Video Game?

February 27, 2010

It seems like we usually talk about work and how difficult and frustrating, yet successful and rewarding it can be. But there are so many other components to life in Arusha besides our work, and Whit and I have talked a little about how they are kind of like a video game. There are so many different levels to play every day, whether it be dodging tourist chasers downtown, or braving the dirt roads of Mianzini and Ilboru that seem like their own mountain ranges with peaks and canyons, or maneuvering through central market in search of decent produce with an honest seller. All of these levels, once completed, bring a sense of accomplishment, and if not, at least relief.

No matter what level we play on any given day, some of the obstacles are universal to all of Arusha:
• Getting bumped by a car or motorcycle, or even repeatedly having to dodge them while maintaining patience
• Slipping on a banana peel or mango pit (which truly happens more than one would think).
• Dodging dish or laundry water that women throw into the street nonchalantly and without regard for passers-by.
• Crosswalks and stoplights just don’t carry the same meaning and sense of security that we are familiar with.
• Hurdling the large water drainage ditches that separate the sidewalks from the major roads, and many streets have holes in them that expose pedestrians to the mucky waste water below if they lapse in concentration.
• Searching for bits and pieces of Swahili, thinking you have them soon to find out that you’ve lost them, and then having to backtrack to find them.
And if these obstacles (and so many more) aren’t enough to make passing each level difficult, you also have to overcome the distractions:
• So many people going every which way
• The “How are you?” chants that the children direct at every mzungu (white person) they see.
• Honking from cars and motorcycles that often scare you half to death
• The wonderful smells of greasy fries and samosas
All of these distractions, good or bad, can cause the player to become the victim of one of the above obstacles, if they aren’t careful. All of the obstacles here must be faced before the player even gets to work or school, or wherever they are going.

We started playing when we got off the airplane, and won’t pass all of the levels of this year’s edition until we reach the airport again. But aside from all of the obstacles, we have had and will continue to have goals and missions until we leave that have made playing this game so worthwhile. I won’t fully be able to evaluate “Arusha 2010” until we get home, but Playstation should definitely here my ideas.

We’ve taken a little break from the game for the last few days since Mala was spayed, and we brought her back to our apartment so we can watch her. She is definitely dealing with her new apartment very well, especially since she can’t go outside whenever she wants, but she loves sitting on the couch and standing on the small balcony watching the happenings of Fire Road. It really sucks having to watch my dog wear her upside-down, Apollo 13 collar just so that she won’t bite at her wound that is itching to the point where Whit and I both scratch it for her so that she’ll quit driving us crazy. We want to bring the collar home with us though because Mala could do some serious snow shoveling with her Elizabethan collar. The best part about her being here is that she is completely potty trained. She sits at the door every time she needs to go outside, and the only accident she has had was when she was still whacked out from her anesthesia. She’s even potty trained to the point where she is whining at the door so she can go outside, fake squat for two seconds, and then spend the rest of the time sniffing around. I hope she at least feels sneaky. Gotta love dogs!

(This is a good picture of what we refer to as the snow plow and Whitney. Mala runs into everything and it’s so funny but I feel bad every time and want to rip it off early.)

Written by Zach

Differences

22 February 2010

Haven’t written in a while because we haven’t had much new and exciting happening. We have gone to a few more schools and are still getting ready for Women’s Day in a couple of weeks, but work has pretty much been the same old, same old.

So instead! I am going to write about a few more of the things that I find quirky and interesting about living here. :) One of the things I have found very different from home is some of the commercials on television, particularly ones that are advertising skin lightening systems. That’s right. Lightening, not tanning! Funny how people at home usually want to look dark and tan, while products here offer skin lightening for “up to 5 shades lighter!” Most of the television stations here come from South Africa or India, though, and most of these commercials I think are aimed at the Indian populations that live in East Africa.

Another mystery to me here is the “Duka la Dawas”, which literally means “shop of medicines” or “pharmacy”. Here the Dukas are labeled either “baridi” (which literally means cold, but indicates that they sell Western medicines) or “asili” which means they have more traditional, local remedies for illnesses. These dukas are found on almost every street corner, even out in smallest of towns and remotest of areas. When you enter a “Duka la Dawa: Baridi” you will usually see shelves filled with versions of the medicines that we would find in our own medicine aisles, but sometimes they also have medicines that would require a prescription in the US, such as Cipro. As you know, it takes many years of schooling to be able to be a pharmacist in the US, so I have to wonder when I go into a duka here, if the shop owners have any sort of relevant training to qualify them for handing out these sometimes powerful medicines. Although, in the time that we spent at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital we saw the doctor’s writing out prescriptions, so I also wonder what drugs DO require a doctor’s Rx and why? Is it just really specific meds, such as anti-retro virals? This is definitely on my list of things to find out more about.

