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February 26th, 2010
"There is always something new out of Africa..."
Pliny the Younger
Mambo!
The chalk-drawn bao-board in the open dining area of the Mtwero work camp in Lindi was my first destination after rolling out from under my mosquito net and showering in the open-air palm frond shower stalls. Any hope of an early game was thwarted though, by the quantity of packing, cleaning, and carrying that had to be done on the morning of our departure. Hoyse had informed us the previous night that our booked bus to Dar es Salaam had broken down and that we would be traveling instead on two separate buses. It so happened that the Tanzanians had been put on a smaller, earlier bus, and we Canadians, along with Hoyse and Mariam on another. So we saw our counterparts off, wishing them "safari njema", and settled in to wait for our own bus. We constructed lean-toos with our luggage and kangas, and I scratched a new bao board on the little strip of sidewalk, collected the seventy-two pebbles, and challenged Edith to a tournament. When we boarded our own bus, ruefully breaking off our game, we found that our booked seats had been taken by the people from the back, so we peacefully accepted the seats in the rear (resisting the urge to make some inappropriate comment about Rosa Parks...). We sped happily along over the spectacular African vistas and picture-book villages splayed out in the valleys bellow us, with only some amusing bounciness to warn us of what was to come when the paved road ended and we set off along the rough dirt track. When we did I understood the foresight of those who had stolen our seats... We bashed over the uneven, uncompleted road so that we flew several feet above our seats to have our tail-bones come jarring back down, our spines ram up into our skulls, and our ribs accordion. Julie borrowed my rope belt to tie Edith and Sally's seat in place, which had broken loose. The seat in front of theirs, however, was beyond our help and it collapsed into their laps with its occupant placidly ignoring the fact that she was now sitting on the floor. Jimmy, our Irish friend from the work camp who was traveling with us, also had his seat come loose and Andrea behind him had to hold it in place while Sean masterfully held her new ebony tea set intact on his lap. Next to her, my seat slowly drifted forward and Scott's in front of me came back until my legs were rather stuck between them. "This could conceivably be worse," I commented cheerily between stifled grunts of pain. "So could sodomy," Sean retorted, "but congratulations on your sunny out-look." After two hours of this we finally returned to a paved road, although our aching bodies still felt every little bump. We had no right to complain, however, as we learned shortly afterward when Hoyse received a call on her cell saying that our counterpart's bus had broken down twice and that they were now faced with finding themselves a place to stay the night and some form of transport into Dar the following day. As for us, we arrived mostly in one piece (even if the bus didn't) in Mbagala where we gratefully devoured ice-cream cones from a bicycle stand and chicken shishkabobs from a street-side grill for 100 tsh (about $0.09) each. We then somehow crammed ourselves, our luggage, and three weeks worth of work camp supplies into the UVIKIUTA bus to go to Chamazi. When we unloaded at UVIKIUTA our host fathers were there to welcome us, including mine, a beaming man named Jacob. We hugged and greeted one another, then those of us who were going to live at with families in UVIKIUTA unloaded, and those of us going to the Mgola Eco-Village (Sean, Sally and I) headed off about five minutes further down the road.
The sun was just falling into a smooth wash of pale orange extending into a deeper one before fading into a rich ultramarine as we arrived among the young trees and seven houses of Mgola. Jacob helped me to carry Jackson's and my own luggage to the house where I met his shy six-year-old daughter, Anna, and his wife, Mary, a Chaga from Kilimanjaro. They welcomed me and proudly gave me a tour of their house which they had only occupied for three months. I was very pleased with our room, which comfortably held our two large beds (almost as long as me, and almost square) on which I could stretch out if I lay diagonally and put something over my feet where they touched the mosquito net (which was blessedly lacking in holes). The bathroom was inside the house, right across from our room, and had a squat toilet and a drain and buckets for showers, and all together I had a new spring in my step. Jacob explained that the solar panels and water tank for the eco-village had not yet been installed, so our only light at night came from kerosene and battery fueled lamps, and our water had to be pulled up and carried from the near-by wells. Imagine my surprise when I saw a bottle of Canadian maple syrup on the table! I asked, and was told that it had been left by previous CWY participants. Jacob himself had been a volunteer with CWY about five years ago, in North Bay, Ontario. Mary knew how to make “pancakes” which, although they tasted the same and were quite good, were flat and rubbery. A few weeks later I made some, and my proposal to add baking powder sent Mary’s eyebrows halfway up her forehead. “It’s what we do in Canada,” I explained quickly, hoping not to be banished from the kitchen where men traditionally had not right to be. She accepted, and when Jackson saw the result he exclaimed “Wow, big chapatti!”
After I’d finished occupying the new room we all went over to Sylvester, Rosie and Peter’s house – where Deborah and Sally were staying – for the weekly rotational Sunday evening communal potluck. Sylvester had his diesel generator running to power the lights and TV, on which a preacher and his translator were vigorously hollering out a passionate sermon.
The next morning, after waking up from a solid night’s sleep, I headed into Dar es Salaam with Sean, Sally and Adolphina, the Tanzanian volunteer from the Lindi work camp who was now working as a maid in her uncle Julius’ house. We walked through the fields and the village to Mbande market where we caught a daladala through Mbagala to Posta. Getting onto the Posta daladala was a violent affair at rush-hour with everyone pushing and elbowing to get seats. In the midst of the press I looked down and saw someone’s hand in my pocket and spun around yelling “hey!” The man was already running, but there had been nothing worth stealing in my pocket anyways. Once in Posta we went to the Barklay’s Bank, a huge building surrounded by tourists and businesspeople of all races. We then went to the post office, the internet café, and the YWCA where we ate lunch before returning to the eco-village. By the time we got back our counterparts had already arrived after a very long trip, and Jackson was chatting with Mary who came from the same tribe and had a similar dialect as her mother tongue.
The following day we went into UVIKIUTA to be introduced to our work placements. Having been away from the group for a single day seemed like a long time after not having been separated for almost a month. Ben gave us a tour, first showing us around the environment-focused work placements. He outlined a history of Chamazi, the name of the village which was in a local dialect of the Kiswahili words “chai maji” meaning “tea water” after the colour of the river on which the village depended. He explained how the quality of the water and the eco-system of the river had suffered due to deforestation along the banks, the use of fertilizers on farms which extended right down to the water, intentional and unintentional damming, and pollution caused by recent practices such as washing cars next to the river. Now the river which was once swift-moving and bounteous in life was stagnant and covered in oxygen-leaching vegetation. Despite the sadness of that, I felt inspired and hopeful because at least some of the challenges presented here I could see obtainable solutions for and paths of action that I and others could take to improve the situation considerably, something uncommon in most environmental issues that I had previously faced. We were then shown the office and library where Deborah and I would be working, meeting our hip and well-dressed twenty-three year-old supervisor Boven. Many books had been donated and a special building had been built for the library to-be. The entire group then came out to the eco-village for the first time to see the tree nursery and composting work that the people posted there would be working on. After lunch we went to the final work placement – Suzan and Sally’s – the Yatima Group Trust Fund orphanage in Chamazi who we had raised money for in Peterborough. The many children of all ages came and sat on our laps on the steps of one of the buildings as a staff member spoke to us about the organization, then clung to our hands as we were given a tour of the huge property and its farms and dormitories. We then played sports and games with the kids who were very skilled and enthusiastic and who we had to pry ourselves away from when it was time for us to leave.
Following that we began our work. On an average weekday, Jackson and I would get up at 6 o’clock in the morning, roll out from under our mosquito nets, tie them up, make our beds, and get dressed. We then carry water from the wells, I going first to the closer well – past Hoyce and Ben’s future houses – to the edge of the forest where I avoid the giant centipedes in my bare feet as I go down into the watering hole. I do this circuit two or three times, carrying two 10 or 20 litre buckets at a time, to fill the big bucket in the bathroom to flush the toilet with. I then go to the further well, near Sylvester’s house, where I hope that there will be water left to pull up with a bucket on the end of a rope. The first time I threw it down I could imagine the rope pulling free of my hand and that I would have to climb down to get it, triggering my Dad’s voice in my head saying “What’d you do that for, you dork?!” Needless to say, I never dropped it. Once I’ve filled the buckets I carry them back and shower with a kibobo (a small pail) over the drain, then have chai. Chai often consists of tea or milo with mandazi, bread, chapatti, buns, or – when we’re very lucky – vitumbua, and oranges or mangoes. Jackson told me that Mary was very happy when I said that I prefer mandazi and vitumbua to bread, because they are cheaper, and I considered it a definite win-win scenario although I was maybe winning a little more. After chai we inevitably leave late, pushing Julius’ big blue truck until it stubbornly decides to start, then we all pile into the back and bounce down the dirt road to UVIKIUTA, passing UVIKIUTA’s conservation area and the desolation of the sand mines which surround it. Deborah and I then go to the office and say “Mambo” and “Mzuka” to Boven and set to work dusting and sweeping the offices. Once that is done we continue with whatever project we happen to be working on at the time. Sometimes we are summarizing and feeding volunteer registration and evaluation forms into the computer, sometimes proofreading documents which are sent to volunteers and partner organizations, and sometimes labeling, cataloguing, stamping, sorting and shelving the more than five hundred books in the Chamazi Community Library’s current collection. Despite the disproportionate quantity of Christian books, there is also a good number of philosophy, sociology, science, history, literature and story books. These include many withdrawn from the Vancouver Island Regional Library, the Grater Vancouver Public Library and the Trinity Western University library, such my own Science 9 textbook and book of Renaissance history, plus names such as C.S. Lewis, Naomi Kline, Craig Kielburger, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, Plutarch, Tacticus, Herodotus, Cervantes, Theucydides, Marcus Aurelius, Galen, Hypocrates, Machiavelli, Darwin, Hobbs, Marx, Micheal de Montaign, Shakespeare, and others. I’ve been reading several books borrowed from the library and from other participants: Jack Whyte’s Dream of Eagles series, the fourth, fifth and sixth books; Tacticus’ Histories, which I had not finished in Peterborough; “Collapse” by Jared Diamond, which I was very engaged by until I lent it to another participant; a book on basic philosophy; and “Me to We: Turning Self-Help on its Head” by Craig and Marc Kielburger, which I would highly recommend. We met the former CWY participant who had helped to found the library, Sarah from Comox, B.C., when she dropped by to deliver some more materials en route from Egypt via Tanga, where she was visiting her boyfriend, to Uganda where she was working with another library project. Although we may arrive late for our 8 am start, Deborah and I generally take a fraction of our two hour lunch break and work past our technical ending time at 5 pm. We then wait awhile for the truck to pick us up, hanging out on someone’s porch or at the nearby bar where we gratefully drink cold pineapple juice or Stoney Tangawizi and eat donuts or half-cakes. When the truck is available it picks up us Mgola residents and takes us home. Once there Jackson and I are back at work carrying water and helping Mary to prepare dinner. Work in the kitchen began with washing dishes, and I have graduated to cutting ingredients, stirring, and eventually to preparing and cooking dishes. When those chores are done we shower and enjoy Mary’s amazing Swahili cooking together, listening to the Kiswahili news on the little battery-powered radio, then Jackson and I converse as we sit on the floor and wash the dishes in basins. We then read or relax on the porch under the brilliant light of the sky-full of stars, or, if there is even the slightest crescent of it showing, the glow of the moon which is bright enough to cast a shadow even before the light of the sun has left the sky. We turn in between 9 and 10 pm and sleep fitfully. Generally there is a blessed cooling breeze that blows through Mgola. Our room is on the lee of the house, but when a storm rolls in, heralded by distant flashes of lightning in the evening, the wind swings 180o and howls in through our window. The rain falls in deafening torrents on the metal roof, but we are happy because we can put the water buckets under the eaves and don’t have to walk to the wells the following morning.
On Wednesdays we have our Educational Activity Days, which tend to be much more interesting and imaginative now that we have very limited access to PowerPoint and Wikipedia. One such EAD, focused on arts, took us to the wattle and daub home of George – a gentle-voiced artist with a limp and a smile that took up his entire face – in Mbande. He taught us how to make kitenge using the batiki and sewn tie-die techniques. On weekends we have free time to run errands into town, hand wash our laundry, do more intensive chores, hang out, relax, have our communal Sunday evening potluck, and go to church. Entering the Lutheran church at UVIKIUTA, converted from the hall where Deborah and I often work during the week, with the choir singing and drumming, is like ascending a stairway into heaven. The preacher, although his sermons are solely in Kiswahili, has a sense of humor which transcends language barriers and makes even me laugh, although I may not know at what.
Our routines are solid enough that I can write of them thus simply, but there is always enough deviation to keep us on our toes. On Andrea’s birthday, for example, I witnessed a solar eclipse for the first time. Looking cautiously through my fingers and sunglasses I watched the disc of the sun wane into a crescent. When I arrived at work I found Boven with a little bird he’d found on the ground. We perched it on a roll of masking tape where it sat tamely blinking until it flew to the window sill and out and away. An exploring black-faced monkey later entered through another window and was surprised by our presence. He leapt back out of the window, but remained to play peek-a-boo over the sill. To celebrate Andrea’s birthday we went to a place near Mbande for kitimoto, slow-fried pork and plantains served on a communal platter in the middle of a table. In the card that the entire group signed I poked fun at her about someone who’d inaccurately guessed her age in Peterborough: “Happy Birthday – nineteen, isn’t it?” She paid me back the following week on my birthday, again at Kitimoto, writing in a card with a picture of a caribou in a sauna (a word play on the Kiswahili welcome “Karibu Sana”): “To think that just yesterday I would have resented being mistaken for someone your age. Now we can be resentful together. P.S. Aren’t nineteen year-olds annoying? Yeah.”
Near the beginning of our time with Jacob and Mary, just before Anna began her first day at school, Jacob suggested that Anna, Jackson and I each plant a tree seedling in front of the porch for him and Mary to remember us by when we were no longer with them. The trees, he said, would be of medium size once they were fully grown, and would bear beautiful flowers throughout the year. We did so, and they have been growing swiftly under our care.
Although many of us Canadians generally resent going into the city for any but practical purposes, we sometimes like to explore. On one such occasion some of our counterparts took a group of us into Kariako, a very culturally diverse shopping district. We wandered through the market, our senses bombarded by the clashing smells, sounds and colours – fish, spices, hand-made kitchen-wares, and more... We gleefully discovered an ice cream store and succumbed to temptation. A group of elderly maasai – tattooed, toothless and toga-ed, wearing an abundance of jewelry, including huge ornaments in their massively elongated ear-lobes – sold us beadwork. Then, trying to look nonchalant rather than awe-struck, we went to the Shoprite – a grocery store nigh on identical to any in Canada – and we experienced a preview of the culture-shock that we are bound to encounter when we return home. Jackson and I went on another occasion to visit his Babu (grand-uncle) who was in hospital with some health problem. The private hospital was beautiful, far beyond what one would expect in Canada, but the prices were staggering.
On another weekend when the surf was up we took another trip to the beach and body-surfed until we were quite pickled with salt water. Counter-intuitively, Sean from Winnipeg and MJ from Montreal were by far the best body-surfers, and the rest of us became their disciples.
At the end of the month we headed to Bagamoyo, north of Dar es Salaam, for our mid-term camp. After a few hours of driving we entered through a tunnel of trees with a welcoming statue of Jesus Christ at its end, arriving at our accommodations in a specialty school located amongst the over one hundred year old mission buildings and cathedral. There we moved in two to a room, with a bunk-bed each, in two four-room complexes which each had a moldy shower (with a showerhead!) and toilet stall. There was also a western-style washroom building, better than what one might expect to find in a Canadian mall. We visited the museum inside the old mission house, the spire of the old cathedral where Dr. Livingstone’s body rested for a night en route back to Great Britain, the 200 year-old baobob tree, and the newer, hundred year-old, cathedral. Bagamoyo had been a primary slave-trading town of the Omani Sultanate, shipping slaves from the interior to Zanzibar after the fall of the city-state of Kilwa to the Portuguese. We took a tour of several significant historical sights, and my jaw dropped as we entered the narrow streets hemmed in by ancient Arabic houses in stages of repair varying between ruins and complete restoration, all with intricately carved symbolic doors. Passing through this scene with the guide’s words about dhows, ivory, Zanzibar, spices, sultans and slaves echoing in my ears, I felt as though I had just stepped into a childhood storybook. We explored the old fortress and slave house, its crenellated walls still standing imposingly. There we saw the rooms in which slaves were held, forty to a cubicle-like dormitory with a tiny hole in the wall for air, if not for light. We then drove down the Indian Ocean coast to the ruins of Kaole, Kilwa’s trading partner which had declined after the conquest of its co-dependant. There we saw the sight of the former mosque with its well of sacred water, and the burial grounds of the city’s nobility. Many of the tombs boasted detailed stone-work, and some had towering spires over them. One pyramid-topped tomb was said to be that of a sorceress descendant of Mohammed, and is a pilgrimage destination to this day. Our next stop was a crocodile farm, where the fearsome reptiles were raised for their meat and hides. We saw them at all stages of their growth, from tiny babies which one wouldn’t mind having as a pet to imposing giants who could swallow me without bothering to chew.
