A week in Dodoma

We had a week off to stay in Dodoma before we traveled to retreat. We took the girls to their first Mass which I think they really enjoyed – my favorite liturgical dancers were there – and Monday night they went to their first community night at the Ihumwa residence. Monday night community nights are absolutely one of my favorite times of the week. Around 6:30pm on a Monday, we gather with the Jesuits and sometimes the Sisters and have Mass, dinner, and play games like Uno or Scrabble. The Jesuits have recently incorporated a rotating schedule of 'homilists' which includes us volunteers. I like it a lot, because it gives all of us a chance to share our faith and reflections. Sossy loves Scrabble (and is incredibly good at it) and so I'm excited to introduce him to “Banana Grams” which is essentially a fast paced version of Scrabble.

The rest of the week was more house cleaning and obtaining necessities, but also a lot of exploring town and visiting friends. One day we took the girls to visit our friends in Ihumwa, the village just beyond our school. We traveled there in the afternoon and as soon as we arrived, our friends Charley and his wife Mama Tula treated us to a delicious lunch of beans, fish from Hombolo (a lake about 100 km away from Dodoma – Charley rode his bike there to buy the fish for us), and ugali. The meal was absolutely delicious, and the memory of sitting under their mango tree on a mat surrounded by children also eating, and joking with our friends makes me smile. It was so great sharing that with Cristina and Hannah, too. Mama Tula was complaining that she didn't want to eat, and I joke that she had worms (though I knew from Sean that she was pregnant) and she replied, yes one very big worm! I forget when exactly she's due, but it will be exciting to be around with another new born! People are always having babies around here, it seems. Tanzanians consider children such a blessing. Sometimes I get a little jealous that I myself don't have a beautiful little dark-skinned child to tie around my back. Maybe Mama Tula will let me borrow hers ;) !!

After lunch, and after playing with the mob of children that gathered to see us, we all walked to the market that opens every Friday evening in their village. There are tons of people there, many who are completely not used to seeing white faces, especially not in their market. I love being there and surprising the people with the very little Kigogo I know (the tribal language of Ihumwa). Though, I tried to smile and greet a very small boy who was being held by his mother and he was absolutely spooked and started crying. That was a total ego-crusher, but we all couldn't help but laugh, including the mother and her friends. I can't imagine what it would be like to see a person with different skin for the first time as a young child!

At the market we bought a little pork and went back to Charley's house. I tried to help Charley cook, but his little kitchen filled with smoke and I wasn't strong enough to stay there long. Charley set up a mat right outside and the four of us tried to sort rice as he prepared the pork. Cooking on a charcoal stove takes a really long time because you first have to wait for it to get hot enough, and then you cook every dish one by one. We had a great time sitting outside waiting for the meal, though. The stars are incredible in the village, with no electricity they absolutely shine. We played around with Tula a bit making shadow puppets on the wall of their house from the fire of their stove. There is great peace in being there, with their family, at that time of the day, waiting for a meal. It's quite indescribable really, but those are the moments I know for certain change me, and will stay with me.

When it was time to eat, they set up a mat on their living room floor where we sat and were served giant portions of rice, beans, and pork. Charley's food is always so delicious, but Tanzanians are friends to oil, so I eat quickly and get filled quickly as well. After dinner, Charley said a night prayer, thanking God for his guests and for our meal and for the blessings life gives us. Sitting in candlelight, listening to him pray in Kiswahili is another moment I'm finding the words hard to find to describe.

Hannah, Cristina, and I shared a room with Tula (she's about 10), and Sean had his own mattress in another room. Charley's house is quite nice – four rooms and a living room space – but he's only renting it until his new home is completed – a simple two-room mud house. Nights in the village are perfectly quiet, but people in the village wake very early, so it wasn't long before we started hearing the neighbor kids chatting with Sean outside our window. In the morning, Mama Tula insisted we all shower before we leave, so I took my second village shower, in a tiny brick structure, from a bucket of water that is neither hot nor cold, in the morning under the blue sky. I think all showering experiences should be like that – it's just you and the heavens looking down on you.

