Bat out of Hell....

Sunday evening I took a turn for the worse, after dinner I became extremely sleepy. I went to bed early the evening, around 9pm and awoke around 11pm and could barely control my bowels. Just before 2am I was vomiting and extremely dizzy, I didn’t know what was going on, I felt fine only five hours earlier. This continued for much of the night until I felt as though I purged everything in my body. The next morning Betsy ran out to pick up some Sprite, what a life-saver! I was bed-ridden for all of Monday and most of Tuesday, which is not the most pleasant scenario in Haydom. That is especially true when Betsy, on Tuesday came down with Giardia, AGAIN! I keep telling her to stop eating other people’s Pu, but it’s just so hard to remind her when I’m sitting in bed. I think Frank has the same problem sometimes.

To make a long story short, we planned our escape from Haydom while we were still sick as dogs, not knowing if we would make it. We left Haydom at 5:30am in the notorious Land Cruiser, yeah, that one! Thank god for oral rehydration salts, which taste horrible but made both of us feel a TON better that morning. After another grueling 5.5 hours to Arusha, we crashed at the Meru House Inn. I must say that was the second worst ride of my life although it paled in comparison to the first, we were able to finagle for the front seats!

After the much needed stop-over in Arusha, we boarded the Dar (not so) Express, for Dar es Salaam. We’re both enamored by the fact that it seems you can board this bus at any junction of your liking; we stopped in the most random of places to pick people up. It was nice to see the country-side of Tanzania; we went from mountainous rainforest, to grassy savannah, ending in the coastal tropics of Dar. Along the way we were shown a movie, Prey, probably the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I equate it to Jaws on land, although Steven Spielberg definitely did not direct this flick. I think Tanzanians love the crappiest of American cinema (reference prior post about Stupidest Animal Videos). Set in the Serengeti, a tour goes horribly awry! The tour guide is first eaten by a lion and drops the keys to the vehicle 100 yards away. Meanwhile, the entire pride of lions surround the car and the people are trapped inside, for days on end. Eventually, through a stroke of good luck, people find the car and semi-rescue the occupants only to be over taken by the large male lion. The woman in the movie somehow rigs the car with a gas-bomb and blows the whole thing to hell, making it out unscathed! Truly a great film, one for the ages.

Well, we arrived in Dar, and let me tell you, I’m considering staying here the rest of the time and sending Betsy back! It’s a pretty cool city, the little I’ve seen of it, which there is a lot of. Speaking of which, we’re itching to head to the beach, so I’ll cut this short. Kipepeo, here we come (That’s what I’m talking about, anthropology finally pays off)!
-Ryan

Adventures in beer buying

We’ve become more accustomed to life in Haydom. One of our major accomplishments was negotiating a crate of beer from the local distributer. In Tanzania, you HAVE to return the soda and beer bottles, so it’s quite a hassle to buy beer to take to your house, especially if you’re not returning empties. Also, men, such as beer distributors, seem to like to deal with other men rather than a mzungu woman.

On our beer-finding expedition, we walked up to a distributor, where of course, as in all Tanzanian stores, there were about 5 men loafing around, seemingly doing nothing but being nosy. As soon as wazungu walk up, they get interested. Ryan and I start looking around and I ask if we can buy a crate of Tusker. They look for our empty bottles, and realizing we have none, say they don’t have any Tusker. We can see it sitting 10 feet away from us. When I mention this fact to them, they tell Ryan that we need bottles. When Ryan stares blankly back in their direction, and I say that we will pay a deposit for the bottles, they ask Ryan how much. Finally, we are able to negotiate a price for the bottles, and the cost of the beer. This was a big purchase in Tanzanian, almost $40 for 24 beers and the bottles, so I wanted to be sure that when we returned the bottles, we’d get our money back. I made them sign a contract (a blank piece of notebook paper, which I wrote an agreement on in Swahili), which they thought was the weirdest thing in the world. You don’t get receipts here, let alone ever have to sign anything. We’ll see if the contract actually works, or if ANY of the random guys are there the day we return them…….I’ll keep you posted!

As we were getting the beer, Ryan looked around the corner of the building, then fled to the other side of me. At first I thought he was being paranoid or something, and didn’t notice the sloshing sound backgrounding my negotiations. Apparently, there was a guy standing in a bucket….stark naked….just outside of the beer distributor. After he finished his bath, he came to join the mob of people watching the wazungu try to get beer. Just one of the many random things you see walking down the street in Haydom.

