Running Scared

We’ve been back in Haydom for a couple of weeks now and starting to fall into what you would call our “routine”. It has started to get easier for us, partly because we’ve been going gang-busters on Betsy’s research (kicking butt and taking names), which helps my state of mind; sitting around doing nothing was killing me! We spearheaded the qualitative portion of her research last week in a training session which lasted two days, by the end I felt as if I were one of the Leakeys. Peter and Regina (our research assistants) seemed to pick up the idea of the study pretty quickly which put our minds at ease.

Time came when we actually had to start going out and doing the research, but to our surprise it has been going more smoothly than we had initially expected. We have, however, run into a few kinks in the road, one big problem is that I’m a white male over the age of twenty. Normally this wouldn’t seem like an issue but since it’s just Peter and I, most of the kids run away at the sight of me. Peter said that most of the young boys run because white people only come looking for kids when they’re in trouble. It also doesn’t help that the adults in the rural areas are telling the children that we’re going to kill them. All in all we’ve been able to entrap a few of the boys into doing the interviews. We have a long way to go from here but looks like we’re going to do alright.

Many of you have sent packages and I wanted to send you an update as to what both you and we can expect. First the package goes to Dar es Salaam, then it is trucked out to Mbulu, the district capital. It apparently sits there and waits for that person to claim said package. Well, on a daily basis we’ve been going to the administration office in the hospital asking about the package my Mom sent over a month ago, finally a package with the name “Elizabeth” was sitting in Mbulu. Unfortunately, the postal worker took a gander inside and saw that the items were worth something, so basically they black-mailed us into paying them Tsh 6,000. This happens to “wazungu” mail, evidently this does not happen to Tanzanians, which they obviously know by the fact that it’s coming from outside their country. So, we waited another three days for the package, after the dirty-money (figuratively and literally, their money is incredibly dirty, I would rather lick a dollar bill than handle some of this currency) exchanged hands only to see that the package was for Elizabeth Fausenhausen, not our beloved Betsy. We continue to pester the Admin staff, hoping that something, anything will arrive soon, but alas, nothing thus far, so we continue to wait…