. Up until now, my attitude has been very focused on preserving my sanity at others' expense, but I am reminded now, that everything is possible when we ask God for help, even coping with being called "mzungu"!

Zanzibar

2009-06-02T03:54:00.000-07:00

Last week was a fun week of holiday! I took the week off work to join my good friend Jennifer in Zanzibar for my first ever visit there. Travel to Zanzibar was pretty uneventful, but long. I was nervous about the fact that Mwanza airport has (in the past) changed a flight time from 1pm to 10am, so I was there in plenty of time for that possibility with the result that I had to amuse myself for 3 hours. Still, there was a nice walk around the end of the runway (I could have got onto the runway if I had wanted to, it is definitely not quite so strictly enclosed as ones I am used to!) and as long as I wasn’t too bothered by everyones bemused looks and questions (a white person walking, and only for the sake of walking, not to get anywhere?!?) I had a good walk.

Arriving in Dar, I met Jennifer outside, and we swapped to the old airport terminal which was now the main terminal for flights to and from Zanzibar. In truth, the runway connected both the terminals, and in fact on my way back to Mwanza from Dar, the plane taxied right past where the Zanzibar mini-plane had landed, and I could see it still there with all the doors open. So, we arrived at this cute little terminal, all wood-panelled and looking very old school, and were even more delighted to then be boarded onto a 12-seater plane! The flight to Zanzibar is a mere 20 minutes, so it wasn’t long before we were received by Ibrahim, the guy with whom I had arranged our transportation for the week.

Mbweni Ruins Hotel was the slightly upmarket hotel that we stayed in during our Stone Town part of the holiday, and it was definitely very fancy! It was a little distance from Stone Town itself, but ran a shuttle bus to and from every day. As a result of the distance, the hotel was peaceful, and even had its own beach and pier, with mangrove trees along the shore. On our first two mornings there we swam in the pool in the early morning, and it was a very pleasant way to wake up, despite the bugs that had died in the pool overnight. Breakfast was good too, so we were definitely spoilt!

We ventured into Stone Town on the first day, Sunday, and promptly took a very long route to reach the old slave market site, where we had our first tour. We took many a back route, and saw quite a bit of the old town (Zanzibar town is the new section and we didn’t go into that bit) and many of the fancy carved doors that Zanzibar is famous for.

During that first day, we also went to the House of Wonders, a museum which tells of the Swahili culture of the coast, about dhow-building (dhows are the traditional boats they still build around the region) and about Princess Salme, a lady famous for writing “Memoirs of a Princess” about life in the Sultan’s court. The tall building that housed the museum also gave a wonderful view of the town immediately surrounding the museum, the old fort, down to the waters edge and of the Forodhani gardens which were sadly closed for the low tourist season.

I found myself getting very irritated by the greetings of all the people who wanted to sell me items. “Jambo!” is what they would greet me with, and I never knew what the correct reply was, having learnt the “proper” Swahili greetings and not being used to this very touristy one! I found that people weren’t quite so friendly as they are in Musoma (maybe the residents of Stone Town are used to not greeting tourists), but also that there wasn’t so much staring at us white people – we are pretty common in Stone Town!

I ate a good selection of seafood while staying in Stone Town, though probably not as much as I could have tried. It was really great to be able to eat out and receive your order within half an hour, plus to choose from the wide variety available!

Monday saw us taking a trip a little way up North and into the area of the spice farms. Ibrahim took us to one, and we were quickly taken from there around the farm and shown all the wonderful spices that were being grown. Often we would be given a leaf, and would be asked if we could tell what the herb/spice was. I found my use of spices in cooking helpful here, but I still wasn’t able to name all of them. We were shown the vanilla plant too, and finally I realised just why vanilla pods are so expensive, the process of growing and harvesting them is very labour intensive! It is still cheaper than it is in England to buy the pods though, so I stocked up while there. During the tour, the boy who was helping by digging up roots like ginger etc kept making ‘jewelry’ from banana leaves, or cassava leaves. We ended up with a little basket on a string, a ring, a crown, a cassave leaf necklace and a frog necklace. At the end of the tour, a boy climbed a tall coconut tree and brought down 2 coconuts for us to drink and eat the meat of – very tasty and fresh! Then we went to a little shelter and he served us spice tea and various fruits – starfruit, grapefruit, mandarin, mango, a kind of custard fruit etc. A very tasty experience!

