Oh Otavalo!

Lost in Translation
Last week kicked off with a “superbowl” type soccer game between the two biggest cities in Ecuador, Quito and Guayaquil. Everyone in Otavalo had on the jerseys of their favorite team in preparation for the big game; Marco and the family are big Quito fans. We watched the game at the house last Sunday afternoon, and unfortunately Quito lost pretty miserably. When the game ended in the early evening, Marco decided to cheer himself up by showing us his collection of American music videos. He kept pulling more and more DVDs out of the cabinet and we went meticulously through every song ever written in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. The two of us egged him on, and it was funny to watch Marco rock out to Roxette, Cindy Lauper, Bon Jovi, and Bryan Adams, with a thick Spanish accent. It turned into a 4-hour long 5-person dance party at the house, culminating with a Michael Jackson anthology, and teaching little Marquito a feeble rendition of the moonwalk. It was BAD!

The impromptu dance party was an awkward beginning to an awkward week. It’s taken us this long to realize that we’ve been on the wrong side of the language barrier for some time. This is more of a predicament for Rob, particularly because he has about 18 days of Spanish experience. We’ve realized that he’s having a slightly different experience than Emily is here. For example, last week when the family visited the cemetery on the Day of the Dead, Rob asked Emily, “Is this the grave of Marco’s mother? “ Emily told Rob, “No, Abuelita is Marco’s mother….she’s standing right next to you.” Whooops!

In fumbling with the language, we have come to appreciate how only slight variations in pronunciations of some Spanish words can make a huge difference in meaning. For brevity’s sake, the highlights in English are: fear = poop, fork = bullfighter, sister = beautiful, moth = gay, 3609 = 100 testicles, etc. Needless to say we’ve been accidentally making the family laugh pretty consistently. In another example, Marquito tried to bridge the language barrier himself. We were on a hike to a beautiful waterfall, which Rob described as “sister,” and Marquito was trying to explain something to us. He wanted to get a word across and tried the English word “downhill” several times. With his thick accent, it sounded more like “Dohn-hkee.” Emily, trying hard to understand, started going “EEEEEEE-AWWWWW, EEEEEEE-AWWWWW!” ….like a donkey. Marco was totally confused, and likely a little afraid. Eventually we got that all cleared up, but now we use “EEEEEEEEE-AWWWWWWW” whenever we don’t understand something in Spanish, which unfortunately for us, is pretty often.

Ecu-Wah-Duh?
The awkwardness continued right into the week. After somewhat of a rocky start, we had been enjoying teaching the children at school. However, our frustration with the system grew and came to a head on Wednesday of our second week. As per usual, as soon as we got into the classroom, the teachers decided to take their break in the courtyard. In one class specifically, the kids were out of control and we felt almost defeated. In addition to the discipline problems with some children, we felt like the classes in general didn’t have much direction in their curriculum and we certainly weren’t giving the students any really meaningful lessons. It was hard for us to rationalize why we came all this way to this hole-in-the-wall place if we weren’t doing anything more than just “filling in” for a teacher’s break.

Towards the end of the school day, we were glad to have an unusual distraction. Most of the school went across the street to see a one-tent circus run by a vagabond family. The “Circo Illusions!” was exactly what it advertised . . . the illusion of a circus. The clown made five children cry and the trapeze swinger, wearing a skimpy half-sparkly outfit, was 40lbs overweight. It was the best and worst 25 cents we’ve ever spent.

After that frustrating Wednesday, we took the afternoon to walk around Otavalo town. We felt like we weren’t making the kind of impact we wanted to, and decided to focus our efforts on two specific projects for the school: construction of a big mural near the front gate and a school-wide assembly to sing the Numbers Song and the Food Song.

Goooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllls!
As soon as we established these goals, we began moving the school towards them. The immediate response by the students and teachers was amazing and almost instantaneous. Everyone was excited about memorizing the words to the songs, which were in Spanish, English, and Quechua (the indigenous Andean language) and the prospect of singing it together with all classes.

The mural started as a curiosity, but everyone, even Senor Pancho was eager to scrape old paint, clean the wall, and help in any way they could. The design incorporated symbols of Otavalo and Ecuador as well as the hand-prints of all the students at the school. This became an obsession with the children, who clamored to dip their hands in paint and stamp their contribution on the wall.

Throughout each day we’ve noticed some children walk up to the wall and place their hands over some of the prints. We’ve overheard kids talking to each other, “That one’s mine!” and “Mine is green” for example. It’s also cool when kids walk by singing the Food Song in one of three languages. It’s amazing how injecting a sense of purpose, no matter how small, can have such a big impact.

Anniversario Numero Uno
At the school, the seventh grade with Teacher Liliana is our favorite class. Last Monday they invited us on a hike, which apparently is their substitute for gym class. They asked Rob if he could take his guitar and he agreed, although he didn’t realize the hike was going to be an hour’s walk through goat trails up a steep hill.

At the top we could see all of Otavalo and up and down the valley between the volcanoes, and we sang some songs. It was very “the hills are alive with the sound of music.”

The next day the same class surprised us with gifts for our first wedding anniversary. They gave us two dozen red roses with heart-shaped cards written carefully in English. Then all the students paraded by and gave us 31 individual hugs. It was “super bueno.”

Not to be outdone by a single class, the rest of the teachers rallied and put together a pizza and Fanta party for us after school. Afterwards, they also paraded by us, but mostly just to give us congratulatory smiles and handshakes.

We left school and walked back to the house, a mile up the hill. Abuelita was getting the rest of the family together to take us out for a celebratory lunch of fried guinea pig. We were both curious about fried guinea pig and we quickly discovered that it’s exactly what it sounds like. It appears they fry them in the same way you boil a lobster – you just throw them in the pot. The meat itself didn’t taste much different than chicken, but the little claws kept clinging to the edge of the plate and the beady little eyes never blinked, but seemed like they could. Rob’s guinea pig still had some hair on it. Marco ate everything but the eyes. Happy anniversary to us! Yikes!

Farewells
The culmination of our three weeks at the school was incredible. On Thursday we had the whole school sing the two songs together before dismissal. Everyone, kids, parents, and teachers alike were so stoked about it that we did the whole program two times in a row. We even decided to do an encore the following day.

On Friday, our last day at the school, we sang the songs again and more parents showed up to watch. The children were so excited, so loud, and sang so well in all three languages. They even asked the two of us to sing the Food Song in Swahili for them before we finished all together with a thundering rendition in Spanish. After the songs were through, the teachers put chairs out for us among all the children, who stood up and read “good-bye” messages to us in English. Throughout the whole day children had been running up to us and giving us gifts. The indigenous people here are famous for their craftsmanship, so a lot of the gifts were many of the things we saw in the market. They gave us bracelets, necklaces, belts, panpipes, woven pocketbooks, and even two knitted sweaters. Many of the kids also drew us pictures on scrap paper or cardboard and somebody gave us a framed embroidery (which had obviously been hanging up in their home). They seemed to give us anything and everything they could, including pictures of themselves and their families. We even got four ice cream cones (which is an awkward going-away gift), and a little girl gave Emily a Whinny-the-Pooh doll with no arms. It was an unbelievable shower of gifts, and humbling to say the least.