After we successfully got and paid for our beer, our elation faded as we realized we had a mile-long walk back to the house, carrying 50 or so pounds of beer. We thought we were being smart by bringing a cloth to cover it while we carried it back, but nothing could cover up the distinctive sound of bottles clunking together. If possible, we were even more of a spectacle on this walk back than any other. When I say ‘we’ carried it back, I mean of course Ryan carried it back. He definitely got his workout for the day, and earned his luke-warm beer! The next day, we were sitting down, and he noticed 2 bruises on his legs. I got really worried that it was some kind of horrible bite, or crazy African disease (I can be a bit of a hypochondriac here), but then we realized it was from the crate banging on his legs as he walked! Anyway, now we’ve been enjoying Tusker at home on our evenings off, and remembering that in Tanzania, EVERYTHING is an adventure!

-Betsy

home

slightly faster internet connection, here are a few pictures of our new digs.

Celestial Excretions

Oh, the beautiful stars! I have never seen a sight so amazing in my life, well, I take that back, I have read a few National Geographic magazines and the pictures I snapped of the sky could possibly be published. Anyone out there know of an editor at NG that would want a photo of the Milky Way?! I promise to post them when we arrive in Dar, maybe a few weeks from now, give or take a few weeks… you know, Tanzi-time.

There was a bit of good news this morning, we received word that Betsy’s Fulbright funding will be sent out to us next week, that’s a load off our minds!

Speaking of pictures, we’ve received numerous requests to photo-document our elusive pet, Alfred, I promise, before I terminate our relationship, I’ll try to get a picture of him. I will have to apologize though, I usually have one thought in my mind when I see him, “die mother- #$@&er, die mother-#$@&er, die!” So, that being said, I may not have the will nor the strength to withhold dealing my great vengeance down upon his head (I’m currently reading the Bible, so the Pu-Blog may begin to have vengeful “god-like” references, for all of the heathens out there reading this, I feel your pain).

Well, we’ve been here, in Tanzania, a little over two weeks now and I feel as if the beginnings of what they call “culture shock” starting to infect my being. Everyday we walk by the same people, what they do all day long, I have no idea since they’re in the same spot at all times of their waking hours, who call out to us “WAZUNGU, WAZUNGU!” It never gets old to them, even if we pass by three or more times throughout the day! I’m definitely not a person who enjoys being the center of attention 24/7, so that is starting to wear on me. Yesterday, we met with the head-master of Haydom Secondary School, who is in one of the more respected positions in Tanzania. We met with him hoping to utilize him as a resource for studying adolescent nutrition in his school. Right off the bat he began telling us his life story and how his parents died ten years ago, it was a pretty sad story, but then went on to explain how he always wanted to be a doctor and it was never his intent to be a school head-master. After about fifteen minutes of the “sob-story”, he asked us to sponsor him so he could go back to school and become a doctor!

After a long explanation of how we too are students and cannot afford helping him, we retreated into the hospital compound where we found a Tiki-hut in the backyard their housing. Betsy and I promptly made ourselves feel at home here, over-looking the valley below, tucked away from curious eyes of Tanzanians. For me, this was the most comfortable place I’ve been since arriving here. We were alone, no one bothering or soliciting us; we were able to just become lost in our thoughts. Unfortunately, we only had a short “vacation” there, since we do not live within the hospital gates. We are currently living like true anthropologists; our life is a constant ethnography, as Betsy explained in the previous post. I’m not an anthropologist nor do I plan to become one, thank god because I’m just too ethno-centric!
-Ryan

adventures in ethnography

Well, things are moving along, and I feel like we’ve gotten a good start, albeit slow, on our study. Sometimes, when daily life is so monumentally alien to us (bucket showers, no internet, pit latrines, oh my!) it’s easy to forget that we’re here to actually do work! We will be researching adolescent nutrition in the Haydom area and ultimately trying to understand ways to make culturally-based nutrition programs targeting adolescents. It seems to be a very neglected topic here, with most health outreach focusing on maternal and child health and HIV. We are the only wazungu living outside the hospital compound, which puts us in a 24-hour a day ethnography. We’ve already learned a TON in the past 2 weeks and haven’t formally started the study yet. We went with the outreach clinic to a village yesterday about 45 minutes away from Haydom, and the difference between food resources was amazing! To us Americans, Haydom seems like a barren food waste-land, with few pre-packaged foods (soda, a handful of cookies, some peanut butter, and that’s about it – there is one type of canned cheese and a bottle of Alter Wine in the ‘wazungu’ shop in town, and if you know us, that’s going to make for a long 10 months). In the village there was even less, a few greens, onions and mangos being sold, and some generic cookies. In interviewing people, their diet was amazingly monotonous, especially now, in the dry season when the crops aren’t growing and the wild vegetables and fruits aren’t available. Basically, they eat a stiff maize dough called ugali, and maybe some milk, beans and greens if they are lucky.

