Greetings of the strictly formal American variety,

I’m finally back home and settling in, and slightly sad at really, how easy it’s been to adjust. But before I lose that sense of absurd at all things usually familiar in western world, I thought I’d send them out and share them. It’s very long, not too polished or articulate or well-thought-out. Maybe just skim until you see something worth reading. At least scan down to the very end.

• The colors and the ads are so bright and proud of themselves for being so very clever.
• I hear children’s voices and turn around and it startles me that they’re white.
• Heathrow staff really felt the need to post signs everywhere that said “We are please to announce a new fire alarm system for Heathrow…” all over the gangway. I’d gotten so used to absolutely no institution to person communication of any kind.
• I can still feel the wind from the uncovered window at night talking to the family about anything I can think of just to fill the air, we all have our hands clutched between our legs to keep warm and everyone’s wondering why Simon hasn’t come home yet but I can’t really blame him for not wanting to be here. Africa was so real up until the very end.
• There are three separate people selling exclusively UK liqueurs that can be bought for exorbitant amounts in the duty free shops and (“breaking news!”) can probably even be brought on your plane after you buy it. These people seem happy to be pouring the endless little shots, happy to shoo people over, happy enough to stand there for hours. Like the people at the security x-ray machines. How can they be so content to do something so tedious and meaningless?
– X-ray man: “I had to unpack this whole bag for this [empty fanta bottle you stole from the bus to use at home as a vase and a relic.]“
– Me: “Pole sana.”
• I don’t have to clutch onto my purse when I walk around the airport. People have their own purses, their own endless items and have no need or interest in mine.
• People look so different from one another! There are so many beautiful people.
• No one makes eye contact when they walk by. Even if I try to say hello they pretend to or actually don’t hear me…
• I don’t have anything in common with white people anymore–no african traveller solidarity. Now we’re all just passing through London to and from different directions.
• People watch the news for hours like it matters, like it has something important to say, not to be missed. Stories: “Keeping Your Pet Stress-free Through the Holidays” and “Tupperware Parties Have Come a Long Way.”
• I move to sit by Africans hoping they’ll see the Swahili on my shirt and talk to me and ask me where I’ve been and test my Swahili. I miss it already the Shikamoos and mambos. But these aren’t like the Africans I knew for 6 months, they’re in Heathrow in their suits talking about their property in Nova Scotia and $50,000 bribes to Zambian officials just so they can run their businesses. I move.
• How can the city, small gray bug with orange glitter sprinkled all over stretch all the way to the horizon, view from just under the clouds?
• The things people wear: red crocodile boots, sandals with socks, cowboy hats, pink bunny backpacks, such different quirky boring things. So many accessories.
• Urgent, lengthy, incessant, leisurely phone calls.
• Vending machines.
• Everything is built with straight lines and calculated curves, painted to match, spare no expense, all space utilized for signs or windows or ads. Everything polished.
• At the airport I spend 2,000 on tea, 2,000 on a doughnut to take my pill, 1,500 on .5 ltr. of water to take it with. Every single last shilling. Nothing for a keepsake. It’s dark as we take off, even though it’s 9. The man sitting next to me on the plane to London. We don’t speak the whole way until he asks me how my nap was. Says he’s coming from the Sudan where he worked for the UN, heading home to Oslo. “I’ve been there a year, but, I don’t know if I’ll be going back.” I don’t press him for his ideas, his perspective. He says something more under his breath. Before we land, he pays for something electronic with a $100 bill.
• The only way to keep your self busy in London is to buy things. Stores successfully branded like CHANEL with rows of the same pink button up shirt for a price that makes you shudder just imagining. Worse that they know they can get away with it, make a profit at it, that people will get sucked in.
• I don’t want to be in Heathrow, delayed of course. I miss Elieka and her shy presentation of the thermos, loose tea, sugar, 2 eggs, 2 spoons on a plate. Every morning. Kili out the window. And why isn’t she at school?
• Things are warmer there, not just the air but the light isn’t so wet and gray, and the people are warmer too, because they seem to know that their lives are not so isolated but connected to everyone’s they meet. Who’s wrong?
• The Greek woman, wearing black fur and leather, older with droopy lipstick lips, busty and lumpy at once. She adopts me the minute I sit down in the row, encouraging me to demand another set of headphones, explaining to me about the red wine, how it relaxes her and helps her sleep and after finishing the second little bottle, sheepishly removing the extra blanket she’d gotten, looking flushed. Having me to read to her and transcribe her responses on her custom’s form because “I don’t read so good” but she has a watch with diamonds on it and her passport says “US Embassy” and she doesn’t know things like whether her residence is America or Greece and what the flight man means when he tells her to put the purse under the seat in front of her. I don’t understand her or who she is. I let her baby me and wink her wine-filled wink and I try to escape when she’s behind me in line at customs because I don’t want to be responsible for her, for anything that could go wrong.
• In New York and people who look all different ways speak English just like me.
• I can barely figure out where to go and I’m supposed to know without asking but even me, I can get lost and I wonder about people who are foreign who don’t know these rules and this language and how they ever get anywhere.
• I wait outside for an hour for the hotel shuttles as other shuttles come and go two, three times, with the hotel visible from where I’m standing in my chacos and a bandana. I talk to the middle aged, chubby African American couple, the man’s big black coat held over his wife’s shoulders. They’re nice and we comiserate over the wait and the cold and they tell me they’re going to Ghana tomorrow. There’s one man in plaid, no uniform, he seems to be there in the wind all night to help people find their shuttles. The couple is impressed by East Africa and 6 months.
• There’s one man on the shuttle, who can’t stop talking loudly to anyone around him about his 8 hour delay and India and Brazil and his son living in Japan with his half-Japanese daughter. The Japanese man he’s talking to congratulates him awkwardly. I want to kill him. I practice my impenetrable mask, full of self-assurance and clam.
• $160, an over-heated room with a huge, spring-filled mattress all for me, five hours before a wake-up call with no one on the other end of the line. A mirror on the door so you can stare at yourself pee. Mirrors everywhere. The first time I’ve really looked at myself, alone with my reflection, in such a long time.
• The talker is on my shuttle again in the morning. I still want to kill him. Has recruited a Hungarian man and a shaggy-haired singer songwriter to talk to him, apparently willingly. All he manages to get from me when the others make their way to the counters is “Cleveland.”
• Figure out check in, throw the old tag in the waste basket, congratulated by the beautiful Delta lady and I accidentally tell her to have a good flight too, I mean good day, and she laughs.
• Putting on shoes after pointless ages through security again, business man sits across from me to do the same. “Real cracker jack crew they have there,” he says. “I just hope they never get busy.”and I laugh and respond we both get being quiet and resigned but keeping your wits and sense of humor.
• Ladies fighting behind the register at Starbucks, and I spend $8 on coffee and a water.
• Food is so packaged here, filled with so many ingredients and preservatives, rich, high fructose corn syrup. Engineered to taste delicious and fill you up. I can’t finish any of it.
• People have a few people they talk to, most people they don’t talk to, I fit into the latter category for almost everyone, there are so many people who I’ll never exchange words with.
• Tree lawns? Monopoly rows of identical houses? Driveways? How are these the foci of peoples’ lives? How do people live like this?
• I just want to bring everyone back with me to Tanzania so they can se it and rejoice at baby wipes and chapatti for the first time in weeks. Most black people here do not speak even a word of swahili.
• The mzee who stopped me on my way to my plane, finally, to home, stopped me to say “I like that you read books. I’m 70 years old and I know that books are…life.” He’s struggling to express this to me, English is not his first language. I smile and I’m really happy, and we shake hands and wish each other good days and we are both glad that we spoke.

