The weekend from which I send the last post, Carly and I get “Langers.” For those of you who aren’t up on your Irish slang, “Langers” means “wasted.” I am learning a whole slew of lingo from all over the world. We are picked up by the HAPA jeep and we head to Singida town. Carly and I are stoked about running water. Even though the showers are ice cold and trickling, they are heavenly after a week in the sand. We walk to the luxury shop, while the others go for dinner. We decide to gorge ourselves as a reward for our rugged tenacity. We buy a bottle of wine, a Liter of ice cream, 2 chocolate bars and a can of Pringles. This costs more than the average person makes in a week. We don’t care. We are fat-starved. We are sober. It is a travesty. We go back to Helen Keller Hostel and open the wine. This takes us 40mins and we end up bending the corkscrew on dad’s jackknife. Sorry dad, it had to be done. Then we eat the ice cream and drink the wine from the bottle. We revel in it. We burp. Carly takes off her pants (cuz she’s classy like that) and we splay ourselves on the couches, under piles of candy. We laugh loudly, we tell embarrassing stories. It’s wicked. We have been living in a tent with 10 other people for 2 weeks. We have been living with BOYS for 2 weeks. After the first 3 days, expectations of privacy went out the window and we now just walk into the tent and rip our clothes off to change, regardless of who happens to be looking. I have 11 roommates. Here, in the hostel, 2 girls can get wasted in their underwear and burp and not feel obliged to say “excuse me”, “sorry” or “don’t look.” This is a vacation.
After finishing the tub and bottle, we decide we need more. We stumble through the darkened, sandy road, to the luxury shop. This is where I called you mom and dad… haha yeah, we all know Kelly’s friend Carly, is a liar. Haha she thought that was a riot ;) The lady behind the counter looks half amused and half wary of selling us another bottle, but money talks and we buy 2 more and make our unsteady way back through the night. We get back, drink another bottle and are now, bona fide examples of the word “Langers.” We have a canny time (another one I picked up from the Englishmen). The others are quite amused with our antics. When we wake up the next morning, Carly has her mosquito net wrapped around her neck and is holding a lighter for some reason. I’m holding an empty tube of Pringles and we have 2 cartons of juice that neither one of us remembers purchasing. All in all…it was a North American party extravaganza! My first drunken episode in the motherland. It’s not the last.
The next morning, we see the people from Mvae. They look tired and have a very heavy workload. We hug and talk a million miles a minute, asking question after question and telling each other story after story. “Have you killed a chicken yet?” “Does anyone have malaria?” “Have you got a chance to shower?” We have known each other for 2 weeks and we talk as though we are long lost childhood chums. It’s enthralling and validating and I enjoy the camaraderie of it all. We only stop to drink copious quantities of water and shovel food into our mouths. Manners are as practical in Africa as a vacuum cleaner in the Pacific Ocean. Please check your delicate sensibilities at the door. Thank you.
I should describe the situation here in some more detail. First off, money. The largest Tanzanian bill in circulation is 10,000 TSH. That is roughly $7.80 CAD. That pretty much says it all. Carly and I go to the ATM and realize that to climb Kilimanjaro we need about $1000 CAD. The wad that comes out of the machine is shameful. I can’t even stuff the cash into my money belt. I feel slimy. Like a millionaire who doesn’t deserve it. We watch each other’s backs whilst getting cash, but it’s obvious we’re loaded. With white skin, you really can judge a book by its cover here. Then there is the market. This is where we buy our groceries for camp. We get enough to last a week and we ration very tightly. I am learning to cook on a fire, but let me tell you, if you think using a stove and a cookbook is difficult…try cooking for 11 people with no recipes, over an open pit, by the light of a torch. Maybe I’ll work in a dungeon when I finish. Anyway, the market is PACKED. The space to walk is about 2 feet wide and people stand on either side, calling “Mzungu” and “sister, sister.” We try to be polite at first, but if you stop to acknowledge every person who calls out, it would take an hour to walk 10 feet. We look hurried, busy, so we don’t feel bad about not stopping to chat. Sometimes I pretend I’m reading a list, when really I’m trying to navigate by looking only at my feet.
