8.22.2005
The Cruellest Month in Tanzania
Originally sent May 16, 2005. This is the sixth of 8 mass emails that I sent while I was in Tanzania.
Hello again from the Editor of the Emily Peer Review. It's been a while since I wrote, and it's been hectic. Things are looking up lately, but the month of April was pretty tough. In the aftermath of the break-in, one of my neighbors was accused of organizing the crime. He was a young guy I counted among my friends. One night I sat in his family's living room with elders from the neighborhood and listened as his sisters wept and his mother prayed out loud, accusing us of hating her for being a widow. Off he went to jail, and a few days later, the investigating officer released him. None of my things have been traced, and all I was left with was a new set of enemies inthe neighborhood.
The day after the arrest, I got a headache at work that turned into a fever by evening. As my roommate Glory and I sat down to dinner, the landlord came to the door and asked for rent. Then, in one of the Top Ten Most Embarrassing Moments of My Life, I threw up all over the table. It was a long night, full of more embarrassments and a lot of patience from Glory, but what I was convinced must be malaria turned out to be a stomach bug that antibiotics quickly knocked out. My convalescence was an instructive period in Tanzanian folk wisdom about the proper treatment of sick people, which apparently includes force-feeding them, mocking them for sleeping too much, and ensuring an uninterrupted stream of visitors.
As I was getting better, reading a novel when not receiving guests, another neighbor died from AIDS in a crowded public hospital. A man in his thirties, he left behind a wife and three kids, one still nursing. At the last minute, a white Catholic priest came to his bedside and baptized him; it might have been more useful for him to buy the IV drip my neighbor couldn't afford. Back in our neighborhood, the widow sat in mourning for several days in the single dirt room they had shared. The women in the neighborhood took up a collection and used it to prepare dinner for everyone and pay the funeral costs. In the evenings, men came and sat respectfully outside the widow's door; the women sat inside and sang songs about heaven. There was no crying. After a few days, the widow went to the husband's home village to bury him and a few days after that came back with a glazed look and her baby on her back.
Overlapping with all of these events, the rainy season came and went. (Interestingly it was months late and people talked constantly about the increasing unpredictability of the seasons; global warming evidently matters more to people still participating in rain-fed agriculture). Overnight, the rain came in torrents and the mornings were cool and gray, the streets coated with slick mud. In a few days, the landscape was transformed, all the dry fields turning green then to hoed rows of dark mud then suddenly sprouting rows of corn and beans. All the people turned into farmers, trudging off in the morning with long-handled hoes on their shoulders and coming back at night with muddy feet. Even Glory was called away from her tailoring business to help in somebody's fields. Just like at home, the days of rain and cool and gray were quite melancholy after awhile, and I started wishing for big clouds of dust and the beating sun again.
Last night I woke up at 2 am to the shouts of my neighbors. We were under attack by army ants, who flowed along the outer walls of our compound and through the cracks under our doors with eerie efficiency. A lot of stamping and throwing around kerosene, salt, and insecticide ensued. After about 20 minutes, the ants that remained were sufficiently demoralized and we climbed back into bed. "I want to go back to America," I whined, but I was just joking.
The thing about the tough parts of the last few weeks is that goodthings still vastly outweigh the bad. We added new kids at the school--three little girls leaving the worst of circumstances. I took a trip to Dar es Salaam to replace my stolen passport, and in addition to getting a peek at the new ultra-secure US embassy (the previous one was bombed in 1998) I ate pad thai for the first time in seven months and spent a day on the beach. Back home, another neighbor, a young boy who needed surgery, was finally operated on after months of effort. The neighbor accused of the robbery and his sisters have started greeting me again. And, in a time with no volunteers at work, which I was dreading, I have been spending a lot of time hanging outwith Glory and the neighbors and that's nice too. Plus, now that the heaviest rains are over, just the mornings are gray and the afternoon sun on the fields of head-high corn is unreal; it's vivid like when Dorothy steps out of her house into the Land of Oz.
Even so, there's no place like home and every day I think about the date I will be back on my own soil (August 9, for those with calendars).
