Kipilefti

This week is exam week at my school. You know it’s serious because they printed off both a schedule of which exams are when and a schedule of which teacher is invigilating each exam. (Invigilating is one of my new favorite words. It’s British for proctoring, but way better, because it makes you feel like a superhero.) These schedules have been duly posted in the teacher room and before every exam period we all check to see which, if any, exams we are invigilating. Then we pick up the exams, the scratch paper the students write on, and we’re off. I won’t even talk about the invigilating itself, except to say that the exams I’ve looked at have been in excellent English and have seemed to be at the appropriate skill level for the students, which is refreshing for Tanzania.

But here’s the real story: when I went over to the teacher room after lunch to pick up the Form II chemistry exams for the afternoon, the teachers were all standing around, drinking chai and looking unconcerned. The students were all outside, cleaning the environment (according to the primary school students we taught during IST in Njombe, cleaning one’s environment is a basic human right). I stood around for a little while awkwardly, then asked one of the teachers if there were exams for today.

“Oh, no,” he told me unconcernedly. When I asked why he said that there were no exams. The copier ran out of ink so they couldn’t run them off, and the headmaster is, as usual, away somewhere, so there’s nobody to handle the problem. So there are no exams this afternoon. “So probably no exams tomorrow, either,” I said. “Probably not,” he agreed, then went back to his chai.

As I left the school, suddenly free for the afternoon, I giggled quietly to myself. Then I realized that I probably sounded like a crazy person.

When we stood up from breakfast this morning, we all groaned in unison as our legs complained, and with good reason: yesterday we hiked for eleven hours and descended almost six thousand feet (not counting the extra up we did, requiring matching extra down).
(Interesting digression: GPS says that my site’s at 7500 feet, the highest here in the Southern Highlands and maybe the highest in PC/TZ.)
We wanted to get an early start on the hike but waited for two hours for a guide who never showed up, so we left at 8.30. Mama Jully had never taken the high route down but said she could guide us anyway.
Tanzanians had told us that the youth could make the hike in four hours or so, so for us it should take six or seven. HAH. We all know that Tanzanians aren’t good at estimating times (it’s not important for them) but I think we still trusted their numbers more than we should have.
The hike was beautiful, across ridges and through a rainforest and then down infinite, muddy switchbacks with a view of the distant lake beneath us. The first few hours of the hike promised good views, if it hadn’t been completely cloudy. The  mud was intense. After a couple hours an old lady told us that we should cut some sticks: the mud would get worse ahead. A man with a machete cut each of us a bamboo pole; we gave him about a dollar. Six hours later, after the poles had saved us from falling uncountable times, one friend asked “Can we go back and give him more for these sticks?”
After five hours, finishing up with the climbing-along-ridges part of the hike, we ran into an old man and stopped to chat. “How much longer?” he said. “Well, for a youth probably an hour, but for you all, maybe two.” Two hours later we reached the top of a very tall mountain, having gone through a rainforest and a farming valley and an hour of rain (with an hour yet to go) and looked down at Lake Nyasa. Very far down. Then the switchbacks began, four hours of mud and rocks and zigzagging stretching into eternity. Three hours in we didn’t feel, or look, any closer to the lake.
And then my knees gave out.
And I lost my stick, put it down for a minute and watched it slide all the way down the mountain.
Mama Jully gave me her stick and I started moving more and more slowly. Two friends kept me company as the rest went on ahead and I moved down the mountain with tiny steps, creeping along like an arthritic old woman. On the slipperiest slopes I squatted and slid down on my butt.
But despite all this, despite the length of the hike, despite the rain, despite the mud and the switchbacks and the fact that we were all dead tired, we were somehow, amazingly, still in good spirits. We joked as I crept along, talked, discussed impressive falls from earlier in the hike (I think that, total, we all fell maybe 30 times. Everyone but Mama Jully fell at least once). It was a really good experience, and also the longest hike I’ve ever been on.
We got down the mountain around 7.30. It was dark. We walked through blessedly flat ground over to the main road, where I sat down and did not want to get up. We waited for a while and, thankfully, a pickup came along, so we climbed into the back along with nine other Tanzanians and a lot of luggage. “I love it,” said one friend. “Marie’s arm-in-arm with a strange woman, he’s hanging on to the outside of the truck, I’m getting chatted up by the conductor.”
In town the PCVs who had already arrived met our car. “I was so worried about you guys!” one of them said. “We did that hike in the dry season, and it took us twelve hours and we almost died.” They showed us to our rooms, took us to a rice and beans place for dinner.
After dinner we sat on the beach in the dark, under a lantern-bright moon. I went swimming in the lake. It was wonderful, as were the next two days, sitting on the beach reading and talking and swimming and doing absolutely nothing, which was just as well because my legs remained extremely sore. A friend told me that watching me go down stairs, moving slowly and wincing, was hilarious.
Definitely worth it, though, and a great hike. Spending a few days at the beach recuperating was exactly right.

