A major thing that I have learned about Africans in general lately is that everything is used. You can buy anything used, shirts, pants, shoes, I am fairly certain you may even be able to buy underwear which really grosses me out but it is what it is. Let me set the scene of a typical shopping extravaganza for an African:
Picture a crowded alley way surrounded my little shanty's and the ground is naturally unpaved and therefore super dusty. You walk down said alley until you reach a huge opening with table after table of just heaps of clothes. Each table has one item whether it be shirts (tshirts on one table nice dress shirts on another) pants, sweaters, coats, etc. To find what you want you must dig through the piles upon piles of clothes to find the perfect item. Oh and why you are attempting to do these there are about 500 other people trying to get to the same pile of clothes and things are getting thrown everywhere, yet there seems to have some kind of system. A key point to this whole fun shopping trip is that the tables are in no way set to distinguish male and female clothes they are all thrown together, this is why i have found you will see grown men walking down the street in tshirts that are clearly made for women. Once you have settled on the winning item, you pay (bargaining naturally because they want to charge to much) and then you pay for your sack and take your coveted purchase home and wear it for the next three days straight to show it off.
Also in Africa Croc's have found new life. I have decided that the U.S and the rest of the world when the majority of the population realized how worthless crocs were gathered them all up and decided sending them to Africa would be a great idea. Everyone here wears some version of the God awful shoe. They LOVE these things they are their comfy after school shoe, or the walking to town shoe. I just do not understand it.
1990s style windbreaker neon tracksuits also a BIG draw here. They have whole stalls in the markets devoted to these great outfits, because every African male needs to be looking fresh in those fun pants and matching jacket. Before i leave here i will buy one of these just because i remember how much i loved mine back in 1994.
Now for the fun things i have learned this week
1. Big dadas(Swahili word meaning sister) always go for the small kakas( Swahili word for brother)- i learned this fun lesson from one of the other volunteers second headmaster last weekend when we were watching TV he informed us that being a small kaka he was scared of the big dadas.
2. My long hair apparently means i am rich- so this week there has been a lot of fuss about my hair at school and around. Last weekend at one point there were kids who kept touching it because they had never seen a white person with so much hair before and therefore wanted to touch it. Then at school my second headmaster and i were talking and he told me that it must be really expensive to have hair as long as mine. When i asked him why he said because I must have to put so much oil into it and that stuff isn't cheap. He could not believe me when i told him all i must do is shampoo and condition this hot mess.
3. Crayola markers are like gold to my students. I brought my bag full of markers to school to use in class and kids started flocking around me repeating the phrases "madam borrow me a marker" and "madam give me marker pen" all of this was said with the saddest looking faces possible for me to have pity on them which inevitably i did and let them borrow a marker to write on their books, then i became the most popular person at school, and i am pretty sure the other teachers were pissed, sucks for them.
I promise this weekend i will put pictures up because I am going to Mbeya, one of the pictures will def be of the chicken i sat next to on the bus for 4 hours last sunday, great expereince let me tell yah.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
the five things i elarned this week
Here are the five things I learned this week:
1. All white people are related- as I said in my last post we had other white people come to our school from the British non-profit Read International to tell our school we would be receiving new books for our library. This visit prompted much discussion among my fellow teachers and even the headmaster that would ultimately end with all white people are related. They refer ed to the three university students as our relatives and when we would try to explain to them otherwise we were told that in fact we were related and that was the end of that.
2. Tanzanians do not understand the concept of a water bottle- this week i finally received my packages from America!!!! and inside of them was a new water bottle because my other one had broken before i even left America. I started bringing it to school this week because I am always thirsty and was getting some really weird looks from the students and the teachers. Finally a teacher came up to me and said, "Madam are you drinking spirits?" In the class right after this question the students asked again as if it was no big deal if i was drinking alcohol? Apparently the only people who carry around water bottles are the drunks..Oops One teacher even confessed she thought it was perfume..The things they do not understand sometimes
3. Noodles with Ranch seasoning and a little water tastes like America. My package contained ranch dressing seasoning packets to make Ranch because clearly i cant go a year without that. Well I have come to find out that naturally I lack the ingredients to make Ranch dressing so all i am left with is the seasoning. IN a low point i decided to put some on my pasta and add a little water to make a roman noodle concoction if you will and low and behold it was Amazing!! tasted like pure America. I was happy
4. Africans find little people hilarious- I was desperate to watch some TV this week and on Thursdays at the school they watch TV so I decided to join after some students told me it was a good idea. I had no idea what i was in for. Picture about 150 people crowded in a room with a 26 inch TV straight out of 1994 being powered by a generator showing what looks like shows produced by high school production class. One of the shows featured a little person and every time he would come on the room went cray cray it was funny to watch them all freak out when they saw him. When i told some of the teachers about the show Little People Big World they were beside themselves.