After the last gifts, we took a picture with everyone in front of the mural, which is right inside the front gate. The kids were slow to leave, each insisting on a big hug from both of us. Some snuck in for two or three hugs; the individual record was a little girl who got 12 hugs from Rob in 20 minutes.

After the kids left we packed up our gifts and hiked back to the house for our last lunch with the family. In the afternoon we went back to the school to put some final touches on the mural and put our own hand prints in the bottom corner. As we walked out of the school for the last time we were overwhelmed by the generosity of the children and were glad to have been able to give something in return.

Volunteering In Ecuador

Arriving in Ecuador
“Emily Y Roberto” was on the sign for us in the airport. Mariana was waiting for us outside baggage claim with her adopted nine-year old daughter, Joanna. We arrived just after 8 pm in Quito and found that at 9,500 feet, in the second-highest capital city in the world, our luggage seemed extra heavy. Nevertheless, Joanna rushed up to us, gave each of us a hug, and then pulled the guitar case from Rob’s hand. Marianna led us to the parking lot, and Joanna was out front straining to keep the guitar case off the ground and banging it with her knees as she marched along.

Marianna is the chief coordinator for a wide range of volunteer programs in Ecuador. We stayed at her house for the first two nights and learned a little about her background. Mariana’s story began in a little city outside Quito where she grew up. She married a man who worked for Marriott Hotels and they began their life together by moving to Chicago, of all places. Mariana took a job as a cocktail waitress, and made “mucho” money over the course of ten years. She and her husband also worked for a short time in Las Vegas and Hawaii before moving back to Quito. After more than a decade in the US, they had both caught “disco fever” and were determined to import the party to Ecuador. For the next 15 years they opened and closed 4 different disco clubs, including one with a space-alien theme called “UFO.” Mariana spoke about those years with such a smile, and she said the best part about it was that she got to know all the important people in the city. Unfortunately, though, the fame went to her husband’s head and it ultimately destroyed their marriage.

Four years ago, Mariana was offered a job as a project coordinator for volunteer programs. She decided to capitalize on her broad network of friends to connect volunteers to non-profit programs. She told us, “I already have my house. I have everything I need. So now all I get I give to people who need it.” This was not a surprise to us because she apparently did have everything she needs. She lives in a beautiful house on a slope overlooking Quito and the volcanoes beyond. Her house is filled with trinkets and memorabilia, and most notably the walls are decorated with pictures of her “back when she was beautiful,” as she kept telling us. She’s an interesting character and cute little Joanna is her perfect sidekick.

Our first full day in Ecuador was a busy one. We started the day with a tour of old-town Quito, complete with climbing a steeple at the basilica and walking around the park in front of Ecuador’s “White House.”

In the afternoon, Mariana took us to a family reunion in a poor section of the city’s outskirts. There must have been forty people there of all ages, not including us “gringos.” Rob found that though he couldn’t speak any Spanish, he could speak volleyball; and played for three straight hours despite the altitude. Emily, on the other hand, is very good at Spanish and was able to goof around with the litter of kids in the yard. We finished the evening with a feeble rendition of “Hotel California” on Rob’s guitar. We discovered that English or Spanish skills don’t matter if nobody knows the words. We were obscure guests, but had a great time.

On our second day in Ecuador, we took a two hour bus ride north to Otavalo. Mariana’s 24-year-old son, Miguel, escorted us to ensure we linked up with our host family. The drive was exceptionally beautiful, the bus winded its way along a steep gorge and past dizzying volcanic peaks. Using broken Spanish and pantomime, Emily and Miguel conversed the whole way to Otavalo, discussing everything from controversial American politics to Miguel’s fascination with Colombian boobies.
Otavalo & The Family
We arrived in Otavalo in the early afternoon. It´s a cozy city of 52,000 people nestled in a valley between the giant snow-capped volcanoes called Imbabura and Cotacachi. We´re right in the middle of the rainy season now, so the mornings have been typically clear and then cloudy and wet for most of the afternoons. Almost all of Otavalo´s streets and sidewalks are cobbled, presumably to let all the rain seep through the cracks. Everything about the little town is, in fact, little. The roads are barely wide enough for modern vehicles, the streetlights aren´t much taller than Rob, and the doorways are short and narrow. We knew before we arrived that Otavalo is famous for being an indigenous city with native Andean people. It didn´t take us long to realize that “the Indigenous” as they´re called, have an average height of 4ft something. They´re absolutely tiny!

Before we left Quito, Mariana told us that our host family was “very generous” and they had a “beautiful house.” Despite these warnings, however, the two of us were unprepared for our first impression of the Rubio family. The father, Marco, picked us up at the bus station in a brand-new Suzuki 4x4 SUV. He took us to his house on the north end of Otavalo. “Mi casa es su casa,” he told us as we pulled into his gated driveway. The house was astonishingly beautiful, with shiny floors, plush furniture, and hard-wood everything. There was even a giant fish tank underneath the spiral staircase, brimming with goldfish. We got settled in the guest room upstairs, had a big lunch in the dining room, and then played pool and ping pong on the back patio. It was not at all what we were expecting.

Mariana was right, though. The family is very generous. They’ve been hosting volunteers for the last four years. The two of us had already made the assumption that any family who was willing to host complete strangers for weeks and sometimes months at a time would likely have a certain level of decency about them. We were happy to find that the Rubio family really is very nice.

Marco is a teacher at a private high school on the other side of the Lake San Pablo, at the base of Imbabura. He teaches world and national history, and has peculiar work hours. He leaves for work at 7am every day, comes home for lunch, and then teaches again at night from six to eight. He’s very friendly and knows a lot of English. Unfortunately, however, he almost never uses it and insists that we only speak Spanish. We think he just likes to watch us flail around with charades before he eventually helps us get our point across.

Marco’s wife is Yoli, and she is definitely the extrovert. She also is a dentist and works the same peculiar hours as Marco. She loves to talk, and makes huge lunches for the family, but is very self conscious about being overweight, which she’s not. She eats only a little at each meal, but insists that Emily eat everything on her plate, which is funny, but not cool with Emily. A game has developed where Emily sneaks food onto Rob’s plate when Yoli isn’t looking. This makes Marco and the rest of the family laugh and they join in the running joke.

Abuelita, or “Grandma,” is Marco’s mother. Her husband has been sick for almost a year in a hospital in Quito, and so she’s living at the house with the family. She is just under 5 feet tall, loves to knit, and has 10 children. Abuelita doesn’t know a single word of English, but is very patient and enjoys visiting with us in the evenings when Marco and Yoli are at work.

Carlos is Marco and Yoli’s eldest son. He’ll be 15 this month, and he’s polite and respectful. He is, however, somewhat reclusive with us, but is always out with his friends. Recently he’s been trying out a new “punk” hairdo, which has caused some controversy with his parents. We can’t understand Spanish when it’s spoken that fast, but we know that Marco and Yoli don’t like the idea of a mohawk. In Otavalo’s famous October 31st Parade, we saw Carlos perform really well as the lead baton twirler (which in Ecuador is more masculine than you think). His blue uniform, golden epaulettes, and feathery baton were a stark contrast to his punk alter ego.