I’m glad that people talk to me sometimes, that people have things to say to me.

I haven’t been home in so long. I can’t believe how easy it is to be here and how quickly the reality of East Africa is fading, replaced by laptops and bathtubs.

This will be the last of my entries for a while now. Hope you’ll all continue to contact me with greetings and updates even as these emails and the material for them cease. Thanks again for all of your responses and support throughout the last 6 months.

Peace and love and all of those good things,
Selena

Greetings friends and family enemies and lovers,

As I write, I enter into my last week working as an SIC volunteer, which is a reality that is beginning to dawn on me. The time in this village feels about half the length of the time in Ilkisongo, I feel like I arrived to the horrendous confirmation party with the tent and the DJ yesterday. I wonder if the brevity of this ward has been felt by those of you who get these messages in front of your screens on the other side of the world, but then you have your lives and work that make things move slower and faster.

I am beginning the long and quite stressful process of re-thinking and packing all the things I’ve acquired and want to take back, and finding homes for all the things I’m leaving that I brought for the trip. The lists with check boxes in my notebook are take up whole pages and I bring them out to read and re-read every few minutes. I can’t believe I’m finally going home. Africa has a reality for me now that outweighs what I remember from home—things like street lamps, and refrigerators, and toilets inside peoples’ houses, and exterior landscaping, and no chickens and no dalla dallas, and no chappati, and no greetings to every stranger you pass. Mostly, the constant busy-ness, tight scheduling and stimuli.

At the same time, I’m so excited to be around people who speak the same language as me in a way I understand, in a culture that doesn’t feel foreign. And, of course, to see friends and family I’ve been missing for a long six months.

But this is all brooding and not the story of adventure I promised last time. Last Friday, 13 of us went on a 20 hour bus ride (well actually 23 because we got a flat tire in Kenya in the middle of the night), which was obviously horrible. But it got us to Kampala where we had to frantically try to get tickets back home–it’s the end of school at Makerere so tons of Tanzanians were making their was back to Arusha. After getting somewhat cheated on tickets to Nairobi because we didn’t have Ugandan Shillings, we spent a very brief night in Kampala at a restaurant that was way to expensive for us.

Being back in Uganda, in this context with different friends and different memories and places to compare it to, was numbingly confusing. I was proud to be able to host the city a bit, to know which matatus/dalla dallas to take to get where, to know which restaurants were good, to be able to walk from the taxi park to the bank and then Internet without having to ask the way. It was weird to recall and re-discover how difficult communication in Uganda is despite the fact that in Tanzania the language barrier is a lot more obvious. People made comments like Uganda’s beautiful, Ugandans look different, Uganda is greener and cooler and nicer. I couldn’t really see any of those things, because whenever I’m in Uganda what I see is seen through eyes clouded with my past here, and I found myself completely incapable of comparisons.

We made our way early the next morning to Jinja to raft. On the bus on the way there we picked up a middle aged Chinese lady who worked for the World Bank and thought she was going on a river cruise. Before she got into the raft (she was in ours for the first half day) she asked if she was going to get wet. This could have been disastrous, but ended up being not too horribly bad, she was a good sport. I had spent the week previous trying to justify the expense of all the visas from this extra trip, and the bus, and the rafting, to myself. I’d been top Jinja, I’d lived in Uganda, it didn’t make sense to come again when there was so much hassle in arriving.