We watched Charley make us chipati and soon we were enjoying chai and chipati. They sent us off with a basket full of mchicha (a spinach like leafy green) and a few onions and walked us to our dala stop. Leaving there always makes me wonder how different my experience would be if we lived in the village. I can't say village life is better or worse that life in town – it would quite simply be absolutely different.

The weekend before retreat we had been planning on taking Cristina and Hannah to a wedding for our friend J4 (Jumanne, which translates the 4^th day, or Tuesday) in Morogoro, but unfortunately his father died and they postponed the wedding. The rest of Saturday was packing and getting ready for our trip the next day.   

New Community

Here is is – the official start of year two and all the wonderful changes that come with the second year of this experience. Our new JVs have finally arrived – Cristina and Hannah!! - and we're officially in our new home. Cristina arrived in Dar on Monday morning, Hannah on Tuesday morning, and the Dar folks put them on a bus to Dodoma on Wednesday – poor girls! But they arrived in good spirits! After school on Wednesday, Marty, Sean, and I drove into town to pick them up and make our final move to the new house. We packed up Marty's Pajero with our bedsheets and final things, drove to the new place to drop everything off, and got a call from the girls that they should be arriving within the hour. Maybe it was a little foolish to try to officially move into that house the day they arrived, considering nothing was set up, nothing was really cleaned, and we only had mattresses, but at the same time I think Sean and I wanted to get this new community started with Cristina and Hannah as soon as possible, and what a better way of doing that than a little bonding in an empty house that will eventually become our home!

But even though we were all entering this dirty, empty house together, I was channeling my inner “Nance” (it's a quality I'm glad I inherited, Mom!) and decided to stay home and at least give the living room a good sweeping and moping before we slept on our mattresses on that floor. I think it was a little therapeutic for me to be alone in that house and mentally prepare for what I could absolutely not mentally prepare for – a completely, radically different year than the one that came before.

Marty and Sean finally arrived with two smiling (and shiny) faces (those bus rides are rough!), and it was a little surreal to help them move their things into the house. We've had many white-faced visitors come through Dodoma, but none that stayed longer than two weeks. Marty treated us to a nice dinner at the Pizzeria that is conveniently now walking distance from our house, and we chatted and laughed about life in the States, preparations before coming, funny fears of our friends, Washington D.C. (Cristina lived there for a few months), and San Francisco (where Hannah is from). It was a really nice evening.

When we got back to the house Cristina, Hannah, and I set up our mattresses with a few sheets under the fan in our living room. I remembered how hard it was for me to sleep the first few weeks of living in this country because of all the foreign noises outside (roosters in the morning, dogs at night, cows mooing, people talking in an unknown language, loud Bongo music), that I figured a nice “impromptu” sleepover would be fun for the first few days. Unfortunately it was impossible to set up mosquito nets, which I hadn't even thought of – one year malaria free! - but fortunately the house has pretty good screens so we weren't really bothered. Cristina, however, is experiencing much of the biting that I had when I first arrived, but she came prepared with a mosquito-tent-thing (which we are still laughing about) but it really helped her.

We were all so tired that I think we slept through the whole night, besides the early morning when we heard this ridiculous bird chirping almost inside of our house. It wasn't until a few days later, and a few more times of hearing this bird that we realized the bird is actually our doorbell which is connected to the gate!

Thursday morning Sean and I had to go to school for the last day of exams in the morning, and the girls got a ride in the afternoon to the school to be around for our faculty meeting and end-of-year staff get-together. Now as I'm thinking back at that staff meeting, I'm incredibly surprised at how far we've come as a staff, and how differently our colleagueship looks and I'm very happy about that. I think a lot of my own actions, assumptions, and ego had a real affect on how others interacted with me, and even though I thought I was always being “culturally sensitive and aware,” it is quite impossible for that to be your entire reality. I often got tripped up in the justice of my own existence here, the respect I deserved, when the reality of living in someone else's culture means you give up that privilege in order to respect them first. I wonder how this translates to my future work-life back in the States.