I went to visit Mama Jully yesterday afternoon. “When are your friends coming?” she asked. “Tomorrow?”
“The day after,” I said. She sprang into action: “Then we can go visit my parents today!”
Before I’d left for training we’d agreed to visit her village together, and she’d been waiting for me to return to go home.
“I’ll go get some clothes and meet you at the bus stand,” she said. So I did the same: went home, got some things together, tidied my house, fed the kittens. By the time I got the call from her (“Come! Car is ready!”) it was raining.
I sat in the front passenger seat along with an older man (the best seat in the car, even though it’s shared). I was on the window side and the window was open, so I wound up tugging on my raincoat (a great birthday present). He asked, in English, if I was cold. “Just wet,” I told him. We got to talking, on and off, during the hour we were sitting in the car waiting for it to leave. He asked me my age.
“Twenty-five,” I said. I add two years to my age in village so they’ll take me seriously. “Too young,” he said. “Too young.” He didn’t answer when I asked, but I’m pretty sure the answer to my question of “For what?” was for him to marry. Thank goodness.
After an hour of waiting, we left the stand at 3.10, arriving in Namanga around 4. The car dropped us off and went back for another load.
We waited. And waited. It was raining again. We got wet. It got cold. I put on my polar fleece under my raincoat.
The car returned around 6. Mama Jully told me to get on as soon as it came. I wound up getting into a shoving match with an old lady to get on (they have the pointiest elbows, and they’re not afraid to use them). We sat next to each other and exchanged smiles and greetings.
In the Landcruiser (like a Land Rover, but with two long benches in the back along the sides of the car, instead of seats perpendicular), there were three people in the front seat, plus the driver (cramming three into the passenger seat is never fun). Fourteen of us in the back, on benches and standing, plus an eight-year-old and a baby. Three guys hanging on to the back. Plus all the luggage on the top. Travel in Tanzania is always a joy.
We got off at 6.50 and walked well into the darkness, until around 7.30. It was still raining on and off. Lightning flashed in the distance. I watched every house we passed hopefully, wishing it was our destination. When we finally arrived we walked into the kitchen, sat by the clay oven. Bread and tea for dinner; when Mama Jully noticed that my eyes were watering from the smoke we moved inside, unrolled a mattress, slept. Isaack, Mama Jully’s grandson, slept between us, having expressed his desire to sleep “next to the teacher.”
In the middle of the night Mama Jully and her mother had a loud, extended conversation in the local tribal language. It went on and on. In the morning Mama Jully leaned over me to turn off the lantern and I moved to get up. “Sleep,” she said. “Where are you going? Just sleep.” I was happy to oblige.
Finally out of bed, she told me I was going to take me a bath, gave me the provisions, showed me to a sort of courtyard behind the kitchen. I had an audience of chickens and a soundtrack of pigs. I could see the neighbor’s house, so presumably, if they’d looked, they could have seen me. Thankfully, they didn’t.
A pear for breakfast, sitting in front of a dish of coals in the living room, mattresses still on the floor. I was banished from the kitchen because of smoke sensitivity. So it goes.
After church, typically boring, we went visiting. As we walked by grass-covered foundations, Mama Jully recounted: “There used to be a family here, and there, and there…but they all got HIV and died and now it’s just my family here.” We climbed down a mountain to a stream. “This used to be a big river. On a Sunday like this, there would be lots of people here washing their clothes. Now, no people. Nothing.” The stream gave way to an impressive water. There used to be a path to the bottom, she said, but not now.
She pointed out relatives’ houses. We visited her bibi mdogo–her young grandmother, her grandfather’s second wife. It wasn’t clear if he’d had them serially or concurrently, but given the tendencies of the tribes in this area my money’s on the latter. Bibi gave me a gift of a live chicken, which is now living at Jully’s parents’ house. We’ll eat it next time I visit, she says.
“Maisha plus”–“The good life.” Jully kept saying it to describe the life in village. Walking back, she asked me if I saw the problem.  “I see many problems,” I told her, dodging the question. “The people here died because they got HIV and drank too much and didn’t have God in their hearts,” she tells me. Looking around at these painfully poor people who can’t even afford salt but still give visitors gifts of food and of chickens, I can’t help but think that she might be right.