We’ve spent the past week and a half meeting people, and preparing our research materials, namely taking pictures of local foods for a pile-sorting exercise. I don’t know what I would do without my #1 research assistant Ryan who’s graphic design skills have been indispensible! We’re both excited to get them done and get the final research clearance so we can try them out (ok, I’m excited for the nerdy anthropology part of it, Ryan’s just excited to get moving).
-Betsy

icky-sicky

Phew, through one solid week at our new home and we’ve definitely been given a wake-up call. I was ill on Tuesday but recovered nicely but just as that passed I started to have the beginnings of a bloody nose. If you know me well my bloody noses are infamous, which usually end hours later, my nose being cauterized and leaving me light-headed. Naturally, this scared the Pu out of me, what are we to do? We went to the hospital to buy a styptic pen (silver nitrate), which is the cauterizing agent on the end of a long wooden cotton swab. Apparently, Haydom Hospital doesn’t have anything for cauterization, good to know if either of us begin bleeding profusely we’re hours away from the nearest functioning medical facility. Another item that eludes our grasp here is a tube of Neosporin, which is the most basic of items to have on hand!

Betsy, on Saturday evening began to feel ill herself, the next morning she was unable to get out of bed, not good. She burped once and I caught a whiff of it, I remember Vikas emailing me and telling me about sulfur smelling burps being Giardia. Giardia is a stomach infection transmitted through fecal matter, yuck! As her state continued to worsen we decided she should take antibiotics. Good thing, she’s feeling much better today, so much so that she was actually able to eat breakfast. So far it’s been quite the test, physically and mentally for both of us, hopefully as we become more and more accustomed our surroundings, life here will become easier. I knew we would both become ill through our time here but never thought it would be so soon. Hope all is well back home, I wish I could drink tap water right about now…
-Ryan

BFE Africa!

It’s like we are in rural Africa! We were without electricity from 3pm on last night, again, seems to be common occurrence, three times a week or so, give or take a day. Luckily, the family has on stock a large quantity of “shumaa”, or candles in English, which lit that evening’s dinner. I have a feeling Betsy and I will have “romantic” dinners quite often here, much to our chagrin because the darkness usually invites the buibui, or spiders the size of Betsy’s head, out of the walls. We have affectionately named one of the extraordinarily nimble spiders, Alfred; though not as cuddly as Frank, our dog, it may possess superior intelligence. We currently have a running tally of insects killed, Betsy is not as adept to killing as I am, although I definitely do not possess a “killer-instinct” myself.

Betsy: 4 roaches, 2 mini-spiders, 2 centipedes

Ryan: 4 GIANT spiders (gross!), 3 roaches, 3 mini-spiders, countless flies and the largest beetle I have ever seen! So large that I had to run and get Betsy to look at it before I took the howitzer to it.

Life here has been alright, I love the family we’re living with, however, I’m still trying to adjust to Tanzanian culture. There is a saying here, “Tanzanians are not like Westerners who like to have everything finished today, we leave the hardest tasks for tomorrow.” This mentality has been a stick in our spokes on a daily basis, which I’ve lovingly termed, Tanz-time, and has driven me nuts from the day we arrived. I am not an anthropologist, that is for sure and watching the paint dry is definitely not a coveted past-time for me, so this experience, albeit great so far, has had its definitive points of frustration.

The past few nights, especially the ones without electricity, have been quite spectacular, celestially speaking. A few nights ago I witnessed an amazing sight, the Milky Way, which is all but impossible to see in the US. Every part of the sky was lit-up with twinkling, yes they actually do twinkle, stars and there wasn’t a dark spot to be seen. Venus, which is high right now, was so incredibly bright is was hard to take my eyes off of while the rest of the stars come in a brilliant array of colors ranging from bright white down to a pale brown. It was one of the more incredible things I’ve seen in my adult life and wish all of you could see it. I will try to perfect my aperture timing over the next few nights and upload the pictures when we are in Dar. I have to apologize for the lack of pictures over the past week, Haydom’s internet connection shares the same mentality of its people, Tanz-time.
-Ryan