On Wednesday, we moved on from Stone Town to Kendwa Rocks, a beach hotel on the North of the island. It took a very short time to get up there, and we were very soon sitting on the beach trying to soak up some sun. Sadly, the weather was a bit cloudier up North, so we didn’t have too many sunbathing moments, but we still kept trying. On Thursday morning, we made a last minute decision to go snorkelling around the reef surrounding an island off the coast, and after about 10 minutes convincing the guy with my best Swahili, we paid 27,500Tsh (about $20) instead of the original asking price of $30. We set off in very grey clouds, and were slightly alarmed to see a tornado spout up in the clouds, but very grateful that it never decided to come to join the sea, since we were travelling straight for it! We saw dolphins from afar, and after some lashings of rain we arrived in the beautiful sunlight at the island where we snorkelled for about an hour. There were loads and loads of fish around, and so I was very happy with my first snorkelling experience! After everyone had finished, we went back to the mainland (we weren’t allowed to land on the island where we had been snorkelling since it was a conservation area) and were fed a very tasty rice and fish lunch. They had even cooked up a blowfish (we saw him on the boat as we travelled to the island, poor thing!) though I didn’t try any of that.

On our last full day on Zanzibar, we walked from Kendwa to Nungwi, a slightly bigger village to the North of the island which boasted a post office. Since the walk was along the beach and was dependent on the tides, we set off in good time to wade through the retreating tide and made sure we walked back before the tide came back in! I think we took a bit of a roundabout route to reach the village post office (a supermarket with a post box outside) but we made it, and were even able to go to the Mnarani natural aquarium for turtles before we trekked back. The turtles were very beautiful and gathered around as we fed them seaweed. The aquarium is doing great things to protect the turtles in the area, and we even got to meet some week-old hatchlings who were being kept safe until they were big enough to fend for themselves.

Then on Saturday morning, it was back in the taxi and back to the airport again as we travelled to Dar on the cute plane, and finally back to our separate destinations, Mwanza and England. I spent the night with a colleague in Mwanza, which was very pleasant and helped to break the journey up on the way back. This also gave me the opportunity to buy some more cheese in Mwanza before taking the bus to Musoma – opportunities for good New Zealand cheddar must never be passed up since it is difficult to get good cheese, if any, in Musoma!

So, it is back to work now, having had a refreshing break. I did enjoy my holiday, but it is good to be back!

Blog filler

2009-05-22T05:30:00.000-07:00

Since I have not been doing very exciting things lately (discourse charting is not that thrilling an event to put on a blog), I thought I'd share a few things I like about the languages that I am working with, mostly fun words.

Zanaki: during the time I was working with texts, I noticed 2 words that made me smile, both of them borrowed from English and Zanakiized! Try saying them to yourself and see if you know what they mean, though one is pretty obvious - 'epasword' and 'rendorova'. If you are getting stuck with the second one, I should probably point out that 'r' and 'l' are pretty interchangeable in Zanaki, since they don't have 'l' but Swahili does, so they often get confused. I was amused by the first word, because it is so completely English, yet the writer has stuck a class prefix onto it, making it a class 9 word. Maybe that doesn't amuse most people, but I am being linguistically nerdy now!

Swahili: here are some fun words that are completely made up of vowels - 'aiue' and 'uoe'. The first means 'he (subjunctive) should kill it' and the second is 'you (subj) should marry'.
The next Swahili words that have the potential to confuse are kuoza and kuuza - the first has 2 meanings, 'to be rotten' and 'to (cause to) marry' as does the second 'to sell' and 'to cause to kill'. It is probably best not to confuse them!
And here are a few other fun words to leave you with - 'kipilefti' (say it as it is written) - a roundabout, 'lililolala' - it which slept (ok, the subject prefix is unlikely, but it makes a fun word!), and 'umuumamo' - you are biting him (there).

Well, I should have something more interesting to say next week, as I am off to Zanzibar tomorrow for a week :)

Photos of survey and the wedding

2009-05-07T00:17:00.000-07:00

Conducting a group interview in Kizaru

Doing vowel testing in Kibubwa

The view from Nyerere's house, Zanaki country :)

Eliud and his wife Jennipher

Dressed up in our wedding finery; Misha, Rachel, myself and Holly

Eliud's Wedding

2009-05-06T23:57:00.001-07:00

Straight from survey to wedding! On Saturday 2nd May, I had the priviledge of attending the wedding of my colleague Eliud in Mwanza. Rachel and I had ordered special dresses to be made for the occasion, but true to African timing, only got them about 20 minutes before we left on Saturday morning, so I didn't have a chance to try it on before the event.