Marco Junior, or “Marquito,” is the youngest son at 11 years old. He’s the human equivalent of a baby bird, complete with strange noises and awkward gestures. He’s big for his age, probably because he stops at every kiosk to buy candy and soda when we’re walking around town. We posed for a family picture, for example, and couldn’t find Marquito. He was 10 yards away, eating french-fries off a stranger’s plate. He plays indoor soccer and is pretty good. We practiced with him one afternoon and went with the family to watch him win a game on Saturday night. He’s hilarious and by far our favorite of the Rubio bunch.

The School
For the last week, the two of us have been teaching at a local primary school called “Escuela de Luis Ulpiano de la Torre.” There’s not much significance in the name other than Louis was a nationally famous musician. The school itself is small group of rectangular classrooms on the northern edge of town, a 20-minute walk down the hill from the Rubio’s casa. The principal of the school is Senor Pancho, and he’s nice but a little scatter-brained. In the first two days he changed our teaching schedule three different times.

Needless to say, the first few days of teaching were rough. We didn’t know which classes to teach, how long each period lasted, or what lessons to teach the children. Most frustratingly, there was no support from the other teachers, who seemingly took our presence as their chance for some free time. To top it off, some of the students were particularly disrespectful and rowdy, which was to be expected given the circumstances.

By day three, however, we were on a roll. We finally nailed down a schedule and were able to prepare lessons and create teaching tools. We also wrote a few songs that we could teach to every grade level, including the now world-famous “Food Song” which we re-translated from Swahili into Spanish. Even though the first few days of teaching were rocky, the students were, sweet, adorable, and very excited. Also, a significant benefit to knowing some Spanish was that we have been able to communicate with these students, which wasn’t the case in Africa where we could only communicate with pantomime and a meager vocabulary. In another contrast, it was difficult to tell the Tanzanian boys from the girls because they all had very short hair, whereas here in the Andes, it’s almost impossible to distinguish the native girls from the boys because they all have long black hair swept back into braids. They’re all adorable though, at least that’s not hard to figure out.

Other than teaching, one of our favorite things to do is play with the children outside of class. This includes simple games like, tickle monster, hand-clapping games, thumb wars, and exploding high-fives. We found that apparently “give me five” doesn’t translate directly into Spanish. After Emily stuck out her hand and said it to one kid in Spanish, he looked down sullenly and said, “No tengo,”. . .“I don’t have”.

Also, during recess on Thursday, Rob and Emily played soccer on the cement field in the center of the school. Rob played goal keeper because he was twice the size of every other player. The young girls wanted Emily to play sitting games with them on the sidelines, but she insisted on playing with Rob and the other boys. After a few fakes and a couple goals, Emily had the little boys impressed and sidelines cheering.

On Saturday morning, we met Senor Poncho at the school to begin the day’s project, which was to resurface a portion of the school’s cement courtyard. Mariana funded the supplies and by the time we arrived at 7am there were already huge piles of sand and rocks as well as 36 bags of cement. By 7:30am more than 50 people, including some students and their parents, arrived and busily started on the project. Neither Rob nor Emily had any idea how to make a cement patio, but thankfully everyone else did. Whether with a shovel or a wheelbarrow we helped as much as we could without getting in the way. Still, Emily used “lo siento” pretty often to apologize…like after hitting some random lady in the hand with her shovel, for example. Woops! Another funny moment was when Senor Pancho gave Rob a shot of what Marco described later as “poor man’s whisky.” It was pretty stiff, but Rob muscled it down exclaiming in broken Spanish, “Alcohol gives me much strength!” and dashed off with another wheelbarrow full of rocks.

Everyone worked really well together. No one was in charge, but everyone knew exactly what to do and how to do it, like a colony of ants. Senor Pancho blasted some Ecuadorian folk music over the loud speaker, which turned the whole scene into sort of a silent movie, with everyone moving slightly faster than normal speed. We finished the patio by the early afternoon, and everyone stayed at the school for a big celebratory lunch. We all crouched onto tiny chairs in the kindergarten room, everyone’s faces and clothes splattered with cement.

Kili Climb

“Kilima” is the Swahili word for “mountain.” In the Chaga tribe, which lives at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro, the way they describe “steep” or “difficult to climb” is with the word “kiaro.” The first Europeans to come to East Africa were Germans in the 19th century. Understandably, they were awestruck by the giant mountain on the equator with glaciers at the summit, and wanted to know its name. The Chaga tribesmen told them it was “Kilima Kiaro,” which has since evolved into the famous name “Kilimanjaro.”

Mount Kilimanjaro is indeed a “mountain difficult to climb.” The mountain itself is spectacular. It belongs to no mountain range and it gathers itself up from the east African plain with deceptively gentle slopes. The upper portion of the mountain is largely made of grey rocks, which at a distance seem to vanish against the atmosphere. On a clear day, the gleaming glaciers at the summit appear detached from the lower slopes, hanging extraordinarily high above Africa.

We set out on a 6-day expedition to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. We booked a tour with the African Walking Company and found ourselves in a group with 5 other Americans and 5 British adventurers. The route had us ascend on the Rongai Route on the northern slope, and then descend via the Marange Route to the south. We were to ascend to 19,385 feet and cover more than 50 miles on foot, hiking 4 days up and two days down.

The gradual ascent was beautiful. In just the first day we followed the trail up through the lower steppe, then beneath the moss-draped canopy in the rainforest, and then out into the moorland where we camped at 8,000 feet. On the second day we hiked up through the scrub brush to Kikaweli Cave at just over 12,000 feet, where we spent the night.

The third day we felt like we had climbed off Earth and onto Mars. The last few hardy plants gave way to the spotty lichens, which were the only signs of life among the rusty red rocks. We camped overnight at a place called Mwenzi Tarn and at 14,000 feet it seemed we were closer to the stars than we were to the clouds below.

The last checkpoint was at 15,000 feet at Kibo Camp, at the base of the summit crater. We finally reached Kibo at the end of the fourth and most miserable day of hiking. That’s where the two of us finished our ascent.

Emily got acute mountain sickness, also known as “altitude sickness,” at Kibo Camp. Both of us had been feeling the symptoms of altitude sickness by the time we finished hiking on each day of the journey, but we managed to feel better after a night’s rest. Altitude sickness is a pretty miserable condition. It typically includes a migraine headache, nausea, and fatigue, but it affects different people with different intensities. Unfortunately, it was making us feel progressively worse and worse throughout the trek, and it got dangerously bad for Emily at Kibo. Emily had a paralyzing migraine and it was getting worse. The nice thing about altitude sickness is that the cure is simple . . . less altitude. Though somewhat disappointed not to make the final ascent to the summit, it was an easy decision to descend from Kibo. That in itself was rough, however. The two of us pulled camp at 10:00pm and walked hastily down to the next campsite, which was 9 miles away. By the time we arrived at 1:00am, Emily was already feeling better thanks to the 2,500 feet altitude we lost, or ‘gained’ depending on how you look at it.