The name Bagamoyo, a corruption of the earlier “Bwagamoyo”, means “throw down your heart”. This took on different meanings for different people who arrived in Bagamoyo: for slaves shipped through there it signified the place where their hearts were crushed into suppression and where the anguish of their forced march from their homes and families and of their impending auction into a life of labor forced them to leave their heart behind. For the slavers an arrival in Bagamoyo meant that they had successfully completed a long journey and that they were soon to make a profit, so they threw the worries from their hearts and celebrated. One phrase; two radically different connotations. We threw down our hearts in another way during our mid-term discussions about our experiences in the program. Jackson and I talked of how we had developed over the course of the program, reading our goals as we had written at the beginning and analyzing how close we had come to accomplishing them. Afterwards we had to tell the group what we had deduced about each other. “Jackson seems to have achieved all of his goals,” I reported, “he hoped to share his culture, learn about Canada, and improve his language skills, and he has done all of those over the course of the program so far. He has also learned through his experience in Canada and with Canadians, and especially through his work in the Brock St. Mission in Peterborough, that not all white people are rich, as he once believed. Now he is trying to convince his fellow Africans who have not been overseas of this, that people struggle everywhere, that nothing is a simple case of give or take, but he is having difficulty. There are always achievements and always failures, but as far as Jackson’s goals go, he can say that he has succeeded.”
“I appreciate that guy so much,” Jackson said, “that Bradley, because he wants so much to learn about African culture, and he do. And also, I appreciate because he wants to learn Kiswahili. Up to now he knows so much Kiswahili. And also, in this program, he wants to decide for sure what he wants to study in the college, but up to now he is not sure yet, but he still wants to study the anth-ro-po-logy…? Yeah, that one. But now he knows that he will follow his heart and go to the way that God wants him to go.”
The next day Scott, MJ and I, the three broke adventurers, wandered around the Old Town of Bagamoyo together while others went shopping. My God. I never knew that such a place existed outside of imagination and story-books. We wandered slack-jawed through the cobbled streets hemmed by ancient buildings, many still inhabited today. We went down to the crenellated walls of the former German customs house on the beach where lateen-rigged dhows were beached, and we could as well have been in the 19th, 18th or 17th century. Friendly people came to talk to us, somehow aware that we had no money and thus talking as truly interesting people rather than as salesmen. “You know,” I said to Scott, “I had written off the possibility of anything being truly ‘ideal’ some time ago. But, I don’t know, within the past months I may have changed that verdict…” There is always something new to be found I suppose…
Sorry these letters have come to be so late – computer access is limited and schedules are busy. I hope that all is well with you, and I look forward to hearing from you all again!
Kwaheri!
Bradley A. Clements
Chamazi, Tanzania
February 27, 2010
January 20, 2010
Missive #7: Keribu Sana!
January 14, 2010
Mambo!
On December 9th, a snowstorm hit Peterborough. The snow came down heavily and blanketed the world, and thunder rolled ominously. Jackson and I were doing the last of our packing, and I helped Randy shovel the driveway and steps. At 1 o’clock we bid goodbye to Wendy and Randy with whom we had enjoyably spent the past three months, and took a ride with Patricia, MJ and Sarah to the Canadian Canoe Museum where we met our bus to go to Toronto and bid goodbye to Peterborough and all of our friends and host families there. We were leaving ourselves four hours of travel time to get to Pearson Airport, but the roads were clear and we made good time.
After checking our baggage, eating an expensive dinner, and going through security we boarded our flight to London which left on time – the winter storm warning had been canceled for Toronto. As the plane lifted off from the runway, we felt North America fall away beneath us, and I bid her farewell for the following three months… I listened to Bruchner, Haydn, Verdi, and the Beatle’s “Rubber Soul” album as we crossed the Atlantic. I became more and more excited as Europe, the stage of so many of my interests, grew closer. We passed over Ireland, then Cornwall and by dawn we were circling London preparing to land in Heathrow Airport. The plane touched down and we descended the stairs to the tarmac and my first contact with the Old World. We took a tram, which drove on the left side of the road, to the terminal, then began the eight-hour wait for our flight to Dar es Salaam. We became used to pence and pounds, and attempted to sleep in awkward positions on the seats which seemed to be designed specifically to thwart people from resting on them. When our flight gate was announced we took the subway to the terminal and boarded our flight along with many Kiswahili speakers. Again, I got next to no sleep, making for a total of less than two hours over the almost three-day trip. My anticipation escalated as we flew over Paris, Turin, the Mediterranean, Sahara, Nile, Nairobi, within sight of Kilimanjaro, and over the Serengeti plains.
We landed in Dar es Salaam amid towering coconut palms and flocks of white cranes, and disembarked into the upper 30’s degree heat. The Julius Nyerre International Airport was fairly simply built of cement bricks with hand-painted signs. After checking through customs and waiting for our baggage, we headed outside where a throng of people had gathered to greet their arriving friends and family in a chorus of yelled Kiswahili. A group of people from UVIKIUTA were there to meet us, including a brightly dressed elderly woman who carried a cake which said "Welcome, Hoyse" on it. They shook our hands and greeted us with a warm "Keribu", and there were a few excited screams of delight as some of the Tanzanian participant's friends and relatives appeared. Eventually we were all together in a group, huddled like sheep amid the pack of prospective porters, money-changers, salesmen, and pick-pockets. We piled our luggage precariously high on a little pick-up truck and loaded into a little bus to take us to UVIKIUTA centre in Chamazi. Our eyes were pasted wide to the scenes around us as we wove through the packed vehicles of all shapes and sizes of the Dar es Salaam traffic. Bicycles rode swiftly along the roadsides stacked as tall as their riders with pallets of eggs, women draped in brilliantly coloured cangas walked with tall buckets balanced on their heads, chickens and goats grazed under trees, and water-sellers crowded around the cars and buses whenever they stopped, calling "maji, maji!" and making suggestive sucking noises with their lips. As we continued further out of town the industries fortified with walls topped with broken glass gave way to roofless cement-block houses being undermined by the erosion of the hard, red earth. We passed through markets, close-packed with buyers, sellers and any description of wares. Beautiful hand-made wooden furniture and bed fames lined the streets in areas, being advertised by their craftsmen. Everywhere there were people - lots and lots of people, some walking on errands, some hawking wares, but many simply standing. We were stopped twice by police, once because some of our luggage had fallen off of the little truck. When the trees became more and the people slightly less, we passed a small sign welcoming us to Chamazi and pulled into UVIKIUTA centre. This area was vegetated by mango, jackfruit, and a variety of palm trees which were home to many black-faced monkeys who stopped and stared at our passing. We broke into a chorus of "Wewe ni nani jama" and "Jambo bwana" as we pulled up to a big open building over a bridge from a lily pond where a big group of people had gathered to welcome us. Our Tanzanian counterparts sang our names as we descended into the hugs and handshakes and sincere grins of welcome. Chai (breakfast) was already laid out for us, and we were surprised to learn that it was still early in the morning. We were then shown to our dormitories, the boys being in the house of a man named Julius and his children, nestled amidst palms and a giant cactus. We each had a bunk-bed with a mattress, sheet and mosquito net, and there was a common room with some sofas.
We spent the following week being oriented to Tanzania, UVIKIUTA, the work we would be doing, and the goals of various organizations including the UN Millennium Development Goals with Executive Chairman Ben Mongi. Ben is deeply interesting, wise, and lovably cheerful, and I enjoyed our time working with him. He has an outlook on culture and sustainability and life in general which is very inspiring. “People think we are crazy for saving land for monkeys,” he laughed, “’You are planting fruit trees for monkeys?! Why not use the land for yourself?’ Because monkeys have the right to live and eat too! People say ‘why are you worried about saving the snakes? They are dangerous!’ Yes they are dangerous, but only because we make them so, by destroying their habitat. Which is more dangerous: snakes or people? We are! We are the dangerous ones!”
For our meals we enjoyed the amazing Tanzanian cuisine, including ugali (thick flour goo), vegetable sauces, pilau (rice flavored with a masala spice mix), chipati (like an Indian roti – ranging from very good to spectacular), mandazi (deep-fried wheat bun with ginger flavouring), meat stew (read "gristle-and-bone stew" - it's still great), mango, pineapple, banana, and kitumbua (like mandazi but made of rice - alikened to the upper regions of heaven). Other aspects of daily life differed from what we Canadians had ever experienced, such as the carrying of water from the tap outside for showers, which were done with a small bucket called a kibobo, doing laundry by hand, walking to the communal squatting toilets which were the night-time haunts of mobs of cockroaches, and having to sleep under mosquito nets. We Canadians were shown just how luxuriously and resource-intensively we lived at home, but I adapted happily and quickly.
We went into Dar a few times, cramming into already crammed daladalas (basically a minibus transit - as the saying goes, a cup of water can become full, but there is always room in a daladala). We would transfer from Mbagala market to the post office in downtown Dar, selecting our daladala by the cries of the conductors: "Mbagalabagalabagala", "Poosta-postaposta", "Chimaziii, chimazi!"
Whenever we had nothing else to do we were entertained watching the capering families of monkeys with their tiny and incredibly cute babies who often clung to their parent’s stomachs, or by playing with the village kids. Joel’s son Alpha and Ben’s son Ima were deffinatly the alpha duo, and we played with them often. We’d kick a ball around for a while until Ima would announce “nimechoka,” I’d reply “na mimi pia,” and we’d collapse onto the porch, where we’d rest for about two seconds before he’d be re-invigorated and leap to his feet yelling “piga piga!”
Each morning we were awakened at around 5:30 by a cacophony of Muslim calls to prayer layered over the crowing of cocks layered over the howling of dogs layered over the songs of exotic birds layered over the constant drone of sacatas. Naps during the day were often interrupted by the families of monkeys “playing football” on the corrugated metal roof, to quote Sarah. One such morning I went for a short walk with Frank to watch the sun rise over the palm groves. Afterwards I joined Sean in an amusing and embarrassing exercise session on the veranda which involved many awkward and difficult positions and painted the words “crazy wazungu” on the faces of all of the locals who saw us. We then had the privilege of being blatant tourists, visiting the village museum and beach. The museum was very interesting, being outdoors with many houses authentic to those of many of the tribes across Tanzania. Norbert made a very knowledgeable tour-guide, having been taught by his grandmother about the traditional houses, ways of life, and medicinal plants. I found that many aspects of natural building, including some which I had not expected such as living roofs and solar design, were traditional here. After lunch we headed off through the traffic jam onto a ferry to the other side of the harbour where we continued on to the beach. It was a long, hot and tiring trip, but thoroughly worth it when we raced down the white sand into the extraordinarily warm Indian Ocean. After a long swim we went beach-combing, found a recently-beached puffer fish, ate ice-cream, and I brought Nivanuatu sand-drawings to the soft silver sand of East Africa.
After an amazing first week we got up at around 3:30 am and headed into Dar to catch our bus to our first work-camp in Lindi, to the south. The bus was decorated with drapery, had comfortable seats, offered various refreshments, and blared Indian and Middle Eastern music, but it became less luxurious when we reached the area where the only road was still under construction and we had to bounce slowly over the off-road track, passing mud-hut villages and patches of jungle. We stopped once for lunch in a village where people crowded around the bus to sell fish, eggs, and other fly-surrounded wares. Eventually we were back on a paved road and in sight of the Indian Ocean, and the bus stopped and let us out on a flat, lightly vegetated stretch of land between cob villages, and a group of friendly UVIKIUTA members were there to meet and welcome us, including the camp leader, Joel (Alpha’s dad!), for whom I gained a great respect and friendship. Another work camp of international volunteers was already there, including people from Italy, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, the US, Canada, and Tanzania. We moved into our dormitories, packed our thin mattresses together slave-ship fashion, and hung our mosquito nets. We were impressed by the sit-on flush toilets, right next door to our room, even if we had to fill them with buckets from the tap near the out-door kitchen. I signed up many times for duty in the make-shift kitchen, set up under a tree with a counter and tarp shelter on a frame of lashed wooden poles, helping Mariam and cheerful Dina prepare delicious meals over the charcoal braziers. Each evening, after finishing dinner and washing dishes, we enjoyed a cultural night presented by members of the different countries represented in our group. Many of them were very good, consisting of music, traditional foods, maps, and lectures about different aspects of the country. The Canadian culture night, however – modesty aside – blew all of the others out of the water. Sean narrated and played the soundtrack on his guitar for a play of Canadian history staring Scott as a drunk John A., Andrea and JP as high-fiving soldiers (“And they’re back from WWI! Don’t get too comfortable, though, WWII is right around the corner: bye! Bang… bang… landmine… landmine… They should be back by now… Oh, looks like they’ve won again! We’re good at world wars!”), Sally as a First Nations woman, Colin and I as snobby European explorers (“Noice twees… Noise wesouses…”), and Edith and Andrea as the first legally married same-sex couple.
We spent a few days getting used to the new area, then spent the weekend on a trip to Kiliwa. The trip was another hot and tiring one, with five of us crammed into four small seats. After several hours a tire, the one right next to my seat, blew out with a bang like a shot gun and we stopped in a village of thatch-roofed cob huts to jack the bus up and replace the tire. Once again, though, the trip was thoroughly worth it when we reached our destination: we found that we each had accommodation in our own or a shared hut with massive beds! Colin and I shared a cabin, but each had our own room and bathroom. In retrospect, it probably would have looked pretty poor had we come as tourists directly from Canada, but after our recent humbling experiences we basked gratefully in the lap of luxury. After a beautiful night’s sleep we loaded into the bus and headed down to the beach to board an open motor boat to Kiliwa Island. We pulled up on the beach which stretched between a mangrove swamp and the ruins of an Arabic fortress, on which a number of dhows were beached and over which looked cliffs supporting ancient bricks, thatched shelters, and local children who watched us wade ashore. We walked down the beach, stepping over the dhows’ anchor cables, to the 16th Century Omani fortress with triangular crenellations and a wooden Arabesque over the studded gate in the Middle Eastern fashion, and a round tower which had been added during the Portuguese occupation. The fortress had once been the guard-post and prison of a wealthy trading port, the name “Kiliwa” meaning “the place of abundant things” because almost any product could be purchased there. It was now under the protection and restoration of UNESCO. We entered through a postern in the main gate and walked down the narrow corridor hemmed in by high walls: I imagined trying to force an entrance here without welcome if the place were in repair and garrisoned with Arabic bowmen, and shuddered at what my mind’s eye saw. We then continued on to the domed and colonnaded ruins of a huge mosque, host to a gigantic 500 year-old boa tree. As I entered the forest of columns and canopy of domes of the 11th Century place of worship, it occurred to me that this was the oldest building I had ever entered. Our local guide explained to us that the octagonally-based domes, now home to hanging bats, symbolized the seven days which Allah had created, and the eighth which began when one entered the mosque and was re-born. Kiliwa had been the home of the East African Sultanate for a time, and the Sultan had his own room of worship within the mosque, which had, until about two hundred years ago, been the largest in Africa. We then continued to the Sultan’s palace, a huge ruin once surrounded by a gigantic fortifying wall which had been a century in the making. Despite the size of the once-two-storied palace, the individual rooms were small because the floor and roof beams had been made of round-wood mangrove trunks due to their imperviousness to termite infestation. We continued across the flat of a dried lake and through a grove of massive ancient boas to the 16th Century Sultanate cemetery, then through the cob, coral-block and thatch village, inhabited by starring children, brightly dressed singing and dancing women, and men in white robes and cylindrical hats. We boarded the boat and sped back to the mainland, passing crowded lanteen-sailed dhows making a good clip in the opposite direction. I was fortunate to see a massive (I’m sorry, I’m starting to run out of adjectives for big things) King Fish, at least as long as my arm, propel itself powerfully out of the water and about twenty feet in the air before plummeting spectacularly to a great splash which most of us saw.
The next morning we had breakfast at the nearby restaurant and headed off to see the hippopotami of the mangrove swamps of Kiliwa Island on the same boat as before. We saw some white cranes and fiddler crabs, and eventually came in sight of the splashing, ear-wiggling hippos lounging in the water. We sat and watched them sit and watch us from a distance for a little while, then headed back, rather sun-burned, and some of us slightly disappointed. However, as we were puttering out of the delta, a mass of air-bubbles surfaced beneath the boat and, looking back, I saw a huge hippo surface in a splash behind us before sinking again quickly. I called to the others to look, but they were too slow and claimed that I was joking or seeing things. Some of us later went swimming at the beach while others went snorkeling.
After an amazing weekend we headed back to Mtwero, ready to pay for our time of rest and tourism with grueling work. On our first day of digging the school foundation Sean and I, the two lankiest guys on the team, wore our matching “wife-beater” undershirts. “I hope I’m still dreaming…” Scott said when he saw us. “Are you drunk?” said MJ. “Are you sure of what you’re wearing?” asked Tegemeo. We made amazing progress on the foundation trench, and within a few minutes of starting the sweat was running off of us in torrents. And, in that heat, I realized just how refreshing sweat can actually be. After four hours of hard work we drug ourselves off for our lunch break and ate ravenously. Thanks to the four-hour rest afterwards, we were able to then go to the village school to play with the kids. As we neared the village after a half-hour walk, the kids started coming out of the wood-work to join us, clinging to our hands and laughing and chattering to us in Kiswahili and their mother tongues, unknowing or uncaring that we couldn’t understand them. As we neared the school field the ants became thick upon the ground, enlivened by the recent rains, and painfully bit our sandaled feet. I joined Jimmy, Kotoro, Sean and Scott with the 14 – 16 and 11 – 13 year old groups. Jimmy – from Ireland – taught them hurling and Gaelic football, and they were natural pros at soccer, which they call football. Even Sean and Scott, impressive players in my inexperienced eyes, were ashamed of their skills in the face of these critical teens. The girls, who generally excluded themselves from football, seemed a lot less egotistic but no less skilled or competitive in their favorite sport of netball. We also taught them other games, such as “Stella-ella o-la”, a clapping game which we couldn’t remember the nonsense words to so replaced with Kiswahili names of fruit and numbers.