All was well, though, as the dresses fit wonderfully, and we joined our other wazungu colleagues outside the church just before 3pm, the official start time for the wedding. Some of us went to see the groom and found him waiting in a room with the bride, best man and maid of honour (the best man is called 'besti' here, but I don't know the word for the lady's role as the bride's helper), a very unusual thing for us who are used to the Western tradition of keeping the bride and groom apart until the wedding! In the end, we proved that we had all forgotten about Tanzanian/African timing, and had to wait around for an hour until the wedding began at 4pm.

I was told later, that this was a very Western wedding compared to others that the person had attended, but there were a few differences that I noticed. One was the dancing. The bridesmaids task seemed to be to dance everywhere in front of the bride, or the bride and groom. Likewise, the congregation was dancing quite often, sometimes with people dancing up to the front to where the newlyweds were standing. The choir was pretty boisterous too, and one guy really got into the dance mood, even coming right up to the end of the row where I was sitting and dancing there.

Another difference was the was the bride walked into the church. She walked very slowly, and for most of the ceremony, until she walked down the aisle with Eliud at the end, she looked almost sad. I guess that this is a traditional attitude to have, perhaps sadness at leaving her family home, then happiness at joining a new home on her marriage.

Most of the differences were during the reception. This began some 2 hours after the wedding finished, and had its own timetable. First was the entry of the guests, then later the bridal party. They stopped at a ribbon tied between two posts and cut it together (like an opening ceremony for a building!) before walking through. After that, there were 'traditional' events, like the cutting of the cake, and more strange to me, the introduction of all the guests, beginning with the groom and his side of the family, and then on to the bride's side, each person/group standing and waving as they were announced. Another fun event was when we all danced up in front of the bride and groom with our drinks in one line and bumped bottles (we had sodas/water/light beer for drinks) with the people coming the other way. Embarrassingly enough, I hadn't realised that this was the aim of the line of people dancing up to the bride and groom, so I hadn't brought my drink! Oh dear...

The final event of interest was similar to the introductions as the bride and groom stood to receive the gifts from friends and family, each gift being presented in order from groom's side to bride's side. This was slightly embarrassing also, as our joint gift of a bed and mattress for the couple was still being made at the fundi's in Musoma, and wouldn't exactly be presentable on a table anyway... so really it looked like a bunch of us gave nothing, but never mind, at least the bride and groom know that isn't true!

There weren't any real speeches a far as I could tell, but since I left after the food was served at 11pm, there may have been something else. As I went to sleep (we stayed at the same hotel where the reception was held, not the brightest idea!) I could hear the party continuing, though I still don't know whether they did party til 6am as it said on the schedule, or not...

Survey

2009-05-06T23:50:00.001-07:00

So, the survey has finished! Apologies for the delay in posting this, but hopefully you will have two at once this time as I report back on survey and on Eliud’s wedding.

Survey began on Friday 24th April with a short journey out to the Zanaki villages. Zanaki-land is not far from Musoma really, at least in comparison to some of the other language areas, so we didn’t have to go too far for any of the locations which was a blessing to the survey budget in terms of fuel! So, we began on the first day by meeting with some leaders in the wards etc. The Zanaki area is divided up into 6 wards, each with its own ward leader, and then there is a leader over all of them (‘katibu wa tarafa’ in Swahili, something like ‘district secretary’ in English) to whom we also paid a visit. Setting up a survey in a village means that we have to go to 3 people essentially, the katibu wa tarafa, the mtendaji wa kata (ward leader) then the mtendaji wa kijiji (village leader). The Zanaki leaders were pretty official about their business, so at each office we received a letter of introduction to the next guy down, and so on. Thankfully, quite often we were doing two villages in a ward, so we only had to see the ward leader once for both of these villages. In the end, we saw the katibu, 5 ward leaders or someone able to represent them, and about 6 village leaders! Tracking down the leaders was sometimes a job, if they were called away from the office, or had an appointment or something. One of the leaders we chased all the way to a school where he had a meeting, only to find we had passed him on the way, and actually we ended up meeting him in another village.