We waited at Horombo Camp for the rest of the group to make the final push for the summit and then descend later that afternoon. We learned later that the rest of the group had a harrowing time at the summit. A 22 year-old medical student from London collapsed at the peak with altitude pulmonary edema (the advanced stage of altitude sickness). He was unconscious and had to be physically carried down the mountain. The guides were amazingly unprepared and brought no medical equipment on the most dangerous portion of the hike. The kid had to be rescued by the other hikers in the group, who were feeling pretty awful themselves. He was lucky that another hiker happened to be a medical doctor, and happened to be carrying steroids. The steroids kept him alive long enough to get him (very slowly) down the mountain. The others actually ripped down the sign at the summit point and used it as a stretcher. To make matters worse, there was another emergency at the top. Another hiker passed out. He is a 63-year-old mountaineer from Boulder, Colorado, named Roger. He’s been climbing mountains all his life and climbed a handful of 14,000 ft peaks in Colorado to train up for Kilimanjaro. He was feeling ill at the summit and tried to get some food in him, but choked on a biscuit and passed out. Thankfully, his daughter did a finger sweep and was able to resuscitate him.

We were shocked to learn how close the group came to total tragedy. We were also shocked at the negligence of the guide service. They had no critical medical supplies, viable communications equipment, or coherent rescue plan for the summit portion of the hike. Unfortunately, Roger and his daughter had to cancel their week-long safari that they had planned. Roger was too sick by the time he got down the mountain. They changed their flights and went home.

The two of us were happy to have found our altitude limit without risking serious injury. We were glad to enjoy what was, on the whole, a wonderful week-long adventure on a mountain difficult to climb.

On Safari with Magic Honest

There are several national parks in the vast expanse of northern Tanzania between Mount Kilimanjaro and Lake Victoria. From east to west, the largest parks include Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater, Olduvai Gorge, and Serengeti National Park. Each park is different in its own way, but all of them are famous for their wildlife. The two of us set out on a five day excursion through each of them to see what we could see.

We should explain that we inadvertently paid about three times as much for the trip as was necessary. We wanted to book the safari over the Internet before we even arrived in Africa. What we didn’t realize at the time, though, was that the vast majority of safaris are coordinated on the streets of Arusha. Some of the other volunteers went on similar safaris that they booked in Arusha, for instance, for significantly less cost. The most notable differences we could discern between our itinerary and theirs were that we would have our own vehicle and guide, our own plush camping accommodations, and we were scheduled to fly out of the Serengeti instead of making the 8 hour return trip on the ground. Needless to say, we had high hopes for a good journey.

Our guide picked us up in Arusha. We hoped to make a good first impression because he would be our safari guide for the next five days. He spoke heavily-accented-but-very-good English, and his name was “Honest,” which were both good things. We tried to use as much of our Swahili vocabulary as we could, which was a pleasant surprise for Honest. We hit it off immediately.

Lake Manyara
The first stop on our safari was at Lake Manyara. The lake is a huge soda lake, just about the size of New York Harbor, but only 8 feet deep. Though the park boasts a large variety of wildlife, it’s known primarily for the birds that love the shallow lake.

We ran into a problem at the gate. The park only takes credit cards from travelers, and we wanted to use cash. After a really ridiculous conversation between Rob, Honest, and the park ranger, we were finally able to use cash. When Emily pulled out Tanzanian cash, the park ranger refused it saying, “We only accept US dollars!” After much discussion, Honest was able to smooth it over and we got in by paying the Tanzanian park in Tanzanian shillings. Imagine that. We thanked Honest for “working his magic” to get us in the park on our terms and we were very excited to get started.

It felt like a little like we were entering into Jurassic Park, in no small part thanks to the giant elephants rummaging through the brush next to the road inside the gate. We traveled through the forest and passed monkeys, baboons, impala, and all sorts of other critters along the way. By far, the highlight of the lake was the pool of hippos.

On the way to the pool Rob asked Honest what the chances were of seeing an African Fish Eagle (Rob’s favorite bird in Africa). Honest began his reply with a deep, “Wellllll uhhhhhh,” which he would do every time he spoke. “If nature provides” he said. “At the end of the day we will know.”

By the time we got to the hippo pool, Rob had forgotten about the fish eagle. The pool was so teeming with storks and pelicans and geese and cormorants that it was hard to take it all in at once. In the distance were herds of buffalo and zebra, simmering on the horizon, and another herd of giraffe off in the opposite direction. We didn’t even notice the hippos until one climbed out of the water, we thought they were brown patches of mud in the water! Even Honest had never seen so many birds in the pool at once.
In the loud frenzy of squawking from the birds and guttural noises from the hippos, Honest told Rob to take a look in the thorny acacia tree about 200 yards from the pool. There it was, an African fish eagle.

We were thrilled by our four hours at Lake Manyara and thanked Honest again for “working his magic” to get us in and also for the fish eagle. By the time we left the park, Emily had nicknamed our guide, “Magic Honest.”

To top off a perfect first day on safari, we spent the night at Gibbs Farm. The ranch hotel upgraded us to a honeymoon suite which was a private villa overlooking the garden. Our escorts showed us the house and the two of us happily laughed that we accidentally booked of a five-star safari.


Ngorongoro Crater
We began the next day’s journey just after breakfast. We were both eager to get up to Ngorongoro Crater, the 8th wonder of the natural world. During the two hour drive to the crater, Emily asked Honest, “Are we going to see any lions?”

“Wellllll uhhhhhh,” he began, “It’s possible, but the Serengeti is famous for lions. Maybe we will see them . . . if nature will provide. At the end of the day we will know.”

Ngorongoro Crater is incredible. The crater itself is the collapsed summit cone of a 9,000ft volcano. The crater floor is 20 miles across and the rim is 2,000 feet high all around. There is a shallow soda lake on the western side of the crater, and the rest is mostly grassy plains that are crisscrossed with creeks, swamps, and watering holes. The whole place is absolutely alive with wildebeest, zebra, elephants, buffalo, warthogs, and everything in between (except giraffes, which can’t negotiate the crater slopes). Don’t forget the birds, too. Ngorongoro had everything from crowned cranes to firefinches and goofy looking secretary birds. We even saw two ostriches mating, which was really awkward.

True to his new nickname, Magic Honest found us some lions. About 200 yards from the road was a pride of lions sleeping in the grass. While we were watching them, the lionesses got up and began moving towards a herd of zebra, apparently to teach their cubs how to kill. Their pursuit was so slow in developing that before long other safari-goers had taken notice and were crowding around the lions, effectively ruining the hunt. Still, we were thrilled to see the lions. Emily thanked Honest for working his magic and then threw in another request, “Next, can we see them killing something?”
We continued driving around the park and were very fortunate to see a black rhinoceros. The black rhino is extremely endangered, with fewer than 50 left on the planet, and only 20 in the park. Supposedly it’s good luck if you’re able to spot one.

The highlight of the day came at the end of the afternoon. We had decided that we’d seen more spectacular birds and animals than we thought we would, and were satisfied with an amazing trip through Ngorongoro. On the way out of the crater, Rob and Honest noticed a lion in the grass about 150 yards from the trail stalking a herd of unsuspecting wildebeest. The other lions were another hundred yards away, laying in ambush. Honest stopped the truck and we watched – there wasn’t another soul in sight.

The lion crept within 20 yards of the wildebeest and then exploded out of the grass! In four lightning-quick strides, the lion was in front of its target and lunged in for the kill. It sank its jaws around the wildebeest’s neck and pierced its claws into the prey’s shoulders. Another lion came sprinting over from under a tree and jumped on the wildebeest’s back. In seconds they wrestled it to the ground and it was over.
We were absolutely stunned and Honest was just as excited as we were! He said that in his 10 years of experience as a safari guide, he’s only seen something like that happen twice. Rob said it was the coolest thing he’s ever seen. After that moment it was undeniable…Honest was magic!