We went into Lindi town to visit two different HIV/AIDS organizations, one of which was funded by CIDA, and learned about the work that they did in Lindi region though Frank’s translations. We went into Lindi several other times, making the 15 or 20 minute drive in the backs of a trio of different coloured three-wheeled bijajis. People in town knew as soon as they saw our white skin that we must be the same wazungu (foreigners) who were here building the school, and they profusely thanked and welcomed us in Kiswahili or broken English.
One night, after the moon had risen blood red, a thunder storm to rival even the worst that I had experienced in Australia rolled in. At three in the morning I was awoken by flashes of lightning which were blinding even inside the room, and incredibly long and loud rolls of thunder which brought images to my mind of mythological muscle-bound titans beating on gigantic timpani drums.
There were always masses of bugs, especially at night around the lights: huge moths, sacatas, hornets, beetles of all sizes and descriptions, large spiders and centipedes, and many others. Despite the malaria risk, mosquitoes were the least of the insects, in my opinion. One night there was all of a sudden a full-scale invasion of kombe-kombe: fat flying termite-like bugs which came in such large numbers that they obscured lights even from long distances. If you hit one, its flimsy wings would fall off, and when we swept in the morning we raked up piles of them under the light fixtures. The Tanzanians were delighted, however, as were the hundreds of swallows who showed up in the morning, both of whom loved to eat the easily-caught bugs. While they were generally eaten fresh, a large number of them were caught and kept in water for Dina to fry and serve with supper the next day. One evening after dinner I was sitting in the open dining area when something hit me on the back of my shoulder, and clung there despite my attempts to shake it off, until I looked over. I expected a big flying bug, but instead it was a grinning green gecko. I apologized to him and let him run around on my arms and back, until he leaped onto my cheek, fell to the floor, and ran away.
When Christmas Eve eventually rolled around, none of us Canadians were even slightly in the spirit. We tried singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Raindeer” as we dug under the broiling sun, but that just didn’t cut it. Jackson, Tegemeo, Frank, Norbert, and our other Chaga participants, on the other hand were enthusiastic that we should partake in the traditional holiday festivities: the slaughtering and eating of a sacrificial goat. So, after work, they headed off together and bought a goat who was quickly dubbed “Roland”, after the Carolingian paladin from “The Song of Roland”. On Christmas morning I got up earlier than most to find Jackson running up to our room. “A hyena came in the night and ate our goat!” he told me, in a strange mix of excitement and disappointment, then added, “some men came and killed the hyena.” I took this information in stride and sleepily decided to give it more thought after a shower in the palm-frond shower stalls that were rigged up along the fence. I can’t complain too much about Jackson’s English, but I’m going to have to help him out a bit with his tenses: the men that had “came and killed the hyena” were in fact still chasing it. I heard the hollering and yelling and peeked through the space between two palm leaves to hear the feral panting of the hyena and see the huge spotted dog-like form of it bound about an arm’s length away, followed by a mob of club-wielding villagers. I saw the hyena pass just as close four times before hearing a gun-shot and a chorus of shouts that signaled the end of the chase. When I left the shower, the big hyena had been hauled up near the fence and a mob of people were looking at it. I felt bad for the animal, but knew that it had to be gotten rid of for the safety and well being of the locals. What followed, though, was absolutely un-necessary, and I turned when I saw the first man raise his club. The poor hyena was still alive and was clubbed thoroughly, although not fatally, and was finally burned, alive and yelping. We were sickened.
A few of the Canadian members of our team had seen the hyena when it arrived, around midnight, when they were hanging out on the porch. Sean, who was talking on the phone with his mom, saw it and exclaimed “Jesus Christ, it’s a gawd-damned jungle cat!”, a quote which has gone down in our program’s history. They all ran into the girl’s dorm room, and Edith slammed the door on Sean by accident and locked it!
Several of us went to church after breakfast, which I called “the Corrugated Iron Cathedral”, since that’s exactly what it was. After a two hour wait (the pastor was touring all of the local churches, as he was the only one available) we had an enjoyable service including a baptism of a baby, extraordinary singing and drumming, and a special thank you and welcome to us visiting volunteers by the church secretary, the only person present who had any English.
A new goat was found, and was being slaughtered just as we were walking off to wish the kids of Mtwero a Merry Christmas. JP excitedly begged permission to stay and help, but most of us were happy to escape. As the other group of volunteers was preparing to depart the following day, we had a farewell ceremony for them and gave the kids Christmas gifts. The second goat, Olivier, was very good, and we had festive soft drinks including my new obsession, Stoney Tangawizi ginger ale. After dinner a few of us went to the “disco”, an earth-floored palm-frond enclosure with the stars overhead and blaring music. I danced with the little kids, who were very good, and people of all ages and walks of life, including mother’s with babies on their backs and elderly people, danced around us. The next morning we bid our fellow volunteers farewell, except for Jimmy who was staying with us to the end, as they headed off for the bus, sorry never to have had the chance to see Kim and Sally, the two tae-kwon-do practitioners, spar together.
Our first Tanzanian EAD, focused on community and lead by the long-suffering Edith, Rahel, Andrea, Sarah and MJ, was very good and interesting, despite the beaurocracy with local policies that they had to endure in the preparation of it. We learned what I considered to be very valuable information about the community of Mtwero which helped me to fully realize the importance of the girl’s secondary school which we were working to build.
We continued our work as usual, only now taking the lead in the sports education with the children, until New Years. By our final day of work we had very nearly completed the school’s foundation trench. We rung in the 2010 under the bright red moon with another disco, this time at the work camp, and invited many of the locals. When midnight struck we sought out all of our friends and hugged them, wishing them a Happy New Year.
The next day we ate another festive goat (Charlemagne), and I got Frank and Norbert to teach me to play bao and was instantly addicted. Bao is a traditional Tanzanian game which can take a long time to play and Nyerre, Tanzania’s first President, used it to bring people together to discuss politics. “Why didn’t you teach us this game earlier?!” I asked Frank. “Because I had to wait until we finished working,” he exclaimed, “otherwise you wouldn’t go to work, you’d just stay and play bao!” I grudgingly broke off a game for our formal farewell, thank-you’s, and closure of our work camp, then went off to pack.
I must apologize for this letter being so late – computer access has been very limited here – and for it being so short and ill-organized. Had I had the time and computer access I could have written far more about the extraordinary experiences that I have had over the past month. Anyways, I’m just on a lunch break at work right now and Deborah – my new work-place counterpart, who would laugh if I told here this letter is too short – is impatient to get back to work (“Are you writing a letter or a book?”), so I’d better cut this off. Thanks so much, especially to those of you who financially, supportively and morally helped me to be here! My address for the next month will be: c/o UVIKIUTA, PO BOX 71373, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We are now back in Chamazi with our host-families and work-placements – and I’ll tell you about all of that in my next Missive!
Yours truly,
Bradley A. Clements
Chamazi, Tanzania
P.S: CWY rocks! If you know anyone between 17 and 25, definatly recommend it to them!
Mambo!
On December 9th, a snowstorm hit Peterborough. The snow came down heavily and blanketed the world, and thunder rolled ominously. Jackson and I were doing the last of our packing, and I helped Randy shovel the driveway and steps. At 1 o’clock we bid goodbye to Wendy and Randy with whom we had enjoyably spent the past three months, and took a ride with Patricia, MJ and Sarah to the Canadian Canoe Museum where we met our bus to go to Toronto and bid goodbye to Peterborough and all of our friends and host families there. We were leaving ourselves four hours of travel time to get to Pearson Airport, but the roads were clear and we made good time.
After checking our baggage, eating an expensive dinner, and going through security we boarded our flight to London which left on time – the winter storm warning had been canceled for Toronto. As the plane lifted off from the runway, we felt North America fall away beneath us, and I bid her farewell for the following three months… I listened to Bruchner, Haydn, Verdi, and the Beatle’s “Rubber Soul” album as we crossed the Atlantic. I became more and more excited as Europe, the stage of so many of my interests, grew closer. We passed over Ireland, then Cornwall and by dawn we were circling London preparing to land in Heathrow Airport. The plane touched down and we descended the stairs to the tarmac and my first contact with the Old World. We took a tram, which drove on the left side of the road, to the terminal, then began the eight-hour wait for our flight to Dar es Salaam. We became used to pence and pounds, and attempted to sleep in awkward positions on the seats which seemed to be designed specifically to thwart people from resting on them. When our flight gate was announced we took the subway to the terminal and boarded our flight along with many Kiswahili speakers. Again, I got next to no sleep, making for a total of less than two hours over the almost three-day trip. My anticipation escalated as we flew over Paris, Turin, the Mediterranean, Sahara, Nile, Nairobi, within sight of Kilimanjaro, and over the Serengeti plains.
We landed in Dar es Salaam amid towering coconut palms and flocks of white cranes, and disembarked into the upper 30’s degree heat. The Julius Nyerre International Airport was fairly simply built of cement bricks with hand-painted signs. After checking through customs and waiting for our baggage, we headed outside where a throng of people had gathered to greet their arriving friends and family in a chorus of yelled Kiswahili. A group of people from UVIKIUTA were there to meet us, including a brightly dressed elderly woman who carried a cake which said "Welcome, Hoyse" on it. They shook our hands and greeted us with a warm "Keribu", and there were a few excited screams of delight as some of the Tanzanian participant's friends and relatives appeared. Eventually we were all together in a group, huddled like sheep amid the pack of prospective porters, money-changers, salesmen, and pick-pockets. We piled our luggage precariously high on a little pick-up truck and loaded into a little bus to take us to UVIKIUTA centre in Chamazi. Our eyes were pasted wide to the scenes around us as we wove through the packed vehicles of all shapes and sizes of the Dar es Salaam traffic. Bicycles rode swiftly along the roadsides stacked as tall as their riders with pallets of eggs, women draped in brilliantly coloured cangas walked with tall buckets balanced on their heads, chickens and goats grazed under trees, and water-sellers crowded around the cars and buses whenever they stopped, calling "maji, maji!" and making suggestive sucking noises with their lips. As we continued further out of town the industries fortified with walls topped with broken glass gave way to roofless cement-block houses being undermined by the erosion of the hard, red earth. We passed through markets, close-packed with buyers, sellers and any description of wares. Beautiful hand-made wooden furniture and bed fames lined the streets in areas, being advertised by their craftsmen. Everywhere there were people - lots and lots of people, some walking on errands, some hawking wares, but many simply standing. We were stopped twice by police, once because some of our luggage had fallen off of the little truck. When the trees became more and the people slightly less, we passed a small sign welcoming us to Chamazi and pulled into UVIKIUTA centre. This area was vegetated by mango, jackfruit, and a variety of palm trees which were home to many black-faced monkeys who stopped and stared at our passing. We broke into a chorus of "Wewe ni nani jama" and "Jambo bwana" as we pulled up to a big open building over a bridge from a lily pond where a big group of people had gathered to welcome us. Our Tanzanian counterparts sang our names as we descended into the hugs and handshakes and sincere grins of welcome. Chai (breakfast) was already laid out for us, and we were surprised to learn that it was still early in the morning. We were then shown to our dormitories, the boys being in the house of a man named Julius and his children, nestled amidst palms and a giant cactus. We each had a bunk-bed with a mattress, sheet and mosquito net, and there was a common room with some sofas.
We spent the following week being oriented to Tanzania, UVIKIUTA, the work we would be doing, and the goals of various organizations including the UN Millennium Development Goals with Executive Chairman Ben Mongi. Ben is deeply interesting, wise, and lovably cheerful, and I enjoyed our time working with him. He has an outlook on culture and sustainability and life in general which is very inspiring. “People think we are crazy for saving land for monkeys,” he laughed, “’You are planting fruit trees for monkeys?! Why not use the land for yourself?’ Because monkeys have the right to live and eat too! People say ‘why are you worried about saving the snakes? They are dangerous!’ Yes they are dangerous, but only because we make them so, by destroying their habitat. Which is more dangerous: snakes or people? We are! We are the dangerous ones!”
For our meals we enjoyed the amazing Tanzanian cuisine, including ugali (thick flour goo), vegetable sauces, pilau (rice flavored with a masala spice mix), chipati (like an Indian roti – ranging from very good to spectacular), mandazi (deep-fried wheat bun with ginger flavouring), meat stew (read "gristle-and-bone stew" - it's still great), mango, pineapple, banana, and kitumbua (like mandazi but made of rice - alikened to the upper regions of heaven). Other aspects of daily life differed from what we Canadians had ever experienced, such as the carrying of water from the tap outside for showers, which were done with a small bucket called a kibobo, doing laundry by hand, walking to the communal squatting toilets which were the night-time haunts of mobs of cockroaches, and having to sleep under mosquito nets. We Canadians were shown just how luxuriously and resource-intensively we lived at home, but I adapted happily and quickly.
We went into Dar a few times, cramming into already crammed daladalas (basically a minibus transit - as the saying goes, a cup of water can become full, but there is always room in a daladala). We would transfer from Mbagala market to the post office in downtown Dar, selecting our daladala by the cries of the conductors: "Mbagalabagalabagala", "Poosta-postaposta", "Chimaziii, chimazi!"
Whenever we had nothing else to do we were entertained watching the capering families of monkeys with their tiny and incredibly cute babies who often clung to their parent’s stomachs, or by playing with the village kids. Joel’s son Alpha and Ben’s son Ima were deffinatly the alpha duo, and we played with them often. We’d kick a ball around for a while until Ima would announce “nimechoka,” I’d reply “na mimi pia,” and we’d collapse onto the porch, where we’d rest for about two seconds before he’d be re-invigorated and leap to his feet yelling “piga piga!”
Each morning we were awakened at around 5:30 by a cacophony of Muslim calls to prayer layered over the crowing of cocks layered over the howling of dogs layered over the songs of exotic birds layered over the constant drone of sacatas. Naps during the day were often interrupted by the families of monkeys “playing football” on the corrugated metal roof, to quote Sarah. One such morning I went for a short walk with Frank to watch the sun rise over the palm groves. Afterwards I joined Sean in an amusing and embarrassing exercise session on the veranda which involved many awkward and difficult positions and painted the words “crazy wazungu” on the faces of all of the locals who saw us. We then had the privilege of being blatant tourists, visiting the village museum and beach. The museum was very interesting, being outdoors with many houses authentic to those of many of the tribes across Tanzania. Norbert made a very knowledgeable tour-guide, having been taught by his grandmother about the traditional houses, ways of life, and medicinal plants. I found that many aspects of natural building, including some which I had not expected such as living roofs and solar design, were traditional here. After lunch we headed off through the traffic jam onto a ferry to the other side of the harbour where we continued on to the beach. It was a long, hot and tiring trip, but thoroughly worth it when we raced down the white sand into the extraordinarily warm Indian Ocean. After a long swim we went beach-combing, found a recently-beached puffer fish, ate ice-cream, and I brought Nivanuatu sand-drawings to the soft silver sand of East Africa.
After an amazing first week we got up at around 3:30 am and headed into Dar to catch our bus to our first work-camp in Lindi, to the south. The bus was decorated with drapery, had comfortable seats, offered various refreshments, and blared Indian and Middle Eastern music, but it became less luxurious when we reached the area where the only road was still under construction and we had to bounce slowly over the off-road track, passing mud-hut villages and patches of jungle. We stopped once for lunch in a village where people crowded around the bus to sell fish, eggs, and other fly-surrounded wares. Eventually we were back on a paved road and in sight of the Indian Ocean, and the bus stopped and let us out on a flat, lightly vegetated stretch of land between cob villages, and a group of friendly UVIKIUTA members were there to meet and welcome us, including the camp leader, Joel (Alpha’s dad!), for whom I gained a great respect and friendship. Another work camp of international volunteers was already there, including people from Italy, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, the US, Canada, and Tanzania. We moved into our dormitories, packed our thin mattresses together slave-ship fashion, and hung our mosquito nets. We were impressed by the sit-on flush toilets, right next door to our room, even if we had to fill them with buckets from the tap near the out-door kitchen. I signed up many times for duty in the make-shift kitchen, set up under a tree with a counter and tarp shelter on a frame of lashed wooden poles, helping Mariam and cheerful Dina prepare delicious meals over the charcoal braziers. Each evening, after finishing dinner and washing dishes, we enjoyed a cultural night presented by members of the different countries represented in our group. Many of them were very good, consisting of music, traditional foods, maps, and lectures about different aspects of the country. The Canadian culture night, however – modesty aside – blew all of the others out of the water. Sean narrated and played the soundtrack on his guitar for a play of Canadian history staring Scott as a drunk John A., Andrea and JP as high-fiving soldiers (“And they’re back from WWI! Don’t get too comfortable, though, WWII is right around the corner: bye! Bang… bang… landmine… landmine… They should be back by now… Oh, looks like they’ve won again! We’re good at world wars!”), Sally as a First Nations woman, Colin and I as snobby European explorers (“Noice twees… Noise wesouses…”), and Edith and Andrea as the first legally married same-sex couple.
