Walking around the dirt roads through the soft mud and the snow littered fields I wonder if it all was a dream. Part of me feels like I never left and part of me feels like so much inside of me has changed and that I am looking at my home through new eyes, a pair that has been scorned by poverty, by brilliant colors of fabric and skin, by tired feet and leather palms and by friendships new and sincere.
The last week in the humid tropics of Tanzania was fast and eventful. The SEGA students were determined and courageous and worked alongside each other under the heat of the sun to plant the 200 trees that I had bought for the boundaries of the land. The younger students would work diligently in the morning clearing brush and digging holes while the older girls would fill them with compost, carry buckets of water out to each hole and dig them out just a little bit more in preparation for planting. We carted tree saplings out in wheelbarrows, placing one next to every hole to be planted. By the time I had left three of the four boundaries were planted. The rain had still not come and we have been hand watering the trees, often walking 15 minutes, carrying pails of water perched high on our heads. I never knew the pain that is partnered with the graceful act of balancing the sloshing bucket on one’s head. “When you are young and you have to go far, far, far for water, you cry,” one student told me. I was selfish and ignorant as I marveled at the sight of a young woman carrying a five gallon bucket of water or veggies carefully balanced on her head, often wanting a photo for my collection, but forgetting the head and the heart that labored under the weight of the task needed for life.
Each day I arrived at the school before 8 am and left after 8pm. The air was thick and hotter than it has been the entire four months I have spent there. Lightning danced in the mountain ridges, mocking us as we wait for her wet relative. Sandra, the students and I would wait until the sun had cooled slightly-around 5 or 6pm and then gather our tools and head out for the boundaries, the girls still singing or laughing despite the heat. Sandra and I ate dinner with the girls most of the week, under the stars out in the courtyard as the banda was under construction getting a new roof (the palm fronds were leaking so Polly finally decided to put on a metal roof even though she and all of us loved the look of the thatched roof). The girls were happy when we stayed and shared a meal with them and often they begged us to stay in the dorms with them.
After a week of planting trees and tending to last minute projects in the gardens it was time for me to say goodbye. I hate goodbyes and often opt for “see you later”, but the girls insisted on throwing me a proper goodbye party. They decorated the classroom, prepared a speech, we shared a meal of rice and beans and chapattis, and of course we danced. They presented me with a beautiful kanga and many cards of thanks. I was honored and thankful to have shared such an amazing experience with them. I will miss the students of SEGA so much and my lovely housemate and colleague Sandra who has made this trip easier in so many ways.
On Sunday I packed my bags and headed to Dar es Salaam for a last minute little adventure. I have always wanted to go to Bagamoyo, a little historic town just north of Dar. I had met a bunch of kind kids who lived there while I was on Zanzibar and the invitation was open to visit. Bela Fleck had visited Bagamoyo the last time I was in Tanzania. He was there making a film about the history of the banjo. I got the opportunity to meet him the following summer at the Telluride Bluegrass Music festival where I was working in the kitchen backstage. He told me it was one of the most beautiful places. After that I had to see it for myself. In Bagamoyo I found so much art, music, dancing, singing and history. I felt so happy that I finally made it there but a bit frustrated that I hadn’t found it earlier. There is an arts college there with dance and drumming classes, Rastas painting on the streets and children drumming and dancing in the ruins of the city. It was once the capital of Tanzania and the stories it holds in its crumbling walls speaks clearly into the heat of the day. The ocean nearby crashes loud waves onto the long open beaches as if in paradise, and where we swam for hours. My hosts gave me a tour of the town via bikes and we ate really good local food near the beach. The ghetto that my friends stay in consists of a long narrow building with six simple cement rooms. Each room functions as a house. Nassa lives alone-or so he told me, though I think his two friends often sleep and share his space. Miriam, the beautiful smiling woman across the hall lives in her room with her young daughter, Zuhula and her husband. In her room is a bureau, a queen size bed and frame, a low table with all her kitchen supplies, a television and a small fridge that she uses to sell cold bottled water out of. All the tenants cook in long hallway on the floor and they share a bathroom, which is two squat toilets that also are used as a shower room. When you want to take a shower you need to go to the pump, about 500 yards from the house and fill your buckets. My Rasta friends would cook up a big meal and then bring a woven mat outside where everyone would sit around the food and eat with their hands. No one was ever turned away and the simplicity of the meal was so beautiful. There is so much I can write about those last few days living like a Tanzanian, but I am not even sure anyone is even reading this anymore or if I can even convey how special it was to me to be able to go on this adventure and be part of a different culture and life.