Olduvai Gorge
After our amazing day at Ngorongoro Crater, we spent the night at a ridiculously nice campsite on an outcrop of rocks near Olduvai Gorge (named for the indigenous oldupai cacti-grass that grows there). It was a hard-stand tent with a king-sized bed, a flushing toilet, and a hot shower. The tent opened up to a sweeping view of the Ngorongoro highlands and the three course dinner was superb.

Our third day on safari began at Olduvai Gorge, where we stopped to see a small museum dedicated to the discoveries of Louis and Mary Leakey. The married couple from England spent 60 years doing research in the gorge, uncovering bones, stone tools, and even footprints of the first hominids some 3.6 million years ago. The gorge isn’t really much to look at. We wouldn’t even consider it a gorge, but because the valley cuts through the base of an almost regularly erupting volcano, it has become an amazingly rich repository of humankind’s earliest fossil records. Peering into the gorge invokes a deep sense of humility. On Kilimanjaro we felt small in space. At Olduvai we felt small in time.

The Serengeti
From Olduvai Gorge we traveled for an hour on a straight road through a sea of brown grass until we came to a huge gate in the middle of nowhere that announced the beginning of the park. “Serengeti” translates from Maasai to mean “endless plain,” and rightfully so. Beyond the gate were miles and miles of more of the same endless emptiness. After traveling a few times over the horizon, we came to an outcrop of rocks with a visitor’s center. We did a pit-stop there and climbed to the top of the rocks, just to verify that the endless plain was indeed endless. It was.

As we ventured deeper and deeper into the park the landscape began to change. We came to see that though the plains dominate, there are areas with trees, creeks, and swamps. The most conspicuous features on the landscape were the “kopjes” (pronounced ‘copies’). These random jumbles of rock coming out of the plain are favorite nesting spots for birds, apartment complexes for hyraxes, and perches for predatory cats. As we soon discovered, the landscape is surprisingly just as diverse as the wildlife.
The highlight of the first afternoon in the Serengeti was that we found a group of bachelor lions resting under a tree. The strongest of the group got up and sauntered over to a lioness in the grass, and presumably was trying to ask her to marry him. She teased him for hours, rubbing up against him like a giant housecat and then keeping just out of reach of his playful (although obviously frustrated) chase. We didn’t stay long enough to find out her eventual answer.
The next day was amazing. Before we got started, Emily wanted to put Honest’s “magic” to the test, so she asked to see a cheetah today. Honest insisted that he had no control whether or not “nature will provide.” He reassured us that “at the end of the day we will know.” It just so happened that before 9:00 that morning, we saw a pair of cheetahs about 200 yards from the road. We followed them for a few hours as they crept up on a herd of gazelle. Though we didn’t see an all out sprint, the cheetahs caught a baby gazelle and toyed with it, letting the poor thing run and then chasing it down again. It was fun to watch nature in action. Again we hailed “Magic Honest.”
For us the day was a success even before we stopped for a picnic lunch. We challenged Honest with another request. “What about a crocodile?” we asked. “Welllll uhhhhhh,” he said, “let’s see if nature will provide.” Within minutes he drove us to the banks of a riverbed and, sure enough, there was a crocodile.

Next, we asked to see a leopard, which was rare because they’re nocturnal hunters. The only chance to see one was if it decided to sleep in a tree near enough to the trail. It took a while, but Magic Honest managed to find a leopard in a tree. We were astounded at our luck, or Honest’s “magic,” or some combination of the two!
Emily challenged Honest with another request. “I really want to see something eating a carcass,” she said. Honest shrugged his shoulders. We puttered around the plains for another few hours. We passed by a kopje and two lions, a male and female, stood up in the grass about 10 yards from the road. It was a surprise to all three of us. They looked at the truck, then mated, and then lay back down in the grass and disappeared. We laughed and told Honest that such timing was ridiculous! He laughed too. Another 20 minutes from there we came across a pride of red-faced lions in the grass, gnawing away at zebra carcass! Way to go Honest!

At that point we’d seen more than we could’ve imagined. We had only seen one hyena from a distance, so Rob asked Honest if we could see a hyena up close. Emily upped the ante and told Honest that she wanted to see “something giving birth.”
After another hour in the truck we drove past a swamp. An extremely pregnant hyena came up out of the reeds. It walked towards us and then pooped right next to the road! It wasn’t exactly what we asked for, but close enough! Way to go Magic Honest!

We spent the last night back at the luxurious tented camp. Amidst the flushing toilet and fine dining, we could still hear the lions and hyenas howling and growling in the distance. Good thing we had a safety whistle next to the bed.

On our last morning we woke up early to visit the hippo pond. We arrived in time to see the end of the hippos’ commute from the woods after a long night of gluttony. With loud moans and bellows, the hippos jockeyed angrily for comfortable positions in the pond, where they’d spend the day napping. Rob saw another fish eagle across the pond. As the eagle flew off down the river, a 13 foot-long crocodile leapt up out of the water to try and snatch it out of the air. Unbelievable!
The two of us spent the last day on safari trying to soak in the landscape and dodge the thunderstorms that were bringing in the new rainy season. Honest found us another sleepy leopard. We also happened across a few lionesses relaxing in the shade, sleepily digesting a big meal. There’s something hypnotic about the big cats and we spent quite some time admiring their awesomeness.
In the late afternoon, Honest dropped us off at Seronera airfield. We gave Honest our field guide and included a nice tip inside to thank him for his “magic.” As we taxied off down the dirt strip we looked back to the truck. Jumping up and down and waving the book over his head was a happy and “Magic Honest.”

Asante sana elf moja (a thousand thanks)