As soon as I got in the raft and the Nile was two feet from me and right under my feet, it occurred to me that actually, this would be quite different from my previous experiences in Uganda. I also knew that if nothing else, it would be a really fun bonding experience with almost all the other amazing SIC volunteers. Our guide was a very calm and chill South African who was a little hungover in the morning and taught us how to paddle forward and stop on his commands but forgot to teach backwards (we were luckily able to figure it out as we went). I was a little baffled as to how other people were enjoying themselves at first. It was drizzling and there was water every where to be thrown into without warning, and rocks to be hit, and a huge raft to get trapped under. I didn’t even feel scared really, just not very happy.

This feeling was exacerbated by the violent flip on the second rapid we did which threw everyone, including the guide, out of the raft and down the river. I hated feeling tossed around and out of control and got hit by a wave as soon as I came up for air and had to swim to a kayak (there were kayaks around to pick people up when rafts flipped and there wasn’t any real danger it was just scary). After that raft I calmly asked my guide whether I could go onto the safety boat (this huge big raft with all our cameras and sunscreen and first aid stuff that never flipped) for the next big rapid. Our guide, who was very much awake at this point, asked the other SICers on the boat to raise their hands if they wanted me to stay, and told me it wasn’t as bad as a thought. I wasn’t sure what to do, but guess I would wait and see how it went…?

After lunch there was a long flat stretch we could use to digest and tell jokes and stories and try to wrestle each other off the boat. I finally began to relax and joke and enjoy myself. I stopped wondering how many more rapids there were to come and what class they were and whether we would flip and how long until lunch etc and just took them as they came. We did a few other rapids that day and felt more able to ride them and not fight them and even though we flipped again, it wasn’t too bad. I started to get a little more confidence in my ability to do what I needed to do in the water.

We had a wonderful and amazing evening with good food and a bonfire and more stories around the fire. The next day it was sunnier and I had fun again–I even was able to pull myself into the raft (once, but still). I’m so glad I went, it was such an adventure, and so exhilarating, maybe even more so as a memory.

One more week working in the village, one more weekend before I fly home. I am excited about how well we’ve been able to do in this village and having so much fun with DeAnna and my family, and my homesickness has given way to premature nostalgia.

I miss you all, please shoot me back something that’s going on in your life.

Peace,
Selena

Greetings friends, another week finished in Nsengoni, another 2 two and a half to go until the end of the program and my trip home.

This week was very eventful, and enjoyable. These days, I’ve been feeling better about the work we’ve done and what we’ll be able to do here. The weather has been better this week, sunnier (little nose burning action going on) and also hotter. On Monday, we stopped at a clinic nearby the farther school and found out that every Tuesday pregant and recent mothers come to the clinic for vaccinations and general check ups. The doctor and nurse (both singular) were both eager to have us come teach, so we arranged school teaching to allow Simon and I to go to the clinic and teach on Tuesday. It was really fantastic: we had 41 really attentive and interested women with their infants and bellies. We were able to teach the whole curriculum and do condom demos for both male and female condoms (which can be called mpira in Swahili, meaning rubber). They giggled a lot at the dildo we used for the demostration–Simon said that people used to demonstrate by putting the condoms on their fingers, so people would put the condom on their fingers and have sex and be confused when their wives got pregnant.

Life at home has been wonderful. I think I made this same revelation in Uganda, but a nice home makes all the other stuff in life feel better. I promised names in this email, and I can do it to a certain extent, but we’re still a little fuzzy on some people. It occured to me to have Simon and Audi come over and do some relationship/name sleuthing under the guise of making getting to know you conversation, and then translating to us their newly acquired information. It went relatively well, read the fruits below. Also, on Tuesday, we had an official introduction to the many animals of this legitimate farm. Meet the cast of characters at our home:

We have Baba who we met the first two nights and haven’t seen since. Mama has been a little sick with the flu which means that she has only appeared occasionally, sniffling, and then only in house clothes with her hair awry, which oddly serves to endear her more and make me feel more like family. She’s no nonsense–when we were admiring the donkey, Tom (very serious donkey) from afar, she walked up and said “If you want to see the donkey you should really see.” She walked right up to it and proceeded to untie its rope, pick up a stick, and herd it onto the front lawn. When it wandered elsewhere, she chased after it, her hair going everywhere, weilding a stick in the air, everyone watching and laughing hysterically. She similarly chases Shedrack (who’s four) all around the little courtyard between the kitchen/animal sheds and house tirelessly to get his clothes off for a bath while he giggles and tries to out manuver her. Shedrack is completely incomprehensible and adorable and blubbery and we love him. He’s baba and mama’s son, and so is (insert name here), who’s 7 and quite strange. He talks to himself incessantly and when he says anything to anyone else, he whines. Very strange child.

So besides the immediate familiy, there’s mama mdogo, or mama’s little sister. Her name’s Anna, and she started secondary before getting really ill and having to stop. She’s better now, really sweet and helpful and has a pretty good English vocabulary. It’s a little uncear if she’s living with the family permanenty or not, but seems pretty settled. There’s also dada (another insert name here, of some relation to mama’s family) who I think is around 14 and attends Upendo, the closer school we teach at in Standard 5. She’s really cool too, we spend most of our time with her and Anna. Then there’s babu (a nickname meaning grandpa, don’t know his real name)–he’s about 16 I would guess and kind of giggly and goofy in a (I’ve come to figure) not-mocking-way. Finally Sila, who’s 9, is baba’s son from another wife. I don’t think he goes to school. Everyone’s chill and not intense or stressful to be around. We’re really coming to adore them. It’s good to feel generous, it assures me I wasn’t born without that noble inclination.