(The picture here is of a waterfall that we hiked to last weekend. It is up in the foothills of Mt. Meru, just past a little village where some of the Basecamp employees are from. It was beautiful. If you look closely, just at the top of the rocks, you can see Zach standing up there. He was brave enough to take a dip in the freezing water, but since I tend to be a little hydrophobic, I just took pictures!)

Written by Whitney

Tarangire National Park

11 February 2010

We just got home from safari today and had a blast. We are now in the mood to watch the Lion King :) , but we don’t have it here. We went to Tarangire National Park and stayed at the Tarangire Safari Lodge. Our “camping tent” was nicer than our apartment in Arusha so we definitely were on vacation! We went with a couple from Minnesota who were nice enough to let us share a safari truck. They lived in Tanzania ten years and taught at the Maasae Girls School in Monduli for two years and are just back for a few weeks to visit. We had a lot in common and had fun exchanging stories and experiences from our time living and working in Tanzania.

We went on almost two full days of game drives around the park and were able to see a variety of landscapes and animals. Some of the stuff we saw were: a leopard, two lions, elephants, giraffes, warthogs, impala, water bucks, dikdiks, hartebeests, klipspringers, mongooses, bat-eared foxes, cape buffalo, gazelles, ostrich, oryx, baboons, vevet monkeys, brown-crowned crane (endangered!), egrets, owls, eagles, vultures, turtles, and tons of other beautiful and colorful birds. We didn’t see everything we were hoping to, but that leaves us something to look forward to later.

We saw babies of almost all the animals, but the baby warthogs were one of our favorites. They are unfortunately, though, one of the most skiddish of all the animals and were hard to photograph. The elephants were the most abundant animals in the park, as Tarangire is famous for. There were thousands around and we were able to see them in many different habitats. Sometimes they were so close to the truck that we could practically reach out and touch them. They almost seem otherworldly and we laughed at how we felt like we were in Jurassic Park at times.

Overall, we had a great time. We wish our families could have been there to share the experience, but hopefully in the future we will get to make the trip together.

(One of our favorite photos of the trip was of the leopard in the acacia tree. They are so sleek, beautiful and rare and seeing it in the wild was absolutely exhilarating.)

Written collaboratively by
Whitney & Zach

Tough Questions

4 February 2010

Even though our week started out slow, it has turned out pretty good. The last two days we have done presentations at Sinon Secondary School that is a little South of Arusha in a rough neighborhood. The school wouldn’t let us present during the day so we have been getting there around 3pm and presenting until about 5:30pm. The fact that the students stay that late at school to listen to our presentation amazed me, let alone how interested they were the whole time we were presenting. At the end of the presentation today one boy raised his hand and said how happy he was that we had come and how much they all appreciated it. He said that they were so thankful three times in a row and everyone in the class was cheering and clapping. It is times like those that make the bad days here worth it.

During one of presentations at Sinon there was a young girl who sat in the front row and asked some interesting questions. Her first question was about we were doing as an organization to address homosexuality in Tanzania. We were a little taken aback by the question, but told her that we have not worked directly with the topic here because it is still not something that is received very well in Tanzania at this point in time. Later we were talking about the time period between when someone contracts HIV to when they will actually test positive, which can be several months, but she asked, “what are you as Americans doing for us to decrease the amount of time we have to wait for those results?” She also later asked a question about what America is doing to help AIDS orphans get access to formula. Not that those aren’t valid questions, but they are also problems that we have in America. I think it was her accusatory tone of voice that made America seem like the bad guy, and the laughing and clapping from other students during those questions, that are frustrating. (Most of the ARVs in Tanzania, which are free, are provided by EGPAF and USAID, both from America. It is not like there aren’t efforts being made to address the issue.) I guess I feel like we get so many mixed signals from people here about these issues. Sometimes I feel like they don’t even want us here, thinking that we work here out of pity for them…sometimes they accuse America of putting AIDS in condoms and other things, like biological warfare…and yet sometimes they ask questions about what America is doing to solve ALL of their problems, problems that we even still have in America. I can’t even count how many times we have gotten questions about how to prevent miscarriages, premature births, infertility and things that we still deal with in America, but it seems like they just have this picture in their minds that America is a place where everyone has everything they want and no one has any problems or worries in life. I know they hate hearing that sometimes there are no solutions to life problems, but sometimes I feel like they don’t always believe us…like they still think we are part of some big American conspiracy to make the lives of Africans as hard as possible.

On a lighter note, the best thing about work this week was that we hit the 2,000 mark for how many people we have presented to in Tanzania. We were pretty excited about that and are happy to have a “concrete” way to quantify the work that we have done here. (It also makes us feel less guilty about taking a few days off next week to go to Tarangire National Park to go on safari. We are really excited about it!)

(The picture today is of the warning label on our box of wine...pretty funny, but also true!)

Written by Whitney