5. You can always increase- after the phrase be free this is what i always here. They use it to refer to a coke, beer, food, time or really anything in general. My late friend Mr. Happy was notorious for using this phrase. Last Friday i was down in Isoko hanging out at the guest house/ bar/ lounge tha tin America on the inside would be considered a crack house but here is a fine establishment that plays gospel music videos and Tanzanian parliment. Anyway Happy and i were hanging out and he was buying me coke after coke informing me when I finished one that there were plenty and i must increase I could not possibly be full. Six big cokes later I finally managed to stop the madness only after being informed that I could alwasy increase with one for the walk home. I kindly declined and was about to set off for home when he infomred me that I must have an escoourt or two because again you can alwasy increase and walking alone all that way would make me lonely.
That is all for now because I do not have very much battery left on my computer I am going to update again this weekend with details from the Tanzanian funeral I sadly had to attend this week for my friend Mr. Happy.
1. All white people are related- as I said in my last post we had other white people come to our school from the British non-profit Read International to tell our school we would be receiving new books for our library. This visit prompted much discussion among my fellow teachers and even the headmaster that would ultimately end with all white people are related. They refer ed to the three university students as our relatives and when we would try to explain to them otherwise we were told that in fact we were related and that was the end of that.
2. Tanzanians do not understand the concept of a water bottle- this week i finally received my packages from America!!!! and inside of them was a new water bottle because my other one had broken before i even left America. I started bringing it to school this week because I am always thirsty and was getting some really weird looks from the students and the teachers. Finally a teacher came up to me and said, "Madam are you drinking spirits?" In the class right after this question the students asked again as if it was no big deal if i was drinking alcohol? Apparently the only people who carry around water bottles are the drunks..Oops One teacher even confessed she thought it was perfume..The things they do not understand sometimes
3. Noodles with Ranch seasoning and a little water tastes like America. My package contained ranch dressing seasoning packets to make Ranch because clearly i cant go a year without that. Well I have come to find out that naturally I lack the ingredients to make Ranch dressing so all i am left with is the seasoning. IN a low point i decided to put some on my pasta and add a little water to make a roman noodle concoction if you will and low and behold it was Amazing!! tasted like pure America. I was happy
4. Africans find little people hilarious- I was desperate to watch some TV this week and on Thursdays at the school they watch TV so I decided to join after some students told me it was a good idea. I had no idea what i was in for. Picture about 150 people crowded in a room with a 26 inch TV straight out of 1994 being powered by a generator showing what looks like shows produced by high school production class. One of the shows featured a little person and every time he would come on the room went cray cray it was funny to watch them all freak out when they saw him. When i told some of the teachers about the show Little People Big World they were beside themselves.
5. You can always increase- after the phrase be free this is what i always here. They use it to refer to a coke, beer, food, time or really anything in general. My late friend Mr. Happy was notorious for using this phrase. Last Friday i was down in Isoko hanging out at the guest house/ bar/ lounge tha tin America on the inside would be considered a crack house but here is a fine establishment that plays gospel music videos and Tanzanian parliment. Anyway Happy and i were hanging out and he was buying me coke after coke informing me when I finished one that there were plenty and i must increase I could not possibly be full. Six big cokes later I finally managed to stop the madness only after being informed that I could alwasy increase with one for the walk home. I kindly declined and was about to set off for home when he infomred me that I must have an escoourt or two because again you can alwasy increase and walking alone all that way would make me lonely.
That is all for now because I do not have very much battery left on my computer I am going to update again this weekend with details from the Tanzanian funeral I sadly had to attend this week for my friend Mr. Happy.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
three countries, one weekend
So sorry it has been a week since I last updated the generator at the school that we used to charge our computers over night has been broken and walking 45 minutes into town and 45 minutes back just hasn’t sounded like much fun. Where to start, well this past weekend was Nane Nane which is a big holiday for the farmers which basically meant we got Monday off of school. With the long weekend my roommate and I as well as our fellow volunteers 2 hours away were planning on going to Matema which is on Lake Malawi with my driver friend, but he had a death in the family and therefore we were stuck with public transportation and decided to go to Tunduma which is the Tanzanian boarder town with Zambia.
This fun adventured entailed another morning of walking up at 4 am and walking down the mountain to stand on the side of the road until a bus comes out of nowhere Harry Potter style to pick you up. The bus looked exactly like the one from my first post and was crowded with 17 people, luckily we got the front row and only had to sit next to a lady with a live chicken in a basket. When we arrived 4 hours later in Tunduma we met our friends and checked into our hotel the High Class hotel. Let me tell you this place was classy. There was crown molding around the ceiling and a television in our room that had English channels,a real toilet, needless to say I was happy.
In Tunduma because it is a boarder town there are so many Zambian people just hanging around. We were on hunt for pinapple because we heard you could get it there and ended up finding two Zambian guys who escorted us around town all day. At one point we asked about the internet and found out that in Tunduma the power had been cut all day so they suggested we go to Zambia because they had power. It sounded like a good idea so we went. This boarder crossing was like nothing I ahd experienced before in that there were no people with guns standing around nobody even questioned what we were doing, it was on the sketch side but hey its Africa. The rest of the time in Tunduma was spent getting charged a crazy amount by the venders because we were muzungu’s (literally translated it means white person, so very racist.The kids here shout it at me when I walk by, I am beginning to hate it) On Sunday we decided to go back to Isongole to stay with our friends and see what their town was like.