Additionally, we live with the donkey (Tom), and kitten (Msa) and cat, two goats, a sheep, a 2 month old calf, a mommy cow, and a goodly number of chickens. Plus, of course, the flies, crickets, moths, and other unofficial inhabitants.

We were surprisingly off from school teaching on Wed and Thurs because of national exams for Standard 4. On Friday we had only one rushed day of teaching at Upendo Primary, and that’s all for the week. Because school ends after next week, we’ll only have 4 more hours to finish quite a bit of the curriculum with them and it won’t be covered thoroughly. It’s a shame that these kids won’t get a chance to grasp the material as well as the students at the other schools we’ve taught at, but it’s better than nothing, certainly. Having those two days cancelled was annoying because we hadn’t scheduled our lessons with them in mind, but because we teach 5 days a week usually, we were able to do a little bit more in the way of community scoping out than we would have otherwise. This includes getting to know the vast flat but verdant village on long walks and visiting all the dukas or stores we found along the way asking about condoms. We ask them if they sell male/female condoms, why or why not, and whether they want to get a box to try selling for free from SIC (I don’t know if I explained this process for Ilkisongo). The highlights of these visits include a man at a butcher shop with several goats’ heads on his counter shouting “mzungu” at us, and a lady .with chest hair and beard who snacked on dried fish from a cardboard box while she talked with us. Our teaching group of me and Deanne, DeAnna, Simon, and Audiface has been getting along so well recently, I’m beginning to feel nostalgic now even before the trip’s over. We had a fantastic walk each way, wearing huge ponchos and crowns of flowers that DeAnna made, practicing our cat walking down the dirt roads between the shambas, translating “La Vie en Rose” into Swahili.

Last week Simon was lamenting about the lack of soccer team in this village, and how he would get overweight eating all these carbs without exercise (unlikely, but you know). I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but Simon is a really fantastic soccer player–I don’t remember a game he didn’t come home saying he helped to win. He used to brag that when he got the ball during a game, three guys would run over because they knew he was dangerous. Every evening, even though we’re tired from walking around 10k a day, we’ve headed over to the field nearby and Simon’s been teaching me how to play soccer (also known as mpira wa miguu, or rubber of feet–get the subject header now?). I really think I never played soccer outside of middle school gym before this week. It’s fun and hard and frustrating and invigorating. We always have spectators of young men who are a million times more competant than I am aching to play and hitting themselves watching me fumble around. It’s also funny, since everything that he teaches me, he does perfectly and then I embarass myself trying to imitate him. At the end of the first night, I tried to redeem my athletic self by doing handstands, one handed cartwheels, backbends, and the splits, which Simon and the spectating boys could then embarass themselves trying to do. It’s so fun, and I hope to accrue some semblance of ability before I go back so I can convince my former roommate Jessica to play with me and teach me more…

We only have one more week of school teaching left in this ward because school ends for the term. Then we’ll be focusing more on community stuff, which, despite the headway we made this week, is going to be a huge task. There’s no central area to advertise teachings, and people live so far apart it’s going to be a challenge to gather people. Reading “Infections and Inequalities” has really resonated here, since a huge theme of the book is the challenge of prevention efforts to reach people in rural areas. I’ve enjoyed it, even though it’s quite dry and academic. I wish he would give more concrete definitions to the terms he uses like “inequality” and “poor.” Things that make sense from a wide global regional angle, like women’s roles, just don’t make sense from a household angle. The challenge of perspective is also addressed in the book but I’m having trouble understanding the conclusions I’m supposed to draw from the issues he brings up and then leaves floudering and unanswered. How I can use what I’m reading to influence how I’m doing my work while I’m here. Maybe thinking about these issues a little is enough? But I doubt it…

I have a feeling though, that that sense of wanting to do more and to see things everywhere that can be done is a feeling I’ve grown accustomed to, something I’ll miss when I get back and AIDS work in subsaharan Africa becomes a distant intellectual exercise, like it was before. At the same time while I’m excited by the potential of the work I can and could do here, Farmer reminds us, “We must avoid confusing our own desire for personal efficacy with sound analytic purchase on an ever growing pandemic…”

I’ve finally reached the end of my musings for the week. I have a sneaking perspective I’m becoming progressively less eloquent in these email things as I go, so apologies. I’m glad that some of you have continued to read them and am always grateful for your occasional thoughts. It’s certainly theraputic for me to reflect every week.

I’ve been so good and regular with these every week, I should note that I’m going to Uganda of all places next week to raft the nile, since I never did get to do it this past summer (and most of the other American volunteers are going). I may or may not have time/opportunity to send an update, so be forwarned, and I’ll write as soon as I get the chance.

Love and best wishes,
selena

Hello my fellow North Americans, greetings from the new ward.

Of course, I am absolutely thrilled with the election news (conveyed to me in an excited 3 minute conversation with my parents on Wednesday). Woohoo!