Mama’s Gladness
Mama Gladness is unequivocally the most fascinating person we’ve met in Africa. When we were introduced to “Mama” as she’s affectionately known, we readily assumed she was an important figure in this volunteer program. It really has taken us four weeks to get a deep appreciation for just exactly who Mama Gladness is.
Mama’s home says a lot about her. The front gate is unassuming, although the entry is inviting with neatly trimmed hedges that line the trail. The gate is made from banana wood and coconut thatch. The doors are bound together with a small linked chain, which seems only cursory. Just the other day, for instance, a cute little two-year old girl let us in after we banged on the iron pot that serves as the doorbell.
Inside the gate, Mama has a manicured garden. There’s a type of thatch parapet near the gate. It serves as a lookout spot for the night watchman, although you’d never guess that it was for security purposes. There are fruit trees in a nice neat row, trimmed grass, and the low hedge that’s planted to read “Karibu” as you walk into the courtyard. The first thing you notice in the courtyard is the gray-brick skeleton of a new building. At first glance it appears to be a ruin of some sort because it has no roof or windows. But by the time you walk past it, you’ve noticed that it is very much in the process of being built.
As we’ve learned in recent days, Mama has spent her whole life building things. She started with very little around her and slowly built a family and a business. Although her husband remains a mystery to us, we do know that she raised Lema and Siza on her own. When the children were young, Mama recognized a new niche in the tourism industry and began an NGO. She began by hosting cultural tours and inviting travelers to come, stay, and get involved in the local community. Mama named her NGO the “Green Foundation,” and speaks of it with great pride. “I had the idea, I got the lawyers, I wrote the constitution,” she explained to us. “I did this.”
The Green Foundation now supports volunteers who come to work in and around Tengeru and Arusha. Volunteers come from all over the world to help in the schools, at the hospitals, with the HIV/AIDS program, or in the coffee plantation. The amazing thing is that Mama Gladness literally hosts every volunteer like they are her personal guests. In addition to her home and the two volunteer houses in Tengeru, Mama also owns more than 70 acres of farmland which she uses to support the foundation and her family. She has also established herself in an important role as a regionally elected representative to the national board of energy and biofuels. She has quite a resume.
When we first met Mama Gladness, all we knew was that she was Lema’s mother and she cooked the meals for the mzungus at the volunteer house. We had no idea about her history of accomplishments. It really has taken us four weeks to pull these achievements out of her. The more we’ve learned, however, the more we’ve discovered that the real essence of Mama Gladness is her compassion and humility, and her biggest achievement is her family.
Last week we sat with Mama and told stories over steaming bowls of vanilla porridge. We learned a little more about her faith and her family. Emily had read in the news that some African cultures made it customary to take in orphans off the street. She asked Mama if it was common in Tengeru. Mama smiled and told us that people think she’s ‘crazy’ because welcoming orphans confuses inheritance rights to land and property, etc. But Mama told us, “I read this in the Bible.” She went on to describe how the Bible drives her philosophy of giving. For example, she explained that every time she takes a new cow she donates the first of its offspring to the church or a needy family. She also donates 10 bushels of maize to charities after every harvest. We never would have learned this from Mama if we hadn’t asked her directly, and we were glad we did.
Mama’s generosity humbled the two of us very quickly. Before coming to Mama’s on that particular day we went with Siza to the Tengeru market to buy some fruit. We gave Siza the equivalent of $1, and asked him to buy as many oranges as he could. Both of us expected him to get only 3 oranges, maybe 4 at the most. In just a few minutes, though, Siza had bagged 10 oranges, 2 avocados, and 3 cucumbers! We both really wanted to keep a few oranges for ourselves, but were happy to give the rest of the fruit to Mama. We even thought it was a nice gift. After Mama’s explanation of her devout selflessness, however, the two of us looked sheepishly down at the bag with the 7 oranges we’d carefully stashed away for ourselves. After we finished our porridge, we played silly games with Mama’s orphans, Mondo, Naemma, and Massioy under the coconut thatch.

To Volunteer or Not To Volunteer
At the end of last week, 14 girls from a community college in Seattle arrived to be the newest volunteers in Tengeru. Lema got them situated in Mama’s other volunteer house, in another section of the banana grove. On Sunday night, Lema organized a dinner party to bring the two volunteer groups together. Dinner didn’t last long, but the party carried on to a circle of chairs around a bonfire in the yard.
After brief introductions, Lema began an open discussion about “what it means to volunteer.” Lema’s local rafikis (friends) were curious why westerners, mostly Europeans and Americans, decide to come all the way to this part of the world to “volunteer.” According to Lema’s friends, “when there is public work that needs to be done, the locals agree when and how to do the project, and then do it.” Essentially volunteering stems from a necessity that pulls them away from other important chores. It is peculiar to them that mzungus “don’t have anything better to do” than come all the way from their country to “help.”
The new group of volunteers described what volunteering meant to them, and we quickly got the impression that for them that their definition was dripping with altruism. We feel that the reality is, however, that you cannot escape at least some egocentric reason for “volunteering” in Africa. Rob contributed to the discussion that “people are people everywhere and if volunteering is as altruistic as we want it to be, then we all should have stayed home, donated the money we spent on traveling, and helped the people down the street from where we live. It’s true we came to Africa to give of ourselves. But we also came all this way to step outside our comfort zone, to learn things we couldn’t learn down the street, and to see and do things we couldn’t do elsewhere. That, to us, is volunteering.”
Emily more eloquently unraveled the misconception about volunteering. She described a fundamental difference in the sense of community between Tanzanian and “mzungu” cultures. Tanzania’s sense of family, regardless of whether it is inherent or imposed, makes ‘volunteering’ a common part of everyday life. It’s so common, in fact, that it has essentially become transparent. We mzungus on the other hand, tend to absorb ourselves in our own business and our own families, usually at the expense of the larger community. Thus “volunteering” becomes something separate, something different, or something scheduled.

Jumapili
We scheduled to help out Memu in the afternoon on Sunday, or “Jumapili.” Memu is Mama Gladness’s youngest sister. Memu invited us to see her home last week. She lives in a tiny brick building and her front steps are four feet away from the cow pen where she keeps her three heifers. We were surprised that when she opened the door to her house that the room inside was literally piled to the ceiling with bushel bags of unprocessed corn! “Whoooaa” we said, and Memu laughed. In Memu’s limited English she described the harvesting process that takes place after all the shucking, like what we did last Tuesday. She said it was her job to clean it all. Although we had no idea what that meant, we volunteered to help her out and scheduled it for Sunday afternoon.

Before school dismissed for the weekend last Friday, our 6th grade teacher, Mama Foya, invited the two of us to her house for Sunday lunch. Mama Foya is one of our favorite people in Tengeru, so it was easy to accept the invitation. On Sunday we met her at Mavinuni School and followed her on a short walk down the hill to her house. We hopped over a swollen irrigation ditch and walked through her front gate into her yard. A sweet combination of spices, maybe cloves, snuck out of the house. We were both hungry.
Mama Foya introduced us to her husband and her four young children and we sat just inside the front door where her living room doubled as the formal dining area. Foya brought in pot after pot of steaming food, and set them in front of us on the rosewood coffee table. She prepared steamed rice, vegetables, chapatti, avocado, banana, and best of all, chunks of beef in a thick sauce, evidently the source of that delicious smell. Rob was particularly thrilled to see the beef, which was only the second time he’d had meat since coming to Africa.
Mama Foya’s husband teaches math and science at the local secondary school. During lunch our conversation centered on the challenges of the Tanzanian education system, particularly those he faces in his classroom. It was very interesting to hear his opinions. It was evident, however, that perhaps the greatest challenge was that, as in all secondary schools in the country, he was required to teach every lesson in English. Though his English skills were just strong enough to host a lunch party, it must be extraordinarily difficult for him to explain complex concepts to students who aren’t even as proficient in English as he is. He confessed that teaching math was easiest.
For dessert we had oranges and tall glass bottles of Coke. There was a small TV in the corner of the room with a fuzzy channel coming through the rabbit-ear antennas. Rob noticed a commercial reference the Olympics and asked Foya if she’d heard anything about the games. She changed the channel to the closing ceremonies, which was coincidentally taking place live in Beijing. Our attention was glued to the screen.
If you didn’t get a chance to see the closing ceremonies, it was an elaborate show of thousands of Chinese people, dressed in glowing costumes, twirling and dancing to choreographed music. It would’ve made for a great Pink Floyd music video. Mama Foya and her whole family were completely bewildered by the Chinese dancers. So were we, quite frankly. Foya’s children were even giggling and laughing when the cameras zoomed in close on the silly costumes. It was poignant that we could bridge our dramatic cultural differences to have wonderful lunch with a Tanzanian family, and at the same time we were all still a little weirded-out by the Chinese.