Nicole one of the volunteers has to bike to school everyday and suggested we go to town when we got to their house to see what was going on. Her and I got on the bikes and everything was going fine until my skirt got caught in the chain and literally almost ripped right off me. Two guys on a motorcycle had to stop and help me. I decided to ride the rest of the way into town and have Nicole buy me some fabric to wrap up in (thank god for kangas). I should have known it would happen I mean really that kind of stuff happens to me. In town I get to meet some of her fellow teachers one of which is deadest on coming to American and marrying a blonde girl from Tennessee, I told him to shoot for the moon with that one. He also wanted us to go to Malawi which we decided why not lets go it was only another 20 minute bike ride. At this boarder crossing they actually had men with guns but again we did not have to show any form of identification, I am still confused about it all.
This week also marks the two month mark I have been in Africa and at this point I feel like I
have really culturally assimilated because of the following reasons:
Today I spent an hour sweeping dirt in my compound
I have no problems dirnking warm/ hot beer
walking 45 mintues jsut to get said warm/ hot beer is something i look forward to
I have come to accept eating with my hands/prefer it because then washing the dishes takes less time
When I see other white people I freak out and refer to them as muzungu’s
I have almost successfully mastered the art of taking a bucket shower and getting all the shampoo out of my hair
Sitting on a bus that was made for 6 people max and craming 15-20 people, chickens, babies, and massive sacks of grain no longer bothers me
And lastly I may or may not have some fun parasite but am not even bothered by it
These are just a few of the things that I have decided make me truly African
Everything else is going great I now only teach 2 classes because of all the student teachers and this week in honor of work week at Arkansas I made the kids learn the lyrics to she was a top tri delt rushee and then filmed them….they loved it they also saw pictures from America on my camera and made fun of my nike shorts . I will post pictures soon I promise
This fun adventured entailed another morning of walking up at 4 am and walking down the mountain to stand on the side of the road until a bus comes out of nowhere Harry Potter style to pick you up. The bus looked exactly like the one from my first post and was crowded with 17 people, luckily we got the front row and only had to sit next to a lady with a live chicken in a basket. When we arrived 4 hours later in Tunduma we met our friends and checked into our hotel the High Class hotel. Let me tell you this place was classy. There was crown molding around the ceiling and a television in our room that had English channels,a real toilet, needless to say I was happy.
In Tunduma because it is a boarder town there are so many Zambian people just hanging around. We were on hunt for pinapple because we heard you could get it there and ended up finding two Zambian guys who escorted us around town all day. At one point we asked about the internet and found out that in Tunduma the power had been cut all day so they suggested we go to Zambia because they had power. It sounded like a good idea so we went. This boarder crossing was like nothing I ahd experienced before in that there were no people with guns standing around nobody even questioned what we were doing, it was on the sketch side but hey its Africa. The rest of the time in Tunduma was spent getting charged a crazy amount by the venders because we were muzungu’s (literally translated it means white person, so very racist.The kids here shout it at me when I walk by, I am beginning to hate it) On Sunday we decided to go back to Isongole to stay with our friends and see what their town was like.
Nicole one of the volunteers has to bike to school everyday and suggested we go to town when we got to their house to see what was going on. Her and I got on the bikes and everything was going fine until my skirt got caught in the chain and literally almost ripped right off me. Two guys on a motorcycle had to stop and help me. I decided to ride the rest of the way into town and have Nicole buy me some fabric to wrap up in (thank god for kangas). I should have known it would happen I mean really that kind of stuff happens to me. In town I get to meet some of her fellow teachers one of which is deadest on coming to American and marrying a blonde girl from Tennessee, I told him to shoot for the moon with that one. He also wanted us to go to Malawi which we decided why not lets go it was only another 20 minute bike ride. At this boarder crossing they actually had men with guns but again we did not have to show any form of identification, I am still confused about it all.
This week also marks the two month mark I have been in Africa and at this point I feel like I
have really culturally assimilated because of the following reasons:
Today I spent an hour sweeping dirt in my compound
I have no problems dirnking warm/ hot beer
walking 45 mintues jsut to get said warm/ hot beer is something i look forward to
I have come to accept eating with my hands/prefer it because then washing the dishes takes less time
When I see other white people I freak out and refer to them as muzungu’s
I have almost successfully mastered the art of taking a bucket shower and getting all the shampoo out of my hair
Sitting on a bus that was made for 6 people max and craming 15-20 people, chickens, babies, and massive sacks of grain no longer bothers me
And lastly I may or may not have some fun parasite but am not even bothered by it
These are just a few of the things that I have decided make me truly African
Everything else is going great I now only teach 2 classes because of all the student teachers and this week in honor of work week at Arkansas I made the kids learn the lyrics to she was a top tri delt rushee and then filmed them….they loved it they also saw pictures from America on my camera and made fun of my nike shorts . I will post pictures soon I promise
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