So we’ve finished our first week out in King’ori ward, one of the biggest wards in the district, about equidistant from Moshi and Arusha. What that means, is that on a clear day we can see Mt. Meru on one side and Kilimanjaro on the other. Unfortunately, there has yet to be a clear day–we’ve had a great deal of rain every day this past week (which has been much less of a problem thanks to the timely arrival of the poncho my mother sent me from Cleveland almost a month ago). We’re teaching at two different primary schools, one is very close by and the other is exactly an hour’s walk away. The rain means that carrying posters to use in our lessons is a challenge, and that intermitantly we have to navigate through swampy grass and seasonal rivers that pop up in the middle of the road. The commute is a bit lengthy, but also good to get moving, and it’s not a hard walk because it’s flat. Once we get to the school we teach for 4 hours (with a lovely tea break in between) and then walk home, getting there around 4 very hungry and very tired. The school is really awesome–the students are attentive and behaved, the teachers seem to really be interested in teaching (!) and the heardmaster is really easy to work with, pleasant, and adorably formal (had notes to introduce us to all the other teachers). They feed us lots of eggs and yummy things and even make tea without milk for me because I haven’t been able to digest milk as of late. We’re also teaching a group of standard 6 this time, so about 14-5, who are really gratifying to teach because they’re so sharp and ask such good questions and because for many of them this material is actually relevant to their lives. The other school is pretty average, I’m teaching there with Simon which isn’t overwhelming since I’m not living with him any more and that’s a fun change.

In terms of home, I living in a small room whose main feature is an enormous bed that I share with DeAnna. We’re getting along really we, and never have a dearth of things to talk about from picking wild berries, to poetry, to poverty in the third world. It’s fun living with her, and also to live with an American, because there’s this sense of solidarity in the face of strange new things, and the consciousness that we’re both making fools of ourselves. That solidarity was certainly necessary on the first day when we arrived during the confirmaiton of one of the girls in our house. Thus there was a huge white tent, baloons and tinsel and streamers everywhere, around 50 some people decked out in suits, a man speaking into a microphone over a keyboard demo (which could not be called music because it was a three note scale on loop), hundreds of sodas, and a huge buffet table of around 8 meat dishes all of which I had to refuse. DeAnna and I kept getting dragged into pictures with strangers who had know idea who we were or what we were doing here, and people kept bursting into our room when we huddled trying to unpack in our room that did not appeared to have been cleaned with the expectation of guests in mind. To top things off, my larger backpack seemed to have disappeared from the room, which was so ironic since after managing not to lose it in 6 5 hour + bus rides, two intercontinental flights, three interAfrican flights, a ferry ride, and a 42 hour train ride, it had not disappeared, but managed to in getting from the truck to my room in the middle of nowhere. I enlisted the help of whoever I ran into in the hall (not really knowing who lived there and who didn’t) and DeAnna and I attempted to wander around the house, avoiding the requests for pictures, trying to figue out where it had gone. Our mama finally found it locked up in a storage shed, so all is well, but that was a very strange experience. DeAnna and I hid in our room peaking our heads out occassionally for the rest of the night, and in all the cleanup chaos, weren’t fed dinner that first night.

After that (thank god) things calmed down a great deal–the tent came down and people slowly began to move out and back to their homes. Our family is a little quirky but pretty cool and easy to live with. That first night we had a generator, but alas otherwise there’s no electricity. Our baba is outgoing and a little crazy–came to dinner the second night in only shorts (and he has quite a belly). He works at a hoteli on the road along to Arusha and loves to talk about it. Speaks the tinyest bit of english that serves mostly to confuse us. He and mama are Lutherans again and despite the huge display of piety on the first day don’t seem to observant. They both took the news that I was jewish and DeAnna had no church without blinking an eye, and they’ve been very accomodating about my meat and dairy dietary needs, which is lovely. We’re also getting a lot of protein–beans, eggs, peanuts–and generally feel a lot less lethargic than we did on the Ilkisongo diet.

Mama is really neat, very communicative and accommodating. She’s talkative and nice but not really dragging us into the kitchen to sit with her and tell her our life stories. I feel like we’re going to grow really fond of her and she gets to know us and opens up more. She and baba both speak quickly but clearly and I’ve been excited to be able to (despite being occasionally tongue tied) keep up. Our children are a million times calmer than Noella and Noelli were, cute and a little strange (they talk to themselves?) but not great trouble. We’re still figuring out relationships and names, so I send those along as they come.

This village, as I mentioned, is so spread out and isolated it’s a little overwhelming. We can walk 20 minutes without seeing a person, let alone a house. I am aprehensive that we won’t be able to do things as thoroughly or as well as we were able to do in Ilkisongo. Also with our schedule, we’re teaching all day 3 days a week and haven’t had time even to meet with the village leaders and talk to them, let alone scope out the roads and bounderies of the village. We have Thursday afternoons to do something that’s not school teaching, and the chances that we’ll be able to do 20 hours of training with two groups at two schools an hour apart are next to none. So anyway, we’ll do what we can.

The biggest environmental feature here besides the rain is the FLIES. There are swarms of them EVERYWHERE (I uploaded a picture), and the rainy season is also their mating season, so they’re more active and noisier than usual.

Only a few more weekends in Arusha before I make my way back to Uganda and fly home. Obviously I have mixed feelings about leaving, and a few more weeks to process those…

All my love (and squalor) as always,
Selena

Hello friends, happy November.

Thanks for your responses to my email from last week.I know it was kind of a strange/confused/venting kind of email, and I appreciate that many of you sent me your thoughts in the attempt to process it. I am wary sometimes, of writing things that are hard to fit into a context that’s so foreign. I was really happy that it made some sense….