We spent a few days getting used to the new area, then spent the weekend on a trip to Kiliwa. The trip was another hot and tiring one, with five of us crammed into four small seats. After several hours a tire, the one right next to my seat, blew out with a bang like a shot gun and we stopped in a village of thatch-roofed cob huts to jack the bus up and replace the tire. Once again, though, the trip was thoroughly worth it when we reached our destination: we found that we each had accommodation in our own or a shared hut with massive beds! Colin and I shared a cabin, but each had our own room and bathroom. In retrospect, it probably would have looked pretty poor had we come as tourists directly from Canada, but after our recent humbling experiences we basked gratefully in the lap of luxury. After a beautiful night’s sleep we loaded into the bus and headed down to the beach to board an open motor boat to Kiliwa Island. We pulled up on the beach which stretched between a mangrove swamp and the ruins of an Arabic fortress, on which a number of dhows were beached and over which looked cliffs supporting ancient bricks, thatched shelters, and local children who watched us wade ashore. We walked down the beach, stepping over the dhows’ anchor cables, to the 16th Century Omani fortress with triangular crenellations and a wooden Arabesque over the studded gate in the Middle Eastern fashion, and a round tower which had been added during the Portuguese occupation. The fortress had once been the guard-post and prison of a wealthy trading port, the name “Kiliwa” meaning “the place of abundant things” because almost any product could be purchased there. It was now under the protection and restoration of UNESCO. We entered through a postern in the main gate and walked down the narrow corridor hemmed in by high walls: I imagined trying to force an entrance here without welcome if the place were in repair and garrisoned with Arabic bowmen, and shuddered at what my mind’s eye saw. We then continued on to the domed and colonnaded ruins of a huge mosque, host to a gigantic 500 year-old boa tree. As I entered the forest of columns and canopy of domes of the 11th Century place of worship, it occurred to me that this was the oldest building I had ever entered. Our local guide explained to us that the octagonally-based domes, now home to hanging bats, symbolized the seven days which Allah had created, and the eighth which began when one entered the mosque and was re-born. Kiliwa had been the home of the East African Sultanate for a time, and the Sultan had his own room of worship within the mosque, which had, until about two hundred years ago, been the largest in Africa. We then continued to the Sultan’s palace, a huge ruin once surrounded by a gigantic fortifying wall which had been a century in the making. Despite the size of the once-two-storied palace, the individual rooms were small because the floor and roof beams had been made of round-wood mangrove trunks due to their imperviousness to termite infestation. We continued across the flat of a dried lake and through a grove of massive ancient boas to the 16th Century Sultanate cemetery, then through the cob, coral-block and thatch village, inhabited by starring children, brightly dressed singing and dancing women, and men in white robes and cylindrical hats. We boarded the boat and sped back to the mainland, passing crowded lanteen-sailed dhows making a good clip in the opposite direction. I was fortunate to see a massive (I’m sorry, I’m starting to run out of adjectives for big things) King Fish, at least as long as my arm, propel itself powerfully out of the water and about twenty feet in the air before plummeting spectacularly to a great splash which most of us saw.
The next morning we had breakfast at the nearby restaurant and headed off to see the hippopotami of the mangrove swamps of Kiliwa Island on the same boat as before. We saw some white cranes and fiddler crabs, and eventually came in sight of the splashing, ear-wiggling hippos lounging in the water. We sat and watched them sit and watch us from a distance for a little while, then headed back, rather sun-burned, and some of us slightly disappointed. However, as we were puttering out of the delta, a mass of air-bubbles surfaced beneath the boat and, looking back, I saw a huge hippo surface in a splash behind us before sinking again quickly. I called to the others to look, but they were too slow and claimed that I was joking or seeing things. Some of us later went swimming at the beach while others went snorkeling.
After an amazing weekend we headed back to Mtwero, ready to pay for our time of rest and tourism with grueling work. On our first day of digging the school foundation Sean and I, the two lankiest guys on the team, wore our matching “wife-beater” undershirts. “I hope I’m still dreaming…” Scott said when he saw us. “Are you drunk?” said MJ. “Are you sure of what you’re wearing?” asked Tegemeo. We made amazing progress on the foundation trench, and within a few minutes of starting the sweat was running off of us in torrents. And, in that heat, I realized just how refreshing sweat can actually be. After four hours of hard work we drug ourselves off for our lunch break and ate ravenously. Thanks to the four-hour rest afterwards, we were able to then go to the village school to play with the kids. As we neared the village after a half-hour walk, the kids started coming out of the wood-work to join us, clinging to our hands and laughing and chattering to us in Kiswahili and their mother tongues, unknowing or uncaring that we couldn’t understand them. As we neared the school field the ants became thick upon the ground, enlivened by the recent rains, and painfully bit our sandaled feet. I joined Jimmy, Kotoro, Sean and Scott with the 14 – 16 and 11 – 13 year old groups. Jimmy – from Ireland – taught them hurling and Gaelic football, and they were natural pros at soccer, which they call football. Even Sean and Scott, impressive players in my inexperienced eyes, were ashamed of their skills in the face of these critical teens. The girls, who generally excluded themselves from football, seemed a lot less egotistic but no less skilled or competitive in their favorite sport of netball. We also taught them other games, such as “Stella-ella o-la”, a clapping game which we couldn’t remember the nonsense words to so replaced with Kiswahili names of fruit and numbers.
We went into Lindi town to visit two different HIV/AIDS organizations, one of which was funded by CIDA, and learned about the work that they did in Lindi region though Frank’s translations. We went into Lindi several other times, making the 15 or 20 minute drive in the backs of a trio of different coloured three-wheeled bijajis. People in town knew as soon as they saw our white skin that we must be the same wazungu (foreigners) who were here building the school, and they profusely thanked and welcomed us in Kiswahili or broken English.
One night, after the moon had risen blood red, a thunder storm to rival even the worst that I had experienced in Australia rolled in. At three in the morning I was awoken by flashes of lightning which were blinding even inside the room, and incredibly long and loud rolls of thunder which brought images to my mind of mythological muscle-bound titans beating on gigantic timpani drums.
There were always masses of bugs, especially at night around the lights: huge moths, sacatas, hornets, beetles of all sizes and descriptions, large spiders and centipedes, and many others. Despite the malaria risk, mosquitoes were the least of the insects, in my opinion. One night there was all of a sudden a full-scale invasion of kombe-kombe: fat flying termite-like bugs which came in such large numbers that they obscured lights even from long distances. If you hit one, its flimsy wings would fall off, and when we swept in the morning we raked up piles of them under the light fixtures. The Tanzanians were delighted, however, as were the hundreds of swallows who showed up in the morning, both of whom loved to eat the easily-caught bugs. While they were generally eaten fresh, a large number of them were caught and kept in water for Dina to fry and serve with supper the next day. One evening after dinner I was sitting in the open dining area when something hit me on the back of my shoulder, and clung there despite my attempts to shake it off, until I looked over. I expected a big flying bug, but instead it was a grinning green gecko. I apologized to him and let him run around on my arms and back, until he leaped onto my cheek, fell to the floor, and ran away.
When Christmas Eve eventually rolled around, none of us Canadians were even slightly in the spirit. We tried singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Raindeer” as we dug under the broiling sun, but that just didn’t cut it. Jackson, Tegemeo, Frank, Norbert, and our other Chaga participants, on the other hand were enthusiastic that we should partake in the traditional holiday festivities: the slaughtering and eating of a sacrificial goat. So, after work, they headed off together and bought a goat who was quickly dubbed “Roland”, after the Carolingian paladin from “The Song of Roland”. On Christmas morning I got up earlier than most to find Jackson running up to our room. “A hyena came in the night and ate our goat!” he told me, in a strange mix of excitement and disappointment, then added, “some men came and killed the hyena.” I took this information in stride and sleepily decided to give it more thought after a shower in the palm-frond shower stalls that were rigged up along the fence. I can’t complain too much about Jackson’s English, but I’m going to have to help him out a bit with his tenses: the men that had “came and killed the hyena” were in fact still chasing it. I heard the hollering and yelling and peeked through the space between two palm leaves to hear the feral panting of the hyena and see the huge spotted dog-like form of it bound about an arm’s length away, followed by a mob of club-wielding villagers. I saw the hyena pass just as close four times before hearing a gun-shot and a chorus of shouts that signaled the end of the chase. When I left the shower, the big hyena had been hauled up near the fence and a mob of people were looking at it. I felt bad for the animal, but knew that it had to be gotten rid of for the safety and well being of the locals. What followed, though, was absolutely un-necessary, and I turned when I saw the first man raise his club. The poor hyena was still alive and was clubbed thoroughly, although not fatally, and was finally burned, alive and yelping. We were sickened.
A few of the Canadian members of our team had seen the hyena when it arrived, around midnight, when they were hanging out on the porch. Sean, who was talking on the phone with his mom, saw it and exclaimed “Jesus Christ, it’s a gawd-damned jungle cat!”, a quote which has gone down in our program’s history. They all ran into the girl’s dorm room, and Edith slammed the door on Sean by accident and locked it!
Several of us went to church after breakfast, which I called “the Corrugated Iron Cathedral”, since that’s exactly what it was. After a two hour wait (the pastor was touring all of the local churches, as he was the only one available) we had an enjoyable service including a baptism of a baby, extraordinary singing and drumming, and a special thank you and welcome to us visiting volunteers by the church secretary, the only person present who had any English.
A new goat was found, and was being slaughtered just as we were walking off to wish the kids of Mtwero a Merry Christmas. JP excitedly begged permission to stay and help, but most of us were happy to escape. As the other group of volunteers was preparing to depart the following day, we had a farewell ceremony for them and gave the kids Christmas gifts. The second goat, Olivier, was very good, and we had festive soft drinks including my new obsession, Stoney Tangawizi ginger ale. After dinner a few of us went to the “disco”, an earth-floored palm-frond enclosure with the stars overhead and blaring music. I danced with the little kids, who were very good, and people of all ages and walks of life, including mother’s with babies on their backs and elderly people, danced around us. The next morning we bid our fellow volunteers farewell, except for Jimmy who was staying with us to the end, as they headed off for the bus, sorry never to have had the chance to see Kim and Sally, the two tae-kwon-do practitioners, spar together.
Our first Tanzanian EAD, focused on community and lead by the long-suffering Edith, Rahel, Andrea, Sarah and MJ, was very good and interesting, despite the beaurocracy with local policies that they had to endure in the preparation of it. We learned what I considered to be very valuable information about the community of Mtwero which helped me to fully realize the importance of the girl’s secondary school which we were working to build.
We continued our work as usual, only now taking the lead in the sports education with the children, until New Years. By our final day of work we had very nearly completed the school’s foundation trench. We rung in the 2010 under the bright red moon with another disco, this time at the work camp, and invited many of the locals. When midnight struck we sought out all of our friends and hugged them, wishing them a Happy New Year.
The next day we ate another festive goat (Charlemagne), and I got Frank and Norbert to teach me to play bao and was instantly addicted. Bao is a traditional Tanzanian game which can take a long time to play and Nyerre, Tanzania’s first President, used it to bring people together to discuss politics. “Why didn’t you teach us this game earlier?!” I asked Frank. “Because I had to wait until we finished working,” he exclaimed, “otherwise you wouldn’t go to work, you’d just stay and play bao!” I grudgingly broke off a game for our formal farewell, thank-you’s, and closure of our work camp, then went off to pack.
I must apologize for this letter being so late – computer access has been very limited here – and for it being so short and ill-organized. Had I had the time and computer access I could have written far more about the extraordinary experiences that I have had over the past month. Anyways, I’m just on a lunch break at work right now and Deborah – my new work-place counterpart, who would laugh if I told here this letter is too short – is impatient to get back to work (“Are you writing a letter or a book?”), so I’d better cut this off. Thanks so much, especially to those of you who financially, supportively and morally helped me to be here! My address for the next month will be: c/o UVIKIUTA, PO BOX 71373, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We are now back in Chamazi with our host-families and work-placements – and I’ll tell you about all of that in my next Missive!
Yours truly,
Bradley A. Clements
Chamazi, Tanzania
P.S: CWY rocks! If you know anyone between 17 and 25, definatly recommend it to them!
December 15, 2009
Arrived Safely
Just a quick email to let you know that we arrived safely in Dar es Salaam on the 11th.
Having an absolutly amazing experience! Reminds me a lot of the South Pacific, although the people and animals are a little different. I think some of the Canadians are rightfully getting sick of hearing me say "in the South Pacific...." The food, people and environment in UVIKIUTA - where we are right now - is beautiful. We're leaving for a three-week work-camp in Lindi early tomorrow morning (until Jan. 2). We'll be working on building a school in the mornings and teaching children sports and English in the afternoons when it's hotter. Apparently there's a 99% Muslim population there, and I'[m looking forward to wearing one of those long white robes. The heat is often quite nice, although it's sometimes too much. Some of the Canadians are really suffering from it. Went to the beach and museum a couple of days ago. Showers are with buckets, we fetch our water, laundry is by hand, and toilets are squatts, but we're pretty well used to that by now. Usually wake up around 5 am to the sound of cocks crowing, dogs howling, secatas chirping, and Muslims being called to prayer from a local minaret, and we go to bed in the dormatories under our mosquito nets around 9:30 pm. I'm at an internet cafe now with Sean, Edith, Andrea, Suzan and Rahel. We transfered on a pair of cramed (by deffinition) daladalas. As Sarah says, "a glass of water can become full, but a daladala can't." Getting used to being called "mzungu" (white person), but Sally (who's Asian) is having a harder time with that. Internet is cheap here (1000 tsh an hour), when I can get to it. The place where we are is owned by a friend of Rahel's, so she re-impursed my time when my email wouldn't come up. Don't know how much I'll be able to email in Lindi. Anyways, lots happening, and when there isn't we stay entertained by watching the monkeys or playing with the little boys (Alpha and Ima). I'll try to get you an official Missive on schedule, but that depends on whether or not there's easy computer access in Lindi. My Kiswahili is really improoving. Love to hear from you!
Rafiki yako,
Bradley
Having an absolutly amazing experience! Reminds me a lot of the South Pacific, although the people and animals are a little different. I think some of the Canadians are rightfully getting sick of hearing me say "in the South Pacific...." The food, people and environment in UVIKIUTA - where we are right now - is beautiful. We're leaving for a three-week work-camp in Lindi early tomorrow morning (until Jan. 2). We'll be working on building a school in the mornings and teaching children sports and English in the afternoons when it's hotter. Apparently there's a 99% Muslim population there, and I'[m looking forward to wearing one of those long white robes. The heat is often quite nice, although it's sometimes too much. Some of the Canadians are really suffering from it. Went to the beach and museum a couple of days ago. Showers are with buckets, we fetch our water, laundry is by hand, and toilets are squatts, but we're pretty well used to that by now. Usually wake up around 5 am to the sound of cocks crowing, dogs howling, secatas chirping, and Muslims being called to prayer from a local minaret, and we go to bed in the dormatories under our mosquito nets around 9:30 pm. I'm at an internet cafe now with Sean, Edith, Andrea, Suzan and Rahel. We transfered on a pair of cramed (by deffinition) daladalas. As Sarah says, "a glass of water can become full, but a daladala can't." Getting used to being called "mzungu" (white person), but Sally (who's Asian) is having a harder time with that. Internet is cheap here (1000 tsh an hour), when I can get to it. The place where we are is owned by a friend of Rahel's, so she re-impursed my time when my email wouldn't come up. Don't know how much I'll be able to email in Lindi. Anyways, lots happening, and when there isn't we stay entertained by watching the monkeys or playing with the little boys (Alpha and Ima). I'll try to get you an official Missive on schedule, but that depends on whether or not there's easy computer access in Lindi. My Kiswahili is really improoving. Love to hear from you!
Rafiki yako,
Bradley
December 7, 2009
Missive #6: Tutaonana Canada!
December 7th, 2009
Mambo, Bonjour, and Hello!
At the beginning of November, Norbert and I attended the official opening of our work placement, the Camp Kawartha Environment Centre, one of the most sustainable buildings in Canada. There was harp and cello entertainment by one of the host mothers, and many recognizable faces from the camp and various community organizations. Bob, Ann, and Colleen Gainey, of the Gainey Foundation, were there as some of the biggest donors of the project. After hearing many of her aristocratic seniors stumbling over a fresh vocabulary of environmental lingo in an attempt to sound natural and accustomed to it, the younger of the Gaineys commented that it was good to see so many “old fogies” finally talking so passionately about the environment.
I was sick with a cough for the first part of the month, and lay listening to an audio book of “Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, a very interesting, entertaining, and enlightening book. I had caught the audio book bug and continued by listening to Cornelius Tacticus’ “Histories” of the decline of the Roman Empire, and Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well”.
A few members of our group went swimming on the weekend, and kept the lifegaurds very busy. Tegemeo was treading water in the deep end of the pool, but he was doing so below the surface, and a lifegaurd dove in and hauled him out. Following that we had a swimming race, and Sally ran into the pool wall, breaking her nose and spraining a finger. Sean and Julie took her to the hospital, and the survivors slid on the slide some more and gave the Tanzanians swimming lessons.
On November 10th our Educational Activity Day group delivered its second EAD. This one was on Media and Communications, and I presented a giant interactive timeline of communications technologies from 4000 BC to the present. Jackson told us about recent global news issues, Deborah talked about the Environment Media Agency, Sally showed a variety of ads encouraging environmental stewardship and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, and Colin took us to a Chex TV news station. The same evening Wendy took Jackson and I to Trent for a lecture by the author of “The Prisoner of Tehran”, a woman who, as a teenager in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, had been imprisoned, tortured, and forced to marry one of her torturer before he was assassinated, she was bribed out of prison, and further bribed for a passport to Canada. She stressed that her life before the Revolution was the same as any young person in any Western country, and that she could not explain what her experience was really like to someone who had not themselves experienced it. Romeo Delaire, the Canadian general of the UN forces in Rwanda, was giving a lecture at the same time just downstairs.