The tray of food sits in front of me on my bed, the mattress firm enough that my cross-legged weight doesn’t even tilt it. I look at the book in front of me, thinking that my reading here resembles compulsive eating more than anything else: I finished the five Janet Evanovich books my mother sent me in as many days, gulping them down like M&Ms. I don’t want to do that to the current book, a volume of Annie Proulx shorts, but there’s no middle ground for me. Either I’m chewing through a book or it’s drifting towards the bottom of the pile by my bed, forgotten.

I finish a story, put the book down, take a breath. Look out the window at the wisps of clouds drifting past, the placid masses approaching over the mountains like indefinite ships. I finish my mug of milk chai and look at the rest of dinner, no longer hungry. Tomorrow’s lunch, I think, and get up to carry the tray back to the kitchen. The bread that’s baking is lopsided and not done. I rinse out my mug at the spigot in the backyard.

When I get back to my room, the clouds have obscured the mountains.

I think I’ve used up all my mail karma for the next year.

While I was in Dar I texted with Jess, visiting Makete to get money, essentials, and mail. She warned me that Posta Mama said I had a lot of packages, but I wasn’t expecting twelve (!!!) packages and as many letters. It’s quite overwhelming! I want to save some of them to open later but I’m not sure I have that much self-control…

With all these packages, I’m pretty sure I have everything I could possibly need (aside from media and information). Letters are the way of the future!

My conclusion is that I need to start writing letters right now to start building up my mail karma again!