During this village meeting we had 2 curious incidents. The first was an experience of village politics as we sat around waiting for the mtendaji to arrive. As far as I can gather, a woman had been travelling on a daladala (public transport) for a few days, and had not yet paid, so the ticket collector guy took her kitenge (rectangle of fabric usually worn by women as an extra wrapping around head/whole body/as a skirt) until she could pay up. When she came to pay and collect her kitenge, she found that the kitenge had been ripped, so we got to listen to the argument between her and the ticket collector, in front of the village leader, as to who should pay or not. Another incident happened when an old man came into the village leader’s office, and started to accuse one of the survey team members (who is from Austria) of being a South African colonist come to steal the wealth of hard-working Tanzanians! Thankfully the others in the office were on our side and sent him out of the office, telling him that he should be more respectful.

The next day, we went back to do the survey in one of the first villages we had set up. This was slightly delayed as we found that no-one had been collected to work with us, so we waited around while the ward leader helped collect people. During the waiting period we were approached by a drunk young man, who then proceded to offer that I become his wife as he followed us wherever we went. Eventually the village leader who was with us sent him away to make himself more presentable before he proposed marriage (he only had trousers on), and when he didn’t go she literally had to push him out of the door.

The work itself was variable. 4 of the 8 villages were what we called ‘primary locations’ which involved an extra wordlist 300 words long, and so this took about 4 hours. The other villages were ‘secondary locations’ and often only took 2 ½ to 3 hours. Some days we managed to fit 2 locations in, and other days we did just the one and spent the rest of the time tracking the villages leaders down in order to set up the locations. Our biggest problem with the work was often getting too few people, or sometimes too many of one sex. We wanted an even mix of men and women, young and old, but often we were only able to get men, and usually then only the older men too. Still, it worked out at most locations and the longest we had to wait was 1 ½ hours as people slowly collected in the village. One day, however, we were the ones making the village wait. This was Wednesday, a day when we had spent some time in the morning setting up locations, and since we ended up back near our accommodation, we stayed there for lunch. We decided to set out again quite early in order to have plenty of time, and were just driving out of Butiama when we had to slow down in order to let people clear out of the way as they got off a daladala into the road. We were looking to the right to have a look at the weekly market that had gathered on the field next to the road, when a daladala rammed right into us from behind. Thankfully our vehicle wasn’t too badly damaged, the spare wheel taking most of the impact and denting the daladala quite impressively, but the main problem was then that they were accusing us of causing the accident and demanding that we pay. Somebody went off to get the police, and we sat in the car for about an hour, waiting for the whole thing to be settled. We were very grateful that Shem was there with us (our Zanaki translator who was helping us with the survey) as he was our defendent in the case, and we were also grateful that the police officer happened to be one of the night guards at our accommodation and so knew our car and was probably slightly more likely to take our side. In the end, no-one had to pay, though details were exchanged, and the survey vehicle now just has another few dents with a history behind how they came to be there.

Speaking of our accommodation, that is another thing that was pretty exciting about survey. When we originally got to Butiama, we aimed to find something inexpensive, but with guards and preferably a wall, so we could park the car safely at night. The Muslim guest house would have been perfect, but didn’t have enough rooms, so we went on to another one which was having problems with water, and then to the final one which was the one we eventually stayed at. This happened to be the guest house belonging to the J K Nyerere ‘estate’ (he was the first President of Tanzania and beloved by all Tanzanians for bringing Tanzania to independence in 1964), so we had a great time on our day off on Sunday being toured around his home, and visiting his museum, compliments of the manager, Nyerere’s son!

Sunday was also interesting as I went to a Catholic Sunday service for the first time in my life. The priest guy was a Westerner, which surprised me, but everything else was pretty Tanzanian. The choir was definitely the best I have ever heard since coming here, but I can’t say that I particularly like the whole incense thing and the very rigid service structure, though the sermon was good.

This blog post is getting pretty long now so I’ll just wrap up with a comment about the vowel testing I was doing on survey. This was a test where I asked about 4 to 6 people in each location about 10 pairs of words, whether they could tell the difference in the pronunciation, or whether the difference only could be told when it was said in a certain context. This proved more difficult to explain than I expected, and I realised just how used to all the language jargon I have become, and how difficult it must be for someone, who has never thought about vowels before, to tell me if the sounds in the word okuzuba and okuzoba are really different, or if they can’t hear the difference. Trying to explain, again and again, that I didn’t want them to explain the difference in use (one means to weed, the other to tiptoe) but the difference in the sounds, very nearly drove me to distraction every time I did it, but at least I could practically feel my patience growing as I tried to be patient and explain it just one more time!

