Tanzi and Zanzi

Yesterday I arrived back from my first African vacation. The usual three week break after the first term of school had been shortened to two weeks after a late start at the beginning of the year due to English teacher training. Three of my fellow teachers and I had been planning a trip to Tanzania and as we hit the 3 month mark in Rwanda, the cultural “W-curve” had chewed us up and was primed to spit us out full force in a general eastern direction. After making our way down to the border town of Rusumo, Rwanda where Kyle, a fellow WorldTeach volunteer is placed, we crossed the border into Tanzania with high spirits. About a quarter of our time during the two weeks was spent on a Tanzanian bus. I’ll spare most of the details, but say that this experience should have been more maddening than it was. It should have been downright insufferable, but the good company, healthy senses of humor and built up excitement kept us going with minimal frustration until about the last 24 hours which were agonizing enough to make Dante’s 5th circle.

The first night we stayed over in Kahama, a medium sized town in Eastern Tanzania where we discovered Pineapple Fanta and got decent hostel rooms for less than $3 a person. Couple this with roasted corn that you could buy and eat in public (faux pas in Rwanda) and we were sure that Tanzania was the best place on earth. The next night we arrived in Moshi. We stayed there for three nights mostly because of the shower. It was the first time since Christmas that we had had a hot running shower from a shower head that was mounted on the wall. I’m restraining myself from talking about this shower more, really I could dedicate a whole blog to it, but I’ll just say that my travel buddy Joanna described it as manna from heaven. Accurate description. One of the days in Moshi we went on a hike at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro led by some local guides that we had befriended at the market the day before. We watched some men making Masaai spears without any modern equipment (they use them to kill lions, a feat the young men have to perform as a group before they can marry). Our tour-guide friends also brought us to some caves that had recently been discovered where 300 years ago a local tribe hid while they were warring with the Masaai. We had a local banana stew for lunch and were shown how to make coffee straight from the tree. In the afternoon, they took us to a huge waterfall where we swam and cooled off after the hot walk in the sun.

The next day we made our way to Dar es Salaam where all longings for a hot shower were sweated out. We spent two nights here and I was able to connect with Crystal, a friend I had worked at summer camp with several years ago who is a teacher in Dar, and also Gayo, (a close friend of Jerry and Ann Martin’s). After all of the miles we had logged on the road, we were finally ready for the main event: Zanzibar. Zanzibar is the island paradise off the coast of Tanzania, about a two hour ferry ride into the Indian Ocean. It has thick Arabic roots and the main town, Stonetown is reminiscent of scenes from Aladdin. The first night there, we enjoyed a dinner at the park at the harbor. Zanzibaris set up booths where they sell skewers of every kind of seafood imaginable. We sampled everything from mussels to shark. My favorite was the marlin. They also sold banana and chocolate Zanzibar pizzas: bananas rolled up in fried dough with nutella and chocolate syrup on top…mmm. To drink, we bought sugar cane juice. Using a wringer (like they have in old swimming pool locker rooms) they ran the sugar cane through several times, bending it in half and wringing again. To this they added some lemon juice and possible a little ginger. I hope my dentist never knows how many of those I drank.

The next day we took a bus north, got off at an unknown place and wandered towards the beach to find a place to stay. We ended up meandering onto a resort that was partially owned by an American lawyer who used to help with the Arusha trials (the Rwandan genocide trials). Her daughter was there running the place and the fact that we were volunteering in Rwanda and the fact that we arrived smack in the middle of low tourist season landed us bungalow beds for $10 a night with an almost private beach and restaurant. The next four days were spent in a reverie of island paradise. We kept waiting for the whole scene to be sucked back up into a travel magazine.

But even so, we all began to miss our respective homes and were ready to head back when the time came. So, we packed up our things and waved over an open dalla-dalla (mini-bus) to take us back to Stonetown. The ride was a little over an hour long and started out fine, but after about 15minutes, the wooden benches started filling up fast. There is a game that we used to play at camp and college events called Chubby Bunny. You stuff jumbo marshmallows in your mouth and say “chubby bunny” after putting each one in. You see how many you can put in until one falls out. Tanzanian dalla-dallas work on basically the same principal. When you look in an empty one, you’d expect maybe 12 people to fit inside. We had 18 people crammed in, several of whom were crouched in the 12 inches of aisle between the benches.