Life in Haydom

Well, we’ve been in Tanzania for over a week now, and our first week of being in Haydom is almost done. We’ve been enjoying living with Mama Neema and Stephano, their 7 kids, and the 5 or so other people who seem to live here – we haven’t figured all the relationships out yet. Our house is starting to feel more comfortable, and we’ve decorated the walls with pictures of family and a huge map of Africa. We have plans for a batik slipcover for the couch, and possibly some batik wall hangings as well. The bugs are prevalent, although since we are in the highlands, the mosquitoes are not as bad as in Arusha. Our main problem is the ‘buibui’ (spiders) which both Ryan and I HATE in general, and the ones that they have here are basically the biggest, ugliest spiders you’ll ever see outside of a zoo. For their size, they are also amazingly fast, which is even more unsettling.

Haydom is interesting to say the least. There are no paved roads, making it incredibly dusty, and goats, cattle, chickens, cats and dogs seem to roam free. The roving packs of dogs are definitely hunting something at night, although neither one of us is brave enough to find out what. People are very nice, and kids love running up to the ‘wazungu’ and yelling random English phrases such as “good morning” (at any time of day) “thank you very much” and “give me money”. The brave ones try to grab our hands, or touch my hair.

The shops in town are pretty basic, and we’ll definitely have stock up every time we go to Arusha. We went on massive search for peanut butter where we canvassed basically the whole town. We finally found ONE shop in the whole village that had a BUCKET of it, which the shopkeeper unearthed from beneath a pile of junk in a corner. Amazingly, it wasn’t even out of date. Obviously, Ryan was very happy about that development.

The project is going well, and we’ve made some contacts in the community and at the hospital. Everyone has been really positive about the project, and things seem to be moving along. I had a huge step forward today, when I found out that the research clearance was preliminarily approved!!

Ryan was talking to a Tanzanian who works for an NGO that builds dorms for secondary students all over Tanzania, who said that the village that we’re in now is the most remote place he’s been in Tanzania. After Ryan and my experience here, that seems about right.

-Betsy

So, we made our way to Haidom, the village in which we will be conducting our research, after a 6.5 hour trip in the most uncomfortable, crowded and crazy transportation ever! We rode in a Land Cruiser, a quintessential African vehicle, with our luggage strapped to the roof. After being blackmailed into paying more for our massive “wazungu luggage”, Tanzanians apparently do not travel with five full-sized pieces of luggage, we were on our way. The Land Cruiser, which was originally to have a maximum capacity of eleven, was stuffed with fifteen people. Tanzanians, while short, are much wider than Betsy and I; not only were our legs smashed into the seats in front of us, but my body also doubled as a backrest for an inconsiderate woman. We traveled 3.5 hours on a double track dirt and grass road, which was not without its potholes, washes and various water mitigation issues (thank you, Jaron, for the terminology), up a large mountainous region. Thankfully, the Land Cruiser was equipped with a snorkel which helped as we forged a river before hitting the mountains and into Mbulu. The town of Mbulu is mid-way from Arusha to Haidom, which we stopped for a stretch and a potty break (this is the point of mild “freak-out” for me). After going on a wild goose chase, we were finally pointed in the right direction to the choo, or restroom in Swahili. The second half of the ride we requested the front seat, which made the last 2.5 hours of driving “not-so-bad” but by American standards, horrible. We made it to Haidom around 3pm, which has absolutely no paved roads, and our host family was waiting for us at the station. We came back to their place where they have a separate detached structure which is to be our home for the next 10 months. The first few hours here were wavering at best, as the thought of being here for almost an entire year began to saturate our minds. I got my first taste of the bucket-showers and pit latrines, which I am sure we will become more proficient with as time progresses. Our family, however, has been great to us and has made us feel right at home; they had lunch ready when we returned and then around 8:30pm they served us dinner. This morning they brought us breakfast and then lunch around 1pm, the hospitality has been great! It has been quite an eye opening experience for me thus far and seems that the next ten months will continue to hold my constant attention.
-Ryan
ps- sorry, we will post pictures soon, the computers in Haidom are extremely slow and we have to size everything down.