Things take time in Africa

2009-04-19T06:29:00.000-07:00

I love living in Africa, but there are many things that I have had to learn to do here that I wouldn't have at home, due to the lack of availability of items or just differences of living here etc. I thought I'd enlighten you all on some of the differences between living in England and living in Africa.

Washing up - at the moment our kettle is broken, so we heat water on the stove for washing up which takes quite a while. If we were motivated enough, we could install a heater for our kitchen sink, but it does not come fitted in African houses.

Clothes - handwashing everything takes a while, which is why we are so grateful to our househelp Mama Nick for doing it as part of her job 3 days a week. Unfortunately we still have to handwash our own underwear, but it would be unfair to give it to Mama Nick!

Preparing food - rice has to be picked through to remove stones, fruit and vegetables have to be washed thoroughly in purified water, meat never comes perfectly packaged so has to be dealt with (again, a job of Mama Nick's), any pasta apart from the packaged shell/tube shapes has to be made by hand (yay for our pasta machine, makes lasagne sheets so much easier!).

Bread products - I have only ever seen plain white bread being sold here in Musoma (not very tasty stuff) so everything else we want has to be made: bagels, cinnamon buns, tortillas, chapattis, muffins and crumpets are some of the items we have mastered since being here in our house.

Other random jobs - filling our water filters to make sure we have a constant supply of clean water needs to be done regularly, and cleaning it every few weeks is a priority. Keeping 2 buckets and our 100l storage tank full is a priority too, as we never know when the water will go off and we'll have to start using stored water (up to 2 days sometimes).

To be honest, we are very blessed, both in our househelp (Mama Nick is a very lovely woman and very good at her job, havin worked for Westerners before) and in our landlord who helps us with many things which go wrong with our house. Our house in itself is wonderful, but I wonder how weird it will be to go back to drinking water out of a tap, and buying anything you could ever want prepackaged from a supermarket!

Easter week

2009-04-14T03:58:00.000-07:00

The past week has been a great one! Due to the Easter public holidays, and a Tanzanian holiday (7th April), I only needed to take 2 days off in order to have a whole week to spend with my guests. Only Saturday 4th my friends Amy and Rachel and Jonathan Morgan travelled the long journey from Dodoma to Musoma. I believe Jonathan drove the whole way with very few stops, quite a feat when the journey takes 11 ½ hours! They arrived safely, and dropped Amy off with us, as she was to spend the week with us in our house. Since then, we have had some great times, playing football with other missionary friends, watching films and visiting other people’s houses. I’ll just mention a few of those events, since we have been pretty busy!

On Wednesday 8th, we cooked up loads of good food and had a bunch of people round to our house for my birthday party. It was a really fun evening, despite the effort it took to prepare, and I even got brownie cake with 24 candles in it!

On Saturday, we made a big trip to Lukuba Island for the day. Our party included 15 adults and 6 kids, so was pretty big, yet we managed to arrive on time, even if the boat driver didn’t. The island was as relaxing as the last time I went, and the resort had even bought 2 canoes and a kayak since I last went in December, so we had a chance to float around on Lake Victoria as well as sit and sunbathe beside it. We saw huge monitor lizards as we drifted around the rocks near the resort, and lots of cool birds, though I have no idea what they were. The crossing back to the mainland was a bit more choppy, but we all made it safe and sound, and bid each other goodbye for the evening before we saw each other again the next day.

Sunday, being Easter Sunday, was our day for a special service where we gathered together for brunch, then worshipped in English and read from the Word. I tried my hand at hot cross buns, and they turned out reasonably well except for the burnt bottoms due to the stupid gas oven. The worship was really great. We generally don’t get that much chance to worship in English together, especially since Missionary Fellowship hasn’t happened for 2 months now, and it was really awesome to get that chance. We even had a small informal communion service, which was also a real blessing to take part in. I don’t think I have had communion since going to a Tanzanian church here in Musoma. I know that it would have been good to participate in a Swahili service, especially to show support of our church, but in order to really meditate on Easter, and all it means to us, it was definitely necessary to do it in English. I can understand so much better now how important the mother-tongue is when learning about, or worshipping, God.

So, it is back to work, but I am very thankful for having a week to relax before the madness of survey begins!