After spending two weeks away from site in Njombe, I headed to Dar to see Kit, his father, and my father. The bus ride is ten to twelve hours from Njombe to Dar. The countryside is beautiful but that’s far too long to spend on a bus comfortably. It’s on bus rides that I’m especially happy to have my iPod shuffle, with its twenty-odd-hour battery life.
From Njombe we drive north through the southern highlands. Until we start to descend there’s no way to tell how high up we are: there are some sort of wimpy mountains but nothing serious. After a few hours we begin to wind our way down out of the mountains. The temperature starts climbing.
Out of the mountains, we drive through the lush plains of Morogoro. After Morogoro town the soil gets sandy and farms scarce. It’s on this section of the trip that I always see a bright, all-yellow bird, scared by the passing of the buss, fly out of the brush. With my cat’s eyes for brilliance and movement I can’t look away from it until it hides itself again.
As we approach Dar our pace slows. Traffic gets worse and stops get more frequent. The bus made good time, though: about ten hours, Njombe to Dar (the return trip was twelve. I guess it’s faster to go down the mountains than to climb back up again…)
From the bus stand I took a cab to the YMCA. As I was walking through the canteen to check in, someone yelled my name (my real name, not “Mary” or “Maria”). I turned and was surprised to see Eddie and Andrew(Zanzibar) having a beer near the bar. They were on their way to their training, stopped in Dar for the night. So I went to check in and then we hung out for a while. As it got later we decided to go out for food and spent about an hour hunting for the Badminton Institute, a good Indian restaurant. It would probably have been easier to find if we hadn’t been asking for the Badminton Club. We made it eventually, and were the only non-Indian diners there. It was bingo night, and the playground was swarming with kids. The whole thing was somewhat surreal but the food was good.
In the morning I waited for a while for a phone call from Kit and his dad, then decided to take matters into my own hands and go ask at their hotel. I was accompanied by Eddie, Andrew, and a sweet Indian forestry grad student who the concierge had set me up with as a roommate. So we headed over. They were still at the hotel, jet-lagged, and somehow hadn’t been able to call my phone from their room phone.
The time I spent with them blurs together, so here’s a synopsis of what we did: had lunch with relatives (I was invited to the birthday party they’d come to attend); visited several tourist markets; went to the Village Museum; spent time in the air-conditioning of their hotel room and talked; ate delicious food.
After a few days in town they moved to a beach resort where the party was held. The morning of the party I went up to the resort early and met the rest of the family who’d come in for the occasion. Kit had been lethargic with heat and humidity but that morning it rained and he perked up like an underwatered flower. We sang and swimmed and walked on the beach. In the evening was the party; Kit and I hung towards the back and talked. We did have some good conversations with the Dutch ambassador, who was an interesting guy and reminded me of a cross between a Bond villain and my favorite college professor.
I’d had an offer to stay that night in the guesthouse of The General, a cousin of Kit’s relative who is, as his name might suggest, a retired army general. All the Tanzanians at the party seemed to think that Kit and I were dating, so he was talked into coming, too. We arrived around eleven. The guesthouse was beautiful and luxurious: huge flat-screen television, crazy shower with a remote. We couldn’t get the air conditioning to work, though, so it was rather warm. We lay around talking for hours. It reminded me of the time we used to spend in my dorm room, not doing work. Kit is like the brother I never wished for as a child but who I am very glad to have found as an adult.
In the morning we had a relaxed breakfast with the General (at which I was introduced to a daughter as Kit’s girlfriend, rendering proof positive of the Tanzanians-thought-we-were-dating theory). Then we tagged along on his visit to the bank and loitered outside for an hour and a half while he transacted business. We’d arranged to meet Kit’s father and aunt in town for some last-minute fabric shopping, so after an abortive attempt to get to the bus stand so I could change my ticket (the traffic was too awful to get anywhere: we sat in it for an hour before giving up) we said goodbye to the General. After lunch I said goodbye to Kit and David and then went back to the Y to kill a few hours with crosswords. My father called in the evening: he was in a cab on his way in from the airport. He’d said he would be staying at the Kilimanjaro Kempinsky, so I took a cab over and waited in the lobby.
And waited. And waited. Eventually my father called again: “Where are you?” “In the lobby.” “What hotel?” The cabbie had taken him to the Mövenpick, and rather than change hotels he’d just changed reservations. So I took another cab over there
We spent a little more than a day together. I dragged him to the bus station to change my ticket (I’d been confused about departure date), went to a souvenir market, and then toured the Peninsula, the area where all the rich expats live. A work friend of his will be moving to Tanzania, so he wanted to see what his friend’s life would be like. We had drinks at a couple seaside tourist bars and walked on the pier at Slipways. As we were both photographing some dugout canoes moored by the pier, I looked over his shoulder and commented that I thought our photographic eyes were very similar. He showed me the last picture he’d taken: “That’s the picture I would have taken,” I told him. I showed him mine: “Yup,” he said.
We moved my stuff from the Mövenpick back to the Y and had dinner, then said goodbye. I went back to my room and fell asleep, exhausted.
I slept through my alarm the next morning: luckily the night watchman pounded on my door to wake me up and I still made my 6.30 bus with no trouble. An uneventful trip back up.
There were a number of other PCVs in town, so I had dinner with them, handed off the parcel I’d picked up for Aleisha in Dar, and then repacked my bags. The next morning I caught the dala-dala back to Makete. I picked up two kittens from another PCV at the bus stand and put them into a basket I’d bought for the purpose. Mostly they were pretty good, but in the last half-hour they started making noise. The road from Njombe to Makete is supposedly being improved, but so far it seems worse to me. We made a pretty good time of a little more than five hours (to go 110 km: that comes out to 22 km/hr, or less than 14 mph).
And that was my trip. I got home, unpacked, started reassembling my house, went to bed. Site had slipped my mind in my time away, receded into a dream-like place, but as soon as I arrived it was real again. I’m happy to be home, happy to be spending some time alone to unwind and recharge.
As I type this, there is a kitten hiding behind my computer screen, watching my hands, wondering if she should pounce.

This morning was the last session of our training. Tomorrow we all head our separate ways. I’d been hoping to get a ride up to Dar in the PC vehicle but it didn’t work out, so I’ll be catching a bus bright and early (actually dark and early, since it will be before the sun comes up) tomorrow morning. Then a twelve hour bus ride. Should be a fun time.

Highlight of the last few days: teaching a little about HIV/AIDS at a local elementary school with our counterparts. Brian and I finished early so we sat on the ground and the kids crowded around us (they were adorable in their red sweaters and blue pants/skirts and red-and-white striped socks) and we had an impromptu geography lesson from a magazine Brian happened to have brought along.

I’m very sorry to be saying goodbye to my fellow PCVs but rather glad that training is over. The sessions were exhausting, and the Tanzanian presenters were all in the habit of giving us a handout or showing us a Powerpoint, then reading exactly what it said to us. Slowly. It was somewhat excruciating. It was also frustrating because many of the counterparts still don’t seem to know very much about HIV/AIDS (we had a long, long discussion about how it was not created in a lab in the U.S. and some of them still didn’t believe us) or how it’s transmitted. So that was frustrating. But spending time with friends more than makes up for it.