Much love from Oz,
Emily
Hello again from the Editor of the Emily Peer Review. It's been a while since I wrote, and it's been hectic. Things are looking up lately, but the month of April was pretty tough. In the aftermath of the break-in, one of my neighbors was accused of organizing the crime. He was a young guy I counted among my friends. One night I sat in his family's living room with elders from the neighborhood and listened as his sisters wept and his mother prayed out loud, accusing us of hating her for being a widow. Off he went to jail, and a few days later, the investigating officer released him. None of my things have been traced, and all I was left with was a new set of enemies inthe neighborhood.
The day after the arrest, I got a headache at work that turned into a fever by evening. As my roommate Glory and I sat down to dinner, the landlord came to the door and asked for rent. Then, in one of the Top Ten Most Embarrassing Moments of My Life, I threw up all over the table. It was a long night, full of more embarrassments and a lot of patience from Glory, but what I was convinced must be malaria turned out to be a stomach bug that antibiotics quickly knocked out. My convalescence was an instructive period in Tanzanian folk wisdom about the proper treatment of sick people, which apparently includes force-feeding them, mocking them for sleeping too much, and ensuring an uninterrupted stream of visitors.
As I was getting better, reading a novel when not receiving guests, another neighbor died from AIDS in a crowded public hospital. A man in his thirties, he left behind a wife and three kids, one still nursing. At the last minute, a white Catholic priest came to his bedside and baptized him; it might have been more useful for him to buy the IV drip my neighbor couldn't afford. Back in our neighborhood, the widow sat in mourning for several days in the single dirt room they had shared. The women in the neighborhood took up a collection and used it to prepare dinner for everyone and pay the funeral costs. In the evenings, men came and sat respectfully outside the widow's door; the women sat inside and sang songs about heaven. There was no crying. After a few days, the widow went to the husband's home village to bury him and a few days after that came back with a glazed look and her baby on her back.
Overlapping with all of these events, the rainy season came and went. (Interestingly it was months late and people talked constantly about the increasing unpredictability of the seasons; global warming evidently matters more to people still participating in rain-fed agriculture). Overnight, the rain came in torrents and the mornings were cool and gray, the streets coated with slick mud. In a few days, the landscape was transformed, all the dry fields turning green then to hoed rows of dark mud then suddenly sprouting rows of corn and beans. All the people turned into farmers, trudging off in the morning with long-handled hoes on their shoulders and coming back at night with muddy feet. Even Glory was called away from her tailoring business to help in somebody's fields. Just like at home, the days of rain and cool and gray were quite melancholy after awhile, and I started wishing for big clouds of dust and the beating sun again.
Last night I woke up at 2 am to the shouts of my neighbors. We were under attack by army ants, who flowed along the outer walls of our compound and through the cracks under our doors with eerie efficiency. A lot of stamping and throwing around kerosene, salt, and insecticide ensued. After about 20 minutes, the ants that remained were sufficiently demoralized and we climbed back into bed. "I want to go back to America," I whined, but I was just joking.
The thing about the tough parts of the last few weeks is that goodthings still vastly outweigh the bad. We added new kids at the school--three little girls leaving the worst of circumstances. I took a trip to Dar es Salaam to replace my stolen passport, and in addition to getting a peek at the new ultra-secure US embassy (the previous one was bombed in 1998) I ate pad thai for the first time in seven months and spent a day on the beach. Back home, another neighbor, a young boy who needed surgery, was finally operated on after months of effort. The neighbor accused of the robbery and his sisters have started greeting me again. And, in a time with no volunteers at work, which I was dreading, I have been spending a lot of time hanging outwith Glory and the neighbors and that's nice too. Plus, now that the heaviest rains are over, just the mornings are gray and the afternoon sun on the fields of head-high corn is unreal; it's vivid like when Dorothy steps out of her house into the Land of Oz.
Even so, there's no place like home and every day I think about the date I will be back on my own soil (August 9, for those with calendars).
Much love from Oz,
Emily
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