The stench of the market is overpowering. Fetid odor of rot and decay, mixed with spices, perfume, body odor, salted fish and ripe vegetables pours into my nostrils, no matter how hard I try not to breathe through them. With every step on the uneven stone floor, hundreds of flies swarm up, disturbed. I mean hundereds. I have never seen so many flies in all my life. This is why I breathe through my nose, when you breathe through your mouth, you inhale them. They fly up, some get caught in between my glasses and my eye and go “boing boing boing” as they try to escape. They land all over me. I feel like the bee keeper of Africa. I’m the fly keeper of Singida. Here we haggle. I felt uncomfortable haggling the first week. But it becomes easy, when you realize that people are trying to rip you off. We write out how much we pay for things each week, so we know if it is consistent. Sometimes I stop and think about the absurdity of it all, haggling for 5 cents less. We rationalize that if we let them get away with it, the sliding scale prices will continue and locals will be ripped off too. That and apparently it’s expected. Haggling is as common as shaking hands. I can now talk someone down from 1000TSH for a pineapple, to 700TSH for the biggest one. All in Kiswahili. And not bat an eye. The locals seem kind of proud when we argue a price. It’s like this “ahh, you understand now” look. They smile at me and I feel like I am part of a club or something. I’m “in the know.” I…can buy produce in a nowhere town that isn’t even on the map in my Tanzania guide book. It’s even better than making the Dean’s List. This is something to write home about.
I come out of the market, a sweaty, smelly mess. A sweaty, smelly mess, grinning like the cat that swallowed the Canary, holding 2 giant watermelons. I see Carly. She tells me that she was in the bathroom at Helen Keller Hostel and (as always) there was no toilet roll. So she looked around. Weighed her options. She could have waddled into the main compound to scrounge for napkins, with her pants down, praying no one was around. She could have taken her pants right off and waddled to the shower, but that seemed a little impractical. For some reason she had her camera around her neck and she used a page out of her manual to wipe her ass. Now she has no idea how the shutter works. We roar with laughter. This is the funniest thing I have ever heard. Carly laughs and then says, “No seriously, can you show me what the shutter button does?” I just nod because I’m laughing so hard. TI effin' A.
Back in Mghumbu, we go to Mampando rock. Kieran takes leads the way and it’s quite a hike. Then a climb. I shoot a ridiculous amount of photos and when we finally scale the rock, I am breathless. I can see for miles. I can see until the land disappears in the horizon. I have never been somewhere so flat. The only time I have gazed off to where surface meets sky, is looking out at the ocean. Here, on the top of this giant rock, I see the same effect. The hills roll on forever. There are small, one room grass shacks sparsely scattered along the desolate brown and green landscape. But we are alone. It hits me here, unexpectedly hard. I look in all directions and see absolutely nothing. I squint off, stare at one spot, but I cannot see where the nothing ends. The sky swoops down and absorbs my field of vision. There’s simply nothing here. I feel small, like when I was a kid. Like the first time you swim in the ocean and you suddenly realize that you’re floating far off and there is nothing to grab onto. There’s just more ocean. Like the first time I realized that it was possible to be swept out to sea as waves crashed all around me and I understood how strong a force nothing is. When there is enough of it. Mampando rock is my first lesson in true isolation. My breathless appreciation for the view quickly turns into a feeling of sinking discomfort and I am ready to get back to the big green tent.
