Tuesday, February 9, 2010

"It's The African Way" (What more can I say?)

It’s been a little over a week since my last blog post, so I know this is a little overdue (I wrote this on Sunday, but the internet was being wonky). The time has passed me by so quickly; it’s unbelievable that it’s been two weeks already since I began globe-trotting!

Last Sunday (and again today), we experienced the “Sunday Market” scene. It was absolutely packed to the gills with vendors selling fresh produce! The first time we were lucky to have Pendo (our house-keeper) with us to negotiate pricing and show us not to make hasty purchases the first time you see the fruit/veggie you want. There’s multiple multiples of the same stalls all over, but some bear nicer looking products than others, or at cheaper prices that you can bargain down. Everyone wants you to buy their product, and some will go to great lengths to persuade you to buy from them (i.e. chasing us around with cauliflower, which we are not interested in buying, and following and pestering us, peeling away the leaves from the flowerhead, trying to make it look more enticing…). There’s little boys carrying mass collections of plastic bags (so environmentally unfriendly, I know…), and they will follow you around trying to get you to buy one to put your purchases into. An Indian woman happened to wander by when they were harassing Steph and I and warned us to “be careful around those boys” (I guess there’s lots of attempts to snatch your bag or purse, but I don’t think these little boys mean any harm). Luckily, we’ve built up our own little collection of bags and baskets that we continue to reuse. There are also coops of live chickens for sale! Talk about fresh meat…The man took a couple out and was waving them around by their talons for us while we snapped a few pictures. We picked up carrots, peppers, cucumber, tomatoes, potato, bananas, mangos, passionfruit, pineapple, onions, garlic, rice, and beans, all for under 15 bucks… so much cheaper than the grocery stores here!

On Monday, we were scheduled to meet with the Yogurt Mamas! When we walked over to the kitchen in Mabatini, only a few mamas were there and we were informed that the others were at Mtoni Secondary School (just up the road) serving tea, chapati, and buns. On our walk up to the school, all the kids swarmed us and we definitely sparked some curiosity. Next week we’re going to go back and watch the mamas prepare and dole out the chapattis (fried in unreal amounts of oil) with gallons of tea (super sweetened)! We walked back to the kitchen and had our “formal” weekly meeting with the mamas, sitting on the floor in a circle… like I said, formal. Sometimes Esther and the mamas would rattle on in Swahili for what seemingly forever, but Esther was great at translating at several intervals inbetween for Steph and I. Mama Joyce let us know where we could purchase the Moringa (at Adalisha, a medicine packager) for our lab testing, which was great progress on the research front of our project. Later that evening we went to Tunza with Joke and did yoga on the beach-front there. It was the perfect setting, with the sun sinking lower and lower in the sky, the rolling waves, and the soft music in the background. Yoga is every Monday and Thursday, so we’re going to try go out once a week! Later that night, Pendo’s son, Hassan, and Melissa’s friend, Mohammed, both dropped by and we did some Swahili lessons. We’re learning polepole! (slowly!!). We ended up talking out on the porch with Pius and Ben for a while, and by the time my head hit the pillow, I was more than ready to hit the dream highway and get some shut-eye.

On Tuesday morning, I awoke to knocking on our front door. “Mr. Tito” dropped by and displayed his batiks, cards, bookmarks, key-chains, and jewelry all over our living room floor. We chose some souvenirs and gifts to take home (a little soon to be thinking about that, I realize). Later that morning, Mama Joyce arrived with Moringa leaves and we left them to dry on our counter-top; in a few days we can grind them into a powder with our blender. We took a trip to Adalisha with Esther and Mama Joyce to see their pre-packaged Moringa products and also to get the contact information for their packager. We took down the packaging information, so that we can look into using it for the yogurt. If we get a good, cheap, sustainable source of packaging and labeling, the yogurt can be sold to grocery stores (and overcome a big obstacle in the expansion of distribution).

On Wednesday, we took a trip to SAUT (St. Augustine University). Esther pronounces it Sauti, because all nouns in Kiswahili end in vowel sounds haha. The drive there was extended by Pius’ so-called “short cut”, which ended up taking us through seemingly the middle of nowhere, down lots of winding dirt roads. We got some nice views of the country-side though- a nice change from the city scene. At one point, we were stopped at a local “prison” area, while Puice asked for directions. We realized that everyone we had passed by on the way who were working in the fields were prisoners! They seemed to have a lot of freedom, so Steph and I wondered why they didn’t just run away and Esther said they’re watched over by guards as they work. We got to SAUT and the first thing we see: MONKEYS!! There were a bunch lounging on the rocks! We met with Mary Mushi and reiterated some of the things Bob (our project director) and her had discussed during his visit back in November, about matching WHE interns with SAUT students in their relating programs.