The next day Jackson and I got up at 5 am and met with our group at The Bridge by 6 to catch our bus to Ottawa for Remembrance Day. We drove for three and a half hours as the sun rose through the tangled screen of naked trees. It broadened the horizon, silhouetting farmhouses in the orange glow. It reflected on the silver-grey crispness of the frost that coated the landscape, and coaxed a soft mist to blanket the icy stillness of the lakes. As we neared Ottawa we struck a traffic jam of cars which could have held five people each but only held one, and after breaking through that we got lost and found ourselves en route to Montreal, but we were soon reoriented with the help of Edith’s boyfriend on my cell phone. We were dropped off on a busy downtown corner and walked through the crowds, past the cars of ambassadors from many countries (including Tanzania) to the ceremony by the War Memorial. We craned our necks over the crowd as Charles, Prince of Wales, placed a wreath on the Memorial, poems and prayers were read, O Canada was sung, The Last Post was played, canons were fired, and a formation of F-16s roared overhead. Following the parade, we made our way over to the Fountain of the Eternal Flame in front of Parliament Hill where we were due to meet Mom and Dad and the Ottawa – Kenya CWY team. As I approached the fountain Mom ambushed me with a hug from behind. I introduced her and Dad to the team, and we met the Ottawa – Kenya team. The other team had a very different vibe from ours and had some very different experiences. They were going to Kimende in Kenya, the same place that my friend Dylan had gone, and their two supervisors, Rahab of KENVO and Ann-Marie of CWY both remembered Dylan from their days as participants. Mom, Dad, Jackson and I ate lunch on the steps of Parliament Hill, and we went on a tour of the buildings with our team. After going up the Peace Tower, Jackson and the others went to the War Museum and the Museum of Civilization, and Mom, Dad and I took the bus to their house. I hugged Clouseau, Mom gave me a tour of the house’s renovations, I ambushed Harry as he arrived home from school, and showed them pictures that I’d taken since seeing them at Thanksgiving. Dad drove me back to the Terry Fox statue in front of Parliament Hill where we met with the team in the evening. We all said good-bye to him, and walked off to our bus. On the bus ride back to Peterborough I asked Saomu to tell me about Islam, which led to a civil and very interesting three-way conversation, although it held under lying controversy for Jackson, who was sitting with us, and the other Catholic Tanzanians.
The next day we painted signs, planned, tried on traditional Tanzanian clothes, and solicited for silent auction donations for our Farewell Party and fundraiser that we will have in December. That weekend ten of us volunteered at the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre’s Walk-o-thon fundraiser. JP’s parents came to town, and part of the group went out to dinner and bowling with them. Norbert, who had never bowled before, was the triumphant and elegant star of the night. On Sunday, after going to Church with Jackson, I went to a local SCA archery practice. It was a lot of fun to socialize with the local SCA branch and to shoot again, although my finger callouses complained for days about my making them pull a heavier bow than my own after months without practice. Pain and lack of practice aside, I was not unhappy with my shooting and it was enjoyable to do again. Unfortunately the Canton’s fencers were reportedly very busy and were unable to come out.
The next EAD was on local government, and were given a tour of City Hall by the city clerk, then had a question and answer period with the mayor of Peterborough. The following evening some of our group attended a lecture by a native of Peterborough who had travelled to many developing countries to study the plight of women and slum-dwellers. The lecture was about the situation of women in Afghanistan, and was interesting to compare with the one that Jackson, Wendy and I had gone to earlier by the Iranian lady. After the lecture Colin, Andrea and I went to the “Dancing Blueberries” to share a giant waffle covered in ice cream, bananas and fudge sauce and a conversation about our experiences and impressions about the program past and to come. Stopping and thinking in retrospect, we truly have had some experiences and learned a lot of valuable lessons, many the hard way, and we’re not even halfway through...
On the weekend I enjoyed a visit with my Peruvian friends Pepe and Renee, having a wonderful conversation despite my minimal Spanish. I also went to a very interesting lecture by a professor from Trent, the head of archaeological excavations at the site of Minanha, an ancient Mayan city-state. The lecture described the Mayan Empire’s collapse and explained the reasons for it, drawing blatant parallels with our own civilization. That evening Wendy took Hoyse, Jackson and I to a Bah’ai feast of speech at a community member’s house in the country. It was very interesting and there were many kind sociable people there.
The following EAD was postponed due to some shocking, sobering news: Saomu had left the program. She had run away and left a note. This shocked us all deeply, and had serious ramifications for our group, CWY and UVIKIUTA, and many of us were in tears.
The following day, after we’d started to rally our surprised thoughts, we celebrated Scott’s birthday with cake and a movie at Rahel and Andrea’s place. On the way over,
The next day we took the Tanzanians skating for their first time. Frank, who’d roller-skated before, took to the ice like a master, and by the end of the hour most of them where skating impressively. I myself, previously a cripple on ice, surprised myself with how well I managed to fake it, and was even able to offer Jackson some pointers. Some of the Canadians, especially Scott, Sean and MJ, were amazing skaters who showered the rest of us with ice. We had races between the experienced, the intermediate, and the beginners who raced in teams pushing the two hockey nets for balance.
Being Scott’s birthday, we went to Rahel and Andrea’s that evening for a party. On the way over, a big truck with a dark man in it went by us and honked as Jackson waved. “Do you know him?” I asked Jackson, and Jackson explained to me that he didn’t, but he knew that the man was from Africa, and the man obviously knew the same of Jackson. Such was not the case, he explained, of Canadians of African decent, but only of people who were born and raised on the continent: they just know in a simple way that cannot be explained. I was intrigued. At the party we had cake and watched a Quebecois comedy. The next day was our last day of work, which we celebrated with a movie and game night at Sean and Suzan’s.
On Monday, and the next Tuesday, we had our last EADs. The second was headed by Jackson and I, and was concerning “Being Human”, spirituality and religion. It was December 1st, and the first snow had fallen during the night. It was only a little, but it blew Jackson’s mind! We arrived at the EAD venue early and stockpiled an arsenal of snowballs with which we ambushed the others as they arrived in an epic but decisive battle. For the EAD had presentations, an activity around the First Nations Medicine Wheel, a guided meditation, and a talk by Wendy on the Bah’ai faith.
The next day was the first of our debriefing period, and we engaged in a large discussion on everyone’s thoughts and concerns, using Sean’s water-bottle as our talking stick. We also took part in filming at Trent for a CWY promotional video, which involved – among other crazy things – running across a bridge screaming. Amazing how many passers by one recognizes immediately before one is asked to do such a thing. In any case, it was fun and we apparently did well despite our initial lack of enthusiasm.
After our next day of debriefing, Sarah, MJ, Edith and I gathered at Hoyse’s place to prepare the Tanzanian feast for our Farewell Party the following day. Although strength is apparently not considered to be a trait to be complemented on for Tanzanian women, I gained a great respect for them. MJ and I allied against the giant and solid head of cabbage that we had to chop, and a bowl of stubborn chipati dough which took a lot of time and muscle to chew a wad of, let alone knead a bowl of. The cooking was only a small part of the preparations which we had been engaging in since our Welcoming Party – gathering food and silent auction donations, rehearsing performances, booking the venue, planning, promoting, designing and printing invitations, thank you cards, sponsor names, programs, and more. Besides thanking our work placements and host families and saying good-bye, we were also holding the party to raise funds for the Yatima Group Trust Fund, a grass-roots orphanage near Chamazi, and the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre, a hospital for highly endangered turtle species in Peterborough. On the day of the event, December 4th, we arrived at 10 a.m. at our venue, a nice hall behind a United Church called Third Space. We spent the entire day arranging and decorating tables, cooking and heating food, rehearsing our performances, setting out the silent auction, and hanging the Tanzanian flag, CWY and Thank You Peterborough banners, 50/50 draw and silent auction signs, and sponsor names. Things went the Tanzanian way: there was a notable lack of urgency, but everything was prepared. The work that we’d been doing all day was all resolved just as the first guests began arriving. Many people, probably around a hundred arrived between 6 and 7 when Sally and Frank, our MCs, got things under way. After welcoming and speeches about the organizations we were fundraising for, it was dinner time and everyone enjoyed a massive delicious feast of Tanzanian and donated food. After that Julie and Hoyse spoke about CWY and UVIKIUTA, and I routed Sean from dish washing duty to come back stage in time for our performance. We played Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold”, I singing and playing rythm on guitar and Sean taking away the searing guitar solos. It went, surprisingly, even better than the rehearsals and was very well received. It was then Sally’s turn to do an amazing Chinese plate dance, followed by a good-bye song by all of the Tanzanians together. After that we all made our way to the changing rooms while Julie read out the auction and draw winners, and we changed into traditional Tanzanian clothes for a cultural fashion show. While changing into our traditional masaai toga-like clothing in the boy’s changing room, Jackson and Norbert started singing and dancing a masaai song. It was simple, requiring only gutteral throat sounds and stomping to accompany the words sung by Jackson, so we decided to make space for it in the program. After the fashion show, amusingly MCed by Sean and Rahel, we all sang a song in Kiswahili (“Wewe, ni nani jama?”), then gave thank you cards, framed pictures, and hugs to our host families and work placements. The event was then concluded, having gone surprizingly well. After adding it all up, we’d raised almost $1100 for the two organizations. The guests left, but the rest of us washed dishes and cleaned up ‘til about 11:30 pm.
The next afternoon I volunteered with tagging for the YWCA’s Crossroads shelter, then went to the Santa Claus parade on George St. The parade was impressive, but my outer appendages were not so impressed by the cold, so I headed over to Sean’s place for our group Christmas party for the warmth of the fire and Andrea’s hot chocolate and apple cider. We had a party as stereotypical as possible for the experience of the Tanzanians, including cutting and baking shortbread, building a gingerbread house (which was condemned soon after construction), watching National Lampoon’s “Christmas Vacation”, listening to Sean reciting “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, and eating a feast of leftovers from the previous day’s party which was much less stereotypical (mostly Italian and Tanzanian food). The Tanzanians did get to experience a turkey dinner, though, when we went to Hoyse's Lutheran Church on Sunday. We attended the service, and the Tanzanians sang a few songs for the congregation, then had a huge dinner as the reception. The minister called us all forward to be blessed for our trip.
Today, Monday the 7th, was our last group gathering, and it has snowed heavily. We talked about health, travel and flight issues, then made our own seperate tracks through the snow to fulfill our pre-departure needs. The cashier at the drug store raised her eye-brows at the two bottles of sunscreen that I was purchasing.
So tomorrow we have the day off to resolve our packing and other priorities, then at 3 pm on Wednesday we are off to catch our evening flight from Toronto. Hopefully the snow-storm coming in from the Maritimes won’t amount to anything flight-delaying. We’ll then be off to Hethro Airport in London, then to Dar es Salaam. I’ll try to send out a quick email when we arrive on Thursday or Friday, but don’t count on my ability to do so – no news will probably be good news. This is it!!!
Remember to check out mambopress.blogspot.com for pictures and articles by other members of the group! Let me know if there’s any suggestions that you might have to make these letters more interesting or accessible, and I’ll see what I can do. According to the Tanzanians, internet access is not an issue in Tanzania so the Missives will continue. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Wewe rafiki,
Bradley Clements
Peterborough, On.
Mambo, Bonjour, and Hello!
At the beginning of November, Norbert and I attended the official opening of our work placement, the Camp Kawartha Environment Centre, one of the most sustainable buildings in Canada. There was harp and cello entertainment by one of the host mothers, and many recognizable faces from the camp and various community organizations. Bob, Ann, and Colleen Gainey, of the Gainey Foundation, were there as some of the biggest donors of the project. After hearing many of her aristocratic seniors stumbling over a fresh vocabulary of environmental lingo in an attempt to sound natural and accustomed to it, the younger of the Gaineys commented that it was good to see so many “old fogies” finally talking so passionately about the environment.
I was sick with a cough for the first part of the month, and lay listening to an audio book of “Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, a very interesting, entertaining, and enlightening book. I had caught the audio book bug and continued by listening to Cornelius Tacticus’ “Histories” of the decline of the Roman Empire, and Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well”.
A few members of our group went swimming on the weekend, and kept the lifegaurds very busy. Tegemeo was treading water in the deep end of the pool, but he was doing so below the surface, and a lifegaurd dove in and hauled him out. Following that we had a swimming race, and Sally ran into the pool wall, breaking her nose and spraining a finger. Sean and Julie took her to the hospital, and the survivors slid on the slide some more and gave the Tanzanians swimming lessons.
On November 10th our Educational Activity Day group delivered its second EAD. This one was on Media and Communications, and I presented a giant interactive timeline of communications technologies from 4000 BC to the present. Jackson told us about recent global news issues, Deborah talked about the Environment Media Agency, Sally showed a variety of ads encouraging environmental stewardship and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, and Colin took us to a Chex TV news station. The same evening Wendy took Jackson and I to Trent for a lecture by the author of “The Prisoner of Tehran”, a woman who, as a teenager in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, had been imprisoned, tortured, and forced to marry one of her torturer before he was assassinated, she was bribed out of prison, and further bribed for a passport to Canada. She stressed that her life before the Revolution was the same as any young person in any Western country, and that she could not explain what her experience was really like to someone who had not themselves experienced it. Romeo Delaire, the Canadian general of the UN forces in Rwanda, was giving a lecture at the same time just downstairs.
The next day Jackson and I got up at 5 am and met with our group at The Bridge by 6 to catch our bus to Ottawa for Remembrance Day. We drove for three and a half hours as the sun rose through the tangled screen of naked trees. It broadened the horizon, silhouetting farmhouses in the orange glow. It reflected on the silver-grey crispness of the frost that coated the landscape, and coaxed a soft mist to blanket the icy stillness of the lakes. As we neared Ottawa we struck a traffic jam of cars which could have held five people each but only held one, and after breaking through that we got lost and found ourselves en route to Montreal, but we were soon reoriented with the help of Edith’s boyfriend on my cell phone. We were dropped off on a busy downtown corner and walked through the crowds, past the cars of ambassadors from many countries (including Tanzania) to the ceremony by the War Memorial. We craned our necks over the crowd as Charles, Prince of Wales, placed a wreath on the Memorial, poems and prayers were read, O Canada was sung, The Last Post was played, canons were fired, and a formation of F-16s roared overhead. Following the parade, we made our way over to the Fountain of the Eternal Flame in front of Parliament Hill where we were due to meet Mom and Dad and the Ottawa – Kenya CWY team. As I approached the fountain Mom ambushed me with a hug from behind. I introduced her and Dad to the team, and we met the Ottawa – Kenya team. The other team had a very different vibe from ours and had some very different experiences. They were going to Kimende in Kenya, the same place that my friend Dylan had gone, and their two supervisors, Rahab of KENVO and Ann-Marie of CWY both remembered Dylan from their days as participants. Mom, Dad, Jackson and I ate lunch on the steps of Parliament Hill, and we went on a tour of the buildings with our team. After going up the Peace Tower, Jackson and the others went to the War Museum and the Museum of Civilization, and Mom, Dad and I took the bus to their house. I hugged Clouseau, Mom gave me a tour of the house’s renovations, I ambushed Harry as he arrived home from school, and showed them pictures that I’d taken since seeing them at Thanksgiving. Dad drove me back to the Terry Fox statue in front of Parliament Hill where we met with the team in the evening. We all said good-bye to him, and walked off to our bus. On the bus ride back to Peterborough I asked Saomu to tell me about Islam, which led to a civil and very interesting three-way conversation, although it held under lying controversy for Jackson, who was sitting with us, and the other Catholic Tanzanians.
The next day we painted signs, planned, tried on traditional Tanzanian clothes, and solicited for silent auction donations for our Farewell Party and fundraiser that we will have in December. That weekend ten of us volunteered at the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre’s Walk-o-thon fundraiser. JP’s parents came to town, and part of the group went out to dinner and bowling with them. Norbert, who had never bowled before, was the triumphant and elegant star of the night. On Sunday, after going to Church with Jackson, I went to a local SCA archery practice. It was a lot of fun to socialize with the local SCA branch and to shoot again, although my finger callouses complained for days about my making them pull a heavier bow than my own after months without practice. Pain and lack of practice aside, I was not unhappy with my shooting and it was enjoyable to do again. Unfortunately the Canton’s fencers were reportedly very busy and were unable to come out.
The next EAD was on local government, and were given a tour of City Hall by the city clerk, then had a question and answer period with the mayor of Peterborough. The following evening some of our group attended a lecture by a native of Peterborough who had travelled to many developing countries to study the plight of women and slum-dwellers. The lecture was about the situation of women in Afghanistan, and was interesting to compare with the one that Jackson, Wendy and I had gone to earlier by the Iranian lady. After the lecture Colin, Andrea and I went to the “Dancing Blueberries” to share a giant waffle covered in ice cream, bananas and fudge sauce and a conversation about our experiences and impressions about the program past and to come. Stopping and thinking in retrospect, we truly have had some experiences and learned a lot of valuable lessons, many the hard way, and we’re not even halfway through...
On the weekend I enjoyed a visit with my Peruvian friends Pepe and Renee, having a wonderful conversation despite my minimal Spanish. I also went to a very interesting lecture by a professor from Trent, the head of archaeological excavations at the site of Minanha, an ancient Mayan city-state. The lecture described the Mayan Empire’s collapse and explained the reasons for it, drawing blatant parallels with our own civilization. That evening Wendy took Hoyse, Jackson and I to a Bah’ai feast of speech at a community member’s house in the country. It was very interesting and there were many kind sociable people there.
The following EAD was postponed due to some shocking, sobering news: Saomu had left the program. She had run away and left a note. This shocked us all deeply, and had serious ramifications for our group, CWY and UVIKIUTA, and many of us were in tears.