On our way home from Mama Foya’s, we stopped by Memu’s house like we had planned. We cleaned two bushels of corn which took about an hour. It might have taken less time if we didn’t have to fend off the pesky chickens. We found that cleaning corn by hand is rather labor intensive, and even harder if you’re allergic to the dust like Rob is. We poured each bag out onto a large sieve and pushed through the kernels to get rid of the chaff and bits of cob. Memu was very grateful.

Kujamba Juice
Last week we were exposed to every aspect of harvesting “mahindi,” or corn. We realized, though, that we’d done just about everything there is to do to the local corn, except eat it.
Every few hundred meters on the bigger roads around here, there’s inevitably an old woman sitting in a chair by the side of the road. She leans over a small stove and slowly cooks ears of corn, and sells them for 150 shillings ($.12). There’s one particular woman who sits under a ratty umbrella by the side of the road on the way from Mama Gladness’s house and the tree nursery. After working with Siza at the nursery one afternoon we stopped by to try her corn.
The corn was surprisingly delicious. It was not fully “popped,” and it was more carefully cooked than grilled corn. Each kernel expands just a little and the outside is barely charred. The result is a tasty cob of chewy popcorn kernels. We were instantly hooked. For the rest of the week we made it a point to stop by “Mama Mahindi,” as we nicknamed her, for a treat on the way home from the nursery.
Unfortunately, we discovered later that a negative side-effect of Mama Mahindi’s smoked corn is that it makes Rob a little . . . farty.

Thursday was our last day of teaching at Mavinuni School. All the teachers gathered in the teachers’ room for the usual mid-morning break for chai. Emily was talking with Mama Foya, Martha, Asienga, and some others while another woman was handing out tea and biscuits. Emily was describing all the different types of foods we’ve eaten in Africa. Rob chimed in with the Swahili word for “fart,” which Siza had conveniently taught him the day before. “Yeah,” Rob said with hand and arm signals, “Mahindi makes me kujamba!”
The reaction from all of the teachers was explosive! Everyone burst into laughter and Mama Foya reared back wildly and spilled her chai all over a stack of notebooks! The teachers laughed almost to the point of tears, pointing and staring at Rob and his “kujambas.” It’s a good thing that farts are funny pretty much everywhere.

That little episode carried the day. Around lunchtime the teachers pulled some chairs outside and sat in a circle to soak up the sunshine and talk. During a discussion of how to snap fingers the Tanzanian way, everyone was eager to show their skills to Emily. The best performance by far came from Asienga whose snap was clearly the loudest. Mama Foya leaned over to Emily and said, “It’s because she eats cement!” Immediately, Emily pointed at Asienga and yelled “CEMENT FINGERS!” and the name stuck. Then Emily tried her hand at snapping and she quickly earned the less-than-stellar nickname “Cotton Fingers.”
Thursday was the best day of school for the two of us. We returned the final exams to the 6th grade, and most all the students passed. During the chai-break we had the most fun laughing at Rob, and that continued on to the lunch break outside. The conversations in that circle of chairs ranged from snapping fingers, to having babies, to the inequality of educational standards. Rob even tried to pantomime an explanation of the war in Iraq to the headmaster, which may or may not have come across clearly. It was an all-around great afternoon.


Ndafu
After school on Thursday, we were hoping to go back to Lake Duluti with Siza and then start packing our bags. During lunch we overheard the other volunteers talking about a dinner party at Mama Gladness’s house, which was news to us. On our way to the nursery, we decided to stop by Mama’s to see what her plans were.
We never made it to the nursery. Siza was already at Mama’s, busily moving chairs and tables into position in the courtyard. Mama was cooking in the barn and everyone was preparing one thing or another. Mama was surprised to see us and laughed when she gave us the standard barrage of hugs and kisses. “The important people do not come early!” she exclaimed. “The queen and king of the party do not work!”
Siza invited us to the backside of the barn where we arrived just in time to see two men working on a freshly slaughtered goat, hanging from a tree. “Habari!” Siza yelled, and one of his Maasai friends turned and smiled as he pulled the goat’s innards out of the carcass in one sinewy bag. “It is a gift for you!” Siza told us, referring to the goat and not the bag of innards, thankfully. We were astounded.

The rest of the afternoon went to preparing the goat party. The two of us helped set-up for about an hour before going back to the volunteer house to get out of our work clothes. Mama invited all the new volunteers and her neighbors and family from around the village to share in the celebration. They made an incredible feast with rice, spinach, chapatti, fried bananas, soup, and of course the delicious goat.
Siza and Amos brought the goat out on a small table and danced with it in front of everybody in the “traditional way.” Mama and the others clapped and chanted a traditional song. They set the goat in the center of the main table and then said a few words. Amos went on to describe how the roasted goat or “Ndafu” got its Swahili name. It came from mzungu missionaries who tasted the meat and frequently said, “Wonderful,” which to Swahili ears sounded like “One – ndafu.” The name stuck, and so did the wonderfulness.
The goat party was an incredible honor for the two of us. It was an amazing gesture from amazing people. We were both surprised that after only four short weeks we could feel as though we’ve been accepted as members of their family. It was yet another example of Mama Gladness’s boundless generosity. For us, the party felt like a second wedding and is something we will remember always.

Wiki Tatu (week three)

African Moments

Ever since Siza mentioned that there was a waterfall near Tengeru, we’d been itching to go check it out. After being in Africa for three weeks, we were finally able to put it on the schedule.
Last Sunday afternoon Siza escorted Kathleen and the two of us on a 2 mile hike up the valley to the falls. We followed the same tunneling path through the banana plantation that we walk to school, but instead of taking our usual left at the fork in the road, we continued “moja kwa moja,” straight ahead up a steep hill.

We walked for about 20 minutes until we came to another village, which was obviously a little more upscale than little Tengeru. The main road took us across a bridge over a rushing river. “This is it!?” we asked Siza with sarcastic disappointment. He didn’t say anything and kept walking.
Siza talked with a few of the local villagers, and we ended up traipsing behind some houses, across some cow pastures, and then back through the banana trees. We only went a few hundred meters before Siza disappeared over a steep precipice. Through the trees we could hear the thundering water in the bottom of the gorge, and one by one we scaled down the precarious slope.
When Siza told us about a waterfall, we were expecting to find a river spilling happily over some rocks in the picturesque way they do in Hawaii. When we got to the bottom of this gorge, however, we were both overwhelmed by the sheer force of these falls. The waterfall itself was only 30 or 40 feet tall, but the power of the water coming through a chute of rock at the top was incredible! The falls generated a swirling wind that shrouded us in mist at the bottom.

Before long we noticed a troop of “kimas” messing around in the trees above the gorge. We like the Swahili word “kima” because it almost sounds like a flip-flop of the English syllables in “monkey.” The monkeys scampered across limbs and leapt sometimes 20 feet from tree to tree. We looked at each other and took stock of all that was around us…the huge waterfall, the mist, and monkeys playing high in the tangled canopy. It was definitely a true African moment.