I have just come back from Ilkisongo, moving again with all the things I brought with me, coming to town down those rocky hilly roads for the last time for a while. I remembered after I sent my last email a number of really quite nice positive things from my homestay and time in Ilkisongo. I’m lucky to have a group that gets along and gets our job done well. I was really proud that we finished the curriculum at both the schools we taught at, we had several really good community day teachings, and we finished all 20 hours of peer education training (we were the only group to pull it off in this ward). We had community day on Wednesday and it went really well–we had probably several hundred people there, brought mostly by the DJ, and mostly kids, but still, that’s a lot. We had a tag game where kids had to run across past people representing HIV if the scenario they were given transmitted HIV, and we tied red yarn on their wrists when they answered questions about HIV correctly. We had teachings of course, and we gave away condoms and we did free and confidential testings (although less than 20 people tested). Then we had an awesome soccer game, SIC versus a local team that kicked our butts, but it was fun to watch. A little weird since everyone there was rooting for the local team and yelling “Down Wazungu!” which was slightly offensive to the players on our team who weren’t white, that it, all but two. Managed to have a highly hilarious conversation with my mama about it afterwards about the various abilities of the people on the team.

Although several times (especially at community day when there were just huge mobs of them everywhere) I felt as though all I felt towards children was immense hatred. But earlier this week as I was tickling Noella after she got my attention by hitting me with something, Audiface taunted me that I would miss them. So…maybe he’s right. Even though they really definitely do have at least ADHD, are far from being normal and usually intolerable, I think I will miss them in a way. And although I didn’t shed any tears in leaving my homestay, I know I’ll look back on it fondly. Or, I guess we’ll see, eh? Isn’t that what I said about Mbale? I guess it’s all relative, and so a good deal depends on the next homestay I guess. Much comparing will no doubt be done by all.

Among the fond memories will include my surprisingly successful (that is not congealed) cooking of spaghetti last week (although all we had to eat it with were spoons which is pretty freaking close to impossible); going to choir practice with mama which was amazingly fun and mama was thoroughly impressed by my pathetic attempts to step from side to side while I sang vague vowelled syllables in Swahili. and also included an awkward attempt to introduce myself to many people and a strange comment (complement?) from the choir director that all white people know how to sing because they practice everyday; and last night’s farewell dinner of the huge guacamole success and Simon’s amazing chappati and mama’s beans with the exchange of a few small gifts and baba’s speech about how he hoped we would forgive them if they ever made us made (I gave mama some material for a skirt and some hairbands and she totally liked the hairbands better). That was a mammoth sentence, so I guess there are good things to remember. As for the not so good, I think the last email pretty much covers it.
As promised I managed to take and upload about 50 billion pictures of family and friends and as always they can be located at http://www.flickr.com/photos/selenasd

Miss you all, in much better spirits this week, and I’ll have a ton of news from the new village when I write again (leave at 7 am Sunday to start all over again!)
love,
Selena

Hello friends and family, as always I hope life is treating you all well.

On Monday we begin our final week of work in Ilkisongo. In some ways, I can’t wait to move out. The main reasons are: the kangas that screech out side my window every morning at 6 am and kind of sound like someone hitting sheet metal with a hammer next to my head (I had no idea a bird that small could make a noise like that), my kids who are very touchy and stuff and incredibly annoying and frustrating to be around, the lack of eggs depite the constant lobbying, and the very consistent strangeness of my baba. But besides the bird screeching, I really have nothing significant to complain about and overall pleasantness and facility of social interaction definitely is an improvement over my stay in Uganda. I am exhausted thinking about this new place with a new tribe of people (Meru), new schools and community groups to organize, and a new place to get to know. I’m also excited to have a chance to teach lessons better and to be better organized and avoid the mistakes I made the first time. Anyway, next week we move out Friday, and move in Sunday–the new villages are on the East Side of Mt. Meru nearish to Moshi, and about a 2.5 hr. drive. My Ilkisongo Baba offered his perspective on the Meru people: “They’re dirty and selfish and they don’t go to school.” Well then. Thanks pops.

In the last week I have to take a lot of pictures of Ilkisongo. It’s so beautiful, and I haven’t really spent enough time appreciating it. I’ll also take some pictures of my family and my teaching group too; haven’t been breaking the Nikon out too often.

It’s a travel weekend now, but I decided to stay in town. The first reason was because I didn’t really want to go with everyone else, who were going off to climb Lengai, an active volcano. Also, I wanted to visit a support group that I’ll write about in a second. Finally, I promised my friend I would help her shop for community day–a day of free testing, an HIV+ speaker, teaching, soccer, music and fun actitivities we’re putting on for our villages on Wednesday. Turns out, it was a good thing I stayed, because yesterday I had to take my friend who was going to climb Lengai to the clinic (fainting, diarrhea, vomiting, and fever) where she was diagnosed with malaria. Then I had to bring two other girls who also didn’t go to Lengai bread and peanut butter and bananas because they got food poisening. DeAnna from my teaching group stayed in town and was diagnosed with a liver infection and the friend I was joking with that we were the only healthy ones in town was given treatment for a urinary tract infection today. So, I’m the lone soldier I guess. Feel better about being lazy and not going anywhere now that I can make myself useful nursing people.

Yesterday Chloe (the one I promised to help shop) and I visited the HIV support group of which both the patients we visited are members. We sat in a room that was kind of hot and stuffy and made both of us yawn. We went to sit on the benches with the other women (there were only around 3 men in the group of about 30) but they had us sit in the front–they said to see out faces. We introduced ourselves and were warmly welcomed by everyone, waving to the women we had visited before, happy to be there and ready to learn and experience.