The following day, after we’d started to rally our surprised thoughts, we celebrated Scott’s birthday with cake and a movie at Rahel and Andrea’s place. On the way over,
The next day we took the Tanzanians skating for their first time. Frank, who’d roller-skated before, took to the ice like a master, and by the end of the hour most of them where skating impressively. I myself, previously a cripple on ice, surprised myself with how well I managed to fake it, and was even able to offer Jackson some pointers. Some of the Canadians, especially Scott, Sean and MJ, were amazing skaters who showered the rest of us with ice. We had races between the experienced, the intermediate, and the beginners who raced in teams pushing the two hockey nets for balance.
Being Scott’s birthday, we went to Rahel and Andrea’s that evening for a party. On the way over, a big truck with a dark man in it went by us and honked as Jackson waved. “Do you know him?” I asked Jackson, and Jackson explained to me that he didn’t, but he knew that the man was from Africa, and the man obviously knew the same of Jackson. Such was not the case, he explained, of Canadians of African decent, but only of people who were born and raised on the continent: they just know in a simple way that cannot be explained. I was intrigued. At the party we had cake and watched a Quebecois comedy. The next day was our last day of work, which we celebrated with a movie and game night at Sean and Suzan’s.
On Monday, and the next Tuesday, we had our last EADs. The second was headed by Jackson and I, and was concerning “Being Human”, spirituality and religion. It was December 1st, and the first snow had fallen during the night. It was only a little, but it blew Jackson’s mind! We arrived at the EAD venue early and stockpiled an arsenal of snowballs with which we ambushed the others as they arrived in an epic but decisive battle. For the EAD had presentations, an activity around the First Nations Medicine Wheel, a guided meditation, and a talk by Wendy on the Bah’ai faith.
The next day was the first of our debriefing period, and we engaged in a large discussion on everyone’s thoughts and concerns, using Sean’s water-bottle as our talking stick. We also took part in filming at Trent for a CWY promotional video, which involved – among other crazy things – running across a bridge screaming. Amazing how many passers by one recognizes immediately before one is asked to do such a thing. In any case, it was fun and we apparently did well despite our initial lack of enthusiasm.
After our next day of debriefing, Sarah, MJ, Edith and I gathered at Hoyse’s place to prepare the Tanzanian feast for our Farewell Party the following day. Although strength is apparently not considered to be a trait to be complemented on for Tanzanian women, I gained a great respect for them. MJ and I allied against the giant and solid head of cabbage that we had to chop, and a bowl of stubborn chipati dough which took a lot of time and muscle to chew a wad of, let alone knead a bowl of. The cooking was only a small part of the preparations which we had been engaging in since our Welcoming Party – gathering food and silent auction donations, rehearsing performances, booking the venue, planning, promoting, designing and printing invitations, thank you cards, sponsor names, programs, and more. Besides thanking our work placements and host families and saying good-bye, we were also holding the party to raise funds for the Yatima Group Trust Fund, a grass-roots orphanage near Chamazi, and the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre, a hospital for highly endangered turtle species in Peterborough. On the day of the event, December 4th, we arrived at 10 a.m. at our venue, a nice hall behind a United Church called Third Space. We spent the entire day arranging and decorating tables, cooking and heating food, rehearsing our performances, setting out the silent auction, and hanging the Tanzanian flag, CWY and Thank You Peterborough banners, 50/50 draw and silent auction signs, and sponsor names. Things went the Tanzanian way: there was a notable lack of urgency, but everything was prepared. The work that we’d been doing all day was all resolved just as the first guests began arriving. Many people, probably around a hundred arrived between 6 and 7 when Sally and Frank, our MCs, got things under way. After welcoming and speeches about the organizations we were fundraising for, it was dinner time and everyone enjoyed a massive delicious feast of Tanzanian and donated food. After that Julie and Hoyse spoke about CWY and UVIKIUTA, and I routed Sean from dish washing duty to come back stage in time for our performance. We played Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold”, I singing and playing rythm on guitar and Sean taking away the searing guitar solos. It went, surprisingly, even better than the rehearsals and was very well received. It was then Sally’s turn to do an amazing Chinese plate dance, followed by a good-bye song by all of the Tanzanians together. After that we all made our way to the changing rooms while Julie read out the auction and draw winners, and we changed into traditional Tanzanian clothes for a cultural fashion show. While changing into our traditional masaai toga-like clothing in the boy’s changing room, Jackson and Norbert started singing and dancing a masaai song. It was simple, requiring only gutteral throat sounds and stomping to accompany the words sung by Jackson, so we decided to make space for it in the program. After the fashion show, amusingly MCed by Sean and Rahel, we all sang a song in Kiswahili (“Wewe, ni nani jama?”), then gave thank you cards, framed pictures, and hugs to our host families and work placements. The event was then concluded, having gone surprizingly well. After adding it all up, we’d raised almost $1100 for the two organizations. The guests left, but the rest of us washed dishes and cleaned up ‘til about 11:30 pm.
The next afternoon I volunteered with tagging for the YWCA’s Crossroads shelter, then went to the Santa Claus parade on George St. The parade was impressive, but my outer appendages were not so impressed by the cold, so I headed over to Sean’s place for our group Christmas party for the warmth of the fire and Andrea’s hot chocolate and apple cider. We had a party as stereotypical as possible for the experience of the Tanzanians, including cutting and baking shortbread, building a gingerbread house (which was condemned soon after construction), watching National Lampoon’s “Christmas Vacation”, listening to Sean reciting “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, and eating a feast of leftovers from the previous day’s party which was much less stereotypical (mostly Italian and Tanzanian food). The Tanzanians did get to experience a turkey dinner, though, when we went to Hoyse's Lutheran Church on Sunday. We attended the service, and the Tanzanians sang a few songs for the congregation, then had a huge dinner as the reception. The minister called us all forward to be blessed for our trip.
Today, Monday the 7th, was our last group gathering, and it has snowed heavily. We talked about health, travel and flight issues, then made our own seperate tracks through the snow to fulfill our pre-departure needs. The cashier at the drug store raised her eye-brows at the two bottles of sunscreen that I was purchasing.
So tomorrow we have the day off to resolve our packing and other priorities, then at 3 pm on Wednesday we are off to catch our evening flight from Toronto. Hopefully the snow-storm coming in from the Maritimes won’t amount to anything flight-delaying. We’ll then be off to Hethro Airport in London, then to Dar es Salaam. I’ll try to send out a quick email when we arrive on Thursday or Friday, but don’t count on my ability to do so – no news will probably be good news. This is it!!!
Remember to check out mambopress.blogspot.com for pictures and articles by other members of the group! Let me know if there’s any suggestions that you might have to make these letters more interesting or accessible, and I’ll see what I can do. According to the Tanzanians, internet access is not an issue in Tanzania so the Missives will continue. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Wewe rafiki,
Bradley Clements
Peterborough, On.
November 2, 2009
Missive #5: Mwenzi wa Kumi
November 2nd, 2009
Mambo, Bonjour, and Hello!
Ah, October! The leaves are changing into their splendid funerary attire and spiralling gracefully down to carpet the side-walks. To the Tanzanian’s horror the temperature is falling with the leaves, and we Canadians are very cruelly informing them that they ain’t seen nothing yet.
Our first Community Activity Day (CAD) was held on the Otanabee River as we paddled around in canoes and kayaks kindly lent to us for free by a local rental place. Tegemeo enthusiastically took to the river in his kayak, and capsized within the first five minutes. We had not set off yet, so we were able to get him and his boat safely back to the dock and the remembrance of the event still brings giggles to some of us. Unfortunately, seeing Tegemeo’s experience, a few of the Tanzanians decided that they were not interested in risking a swim in the Otanabee and stayed ashore. The rest of us paddled upstream to the Hunter St. Bridge, in the shelter of the islands on the way up and zooming along with the current on the way back. I foolishly paddled under a low-hanging tree and and shipped a kayak-load of spiders, some of which fell down the back of my shirt. We continued back down the river to Little Lake where we rafted up and lay talking in our boats before returning to the Silver Bean Café for generous complementary hot drinks.
Our next Educational Activity Day (EAD) was held at the Canadian Canoe Museum where we built kayaks, baked bannock bread, and learned about Canadian history as it was effected by the canoe. That evening Scott, Colin, Frank, Jean-Phillipe and I got together for an epic game of Risk which left Colin the emperor of the world and kept the rest of us talking about it for days after, much to the rest of the group’s exasperation. For our next CAD we visited Green-Up Peterborough, an inspiringly pro-active environmental agency focused on helping Peterborough residents save money and the environment.
I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading, having all too many books on the go: “Heaven’s Mirror”, “Schools and Masters of Fencing”, “The Alchemist”, “The Skystone”, and “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. By the time that Thanksgiving rolled around, “A Short History of Nearly Everything” had taught more about science than twelve consecutive years of curriculum study in the subject, including that there are many things to be thankful for such as the fact that our planet has a liquid outer core which prevents solar radiation from tearing our DNA to shreds. And, as if that weren’t enough to be happy about, Mom and Dad drove down from Ottawa for the weekend. They stayed at a friendly B&B and spent a lot of time with Jackson and I, and Wendy and Randy with whom they got along very well. Jackson and I showed them around town, and went with them to the lift locks and the petroglyphs provincial park. The petroglyphs were amazing to see, images from the undeciphered dreams of native shamans between 1100 and 900 years ago. On Thanksgiving evening we had 11 people and 5 cultures around the dinner table: Randy (Ojibwa), Wendy, her son Thomas, Mom, Dad, myself (Canadians of British Isles decent), Lam, Jiang (eastern China), Jackson, Suzan (Tanzania), and Wendy’s friends Pepe and Renee (Peru). We had a great traditional turkey dinner and pumpkin-pie dessert and enjoyed eachother’s company. The next day Mom and Dad headed back home to Ottawa.
Jackson and my EAD group was the next in line. We focused ours on how human community effects the wildlife community, and went to the Peterborough zoo to see the bobcat, camels, otters, llamas, monkeys (not as big as the ones in Chamazi, according to the Tanzanians), wallabies, emus, a cougar, reindeer, yak, meerkats, boa constrictors, Burmese pythons, and other animals. We then went to Trent for presentations, then to the Camp Kawartha Environment Centre for a tour and a presentation by Jackson and I about eco-villages.
The following Friday was a busy one. The group met at the Trinity United Church at 6:30 am to attend and volunteer at a Person’s Day breakfast, commemorating the anniversary of women achieving the right to vote in Canada. We listened to the many moving speeches by many people, including Renee, our Peruvian friend from Thanksgiving. Many people were interested in CWY and came over to our table to talk with us. After the delicious breakfast we helped to clean up, then walked home to pack for our mid-term camp. In the afternoon we met again at the Lion’s Hall where we were to volunteer at a fundraising dinner for the Jamaican Self-Help organization. When we arrived we were faced with something of a crisis – all of the food that had been ordered to feed the 130-odd paid guests had been prepared that morning and was now cold, and we had only very limited access to the Lion Club’s oven. Worried but undeterred, we set about going to nearby church kitchens to see if we could use one, which we unfortunately could not. Julie took the samosas to her apartment to heat them in her oven, and we managed to heat most of the other things that required it with the Lion’s stove. Apart from that we also set up tables, banners, a silent auction, and the food and beverage serving tables. The Jamaican organization was very greatful to us, as the only other volunteer they had was one girl who was quite drunk at the time. After all of the patrons had arrived and been served and seated, we were able to take a break and have some dinner ourselves, which proved to be very good. No sooner had we finished than the host families who had volunteered to drive us out to Camp Kawartha for the mid-term camp arrived and we headed off.
Although we couldn’t tell until the next morning, the camp was beautifully located on a luminously maple-graced lake shore and had a teepee, a pioneer-style log cabin, and several straw-bale buildings. To top it all off it was the beginning of a very welcome Indian Summer, and we could not have asked for nicer weather for the duration of our stay. We went to claim our beds at the dormitories, and we boys very cruelly pulled an extra bed into the back room, leaving our renound snorer alone and unimpressed in the front room. We ended the evening with hot chocolate and a game of giant chess between Jean-Phillipe and I. The next day we did a little soul-searching regarding our counterpart, host-family, group, work placement, and program relationships. After that we did some team-building and self-developing activities on the climbing wall and high-ropes. On the climbing wall I expected to make it to the third section and made it my goal to get to the fourth, but as it was I ended up going to the very top and ringing the bell. On the high-ropes course we were expected to climb a telephone-pole with staples, and stand on a small platform on the top with our counterpart and another pair. Once there, we had the option of doing a “trust lean”, holding wrists and leaning out from eachother at the top. I had no trouble getting to the top, but took some coaxing to actually stand on the platform which involved hanging onto JP’s hand and pulling myself up. JP was all gung-ho to try a trust lean, but Norbert and I shook our heads frantically and said “No, JP!” When (safely back on terra firma) I contemplated the experience, I realized that I had not been afraid of the hight, of falling, or anything rational at all (we had all had belay teams holding us up), I had merely been afraid of being afraid, of the instinctive fear that my body would have insisted upon had I looked down and shown it how far it was from its accustomed element. This realization gave me the feeling that there was very little that I had reason to be afraid of, because fear is not rational and, even when it is, it does not aid the situation. Although not a by-all and end-all fan of reason, I realized that fear is almost entirely counterable by it if one can hold on to it in the face of fear. I was ultimately only afraid because I had felt that I should be.
After the climbing some of us went to play hockey and a few others went for a hike. The Tanzanians who tried hockey for the first time loved it, and Jackson shot some good goals. That night we played the piano, the Hammond B-3 organ, and another game of Risk, all of which Sean won on no uncertain terms as we drank hot chocolate and ate apple pie. On our final day at the camp we played a team-building game, tested ourselves on how well we knew the group, discussed environmental issues, and had a Kiswahili class. We then packed our stuff, cleaned up the spaces that we had used, and had a group picture taken in the golden autumn leaves by the lake.
We rode a school bus to a lovely log cabin on a natural piece of land for a presentation about Amnesty International. Our Amnesty member hosts we extremely hospitable and kind, and led us on a beautiful hike through the forest to a series of lakes. Some of the group went canoeing, and the rest of us hiked further. We came across a small lake that was covered in a thin layer of ice. I pointed this out to the Tanzanians who didn’t understand and looked at me as though I was crazy until I threw a pebble out which bounced musically along the surface. The reaction was one of amazement, and they made sport of throwing stones of increasing size out onto the ice until we had to tell them to stop: for the health of the lake and the road. After the refreshing hike we returned to the cabin for a phenomenal multi-lesagnia dinner, followed by an equally amazing desert. Having eaten our fill, and feeling very much obliged to our generous hosts, we all introduced ourselves and our involvement in CWY and were shown a promotional video about Amnesty International. The stories that we heard were humbling and moving. We finished with a short discussion and question period, then took the bus back to Peterborough and returned to our host-homes. One counter-part pair was involved in a car accident on the way home that night, but fortunately no one was hurt.
The very next day Norbert and I went back to Camp Kawartha again for work to help Jen, our supervisor, to make wooden signs to recognize the donors who had helped with the environment centre. We spent the morning routering, sawing, sanding, and varnishing, then, after a lunch of our leftover weekend dinners, we went canoeing out on the windy lake. What a way to end a day of work!
The next day we met at the Stedler House for silk-screening and book-art workshops, as training for a Free Market that we would be volunteering for at Trent. The idea of the Free Market is that one person’s garbage is another’s treasure, so people drop off stuff that they don’t want and pick up stuff that they do and are not expected to pay in any way. This is obviously good, socially speaking, but is also beneficial in terms of the environment and human rights as less waste is going to landfills, less resources need to be extracted from the earth, and less sweat-shop labour is required. Where the art comes in is that, even if something isn’t as good as new, it can still be given new life and great meaning by personalizing it. At Trent we taught silk-screening workshops, painted and did lettering on a big donation bin, set up wares from the free market, and gave away “Green Boxes” of products to help insulate and weather-proof housing.
On Saturday our entire team came together at Sean and Suzan’s for a big road hockey tournament, complete with banners, noise makers, the “Kombe Kup”, and, to quote Sean’s promotion, “the steamiest of cocoas”. We had a blast, playing for hours and calling “Gari!” to clear the road whenever a car approached. After the tournament our team won the “Kombe Kup” by one point. Scott was nominated as the “most valuable player,” Norbert as the “most improved”, and Deborah as the “most enthusiastic”. After dinner we all went to Sarah and MJ’s place to carve jack-’o-lanterns and roast the pumpkin seeds.
On Sunday the Tanzanians went to Hoyse’s church and spent the day with the minister and his family touring Peterborough and going canoeing, some of the Canadians went swimming at a wellness centre, others went apple-picking at an orchard, and I was anticipating going to an archery practice with a local SCA branch. My body, however, had decided that I had made it do too much over the past few days and that it was going to be sick. Wendy was very nurturing and miraculously cured me with sympathy, a light lunch, a long conversation, and a naturopathic tea which left me feeling fine by the afternoon.