We pull over. One person gets off. Four people get on. Chubby bunny. We drive for two minutes. Two more people get on. Chubby bunny. Two more minutes of driving. A woman gets on with her daughter. Chubby bunny. Another stop. Someone gets off, three more get on. Chubby Bunny. At this point, several people are on the lap of someone else and three men are hanging out the back end holding onto the roof.

It has begun to rain and the blue tarps hanging from the top to cover the open sides are only doing half the job of keeping us dry. Across from me are sitting two Muslim women. One wearing a bright peach colored head covering and another in the full black facial covering. Her eyes the only thing showing. We have been looking at each other for the past half hour, mildly checking each other out. No judgments are made, but when the differences in appearance are so obvious, you just can’t help but stare inconspicuously. The dalla-dalla stops and the guy at the back taking the money points to me and the farmer next to me to signal to the man getting on that he should sit there. We both squish into the people next to us to make 10 inches or so of space for the new passenger and his briefcase to squeeze into. Somehow the laws of space are defied and he manages to fit. Five minutes later we pull over and someone gets off, so the man moves. Ah, sweet relief. A few hundred meters and we stop again. An average sized woman is signaled to sit in the recently vacated space. “This won’t be as bad though,” I think, since she is smaller than the man. I exchange empty glances with the women across from me.

But I had forgotten that women have hips. This new passenger couldn’t make it quite onto the seat, so she was half tilted with part of her weight on my left leg which soon went numb. A few minutes later a seat opened up and she moved. But low and behold, in the same turn, someone else was waiting to get in. I tried not to let my jaw drop as my attention was turned to the person waiting to take her spot. This man was closing in on 350 pounds. There was no way that he was going to fit in this packed truck (by this time there were 29 people loaded in). But, just like Chubby Bunny, you don’t stop stuffing things in until something falls out. So in he came. This giant of a man squeezed himself in the back doorway, side stepped the woman perched on a bag of coconuts, and proceeded to lower himself onto the few inches next to me on the bench. But no part of him actually reached the bench. He was suspended above it by my lap on one side and another person’s lap on the other. Joanna and I were trying not to be rude and stifling our bafflement when we looked over and saw the two ladies across from me trying to hide giggles. Soon Jo and I were snickering along with them. The laughter slowly augmented as we realized the hilarity of the whole situation. The woman in peach was covering her mouth with one hand and pointing at me with the other. And through her veil, I could tell by the other women’s eyes that she was barely holding herself together from laughing. If the four of us hadn’t been wedged in so tightly, we would have been on the floor we were laughing so hard. We sat there shaking silently, communing in a sauna of hot moist laughter.

This ride was the beginning of 72 hours of mostly sitting on a seat on various modes of transportation, an experience I’m not eager to repeat anytime soon. After an adventurous 2 weeks, I was surprised to find that I was overflowing with joy to return to Rwanda. Crossing the bridge onto Rwandan soil, I wanted to bend down and kiss the ground and shower “Mwirirwe”’s on everyone within earshot. Our first night in Tanzania, a shop owner asked us why we wanted to go live in Rwanda. ‘Why didn’t you come to Tanzania?” he asked. “Rwanda is very dangerous, they are killing each other over there.” We explained to him that Rwanda is peaceful now but couldn’t quite answer the question of why we liked living there. In fact, for a moment we even questioned among ourselves whether we actually did like living there. (Effects of W-curve mastication). But seeing the green Rwandan hills again after the absence I felt absolutely sure that this is where I want to be. Although I’m not quite sure why yet, nor am I sure that it is for the same reasons that I wanted to come in the first place. On the bus ride back to Kigali, I filled the 3 hours by composing a poem. Something I haven’t done since high school. Here it is:

Hot showers are pleasant and beaches are nice,
Food that’s not bland, full of Zanzibar spice.
But while exotic Masaai and Mt. Kili’s heights
Are salve for the wounds of the travel bug’s bites,
Green amahoro hills in this new home of mine
Are a sight and a sound for sore ears and sore eyes.

The whole trip was fantastic, rough rides and all, but the major success of this vacation: wanting to return when it was all over.