On Thursday, we went to the kitchen for a bit to meet with the Mamas. Steph went to the hairdresser near by and got rows of braids put in her hair (only costs a dollar here!). While we were sitting inside, all the kids started flocking over and swarming the door. The lady who owned the shop would try to shoo them away, so I moved outside to play with the gang of almost forty children that had evolved! We made a jump-rope out of string and the kids all seemed pretty impressed with my skipping abilities haha. We all ended up counting in English and Swahili. The kids got really into it and were dancing and shouting out the numbers haha. One game that later got underway seemed similar to “duck, duck, goose”, and we all sat in a circle and held hands, while one person wandered around the outside. Esther told us after that the song they sang while playing it essentially translates to “searching for a wife”, and they try to “find her” by cutting the clasp of two people holding hands. Esther also said some kids were complaining because they always seemed to favor Steph or I haha. After a while, the kids seemed to adopt some sort of “mob mentality”, and they would get angry at one another and start bopping eachother on the heads. Sometimes a woman would come over and break the squabbles up, waving her arms and threatening to slap them with a shoe or sandal she had picked up. We also comforted a girl named Rose who some boys seemed to be teasing. When she was sitting on my lap, Esther explained that Rose has no home and lives on the streets and the boys tease her that her mother is a prostitute. We bought her a couple of buns to eat, but I still felt guilty leaving her alone when we went home, even though I know she is apparently being sponsored.

On Friday, we were invited to Joke’s 27th birthday celebrations in the evening! We met at Joke and Major’s place and were introduced to some folk from Mwanza. We ate home-made chocolate cake and some goodies Joke had brought back from Dar (you would rarely come across cake in Mwanza, so we all gorged ourselves)! Then, in reverse, we ate dinner after dessert, and were stuffed silly with amazing Indian cuisine… grilled Talapia, cinnamon-spiced rice, coleslaw, and brown bread with goat’s cheese.
On Saturday, we were invited to Tunza Lodge for “Ladies Night” that evening. We had met Nadia (social events coordinator at Tunza, originally from Denmark) the night before. Girls got in free, but of course we ended up paying for Puice and Hassain…Anyways, it was a fun night and we recognized a lot of the people there from Friday night and also some friends of past interns. Mwanza is so small that everyone is friends here and basically everyone finds themselves out at the same places…

On Sunday, we had a sunny day, finally, after those couple cooler, rainy, dare I say miserable ones... Steph and I ventured out to the Sunday Market, as we’d been without fruit for a couple days. We restocked on most of the things we had purchased the previous Sunday. Then we spend the rest of the day lounging at Talapia on the internet to catch up on emails. Of course what started out a beautiful sunny day ended in pouring rain and thunder/lightning!

This is Africa (TIA): Just a few random observations to add that I forgot to mention
-On our way to the market, a young guy was calling me and motioning me over to talk, but we were on a mission so I kept walking. Then, he ran over to me and declared, “I miss you, I love you”. Then he proceeded to grab my hand and motioned to his cheek, “Touch me”. I kissed my palm and touched his cheek and he was beaming. A big group of guys near by were cheering him on haha.
-“Exotic fruits” that would be terribly expensive at home are super duper cheap here (like passionfruit and mango and avocado), but things that would be commonplace in grocery stores back home are harder to find here or else much more expensive!
-Bugs keep managing to crawl into our bread, so we’ve been storing it in the fridge. And ants have now invaded our sugar container!!!
-Nouns in Kiswahili always end in vowel sounds, so they add “eee” sound onto the end of names ending in consonants. We've started calling our taxi driver Puiceeeee! haha
-The “rainy season” is upon us now! But that in no way translates into “raining all the time”. Some days we will wake up to pouring rain, and by the afternoon, the sun is out and shining. Other days, it’s just cloudy and cool all day. Other days, it’s hot and sunny. It’s unpredictable, really.
-The market scene carries on late into the night. The vendors don’t just “pack it in” for the night when the sun goes down. Instead, they light oil lamps sell fruits and veggies by candle-light. It’s a little harder that way to tell the condition of the fruit, so Esther uses her cell-phone light to make sure the mangoes aren’t bruised haha
-The chapati and buns are basically deep fried dough (flour, water, sugar) and we've been eating heaps of them because they're the equivalent of 10 cents each. The whole irony of doing nutritional aid for malnourished people, yet we are eating foods that have zero nutrients...
-Printing pages from a computer is a big ordeal, and we have to go to a local print/photocopying shop and pay to get it done.
-There are "soda machines" (fridges full of coca cola products) in literally every store, whether it be clothing, stationary, etc.
-There's huge sea birds (really ugly, scruffy looking things) that swarm fish and piles of rubbish. From far away they look like beautiful great blue herons, but don't be fooled...

1 comment:

  1. Olive! hahah guess who?

    There's so much to read here! I've got to take off a couple hours just to go through all that you've written. Everything seems so exciting and I'm so proud of you. I hope you are having a wonderful experience and I can't wait to see you again!

    xoxoxo
    Emily

    ReplyDelete