After work on Wednesday our team took a bus to Fleming College for a lecture that Steven Lewis was giving concerning sustainability. He came over before the Ojibwa drummers opened the event, and chatted with Sarah and Suzan (who had her headphones in). He was a very good speaker, charismatic and vehement, and could be very funny at will. He painted the reality of climate change as it related to all fronts, from social to medical, political, scientific, ethnographic, demographic, agricultural, discrimination and more, as it applied to all areas of the world. He poured praise on individuals who took efforts to reduce their individual environmental impact, but stressed that it was simply not enough and that governments and corporations need to be severely pressured. When one Sierra Club member in the audience voiced his frustrations about the lack of action after a massive protest that they had held on Parliament Hill on the weekend, Mr. Lewis looked at his watch and said, “excuse me: today is Wednesday...” but told the questioner to keep at it and to send him an email if he failed to get a response after another 60 or 70 attempts. After he had finished the speech, in which he had acknowledged our CWY team’s presence, he was given a long standing ovation after which he asked for some water. Someone came down with a plastic bottle of water, which he humorously refused: “Come on... Do you really expect me to accept that, after all that I’ve been saying here?” We all went down and chatted with him, and Colin gave him a giant cookie that Andrea had baked for him and a letter from Micheal reminding him of his promise to visit for lunch sometime. We had our pictures taken with him and he told us that he was going to Dar es Salaam in December, at the same time as us.
The following day we all volunteered at the United Way Soupfest, a big delicious fundraiser at the Trinity United Church. We decorated, served, bussed, washed dishes, cleaned up, and enjoyed a vast variety of amazing soups from many local restaurants. I was surprised how many people that I recognized there, many of whom I could call by name, and it felt good to think that I had come to know the community to that extent. To sober the enjoyment of the event, one of the other volunteers said some discriminatory things to JP and called him a “Frenchie”, which hurt his feelings. He had the applaudable courage, however, to confront the man later and told him to respect Quebec.
On Halloween our group met at the parking lot of the Price choppers grocery store along with many other youth, mainly from Trent. We were gathered to go “Trick-or-Eating”: to go from house to house, in costume, asking not for candy but for food to be donated to the Kawartha Food Exchange. We were all very surprised by eachother’s costumes, some of which were quite impressive. To the team’s general amusement, Jackson and I dressed up as eachother and wore very convincing masks made from enlarged photographs glued to cardboard. It was rather disconcerting to everyone, including ourselves! We trick-or-eated for a couple of hours, after which our group of five had gathered an entire shopping cart of food. The whole team then went to Colin and Tegemeo’s place for a Halloween party that there host parent were putting on. There were very many people crammed into the little house, and none were alowed in without a costume. We partook in apple-bobbing, dancing, and a costume contest. The costume contest finalists included Max the King of the Wild Things, a unicorn, and Andrea from our team who was dressed all in black as an iPod commercial. The competition was palpable, and the judges who could not decide by costume had to judge by their dancing skills, and the unicorn just barely squeezed by for his break-dancing capabilities. The Tanzanians, who’d never tried it before, were very gung-ho about the apple bobbing, and Jackson dove in enthusiastically with his whole head and shoulders. We were up very late, but thanks to the time change it was only 1:23 am by the time we got home and went to bed.
I realized, too late, that there were some important things that I neglected to mention about our Tanzanian counterparts in my last Missive. Firstly, they are all members of UVIKIUTA, a Tanzanian grass-roots organization focused on young people. Through it, young people from all over the country are involved with volunteer work camps in other parts of Tanzania, often in collaboration with foreign youth groups. The founding members, including our project supervisor Hoyse, were youth fed up with their restricted lives in the city who moved out of Dar es Salaam and founded a community near Chamazi, where our exchange will be. There they created an eco-village and raised money by offering services, selling flowers that they grew and milk and meat from cattle that they raised. The project has flourished, despite the difficult early days when they lacked enough food and electricity when they were considered to be crazy for their efforts.
Jackson and some of the other Tanzanians had a similarly difficult beginning to this exchange. While we Canadians had to raise $2500, attend conferences, and take questionnaires and interviews, the UVIKIUTA members were going through a gruelling two-week selection camp. The two weeks were without rest: getting up early from bed, having a limited time to shower in limited showers, being on time for everything, writing essays, presenting, exercising, physical labour, surprise schedule changes (sometimes in the middle of the night) and a zero-tolerance on broken rules. The competition was high as there were many people running. Jackson told me that he was very surprised to be selected, as he had been one of the youngest contestants with poorer English, but selected he was. After that he had to convince his disgruntled family, who believed that he should be going strait to university, that his choice was right: “God choose that I musti to go to the Canada”, he would say, “why that? I don’t know why God choose that, but musti to do what God choose. Yes.” Many of the Tanzanians came to Canada hoping find access to post-secondary education and scholarships. Jackson, who’s father had had an accident which prevented him from continuing his job, was funded for secondary school by his aunt in Arusha, and he is now under pressure from his mother to find scholarships to fund his further education. Norbert has related to me his dislike of the style of university education in his home country, saying that there is only theory and no field work, and that a Tanzanian education is not as marketable as a Canadian one. He has been very active in organizing information and lectures about Canadian education, scholarships and programs for international students for his team mates.
Whew! I can’t believe that there is just over a month left of this half of the exchange! It’s as though I woke up one day and realized that two months had simply disappeared. They have been rewarding though, and I know that the month to come will be quite a busy one... Stay tuned for that!
Wewe rafiki,
Bradley Clements
Peterborough, Ontario
P.S: Thanks so much to those of you who have sent me letters and emails in the past while – it’s wonderful to hear from you all!
Mambo, Bonjour, and Hello!
Ah, October! The leaves are changing into their splendid funerary attire and spiralling gracefully down to carpet the side-walks. To the Tanzanian’s horror the temperature is falling with the leaves, and we Canadians are very cruelly informing them that they ain’t seen nothing yet.
Our first Community Activity Day (CAD) was held on the Otanabee River as we paddled around in canoes and kayaks kindly lent to us for free by a local rental place. Tegemeo enthusiastically took to the river in his kayak, and capsized within the first five minutes. We had not set off yet, so we were able to get him and his boat safely back to the dock and the remembrance of the event still brings giggles to some of us. Unfortunately, seeing Tegemeo’s experience, a few of the Tanzanians decided that they were not interested in risking a swim in the Otanabee and stayed ashore. The rest of us paddled upstream to the Hunter St. Bridge, in the shelter of the islands on the way up and zooming along with the current on the way back. I foolishly paddled under a low-hanging tree and and shipped a kayak-load of spiders, some of which fell down the back of my shirt. We continued back down the river to Little Lake where we rafted up and lay talking in our boats before returning to the Silver Bean Café for generous complementary hot drinks.
Our next Educational Activity Day (EAD) was held at the Canadian Canoe Museum where we built kayaks, baked bannock bread, and learned about Canadian history as it was effected by the canoe. That evening Scott, Colin, Frank, Jean-Phillipe and I got together for an epic game of Risk which left Colin the emperor of the world and kept the rest of us talking about it for days after, much to the rest of the group’s exasperation. For our next CAD we visited Green-Up Peterborough, an inspiringly pro-active environmental agency focused on helping Peterborough residents save money and the environment.
I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading, having all too many books on the go: “Heaven’s Mirror”, “Schools and Masters of Fencing”, “The Alchemist”, “The Skystone”, and “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. By the time that Thanksgiving rolled around, “A Short History of Nearly Everything” had taught more about science than twelve consecutive years of curriculum study in the subject, including that there are many things to be thankful for such as the fact that our planet has a liquid outer core which prevents solar radiation from tearing our DNA to shreds. And, as if that weren’t enough to be happy about, Mom and Dad drove down from Ottawa for the weekend. They stayed at a friendly B&B and spent a lot of time with Jackson and I, and Wendy and Randy with whom they got along very well. Jackson and I showed them around town, and went with them to the lift locks and the petroglyphs provincial park. The petroglyphs were amazing to see, images from the undeciphered dreams of native shamans between 1100 and 900 years ago. On Thanksgiving evening we had 11 people and 5 cultures around the dinner table: Randy (Ojibwa), Wendy, her son Thomas, Mom, Dad, myself (Canadians of British Isles decent), Lam, Jiang (eastern China), Jackson, Suzan (Tanzania), and Wendy’s friends Pepe and Renee (Peru). We had a great traditional turkey dinner and pumpkin-pie dessert and enjoyed eachother’s company. The next day Mom and Dad headed back home to Ottawa.
Jackson and my EAD group was the next in line. We focused ours on how human community effects the wildlife community, and went to the Peterborough zoo to see the bobcat, camels, otters, llamas, monkeys (not as big as the ones in Chamazi, according to the Tanzanians), wallabies, emus, a cougar, reindeer, yak, meerkats, boa constrictors, Burmese pythons, and other animals. We then went to Trent for presentations, then to the Camp Kawartha Environment Centre for a tour and a presentation by Jackson and I about eco-villages.
The following Friday was a busy one. The group met at the Trinity United Church at 6:30 am to attend and volunteer at a Person’s Day breakfast, commemorating the anniversary of women achieving the right to vote in Canada. We listened to the many moving speeches by many people, including Renee, our Peruvian friend from Thanksgiving. Many people were interested in CWY and came over to our table to talk with us. After the delicious breakfast we helped to clean up, then walked home to pack for our mid-term camp. In the afternoon we met again at the Lion’s Hall where we were to volunteer at a fundraising dinner for the Jamaican Self-Help organization. When we arrived we were faced with something of a crisis – all of the food that had been ordered to feed the 130-odd paid guests had been prepared that morning and was now cold, and we had only very limited access to the Lion Club’s oven. Worried but undeterred, we set about going to nearby church kitchens to see if we could use one, which we unfortunately could not. Julie took the samosas to her apartment to heat them in her oven, and we managed to heat most of the other things that required it with the Lion’s stove. Apart from that we also set up tables, banners, a silent auction, and the food and beverage serving tables. The Jamaican organization was very greatful to us, as the only other volunteer they had was one girl who was quite drunk at the time. After all of the patrons had arrived and been served and seated, we were able to take a break and have some dinner ourselves, which proved to be very good. No sooner had we finished than the host families who had volunteered to drive us out to Camp Kawartha for the mid-term camp arrived and we headed off.
Although we couldn’t tell until the next morning, the camp was beautifully located on a luminously maple-graced lake shore and had a teepee, a pioneer-style log cabin, and several straw-bale buildings. To top it all off it was the beginning of a very welcome Indian Summer, and we could not have asked for nicer weather for the duration of our stay. We went to claim our beds at the dormitories, and we boys very cruelly pulled an extra bed into the back room, leaving our renound snorer alone and unimpressed in the front room. We ended the evening with hot chocolate and a game of giant chess between Jean-Phillipe and I. The next day we did a little soul-searching regarding our counterpart, host-family, group, work placement, and program relationships. After that we did some team-building and self-developing activities on the climbing wall and high-ropes. On the climbing wall I expected to make it to the third section and made it my goal to get to the fourth, but as it was I ended up going to the very top and ringing the bell. On the high-ropes course we were expected to climb a telephone-pole with staples, and stand on a small platform on the top with our counterpart and another pair. Once there, we had the option of doing a “trust lean”, holding wrists and leaning out from eachother at the top. I had no trouble getting to the top, but took some coaxing to actually stand on the platform which involved hanging onto JP’s hand and pulling myself up. JP was all gung-ho to try a trust lean, but Norbert and I shook our heads frantically and said “No, JP!” When (safely back on terra firma) I contemplated the experience, I realized that I had not been afraid of the hight, of falling, or anything rational at all (we had all had belay teams holding us up), I had merely been afraid of being afraid, of the instinctive fear that my body would have insisted upon had I looked down and shown it how far it was from its accustomed element. This realization gave me the feeling that there was very little that I had reason to be afraid of, because fear is not rational and, even when it is, it does not aid the situation. Although not a by-all and end-all fan of reason, I realized that fear is almost entirely counterable by it if one can hold on to it in the face of fear. I was ultimately only afraid because I had felt that I should be.
After the climbing some of us went to play hockey and a few others went for a hike. The Tanzanians who tried hockey for the first time loved it, and Jackson shot some good goals. That night we played the piano, the Hammond B-3 organ, and another game of Risk, all of which Sean won on no uncertain terms as we drank hot chocolate and ate apple pie. On our final day at the camp we played a team-building game, tested ourselves on how well we knew the group, discussed environmental issues, and had a Kiswahili class. We then packed our stuff, cleaned up the spaces that we had used, and had a group picture taken in the golden autumn leaves by the lake.
We rode a school bus to a lovely log cabin on a natural piece of land for a presentation about Amnesty International. Our Amnesty member hosts we extremely hospitable and kind, and led us on a beautiful hike through the forest to a series of lakes. Some of the group went canoeing, and the rest of us hiked further. We came across a small lake that was covered in a thin layer of ice. I pointed this out to the Tanzanians who didn’t understand and looked at me as though I was crazy until I threw a pebble out which bounced musically along the surface. The reaction was one of amazement, and they made sport of throwing stones of increasing size out onto the ice until we had to tell them to stop: for the health of the lake and the road. After the refreshing hike we returned to the cabin for a phenomenal multi-lesagnia dinner, followed by an equally amazing desert. Having eaten our fill, and feeling very much obliged to our generous hosts, we all introduced ourselves and our involvement in CWY and were shown a promotional video about Amnesty International. The stories that we heard were humbling and moving. We finished with a short discussion and question period, then took the bus back to Peterborough and returned to our host-homes. One counter-part pair was involved in a car accident on the way home that night, but fortunately no one was hurt.
The very next day Norbert and I went back to Camp Kawartha again for work to help Jen, our supervisor, to make wooden signs to recognize the donors who had helped with the environment centre. We spent the morning routering, sawing, sanding, and varnishing, then, after a lunch of our leftover weekend dinners, we went canoeing out on the windy lake. What a way to end a day of work!
The next day we met at the Stedler House for silk-screening and book-art workshops, as training for a Free Market that we would be volunteering for at Trent. The idea of the Free Market is that one person’s garbage is another’s treasure, so people drop off stuff that they don’t want and pick up stuff that they do and are not expected to pay in any way. This is obviously good, socially speaking, but is also beneficial in terms of the environment and human rights as less waste is going to landfills, less resources need to be extracted from the earth, and less sweat-shop labour is required. Where the art comes in is that, even if something isn’t as good as new, it can still be given new life and great meaning by personalizing it. At Trent we taught silk-screening workshops, painted and did lettering on a big donation bin, set up wares from the free market, and gave away “Green Boxes” of products to help insulate and weather-proof housing.
On Saturday our entire team came together at Sean and Suzan’s for a big road hockey tournament, complete with banners, noise makers, the “Kombe Kup”, and, to quote Sean’s promotion, “the steamiest of cocoas”. We had a blast, playing for hours and calling “Gari!” to clear the road whenever a car approached. After the tournament our team won the “Kombe Kup” by one point. Scott was nominated as the “most valuable player,” Norbert as the “most improved”, and Deborah as the “most enthusiastic”. After dinner we all went to Sarah and MJ’s place to carve jack-’o-lanterns and roast the pumpkin seeds.
On Sunday the Tanzanians went to Hoyse’s church and spent the day with the minister and his family touring Peterborough and going canoeing, some of the Canadians went swimming at a wellness centre, others went apple-picking at an orchard, and I was anticipating going to an archery practice with a local SCA branch. My body, however, had decided that I had made it do too much over the past few days and that it was going to be sick. Wendy was very nurturing and miraculously cured me with sympathy, a light lunch, a long conversation, and a naturopathic tea which left me feeling fine by the afternoon.
After work on Wednesday our team took a bus to Fleming College for a lecture that Steven Lewis was giving concerning sustainability. He came over before the Ojibwa drummers opened the event, and chatted with Sarah and Suzan (who had her headphones in). He was a very good speaker, charismatic and vehement, and could be very funny at will. He painted the reality of climate change as it related to all fronts, from social to medical, political, scientific, ethnographic, demographic, agricultural, discrimination and more, as it applied to all areas of the world. He poured praise on individuals who took efforts to reduce their individual environmental impact, but stressed that it was simply not enough and that governments and corporations need to be severely pressured. When one Sierra Club member in the audience voiced his frustrations about the lack of action after a massive protest that they had held on Parliament Hill on the weekend, Mr. Lewis looked at his watch and said, “excuse me: today is Wednesday...” but told the questioner to keep at it and to send him an email if he failed to get a response after another 60 or 70 attempts. After he had finished the speech, in which he had acknowledged our CWY team’s presence, he was given a long standing ovation after which he asked for some water. Someone came down with a plastic bottle of water, which he humorously refused: “Come on... Do you really expect me to accept that, after all that I’ve been saying here?” We all went down and chatted with him, and Colin gave him a giant cookie that Andrea had baked for him and a letter from Micheal reminding him of his promise to visit for lunch sometime. We had our pictures taken with him and he told us that he was going to Dar es Salaam in December, at the same time as us.
The following day we all volunteered at the United Way Soupfest, a big delicious fundraiser at the Trinity United Church. We decorated, served, bussed, washed dishes, cleaned up, and enjoyed a vast variety of amazing soups from many local restaurants. I was surprised how many people that I recognized there, many of whom I could call by name, and it felt good to think that I had come to know the community to that extent. To sober the enjoyment of the event, one of the other volunteers said some discriminatory things to JP and called him a “Frenchie”, which hurt his feelings. He had the applaudable courage, however, to confront the man later and told him to respect Quebec.