We had been told that this group collected small amounts of money from each person and then gave it to a member who was sick and needed help. Efrem, the rasta who took us there, asked them how many were on ARVs, all but 3 or 4. A few of them explained their side effects but they seemed not to be too bad. Otherwise nothing about their lives, their feelings, their experiences were really discussed. The meeting consisted of the collection of money, for those who were sick, and then separately for a man who needed 140,000 shillings to pay 7 months of rent and was sick in bed. They also have a bank account, but nothing was contributed to that at the meeting. When the issue of the man who needed rent came up, the group was restless about giving more than usual at the meeting. Then one woman raised her hand and suggested that we were guests, and they had this problem, and how could we help?

So we sat at the front of the room while everyone watched as we learned of the request from Efrem who translated and then looked at each other and then looked back and weren’t sure what to say. Finally I said “I have 5,000 shillings I brought to the meeting to give to the back account, but I could instead give it for this cause.” Everyone agreed that would be appropriate and as I put my pathetic less than $5 on the table, they cheered and clapped. And I couldn’t help thinking about how much more I had on me that I could have given and how awful it was that’s all I was handing over and why couldn’t I help more? And how I was going to a nice restaurant for dinner and staying in a hostel and probably going to use some of what I didn’t give on a candy bar to appease my insatiable sugar cravings. I thought of Paul Farmer watching me and how he would have done more to help, and I heard myself retelling this story to a million people who will tell me there was nothing more I could have done and I can’t fix every problem. And I’m torn because I want to give but hate that it is expected of me and was the minute I walked into the room because of my skin. The group then asked us for a sponsor in the US, and Chloe just said “It’s harder than it seems, but we’ll look into it,” and the group’s secretary asked for our phone numbers, and the women we visit usually who sell second hand shoes kind of jokingly tried to sell us some. Sometimes I wish I’d never come and want to fly back home as soon as I can because sometimes, working here is so hard that I don’t know what to do.

And if I was a Tanzanian in that support group and I saw two white people sitting in the front of the room when I walked in, I know what I would be thinking. And it’s not too far off right? Why not, right? But somehow I hate that the person to person connection, the emotional support and mutual inspiration gets missed a lot of the time.

I’m reading ‘Catch 22,’ having finished ‘Flame Trees of Thika’ last week. Good literature to read for hours every day. Escapism? Perhaps.

Miss home a little too much these days,
Selena

Hello all, hope that life on the flip side is going fantastically.

We’re moving into the 4th week of our first ward–meaning that there’s only two more to go before we move onto the next ward (that is group of about six villages). Rumor has it that our next villages are on the east side of Meru quite a ways away, so interneting may be very sporadic. In the mean time, I’ve enjoyed a relxing weekend in town and head back to the villages in a few hours…

Our work in Ilkisongo is going relatively well. We’re working with nice and eager to help village leaders who give us schedules with times to teach various groups in the village that always fall through. That is, they aren’t folllowed up on by anyone, and theose who need to know don’t, and then no one comes. Whch is exhausting and frustrating and makes us feel like there’s so many people we could be teaching that aren’t going to get taught before we leave. We did, however distribute about 7 boxes of condoms to 7 stores in the village to be sold, which is cool, and we had an awesome spurr of the moment teaching with some young men hanging around one of the stores with info and a demo about condoms. School is going well too–we’re almost done teaching the whole curriculum at one school and have chosen around ten kids to train seperately who will act as peer educators at the school until they graduate and choose new ones. I’m really excited about the group of kids we got (they were voted on by the class) and can’t wait to start smaller group one-on-one style in-depth teaching with them.

Life at home is a million times better now that mama and Noella are back home–Noella is fully recovered. We thought she might have mellowed out by her near death experience but she definitely hasn’t. Besides internet and indian food as a draw, I would have come to town anyway just for a break from her and her cohorts. The food has also gotten a lot better with mama cooking. I’m going to cook pasta with the family thins week which should be an adventure…

I’ve also started visiting two HIV positive women around town with Efrem, an awesome rasta who works as a health worker and HIV counsellor for SIC. The women are really cool and learning these women’s stories and spending time with them has been really interesting. I visited them with two other volunteers last week and returned this week with a bag full of groceries for each. I’ve been thinking a lot not only about them and their stories but about my role in their lives. Reminds me of Mountains Beyond Mountains, which again, if you haven’t read you must. I have a lot more to say and write about this but I don’t have time now, and I need to process a bit more. Next week, the three of us are going to visit them at their support group session.

My health is wonderful thank god, beside the fact that my ability to digest milk is erroding. Speaking of God, I’ve had the conversation about the Jews killing Christ about three times this week, and can now recognize the word for crucify in Swahili….

I’ll write more next week of course, and hope to hear more about your lives and what you’ve been up to in reply soon.
Love,
Selena

Most memorable things about Lushoto:
- Making guacamole from veggies in the market
- Girl puking the whole 7 hour bus ride back
- Landscape that made us feel like we were in Lord of the Rings

Evidence my Swahili is improving:
- Explained different types and bands of peanut butter and my personal preferences
- Described the plot of Grapes of Wrath

Evidence baba changes subjects unexpectantly (translated for convenience):
- Selena: You were thirsty, Simon!
Simon: Yes, after playing soccer a long time today
Selena: I’m going to go drink water and then rest before dinner
Baba: Do people farm with their hands in America?

- Selena: Wonderful dinner, I’m going to bed.
Simon: Ok, see you tomorrow
Baba: What kind of alcohol do they have in the US?