I think some of my discomfort in isolation, is health. My health. I work in a pit, in a line of people digging the long-drops for the school. The pit is about 8 feet down in the desert earth and about 20ft long. We fill buckets of sand and pass them along a line, eventually up a ladder to be emptied and tossed back down. I pass bucket after bucket over my head, up to Gregg on a ladder above me. My arms burn, but I like the work. The sand filters down on me like rain. I breathe it in, like I’m in a fog. My sinuses are on fire, my chest heaves. I didn’t think to bring a dust mask. We’re all coughing and sneezing and blowing what Carly delicately describes as “snot rockets.” When I try to wipe my eyes or nose with my bare forearm, it leaves a new trail of dirt, smeared across my face. I learn to just let my snot hang out. Just let my eyes water. Sometimes the natural approach is best. It’s sexy, that’s for damn sure.
The next morning I wake up and water is dripping on my face. There is crashing all around me and I run out of the tent to see a storm. Rain pelts the ground and I start sinking in knee deep mud. I call for someone to help me, but rain pours down my throat and I can’t make a sound. I realize that it’s a dream when I open my eyes and my sheet is wrapped around me and I’m choking on my own phlegm. I cough and cough and gasp for air and sit on the side of my bed for a long time. I am completely beat. I don’t go to work that day and sleep and sleep and blow my nose. That is how I learn my lesson about dust masks. Sickness spreads like wildfire in a tent. Everyone is coughing and hacking. At night, the rhythmic slamming of the canvas tent against the metal poles and Charlie’s incessant snorting and throat clearing and Greg's sleep talking have become sounds of soothing rest. I don’t know how I am going to be able to sleep alone, in silence after this.
My feet are in rough shape too. They have huge blisters, sores, like they are literally rotting off. We wipe them daily with wet wipes, but slowly give up and let them become wild and dirty. Like the rest of our bodies. My hair is wild and dry (sorry lily) and Carly walks into the tent, looks at me and yells “Mufasa Mufasa Mufasa!” I laugh and tie it back up and stuff a baseball cap on top. No one wants to see that.We drink more and more. At night Gregg imposes a “book curfew” because he was fed up with people running off to finish novels (I have read 6 so far and am well through number 7). We play drinking games like 21. We catch Ben cheating so badly at the beer waterfall that we hold him down and make him chug. He gets VERY Langers. So we play this game Ciara explains. You have to look at the person on your right and say “hello no spots, me no spots. Meet no spots”. If you screw up, you have to draw a spot on your forehead with lipstick. And take a swig. This proves to be great fun and Ciara ends the night with a whopping 9 spots. Her face is almost solid lipstick. The Safari lager is gone. The next morning, we get up to go to work. Hungover. Oh God, hungover. I stumble out of the tent with 6 smudged blobs of crimson lipstick mixed with sand on my face and my hair wilder than ever. Carly says “wow, you’re pretty” and I just say “blah.”
We go to town again on Friday for weekly shopping. We’re all excited to see the Mvae crew and party it up. We do. We drink and drink like beer costs a dollar. Wait, it does cost a dollar. There ya go. Charlie buys me chips from a vendor on the side of the road and we marvel together at how skilled we are at surviving in the 3rd world. When we get back to the bar, Kieran, Ciara, Kieran Duffy, Ben, Steph and Mvae Carly are all pisstanked on whiskey and coke. I am dead dog tired, but I slam one more beer down before we climb into a cab. Ben is completely incoherent. Which is hilarious. If you knew Ben. He’s this very well-spoken (by our standards anyway) English boy who seems a lot older than 22. He is speaking in slang and throws his arm around me and Charlie and says “Hey Bruv, I’m waaaaysted.” It’s hilarious and a half. We stumble into the hostel. We rented these rooms that are magnificent. No hot water, but they have DOUBLE beds! And private bathrooms! (They are still squat toilets, but who cares, no one can HEAR you). I can barely contain my excitement at the luxury of rolling around on my bed, stretching out, listening to my Discman and speakers, dancing in my underwear as I get changed. Its things like these that I miss the most. Not television and lattes, pfft.