Another truly African moment was on the way back to Tengeru. A group of women, dressed very nicely in colorful skirts and head wraps, was walking towards us as we came down the hill. We stopped to greet them and Siza, of course, recognized the older women. Among the older ladies was a young girl who looked barely 14. After the polite “jambos,” one of the women asked Siza if Rob would like to marry her daughter! Siza burst out laughing before he could translate, but Rob got the gist from the body language and the pointing. Rob responded immediately by shaking his head and giving Emily a big hug. Everyone started to laugh through the awkwardness. Before we left, Rob did compliment the young lady on her ability to balance that bucket on her head.

Finally, to top off our outting, Emily helped a local man corral his two baby goats back into his gated home. For some odd reason Emily was so excited about this and all the way home she kept saying, "I held a goat today!"

Swahili Time

On the daily schedule that hangs up in the teachers’ room at Mavinuni Primary School it says that first period starts at “2 am.” The next period begins at “2:40, then 3:20” and so on for the rest of the school day. Utterly confounded by this, we asked Mama Helena, the 4th Grade teacher, to explain the time to us. Struggling a bit with broken English, Mama Helena explained that the time was written in “Swahili Time,” and “that means it’s 8 o’clock in English.” Naturally, we asked her “What!? Why does ‘Swahili Time’ subtract 6 hours from the actual time?” We tried to troubleshoot for the answer to help improve her explanation. We are only 3 hours ahead of London so we ruled out Greenwich Mean Time and we were otherwise unsuccessful at finding any sort of rationale for the system. So we decided that maybe we’ll ask someone else who might be able to explain it better than, “Oh, it’s just Swahili Time.” Before we thanked Mama Helena, we asked to look at her watch to see if it was set to Swahili Time. Nope. It read 8 o’clock on the dot: time to go to class.

We asked Lema about Swahili Time. Of all the people we know in Tanzania, Lema speaks the most fluent English, and we figured he could give us the best explanation of. Lema described the system in the same way Mama Helena did, with the rationale ultimately hinging on the premise that “Swahili Time” is actually just regular time, just in Swahili. Well that doesn’t explain the arbitrary subtraction of 6 hours from whatever time it reads on your watch! Even Lema’s wristwatch had the world standard time on it, which he called “English Time.” He described a conversation where someone might ask you for the time and you’re expected to reply in “Swahili Time,” not “English Time.” Lema insisted that it is the official time of Tanzania, Kenya, and the other countries of the East African Community (Burundi, Uganda, and Rwanda). Rob countered this claim with evidence like official travel schedules for air and ground transportation, which are all conducted in “English Time,” or as we like to refer to it, the “correct” time.
We are still not satisfied with the explanation of this peculiar aspect of Tanzanian culture. It didn’t help that we even peeked at the time on a young man’s watch while we were riding in a dolla-dolla. It was an hour and 18 minutes off of English Time! ? What was that?!
Determined to unravel this mystery, we asked Babu if he knew how this whole thing got started. Babu, who is normally very helpful, was unable to give us the solution we’re looking for, but he did give us our favorite answer: “When I was being born,” he said, “I woke up and I saw this.”

Last week was “harvest week” for Mama Gladness and her family. She jokingly asked if we wanted to help harvest maize at her farm. Without thinking twice about it we agreed. The two of us were very excited to help out as we had never harvested corn before. We looked forward to a new and interesting experience, especially because we planned to meet Mama Gladness on Tuesday morning at “3am, Swahili Time.”


Mahindi

There was some resistance to the thought of us two Mzungus going out to harvest “mahindi,” or maize. Lema told us that it was a terrible idea and even bet us that he’d have to take us to the hospital before the end of the day. He even offered to take us out to the farm for an hour so that we could “see what it was like.” Nevertheless, the two of us decided that we wanted a full day of honest corn-picking work and a couple of quick shucks wouldn’t be enough.
Lema picked us up at the volunteer house in a beat-up Honda del Sol with tinted windows and a 6 inch suspension. Ironically, this was the first time we were expecting to go off-road in Africa and Lema’s prized Range Rover happened to be in the shop. The two of us hopped in the back while Babu and Lema sat up front and we rocked out to Swahili rap all the way to Kilimanjaro.
Lema pulled carefully off the highway and onto a dirt track. The trail followed a wadi past a line of acacia trees up a gradual slope to Mama’s farm. We were expecting to find a barn or farmhouse of some sort at the end of the road, after all, Siza had been living out there for the last several days. It turned out, though, that Mama’s farm is simple a 10-acre plot of land and Siza has been living in a tent under a tree.
We were glad to see Siza, and he was glad to see us. He shouted “Mambo Vipi!” (Hey, what’s happening!?) from amongst the stalks and came to meet us near the tent. He laughed at Rob when he put on his wide-brimmed hat. Babu said Rob looked like he was from Vietnam (- that’s the first time that’s ever happened to Rob, by the way - ). The four of us crunched out through the knee-high grass to the far end of the field and got to work.
There was a surprisingly large distance between each cornstalk. The spaces in between were filled with different types of weeds including wild tomatoes, which are yellow and fuzzy. The other dominant weed out there was a type of mint, which Siza said can be used as a remedy for cuts and scratches.
The day turned out to be a lot of work, but it wasn’t the grueling drama that Lema made it out to be. There were a few more hired workers in the field and we all got in a line and slowly moved over the field. It turns out that shucking corn is really not that hard. You pull the ear off the stalk, undress the cobb, and then toss it into a big pile in the weeds. After several hours, it’s the repetitive tediousness that makes it hard. At the end of each day the hired workers go around to each pile and load them into bushel bags. We had a great time, and being out at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro in a minty-smelling field for the day was fun in itself.

Mama Gladness came out to the field around mid-day. She was so surprised that we volunteered to help harvest that she made us a special lunch which we ate in the shade of a scrub tree. She kept saying in her broken English, “Please don’t tell your family that your Africa Mama punish you!!” Lunch was absolutely fantastic for us. She brought us chunks of beef, boiled eggs, avocado, bread and two bottles of orange Fanta. The rest of the workers ate traditional “leshoto” out of a bucket. Mama insisted we try it and scooped up a cupful for us. Emily looked at the lumps of corn flour floating in soupy white yogurt, or some type of milk, and mustered an anxious smile. At the risk of sounding culturally insensitive, the truth was that the leshoto was absolutely horrible! Rob decided that it tasted like cat’s vomit and happily returned to the chunks of beef and avocados. We told Mama that she didn’t have to make an extra lunch for us, but we were so glad she did.
After lunch Mama came out to work in the field with the rest of us. It turns out that picking corn is good for conversation. We learned that Mama owns four other similar farms, some with corn and some with beans. She owns more than 70 acres in addition to her farm in Tengeru and the volunteer house. Mama is also an elected representative for northern Tanzania and moonlights as a delegate to the national board of energy and biofuels. She is perhaps the most humble person we’ve ever met, and you’d never know how much power she has by the way she shucks corn. It was an interesting moment when she stopped, in the middle of the corn field, in the middle of nowhere, and pulled out her cell phone. We like Mama Gladness.

Lastly, we wanted to give a quick shout-out to all the washers and dryers out there. If you have them, please give them a hug for us...doing laundry by hand is hard!