After the meeting where we recapped the year, the goods and the bads, we headed to the Jesuit residence with the rest of the staff for “snacks,” which ended up being close to a full meal (pork, 'chips,' salad, ground nuts, fried sweet bananas), and drinks, and music. I love how music and dancing is such a part of celebrating here. Turn it on and someone will stand up and start moving. I remember the first months of being here how uncomfortable that was for me, but now it feels so natural. So what you're the only person dancing! It's so normal. Life is meant to be enjoyed – so stand up and enjoy it!

Friday was house cleaning day for basically the entire day. We did extreme sweeping, mopping, washing walls, and dusting things that probably were never dusted. We had a blast! We just pumped the jams, told silly stories and enjoyed creating our new home. The cleaning actually lasted the entire next week, but at the end of that day we successfully pealed the layers of someone else's house off and could see the glimmer of our home coming through.

Our house has two showers, one with a faucet at our waist and the other with a tall shower head in the bathroom in Hannah's room. So bucket showers have finally become part of my daily life here in Tanzania – a very welcomed change. It's incredible how little water you truly need to take a decent shower. Anyways, Sean and I thought it would be a fun treat for our new community mates to go to the "Cathedral" (Club 84) for their first introduction to Bongo-flava and the dance culture of Tanzania. I absolutely won't go to this club unless our friend David comes along - he just makes the whole experience 100% more enjoyable for me - and thankfully he was totally on board. After our bucket showers, we all settled for a dinner on our floor sitting on the mats made by David's grandmother in Uganda (still waiting for a dinner table and all other furniture).  Though the club is now even closer than it was to our other house, it started to rain and so we took a taxi down the road.  The night was fun, though, and we all came back exhausted.

We slept in on Saturday and took a daladala in the afternoon to Mnadani, the meat market about 20 minutes outside of the city.  We treated the girls to their first plate of goat meat.  That was the perfect ending to our first few days together.

New House

These past few weeks have been a whirlwind. Really only two or three weeks ago, Sean and I had basically given up hope on a search for a new home. It just seemed like our ideas of a JV house and all others' ideas were not matching up so giving up and letting go seemed to make the most sense. Sean and I started having some really difficult conversations with the two German girls we were living with in order to resolve someone of the unnecessary tension by creating better schedules, etc. Unfortunately, the night after this conversation, the JVC office called us informing us that we had only two options about the house – move into a home suggested by the Jesuits that is absolutely the opposite of anything Sean and I had imagined for Jesuit Volunteers in Dodoma (it's huge, far away from other people, and in a nicer neighborhood than desired), or stay in our current living situation. They also sprang on us another volunteer – originally JVC had decided to only send one, but because of issues in Moshi they have decided to close down that site next year and consequently the new volunteer heading there is now being sent to us. To be honest, I was absolutely ecstatic about a fourth volunteer for Dodoma, but all this news was a lot to take in. Sean and I thought about it a lot and eventually decided it would be most helpful to us, and most appropriate to our new community to move into our own space. And that brings us up to this week...

We had been told months ago that the previous owners were considering leaving furniture if we were to take the place, but I guess too much time went by that they decided to move everything. And consequently, the house is entirely empty. I can't imagine setting up a new place in the States – but in Dodoma, Tanzania, with no car of our own, no idea of where to buy things or prices? Chaos. Thankfully Fr. Sossy has been an incredible support and help throughout the whole process, and has kindly lent us a few of his workers to assist in this process.