The days are exhausting, the evenings are fun. It is, always, a joy to spend time with other PCVs, particularly those in my own group. We have a great group dynamic and have a lot of fun. Last night was a murder mystery. I was Congressman Andrew’s wife and shot him when he wouldn’t give me a divorce, then spent the remainder of the evening covering up my crime by getting quite drunk (my character: I was slightly drunk) and telling everyone I missed my husband. It’s the drunkest I’ve ever been, which isn’t saying much. It turns out that all that was necessary was quite strong homemade PCV wine (ginger, mango, apple, but not Brian’s weird tomato/onion wine). Everyone else stayed up even later and hung out but I was sleepy so I went to bed. Despite that, still tired this morning! We begin permaculture, which will involve a lot of work outside. I’m not sure any of us is in suitable shape.

Friday afternoon, after saying goodbye to a couple friends in Makete, I went home to start preparing to leave. Emptied and cleaned my water filter (it was filtering so slowly because of algae in the top: gross!), dumped almost all the rainwater buckets out, washed all my dishes, got rid of the extra fruit by leaving it on the porch, where students asked if they could take it, cleaned my kitchen, packed. Then it was 5 P.M.

I spent the evening jumping from task to task, unable to concentrate. It was like Christmas Eve: I knew that the next morning I’d be headed to Njombe to see tons of friends and I was too excited to focus. I did read a book (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which I loved) but then it was 8 P.M. and I was still at loose ends. Eventually a candle and Pride and Prejudice settled me enough to sleep, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t until 11.

My alarm went off at 5.15 and I jumped out of bed, wide awake (which never happens). I had an appointment with a small car at 6 A.M.–it was going to pick me up outside the school grounds–so I dragged my stuff out of my house and ensconced myself on a hill to watch the sun rise and wait for the car.

…Which never came. Around 7.30 I hauled my bags to the bus stand and waited. Some vehicles passed but they weren’t going all the way. At 8.45 the dala-type minibus that Jess and Bret were on arrived and I joined them, the three of us on the bench seat. Jess was banging against the ceiling and window; Bret in the middle squishing his knees against the seat in front; me falling off the end. The ride was unexceptional, although for the last two hours there were people standing in the aisle, leaning up against me. For a while a woman was sitting on my side, which was fun (and by that I mean painful). We made decent time, arriving around 2.30 after a flat tire within view of our destination. There was a birthday party going on for a health volunteer. A bunch of people went to the Kibena Club, which is an expat club in Njombe. It was actually really disorienting to be in a group of a bunch of white people, many older, who I didn’t know. I socialized for a while but wound up reading and judging a ping-pong tournament in between chapters. Arrived back at the hotel around 11 via a ride in the back of a pick-up with eight other PCVs, all but one drunk. We sang Disney songs all the way.

Back at the hotel they prepared to go out to a disco and I went to bed, woke at 6.30 from city noise. Climbed up to the roof of the hotel to look at the fog, then had breakfast, and now I’m at the Internet. Nipo.

A standard day. I do my morning teaching, cutting the second period short because the power’s out so we can’t do the lab. Skip chai (how un-Tanzanian of me) in favor of heading down to the post office to see if there are any post-birthday packages, but I’m waylaid on the way by Mama Jully, who wants to go to the bank (right next to the post office). First we have to detour to her house; I say hi to her daughter and grandson, then we head up the mountain (she lives on the side of the ridge that the main road runs along). First stop is the post office: two birthday packages from my mother and music from Jan (weirdly, no letters). Then the bank; I sit at the sidelines and read Hemingway while Mama Jully transacts. We head back towards town. It’s market day, and she wants to get cooking bananas, so I accompany her. Somehow I end up buying some avocadoes (they’re good ones for a decent price, so I don’t mind). Jully heads back to her restaurant and I drop in on my friend who owns a shop in the market to pick up a few things, then head home to open packages. The daily rain starts when I get home around noon and stretches on into the evening.

Girl scout cookies! And silly detective novels! That settles it: the afternoon is spent in bed with a box of Samoas while I read an entire book in three hours, listening to the country music Jan sent. I also do some pre-packing and charge my iPod and iPod shuffle (side note to any soon-to-be PCVs who may be reading this: invest in an iPod shuffle. Small, cheap, big enough to hold a fair amount of music. Totally worth it). Around four I start feeling hungry and eat an avocado to stave off the hunger, wondering if having half a pineapple for lunch was the best idea. I decide to make spaghetti to use up the tomatoes and onions I have; the sauce is almost done when I start poking around my kitchen and realize I’m out of noodles. After briefly considering eating the sauce straight or with rice, I bite the bullet, put on my outside shoes, grab my umbrella, and head back to the market. Chat briefly with my friend at the shop, buy noodles, head home. I walk in the door, put the noodles on to boil, and change into pyjamas. The best part of any day.