Dinner with the Fathers

Last week, Katy and I were invited over to the priests' house for dinner. There are four fathers that live in the compound attached to the huge church down the road from us. To get there, it is about a 15 minute walk around to the other side of the valley. The views of the mountains and the level ground make it a very pleasant walk. Our first visit with the fathers several weeks before had left us eager to go back again, mostly because of the good company, but also because we knew we would get a good meal with meat and Fanta or beer on the menu. This was a welcome change to the lonely, meatless, beverageless meals we normally have that.

The first part of our visits are spent in the priests' sitting room with Father Charles. The room is crowded with several cushioned couches and chairs, covered in leopard print material, each back draped with a lace fringed, doily, embroidered with bright pink flowers. On the walls are four large faded prints, two South American looking Madonnas, one very Caucasian Jesus, and a scene of an African Jesus and a few of his disciples. They also have a TV! (we've been told that we'll be invited over to watch World Cup games with them!!) This time, we were also joined by the household cat…Pusi. (The Kinyarwanda word for cat is ipusi and every cat I've ever heard of here has the name Pusi). Katy and I are both animal lovers and were giving the cat a lot of attention. While we were talking, she jumped up on my lap, made a little nest in my skirt, and curled up to receive some loving. Father Charles thought it was the funniest thing ever. "It is your baby!" he said, "now it will not like me anymore!" Apparently the cats here are all really friendly and like to attach themselves to people. My friend Emma's headmaster, Father Jean-Claude is followed around everywhere by the cat that lives at their house. When he teaches, it follows him into the classroom. Emma said that one day he left after teaching and the cat got shut in the classroom while she was teaching. It kept clawing at the window until 15 minutes later when Father Jean-Claude stuck his head in the door. "Come on Pusi," he said. The cat bounded over, slipped out the door and happily pranced behind the headmaster as he went about his business.

On this visit, we sat for about an hour or two, trying to keep up with the Fantas that were set before us. After this they announced that dinner was ready. By this time, the other fathers had arrived. We still aren't very well acquainted with two of the priests, but we are very close with Father Charles and had recently met Father Bonadventure (on our ride down to Mukinga). Father Bonadventure is just about the jolliest person that I've ever met. He laughs like Santa…bowl full of jelly and all. He's always smiling and if Rwandans could have rosy cheeks, his would be the roundest and rosiest of all.

But it is Father Charles that Katy and I adore. He is one of the first people that we met at Rwaza. While waiting for dinner, we told him about an assignment that Sister Blandine had given her religion class. She asked them to draw a picture of God. At first the students protested. "You cannot draw a picture of God!" they said. "He is everywhere and you can't know what he looks like." Sister Blandine explained that God can look like different things to different people at different times. "You might see God when you look at a flower, or a friend" she said. When we told Father Charles this, he said "I would draw a kind Father. He would have a gray beard and he would be very caring and have his hands out towards his children." That statement is about the only description that you need of Father Charles. Minus the gray beard. He is young, he has only been a priest for 2 years and Rwaza is his first placement. He calls the 570 girls at Rwaza his daughters, and essentially that is what they are. They only get to see their families a few weeks out of the school year, but he acts as their father while they are here. He joins in with the basketball and volleyball teams while they practice. It's the same image as an American father tossing the ball with his children on the front lawn. Whenever he comes to the school, he always stops by the classrooms to talk with the students. He gives them hugs, jokes with them, and asks about their studies and families and problems. On Saturday evenings he brings over a movie to play on the sheet/screen in the theatre. This is a treat that most secondary students don't get to enjoy, but Father Charles believes in having some pleasure mixed in with work. In a culture where the feelings and thoughts of children are rarely considered by adults, Father Charles is a rarity.

One of the main topics over dinner was when we will next be able to visit with Father Charles. He has been at Rwaza for almost two years, and for a new priest, that is a long time to stay in one spot. He was informed a few weeks ago that he will be transferred to a parish in Kigali. None of his "daughters" know yet that he is leaving; he will wait to tell them until after their exams are finished. When Katy and I told him that we were upset that he was leaving, he said, "yes, it is sad, but I will be going to a place where I am needed. And it is better that when you leave people cry rather than rejoice." I think that this is probably a pretty good proverb to live by. Katy and I are making that our motto for our time in Rwaza. We're hoping for tears rather than cheers at our absence. One of our first steps towards this will be to try and fill the place that Father Charles will leave. They're big shoes to fill.