Exploring Arusha

On Wednesday we ventured out to explore the city of Arusha and Ryan got his first experience of Tanzanian city life. Our first stop was the ATM and Shoprite, also known as wazungu central (wazungu is akin to ‘gringo’ and means ‘westerner’). After successfully getting money and wandering around refrigerated food items, we ventured off into ‘real Arusha’ to get the list of supplies we realized we needed, such as shower flip-flops, washcloths and a cell phone. Day 1 in Tanzania was a success and we accomplished all of our goals and then some! At sunset, we watched the traffic from our hotel balcony, and took some pictures of the street at rush hour. We also ventured up to the roof, which has an amazing view of Mt. Meru framed by Jacaranda trees in bloom. Today, Ryan was introduced to Tanzanian rice and chicken as well as one of my personal favorites, bitter lemon soda and Konyagi (something like gin).

On Day 2, we went further from our hotel in Arusha, and explored more of the side streets, as well as the ‘fancy’ area. (not to scare you mom and dad, but it’s a little ways from our hotel.) We also found an internet café with reasonably fast wireless. Score! Our biggest success today was getting tickets to Haydom for Saturday! Thank goodness for Crystal and her detailed instructions; we never could have done it without her. (like, I’m sure, many things to come on this trip!) We also found some great Indian food, topped off with some Tusker and Kilimanjaro beer.

After two days, we’re getting more used to being a constant spectacle, and fending off ‘rafiki’ (friends) who just want to show us their paintings, shoes, safari trips, pirated DVDs, etc that they are selling. When venturing into a very non-wazungu market, one guy didn’t even want to sell us anything, he just wanted to be seen walking around with us. (This was really weird to both Ryan and I, neither one of us are what you would call ‘cool’). We’re having fun, but both Ryan and I are excited to leave Arusha and get to Haydom soon!

-Betsy

27.5

Twenty seven hours, thirty four minutes and eighteen seconds, that is how long it took from my parent’s front door to our “hotel” in Arusha, Tanzania. I would have written it out like this, 27:34.18, but I thought it had a better impact in words. We flew out of Chicago to Amsterdam, from there we had a three hour layover before heading on our flight to Kilimanjaro, both flights were similar in length, just over eight hours. I woke at 5:30 am, September 28th, the day of our flight, I’m a notoriously nervous traveler, Betsy is so good to put up with me, I suppose she has to since I’ll be “camping” with her for the next ten months. Saying “goodbye” to my parents in O’hare, which is always a hard thing to do, putting on socks (thank you Mom, Dad and Betsy) in the security line, and hurrying up to wait for the plane to board, were the first items in a long list to be accomplished. Flying to Amsterdam was surprisingly easy, it didn’t hurt that we had exit row seats, although the poor guy next to us had our laptop drop squarely on his head, not once but twice during the flight; I’m surprised he didn’t give the two of us a black eye to match his skull fracture. We made friends with one of the flight attendants; he was really nice and gave us special treatment (extra bags of almonds, first class tea, and extra attention), who would have thought being nice to someone might make them do a little extra for you? We flew KLM, as far as I can tell they outclass all of the American carriers, although their faux Italian food is terrible! We were, however, able to nab four bottles of red wine which were saved as a celebratory drink on our arrival. The flight over to Amsterdam was uneventful, it was night time as we flew east and couldn’t see anything, not that the Atlantic Ocean is that spectacular. We spent a few restless hours in the Schiphol Airport then boarded our plane to Tanzania. We went over the Alps, somewhere between Switzerland and Austria, then over the Adriatic Sea. We saw a few pieces of southern Italy and then as we flew over the Mediterranean Betsy told me to look out the window; we were coming up to the coast of northern Africa. The stark contrast between brilliant blue and khaki sand was a sight I have never before seen, it was really cool. Right around this point we were served dinner, which had a Pu topped dessert. (see picture above) We were able to view the Nile and parts of the Sahara Desert; it was quite an amazing and spectacular flight. Mid-way through the flight I noticed Betsy fast asleep; unfortunately I am unable to sleep on planes, I tried but to no avail. We landed and made a mad dash to the customs department to fill out visa forms and beat the Europeans so we could get out of the airport, it was sort of like a race to a “baggage-finish-line”. Luckily, we won and all of our baggage arrived in one piece and we were off to Arusha 45 minutes away. We went to our hotel, which is literally a hole in the side of a wall; Betsy disappeared for a tenuous five minutes as five Tanzanians stared at me awkwardly. She re-emerged signaling that we had a hotel to stay in and that was it, we made it, and had a few bottles of wine to toast a very long and tiring trip. I’m glad to finally be here, but I am a LONG way from home!
-Ryan
ps- I will post pictures later, I forgot to bring the memory card...