Kilimanjaro trek

2009-04-07T01:58:00.000-07:00

Trevor, Ruth, Eleanor, Julia and Hazel Gray are climbing Kilimanjaro in June to raise funds for Wycliffe Bible Translators. Please sponsor the Grays on their climb. Kilimanjaro is over 19,000 feet high and we start at around 4,000 so you can either sponsor a total amount or at so much per 1,000 feet - multiples of £1 suggested. The criterion of success will be if at least one member of the party gets to the top and we will try and bring back a photo to prove it if there is somebody up there to take it! If you are interested, please email me for any further details: mad_fish@hotmail.com

Funeral

2009-03-25T03:48:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity last Sunday to attend a Tanzanian funeral. As always with such things, it all came about pretty fast. I was expecting to go to church with a friend, since Rachel was away, and then on Saturday afternoon I was told by one of the translators, whom I happened to pass, that Rachel’s mum had died and they were burying her tomorrow. Naturally my first confused thought was, “How do you know that Rachel’s mum has died and I don’t?” I was confused and thinking of course of my housemate Rachel. As it turned out, my friend Rukia, whose other name is Rachel, but who I am used to addressing as Rukia, was the one he was talking about. I quickly changed my plans for going to church, and planned to go to Nyamuswa for the funeral, along with Misha and Johnny, two of my colleagues.

Funerals in Tanzania are, by necessity, arranged very quickly after the person has died, and I was amazed by the immense effort it must have been to provided everything, as there had to be in excess of 150 people there, whether family or friends, come to pay their respects and support the family. I really had a full-on introduction to the African way of grieving too, as people wrung their hands, or generally flapped them around, and wailed loudly. Apparently it is normal to make such a noise, even if you are not crying (which confused me at first) in order to show your support of those who were grieving a loved one. Rukia, by contrast, was very quiet in her grief and since I am used to her being very cheerful, it was really moving to see her so upset. I didn’t know her mother at all, but for Rukia and Kitaboka’s sake (Kitaboka is Rukia’s niece, so was granddaughter to the marehemu – the deceased) I was close to tears at various points, seeing their usually cheerful faces full of grief. The fact that I could understand some of the words that were said (in Ikizu) made it more moving. "Yiiya" (mother) was quite a frequent cry, and it was definitely a testimony to the power of the mother tongue as I really felt their grief when they said that word, more so, I believe, than if they had said the Swahili "mama".

The time we attended the funeral stretched from about 11.30 to 4.30. We began with a long stretch of sitting quietly as we occasionally greeted people and said “pole” (the best Swahili word that fits for any situation where you sympathise with someone, from them having a long day at work to having been bereaved) while watching people pass us to view the marehemu, often wailing loudly. I was very grateful for the loud music playing which covered the sound, as my Englishness couldn’t quite cope with such public wailing. We declined going to see the body, since we didn’t really know her, and were there mainly to support Rukia and Kitaboka, and sat waiting for things to start. Rukia sat with us for a good part of that, and I was selfishly grateful for her support of us as we sat uncertain of what was to come next. The service started properly around 1pm with a Roman Catholic looking priest saying some words and doing some readings. We joined in as much as possible, but often didn’t know the right responses. After that the women filed past the coffin, and then the men, leading off to where she would be buried. The family were last, and we followed the coffin around the house to where they started to mix concrete to bury her properly. We joined the list of people laying flowers on her grave (after the family members had all passed) and although I felt slightly embarrassed by the special attention, I was glad to do it for the sake of the family if they wanted us to. After the burial was a short time of speeches, beginning with a small mention of the life of the lady, Koleta Manyori (1933-2009); how many children she had, when she got married, etc. Misha made a short speech on behalf of our office crew, and then after the speeches we ate. During this whole time, Johnny, Misha and I were all sat up at the “front” with the family, which was again quite embarrassing. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the type of celebrity treatment that wazungu often get at Tanzanian functions.

I all too often forget, since it is quite a frequent occurence that someone has lost someone in their extended family (they all have pretty big families too, so a death of a relative is that much more likely), that although they may seem to get on with life as though not much has happened, there is a lot of grief over the passing. It may seem harsh to imagine that they don’t grieve as much just because they might be more used to the idea of life ending suddenly, but it is an easy one to form until you really see someone’s grief at the actual funeral. In many ways the Tanzanians are very obviously emotional, but at other times you really have to be on the “inner circle” of friends to be shown their real feelings; not so very different from English people then J.

Photos

2009-03-15T07:07:00.000-07:00

Just apologising for the lack of photos on my blog. For some weird reason I can never upload them, but I will keep trying!