I unlock the door, go to the bathroom and when I open the bathroom door…Charlie and Ben are in my bed. I stand there for a minute and they aren’t moving. Ben says “hey, Charlie. Charles. Charlie” and Charlie replies “Charles, hey Charles.” This goes on for like, 5 minutes. It goes on so long that I have time to grab my camera, charging battery, put them together, turn it on and record this. Ohh yes boys. I am facebooking that mutha fo sho. I climb into bed and think “Jesus, can’t I just get ONE night alone?” Pressed against Ben’s back, with Charlie’s snorting, I start to fall asleep. Then Charlie gets up and says “I think I can sleep in my own bed” or something like that. I tell him he can’t leave Ben here. As he walks away, Ben gets up and stumbles out, falls into a plant and slams the door to his room. I laugh, but I’m so tired. I walk back to my bed and crawl under the covers. Freedom. But I can’t sleep. I close my eyes. Nothing. Silence. No breathing. No creaking. No rooster. No tent flapping. No grass rustling. Silence. I feel lonely for the first time since I left home. This is the first time I have been in a room by myself in a month. I miss my big green tent. That, is the lamest thing I have ever thought. I sleep.
Today, we go to the market. I sail past vendors, haggle prices, navigate through the flies and still have time to write the world’s longest blog. We see a crowd of people yelling and then I noticed raised fists. As I get closer, I can see that a circle has formed and a man is being beaten on the side of the road. I ask a well-dressed passing local what is going on. He tells me that the man stole a bicycle. “Oh” I say. Like this happens all the time and keep walking. It’s amazing what changes you can get used to. A man in the market is yelling that he is George Bush’s brother and Osama Bin Laden’s father and Kennedy’s son (or vice versa). Carly stops and he latches onto her. She smiles and says “oh yeah, that right. Hmm”. He is screaming in the market. No one even looks. He’s condemning America, and then praising America. He tells us to beware of terrorists. One eye never looks at us. As we walk away, I say “wow, his family dinners must be exciting” Carly laughs. Just another day.
I am always thinking out here. Thinking about what I am seeing, how I feel, what the air smells like, history, philosophy. How did Tanzania get this way? What kind of alternate dimension is this, where an entire continent can be left behind? What is the solution for Africa? What do we do? When I first decided to come here, I had these great visions of heroism. Riding in on my white Mzungu horse and buying clothes and meals for street kids, working for nothing, dedicating myself to service. I now see the reality of the situation. It’s too big for me. If you give anyone here anything, someone takes it away. If you feed a street kid, you cause a war with the other 50 street kids trolling for food. If you clean one baby, you need to clean them all. It’s like if you find a group of homeless men back home, happy, chatting and give one of them 100 dollars. Just play that scene out in your head and then multiply it by seven thousand. That is Africa. What do you do?
I stand here, on this dirt road filled with smiling faces and handshakes and curious children and I see now that money really is the root of all evil. Giving things without balance causes anger and destruction. I understand the benefit of NGOs. I understand why I am here. I don’t understand what I am supposed to do next. If this is the jumping off point in my humanitarian crusade of a career, what is the next logical step? A place like this can make your head spin with questions. I don’t have any answers. Do we build hospitals? Or roads? Or schools? Or focus on social service? It’s like, there are so many things needed here, what is the natural progression? How do you bring a place like this up to speed? This has really pricked my ears to economic philosophy and history. The answers are here somewhere. I am so intrigued by the questions that have come out of this experience. I think that I have a lot of reading to do when I get home. I have a lot of people to talk to and a lot of schooling to complete.
I am off to “The Stanley” where you have to order your food at least an hour before you plan to show up to eat it, because it’s so slow. That’s how things are here. No one has any reason to hurry. They just stroll along and enjoy the present. I know that I will come home, back to my life of having everything and needing nothing and the smell of textbooks and papers and deadlines. I know that I will return a changed person, while everything I left behind remains the same. They say that is the hardest part of coming here. I thought I understood what that meant. I realize now that I didn’t have the first idea of what I would be facing. It’s almost as scary to think about coming home as it was to leave in the first place. I think I’m building character. I really wish I was fixing the world.