On Halloween our group met at the parking lot of the Price choppers grocery store along with many other youth, mainly from Trent. We were gathered to go “Trick-or-Eating”: to go from house to house, in costume, asking not for candy but for food to be donated to the Kawartha Food Exchange. We were all very surprised by eachother’s costumes, some of which were quite impressive. To the team’s general amusement, Jackson and I dressed up as eachother and wore very convincing masks made from enlarged photographs glued to cardboard. It was rather disconcerting to everyone, including ourselves! We trick-or-eated for a couple of hours, after which our group of five had gathered an entire shopping cart of food. The whole team then went to Colin and Tegemeo’s place for a Halloween party that there host parent were putting on. There were very many people crammed into the little house, and none were alowed in without a costume. We partook in apple-bobbing, dancing, and a costume contest. The costume contest finalists included Max the King of the Wild Things, a unicorn, and Andrea from our team who was dressed all in black as an iPod commercial. The competition was palpable, and the judges who could not decide by costume had to judge by their dancing skills, and the unicorn just barely squeezed by for his break-dancing capabilities. The Tanzanians, who’d never tried it before, were very gung-ho about the apple bobbing, and Jackson dove in enthusiastically with his whole head and shoulders. We were up very late, but thanks to the time change it was only 1:23 am by the time we got home and went to bed.
I realized, too late, that there were some important things that I neglected to mention about our Tanzanian counterparts in my last Missive. Firstly, they are all members of UVIKIUTA, a Tanzanian grass-roots organization focused on young people. Through it, young people from all over the country are involved with volunteer work camps in other parts of Tanzania, often in collaboration with foreign youth groups. The founding members, including our project supervisor Hoyse, were youth fed up with their restricted lives in the city who moved out of Dar es Salaam and founded a community near Chamazi, where our exchange will be. There they created an eco-village and raised money by offering services, selling flowers that they grew and milk and meat from cattle that they raised. The project has flourished, despite the difficult early days when they lacked enough food and electricity when they were considered to be crazy for their efforts.
Jackson and some of the other Tanzanians had a similarly difficult beginning to this exchange. While we Canadians had to raise $2500, attend conferences, and take questionnaires and interviews, the UVIKIUTA members were going through a gruelling two-week selection camp. The two weeks were without rest: getting up early from bed, having a limited time to shower in limited showers, being on time for everything, writing essays, presenting, exercising, physical labour, surprise schedule changes (sometimes in the middle of the night) and a zero-tolerance on broken rules. The competition was high as there were many people running. Jackson told me that he was very surprised to be selected, as he had been one of the youngest contestants with poorer English, but selected he was. After that he had to convince his disgruntled family, who believed that he should be going strait to university, that his choice was right: “God choose that I musti to go to the Canada”, he would say, “why that? I don’t know why God choose that, but musti to do what God choose. Yes.” Many of the Tanzanians came to Canada hoping find access to post-secondary education and scholarships. Jackson, who’s father had had an accident which prevented him from continuing his job, was funded for secondary school by his aunt in Arusha, and he is now under pressure from his mother to find scholarships to fund his further education. Norbert has related to me his dislike of the style of university education in his home country, saying that there is only theory and no field work, and that a Tanzanian education is not as marketable as a Canadian one. He has been very active in organizing information and lectures about Canadian education, scholarships and programs for international students for his team mates.
Whew! I can’t believe that there is just over a month left of this half of the exchange! It’s as though I woke up one day and realized that two months had simply disappeared. They have been rewarding though, and I know that the month to come will be quite a busy one... Stay tuned for that!
Wewe rafiki,
Bradley Clements
Peterborough, Ontario
P.S: Thanks so much to those of you who have sent me letters and emails in the past while – it’s wonderful to hear from you all!
October 1, 2009
Missive #4: New Beginnings
September 30th, 2009
Hello, Bonjour, & Mambo to everyone!
Here it is – what we’ve all been waiting for – the beginning of my Canada World Youth exchange! I am now in Peterborough with my CWY team, and here is the story of that...
After having arrived at the family’s house in Ottawa in the beginning of September, I stayed for long enough to, unpack, re-pack, visit the National Art Gallery, spend some time with the family, pelt Harry with his nerf-guns, and draw a huge reproduction of a full-page manuscript illumination from the Book of Kells on Dad’s chalkboard-painted door – about a week. After that I said goodbye to Mom, Harry and Clouseau, and Dad and I drove down to Toronto to witness the exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). We stayed at a neat little hostel in downtown with a restaurant in the cellar, a gigantic cathedral on one side and the Toronto stock-exchange on the other. Spending a full day at the ROM, we viewed the 2000 year-old (and over) gospels from Qumran, on the coast of the Dead Sea, and their accompanying artifacts. Seeing inscribed bricks from the original Temple Mount of Jerusalem juxtaposed with extremely fragile and ancient relics including not only parchment, but also papyrus, linen fabric, palm-leaf basketry, and improbably thin woolen nets from the time of Christ was a revelatory experience. After spending many hours marvelling over the scrolls (even my stomach clock was too distracted to tell the time until I got out of the exhibit at around 3 o’clock) we had a quick lunch at a hotdog-stand (where my Dad, Ray John, met a co-world-domination-conspirator Ray Von), and rushed back to view other amazing exhibits of medieval and Renaissance arms, armour, statues and furniture. Having arrived right at opening time in the morning, we ended our day at the museum rushing through rooms of Cypriot terra-cotta model chariots, busts of Thusidides and Herodotus, Corinthian helms, and Alexandrian tetradrachmas as we were being called out for closing time. Dad and I enjoyed a very nice last dinner together at a friendly and inexpensive Thai restaurant (I believe it was ‘Golden Thai’, for future reference), and spent a last night at the hostel.
The following morning, on the 9th hour of the 9th day of the 9th month of the 2009th year of the Gregorian calender, I was sitting cross-legged outside of the Toronto Canada World Youth office with my backpack, violin case, and 50 lbs. suitcase. I was soon admitted into the office, and my fellow CWY participants began to arrive. Scott, a Katimavik alumni of London, Ontario; Andrea, from a small town north of Toronto but who had lived in such far-flung parts of Canada as the Yukon; and Edith, a professional English/French/Spanish translator from Gatinau, Quebec (who’s impressive linguistic skills would make her one of the most valuable members of our team) all arrived at the office, and we went for a stroll around Chinatown and the Kensington Market. We caught a big school bus, with our facilitator, Liz, to the airport to pick up our remaining Canadian participants. There we met Colin, a journalist from Prince Edward Island; Marie-Josee (called MJ), a sporty and fun-loving citizen du Montreal; Sean, a humorous guy from Winnipeg; Sally, from New Brunswick, although born in Melasia; and Jean-Phillipe, a fellow fencer from Quebec, all of whom had flown in. It was interesting to note that all but two of us were of different signs of the zodiac, and we varied in more ways than that. At 19 years old, I was the youngest of all of the Canadians, the rest of whom had done university and were in their twenties. We drove out and met our Canadian Project Supervisor – Julie Pyon – at a peaceful, secluded former convent school outside of Hamilton, where we would spend our orientation week. We inhabited our dormitories, gathered for sessions and games, and by the time we retired for dinner we had melded into an inseparable family. We were the only group spending the night in the big, dark building full of statues and broadly-framed paintings, and several of the boys reported the sounds of mysterious piano-playing and large numbers of people moving down the hallways when none were there...
The following day was the one we’d been awaiting – the day our Tanzanian counterparts would arrive. After breakfast we gathered in the craft room to design and paint a banner to welcome them, which said on it: “Welcome! Karibu! Bienvenue!” The paint was mostly dry when an urgent whisper called “Quick, they’re here!” and we all rushed out the front steps bearing the banner. Laughter, greetings and welcomes filled the air as the two groups intermingled for the first time, and I piped “Habari za safari?” as I shook the Tanzanian’s hands, to which they replied with a smiling “Nzuri.” Having introduced ourselves to Suzan, Jackson, Saome, Frank, Deborah, Tegemeo, Sarah, Norbert, Rahel, and their supervisor Hoyse, we helped them lug their bags to the dormitories, then headed out to the field to toss Sean’s football and frizz-bee between us.
It is hard to describe a group of friends in analytical terms, but considering that I am planning an education in anthropology I should probably give it a whirl. The Tanzanian team consisted of well-educated youth, mostly in their twenties and mostly Catholic, but with two members being younger and one a Muslim. There were several from Arusha, in the northern part of the country (near Kilimanjaro), one from the north west (near the Rwanda/Uganda borders), one from Zanzibar, and some from the Dar es Salaam area. I had heard from a friend who had been in a CWY exchange and had a Tanzanian counterpart who had poor English. When I mentioned my friend’s experience to Frank he raised his eyebrows and said “so I suppose you expected us all to be that way, did you?” Many of the group were fluent in English, although a few required an English speaker to slow down slightly, and often added an “i” to the end of many of their words. They are very often laughing, smiling or singing, and when asked about their values, the first things that they list are love, respect, manners, and equality.
Time warped during the camp – I will not go into the details which were delightful for us but probably tedious to a reader, but it seemed as though we’d been there and known eachother for as many years as it was in days (although we were not, by any means, bored). Being asked to consider and discuss things that were very deep down in the vaults of our identity which seldom saw the light of day, and to bring them amongst a group was a very enlightening, self-discovering and bonding experience. It established a sense of trusting and connection between us, allowing us to be very honest and open with one another without invoking judgement or offence. But then, I guess a drowning person will cling to what ever he can reach.
On the evening of the Tanzanian’s second day at the camp came the much anticipated moment: the pairing of the counterparts. After dinner we were all called into the main meeting room and were blindfolded and jostled about by our supervisors. Liz struck up some party music on her computer and we could hear Julie and Hoyse murmuring “Is that right?” and “Are we ready?” before we were told, on the count of three, to whip off our blindfolds and turn around. When I turned I found myself facing Jackson Mushi from Mount Kilimanjaro, the youngest member of our group at 18 years old, and we made incomprehensible sounds of joy, hugged twice, and said “Mambo Kaka!” Down the line everyone was laughing, shouting and hugging: Andrea was paired with Rahel, Colin with Tegemeo, Edith with Saome, Frank with Scott, MJ with Sarah, Sean with Suzan, Deborah with Sally, and Jean-Phillipe with Norbert. After spending most of the evening getting to know our counterparts more personally, we all got together for an evening snack and Sally taught us a loud table-clapping game, Sean showed us a cup-clapping game (clap-clap, tippy-tap, clap bang boom...), and MJ and JP did swing dancing between the tables. MJ introduced us to “The Game” which was lost every time it was thought of, and everyone conspired unsuspecting methods of making others loose. The boys retired to bed at quarter to ten, and the snoring chorus began on the hour with a virtuosic duet performing in perfect counterpoint, accompanied by an occasional crescendo from the harmony section. The rest of us were laughing to hard to get much sleep...
We wrapped up our final day of with a big game of soccer (football to the Tanzanians) in which we found that – although we had some fine Canadian players – the Tanzanian boys were unrivalled. We left the camp the following afternoon on a school bus for Peterborough, to meet the host families with whom we would stay for the next three months. We arrived at a Peterborough bed-and-breakfast where the families were gathered in the garden to meet us. When we were ready we arranged ourselves into a long line and filed out into the garden singing and clapping:
“Jambo, jambo bwana.
Habari gani, nzuri sana.
Wageni, mwakeribishwa
Tanzania yetu, hakuna matata...”
After shaking the hands of all of the host families, we presented ourselves in counterpart pairs for selection. Each family had been given a drawing that we had done of an animal (Jackson and I had drawn a “Mamba”, a crocodile), and we had to go forward and imitate our animal until our family recognized us. We were soon claimed by a smiling silver-haired lady, Wendy, who was an ESL teacher. After introducing ourselves and biding a surprisingly difficult good-bye to our team-mates who we would see again in two days, Jackson and I hauled our luggage out to Wendy’s car and she drove us to her house. There her husband Randy, a native Ojibwa artist, came down the steps of the 100 year-old heritage house to meet us and help us with our bags. Inside we met Jiang, a Chinese exchange student at Trent who was staying there, and Sam, the cat. Our room had a bunk-bed, which pleasantly reminded Jackson of boarding school, and one of Randy’s paintings on the wall. Wendy and Randy took us for a drive in their car out to the Ojibwa reserve to see Randy’s childhood home and some of his relatives. Randy, who shared his name with one of my Dad’s brothers, had a brother named Ricky, the name of my Dad’s other brother. I had dreamed of having a host family with a lute, but had hopes of finding one with a guitar, and Randy had a compromise between the two: a very nice twelve-string Seagull guitar.
The following day we had free to explore the town, and Jackson and I walked a long ways. Our group met back together the following day at “The Bridge” youth centre and related our experiences and began our week-long Community Orientation Camp. Among other things, we prepared for our volunteer work placements, Educational Activity Days (EADs), and established some committees to help with the running of the exchange, of which I found myself on the Communications and the Morale committees. At the end of the week we were told our work placements for the following six months, and I received my first choice of the Camp Kawartha Environment Centre at Trent, along with my workplace counterpart, Norbert. Coincidentally, Norbert’s counterpart, JP, was paired with Jackson at the Brock St. Mission homeless shelter. On Norbert's and my first day, his host mom drove us out to Trent (and I learned that she was a former SCA member) and dropped us off at the Environment Centre. When our supervisor, Jen, arrived she gave us a tour of the 100% energy-efficient naturally built building. It is mostly straw-bale built, but used several materials for demonstration purposes. Part of the roof is thatched, part is a living or “green” roof, and the rest is galvanized metal for the collection of rainwater. The grey-water is filtered though a series of conventional filters an then into a garden of detoxifying plants, and the toilets are composting. The whole building is passive-solar designed, and receives additional heating from solar-powered under-floor hot-water tubes. Being an education centre, Norbert and I had the job of designing school-group programs and displays, and this we have been working on, three days a week at the library, planning an interactive Grade 3 program about seeds.
On our free time we got together with the whole group, going to public music concerts, roasting marshmallows over a fire in Colin and Tegemeo’s host family’s back yard, watching movies and playing board games. On our first weekend, Wendy drove the whole group out to Randy’s reserve in her school bus for an equinoxal pow-wow. After she’d explained all of the dos and don’ts surrounding the ritual dancing, we walked down and sat on the edge of the dancing ring. At the centre of the pow-wow grounds was a shelter for the drummers and singers who were beating out their powerful music, and in the open ring around it danced the dancers in all of their regalia. There were eagle dancers with extraordinary fans of feathers on their backs, buffalo dancers with horns and painted faces, healing jingle-dancers with brass bells sewn to their dresses, and fancy-shawl dancers who reminded us of the ultimate life-giving importance of women. Seeing the costumed warriors spinning around the ring to the beat of the Big Drum brought us back to the essence of the North American spirit. On one dance, when “all tribes” were invited to come dance, I entered the circle through the prescribed gate and danced around the ring with the dancers.
The following Thursday, on our first Community Activity Day, we travelled on a school bus through the beautiful pastoral landscape to volunteer on an organic farm. There we were greeted by a large, black, loud “ombwa simba” (lion-dog) and Mike and Tera, the farmers of the land. They gave us a tour of their green-houses, vegetable fields, horse and cattle pastures, and wild medicinal plants. They explained to us about farm life and of how they farm in a traditional, environmentally friendly manner. On top of being fully organic, they also use horses to draw their tills and other implements and do their harvesting by hand. We got down to work harvesting beans, onions, pumpkins, squash, and potatoes, and hauled our substantial pickings up to the barn. After a day of enjoyably hard work we said goodbye to our hosts and returned to Peterborough, all cradling our incredibly huge zuccinis that we had picked for ourselves.
A week or so after our arrival, another Chinese exchange student arrived at Randy and Wendy’s: Lam (or Ray) from Makaow. His English was somewhat limited, and after meeting him Jackson did a little dance and said “Now I’m not the only one learning English!” The house now had four cultures in it: two Chinese, two descendants of the British Isles, a Tanzanian and an Ojibwa. It was fun to have Lam, Jackson and I all in the kitchen doing dishes: Jackson would be asking Lam how to say something in Chinese, Lam asking me how to say something in English, and I asking Jackson how to say it in Kiswahili.
On Sunday Jackson went to church and I went with Wendy to an interesting Bah’ai meeting, enjoying the drive through the breath-taking Kawartha scenery. The following Tuesday was our first EAD, organized by Andrea’s team, called the FARCES after the acronym of their combined names. Their EAD was on architecture, and we had a very interesting tour of the downtown area, learning about Peterborough’s unique history and buildings. The second part was held in a very nice heritage house, where we talked about Tanzanian and environmentally friendly architecture. It being Frank’s birthday, Sally, Andrea, Sean, Edith and Saomu went shopping after the EAD, then went to Sean and Suzan’s place to cook a gigantic Chinese birthday feast. Sally was the Iron Chef, and the rest of us her minions as we chopped, baked, wrapped, washed, fried and mixed as directed, and eventually it all came deliciously together. We were a bit worried when Frank, who was tired after the EAD and a long walk to Walmart, decided that he didn’t want to come, but we convinced him that he unfortunately had no choice. After the meal we partook in the Tanzanian tradition of singing as the birthday boy fed us each a piece of cake.
I’ve just finished today’s work with Norbert, but I’m running out of time on the library computer and the power keeps going out in the mild early-autumn storm that we’re experiencing, so I’d better wrap this up. When I began this letter, in the beginning of September, I was in a place of complete insecurity. I was leaving everything, everyone, and every place that I knew behind me, and nakedly entering something new and mysterious. Now, at the end of the month, it is surprising how thoroughly and quickly (so says the calendar...) I have become adapted into something so different from anything that I have experienced before.
If you’d like to be in touch, you can send an e-mail, or a letter to 544 Aylmer St. N., Peterborough, ON., K9H 3W7 within the next couple of months. And what is in store for next month? Work, EADs, Hallowe’en, and... who knows what else? You’ll just have to stay tuned and see!
Your Friend,
Bradley Clements
CWY Volunteer
Peterborough, ON.
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