Evidence my diet here leaves something (i.e. protein and vitamins) to be desired:
- Breakfast: White bread, tea
- Lunch: White bread with margarine, soda
- Dinner: Ugali (water and maize flour) and warm milk

Evidence my patience with/affection for children is waning:
- Chased after a kid yelling ready to pummel him for pulling on my hair/touching my face and nose and screaming about my nose ring while I tried to watch a soccer game

Evidence I’m a bad teacher:
-Hissed at children today for not paying attention

Awkward Swahili moment of the day:
- Said “how is the morning” to my friend’s host brother at 4 pm.

Evidence I will experience extreme culture shock in 2 months:
- Realized 200 pages into Grapes of Wrath that I was imagining the driver in the right front seat.

Greetings all, I hope you’re doing swell, and please write with updates…

So, I just got out of a hospital in Zanzibar where I went when I came
down with a case of the notorious and dreaded malaria. Mom and I had
been having a lovely time in Tanzania, we took the Tazara train for
two days from just north of Lusaka to Dar which was nice (and lucky
because the border closed the day after we left and we were eager to
get out of Zambia). Then we spent a day in Dar getting our bearings
and stuff. We also happened to run into my friend Jacob Lemiuex from
Stanford on the street, who actually set up the fellowship I used for
my internship in Uganda, which was a complete surprise since i didn’t
know he was in Tanzania…we had coffee and chatted and that was also
nice. I dusted off my Swahili, and got to use it on the ferry to
Zanzibar, where I got my first marriage proposal from a 60-some
Zanzibari tailor. Sweet…

So once on the wonderful island of Zanzibar, mother and I spent a day
walking around stone town and sleeping in and doing not a lot, but we
did go to a traditional Swahili restaurant on cushions on the floor
with a three person Taraab group (who we of course befriended and who
invited us to visit the Taraab music academy which we did Tuesday).
Sunday we did a spice tour, where we got to see different plants that
bear the fruits that eventually end up in conical containers in the
grocery store–we saw vanilla and cinnamon, and cassava, and also
plants known as “natural lipstick plant” and “natural hair gel plant.”
It was quite interesting and fun and mom took a million pictures. Then
Monday we went snorkeling which was lovely and amazing and also got to
know a lady living in our hotel named Meredith who was here for a
conference on sea grass but is working on her PhD in Mozambique when
she’s not a school in the states.

Anywho post-visiting the music academy which was really really neat we
went to the Palace museum during which I figured I had something that
was not heat exhaustion from the snorkeling. I was leaning on walls at
every opportunity and generally felt awful, so we went home and
rested. By the next morning I was like a million degrees (102 turns
out) so mom managed to get me in a taxi to a hospital where they asked
me for my symptoms and immediately had me tested for malaria, which
came out negative. But because my symptoms were so classic and because
I was on prophylaxis, which can sometimes give false negative test
results, they started me on anti-malarial treatment anyway. This was
Wednesday, and I was kind of a mess, and I actually fainted twice, but
after the first injection and some IV fluids I started to be a little
more cogent. The hospital was nice and clean and I had my own room
with an extra bed that mom slept on, and my own bathroom, but there
was no food (mom got be juice and crackers which I didn’t eat much of,
but you know) and no running water sometimes and the toilet worked on
and off. Also the nurses spoke varying levels of English and my
Swahili is certainly not good enough to keep track of medical terms. I
had a little chill/fever relapse yesterday, but I’ve responded very
well to the drugs overall, and my temperature and blood pressure was
normal so they discharged me with instructions to return for two more
injections for two more days.

It was a nice hospital to stay in, but there seems to be one strange
Zanzibari pastime no one informed us of which is to wander around and
coming into random people’s hospital rooms and ask them how they’re
doing and if they’re feeling better in varying levels of English. And,
no these were not hospital employees, and they certainly didn’t seem
like patients–just grinning young men or small troops of elaborately
garbed Muslim women nodding knowingly when you tell them you’re fine,
although you’re sweating and sprawled out on a hospital bed which tons
of needle pricks all over you. Incredibly, incredibly strange. This
happened relatively often.

All in all, this is just about the perfect time for this to happen
because I’m with my mom in a beautiful, inexpensive place, the
treatment is five days and mom is scheduled to leave in ten, and she
was there to mother me and keep track of my pills and get me food and
rub my back when it was sore, etc. I mean, I guess it’s silly to say
it’s lucky that it happened now, but it kind of is, especially since
malaria happens and these were really ideal circumstances.

So I’m up and about, although a little slow going and not really
eating still, and still have like a billion pills to take a day and a
little stiff, but functioning, and feeling -much- better. Don’t worry
(although none of you knew so you couldn’t have been worried). Because
of the delay in our travel plans (not exactly how we had scheduled
things, but you know), mom and I got some cheap one way flights to
Kilimanjaro airport, and we’ll have around three days there (after I
finish my treatment in Zanzibar) for mom to see the place I’ll be
settling in for the next three months. I have to say it’ll be a relief
to be in one place for a longer period, traveling is exhausting. Also,
I ran into some people from Stanford on their long weekend in Zanzibar
right before I got sick, and they were all incredibly enthused about
the program, which was exciting. Ok, so ran into is an exaggeration,
mom and I snorkeled with one of the coordinators and her dad and when
she heard I went to Stanford she asked if I knew of SIC and I said,
yes I was doing it in a few weeks…She was incredibly nice and gave
me the number of some Stanford kids who had come to Zanzibar too and
that’s how we got to meet up.

Soon we’ll be in Arusha and I’ll be sure to keep updating about the
process of getting oriented, and then going through orientation, and
then beginning to teach and everything with Students for International
Change. Exciting!

Lots of love and good thoughts,
Selena