Although some days were incredibly frustrating, hot and tiring, I am so thankful I returned to Tanzania. I want to thank everyone who helped me get there, all those who followed my blog along the way, encouraging me to keep writing and to be strong and to all the Tanzanian people who took me into their homes, fed me, made me laugh, cry or cringe.
The last day in Africa I spent walking the beaches of the Indian Ocean trying to prepare myself for what lies ahead. Now I am back in Vermont. It is gray here and cold. I miss the tropical flowers, the colors, the smell, the noise, and the people. It is so wonderful to see my family and friends again, my dog, to drive my own car to be under a blanket when I sleep, but there are things in Tanzania I cannot have here just like there were things from home I craved so much abroad. The grass is always greener, and you cannot always have everything, but someday I hope to find some balance between the two worlds, or at least that of traveling and having my home base.
Stepping off the elevator in the NYC airport, struggling to push my cart laden with my heavy baggage through the metal doors I suddenly am traveling head on towards two vending machines standing tall and bright next to each other. They are stocked full of junk food, chips, gum, candy bars and one is entirely filled with sodas and bottled water. I wonder what the Tanzanians would do with a vending machine. My best guess is that would “hire” someone or some guy in need of something to do or some money would take it upon himself to the be the one to feed the money into the slot. A vending machine eliminates a job-a clerk behind the counter to take the money. Yes, someone will need to restock it and to service it and maybe even guard it, but I bet they would also want to “work” it. Flying in over the millions of buildings and paved streets, parked cars and railroad tracks I think about how my friends and students in Tanzania have no idea-cannot even comprehend the immense size of America-or even New York City itself. It is often hard for me to comprehend it-especially flying over it and seeing it all at once. I look down on the neighborhoods and housing projects and it is hard for me to imagine a group of young men cooking up a feast of stiff porridge, fish and vegetables, bent over a charcoal stove in the hallway, then collecting barefoot on the woven mat, which has been carefully placed outside in the shade, so that they can all gather there to eat, passing around the bowl of water and carefully pouring water for each other to wash his right hand until it was satisfactory for eating from. Cup your palm, curl brown fingers close together and make the perfect utensil out of your own body and never spilling a drop. Even the small children can do this. It is these small things that I crave to know, want to be part of…it is the ritual, the sacred, the shared part of life that we have forgotten.
I wish I could compose a list of what I learned while I was in Tanzania, but it seems irrelevant now since I realize we are always learning, everyday and if we are not, then we are not truly living. But if I did the list would be large and probably not even understood by all. The list I would compile would include physical tasks like learning to drive stick shift on the wrong side of the road, that the powder from a single seed can purify water and save lives and how to eat rice with your hands without spilling a grain. But it would also need to include how to embrace a culture and not become angry at them when they won’t help a sick child medically because they claim she is possessed by demons and that a diabetes test would do her no good, or how to gracefully bargain in a market without losing patience and my temper. I look at the houses here and think they are too big, that we have too much stuff that our world revolves in a materialistic manner and we are burdened with how to spend paychecks and settle our debts. The happiest people I have met have nothing and are naïve and innocent to the world around them. They think everything in America is perfect-there is no crime or poverty. The innocent have no idea of the suffering in Afghanistan, the war, the rapes and murders on their own continent, the corruption within their own government. But they are happy, so I will leave them there in their mud hut unconcerned with the problems of this world, so that they may deal with their own lives one day at a time.
As Spring finds her way back to Vermont via raindrops and sprouting crocuses, I am mentally preparing myself for another transition of being home, starting a new home in Cabot with Jonah and falling back into the open arms of my community. I hope to see you all soon.
Much love and many thanks,
Lindsey