Saturday, Mzee January (Mzee is a honorable name for an old person – January is a driver/worker for the parish) and Angel (the parish bursar) took us to town to shop for the home basics, like kitchen and bathroom stuff. Even though we had a list of things we needed and there weren't very many selections, it was incredibly stressful picking out so many things for this house at one time. I'm sure we could have spread it out a little, but I knew it would be so much better to get as much done as possible, especially if we had a pickup to throw everything into! Otherwise Sean and I would be taking the crowded tiny public buses home with all our new purchases – not exactly the most fun thing. We drove the stuff right to the house and hid it in a closet.

Sunday after Mass and lunch with Fr. Kitui – a really great Jesuit who is only around until January unfortunately – I spent some time in my room packing things up. I have really accumulated a lot of crap over the year here. A lot of it is books and papers from being a teacher, letters and other things sent from home, and new clothes and materials that I've bought while I've been here. I'm excited to get rid of a lot of it when I set up my new room, but for now, it's going in the bag!

Oh, Saturday was also the start of final examinations at the school, so Monday Sean and I only had our “Pre-Form I” session because we don't sit exams until Wednesday. That was a great relief because Cristina is scheduled to arrive in TZA on Monday, Hannah on Tuesday, and we're hoping they get to Dodoma by Wednesday. We want to have some of the major moving done by then. So Monday afternoon we went back to town to pick up mattresses for our beds and a gas stove and cylinder. I always think foreign currency is so strange because, for example, we paid 240,000 Tanzanian shillings for four mattresses. That sounds insane, doesn't it? (240,000/= is about $185). There's a man at the parish (who I actually sing in the choir with!) named Veda who is a carpenter. He's making our beds and dining room table. The beds probably won't be done until the end of the week, so if we decide to move in when the girls get here on Wednesday, we may be sleeping on our mattresses on the floor for a few days! Better than cold floor, though! We're also going to try to pick out a couch and mini fridge in Dar es Salaam when we're there over Christmas – another insane thing in my mind, having to buy these things and get them moved to Dodoma. Sossy says its cheaper and better quality if we look in Dar.

Tuesday we had our last pre-form session with out students (we played the “I'm going on a picnic” game and wrote stories) and then finished up the rest of my packing. Mzee came back to our house and we loaded up pretty much everything that we own, including a small table from the storage space behind our house here (it belongs to the Jesuits). Our first piece of furniture! My things added up to close to 6 small bags and one giant one, but I packed up most of our community stuff, so I'm allowed to have more bags than Sean, right? For example, I used my entire small suitcase for our community's books. So there! My room is pretty bare now, besides my bedclothes, a few things for showering and my clothes for tomorrow. We've decided to stay one more night here – it would probably be really overwhelming to stay in that empty house tonight. And I'd feel the need to unpack, etc. I'm excited though; these past two weeks Sean and I have been watching the first season of “True Blood” together almost every night and we've saved the last episode for tonight. We usually watch it while we eat, which isn't so great for the community building, but I think it's done us good actually. We spend so much time together that it is hard not to always talk about the hard stuff. It's fun to forget about that and escape into another world every so often. Especially if that world involves Vampires! (Just kidding, kind of). (PS have you ever seen this show? Mom and Dad – don't do it! It's ridiculous. Sean and I had a little bit of culture shock watching it for the first time. I mean, I know vampires aren't really living in the States, but the humans in that show definitely exist. Yikes).

So tomorrow (Weds) morning, Sean and I are heading to Veyula (a village 18 km away) to see Sr. Immaculata take her final vows. Sr. Imma was our school nurse for most of the year until she went on a month retreat in preparation for her final vows. It will be great to see her again and celebrate with her and the other Sisters. Three of the Ivrea Sisters will be joining us as students next year at SPCHS and have been attending our pre-form sessions, so it will be great to know so many of them! I'm really looking forward to it. The day starts with Mass at 9:30am and a celebration lunch after. Sean and I will have to leave around noon, however, because we're sitting for the last exam at school at 2:45pm. (The students have 2 or 3 exams per day, each is 2 hours).