Directed research has been fantastic. Although it is a lot of work and I feel that I have next to no free time (our first day, we worked from 8am to about 10pm) it is completely worth it and very interesting.
For the last two days, the "environmental policy" research group and I have all split up into smaller groups to visit pastoralists, farmers, tourists, and curio shop owners to interview them. I started with curio shop owners and am totally hooked. I will need to interview all of the groups except tourists for my research, but I wish I could only interview curio shop owners because the town of Mto wa Mbu where we are doing the interviews is so amazing. Today we had to switch between four different students doing interviews with one translator, and in between we had the chance to wander around the town and explore a little. It is a maze of shops and paintings and bananas. I like it more and more each time I visit. I walked around alone once, and on my short walk through the covered fruit market, an old man randomly gave me a bunch of delicious miniature bananas for free, and a woman stopped me and talked to me for a long time about what I was studying and what had brought me to Mto wa Mbu. After leaving the covered fruit market I wandered around the streets and handed out bananas to people who stopped me to talk. So many do, it is surprising, but since this is not tourist season and I am obviously not from here, people are curious. Most know about SFS, and are extremely friendly and welcoming. Two girls invited me into their shop and offered me some of the Ugali lunch that they were having. They were really nice and funny and I wanted to stay but it was about to be my turn to interview so I gave them a banana and left after a short while. I am realizing from these interactions that I understand and speak more Swahili than I think I do, and that if I really want to learn it I can improve very quickly. I do really want to learn it and this has encouraged me to study it more. It's so rewarding when you can actually communicate with someone who you would never have been able to talk to a month ago!
The interviews themselves have been very interesting so far. My topic, now much more developed, is about how people in the region get information about the environmental impacts of their occupations, focusing specifically on pastoralists, farmers, and curio shop owners who sell wooden figurines. In general, the curio shop owners have had very little education about the impacts of their work on deforestation rates in the area and endangered tree species. Also, I have only interviewed one person who made it past primary school education. Yesterday I ran into a curio shop owner who was extremely informed, and I was very surprised, so I asked how he'd learned all this information. It turned out that he'd been the town executive officer in 2002, which happened to be the year that WWF came in to give training to the community on environmental issues. I had learned about WWF's community seminars in my preliminary research and included it in my research proposal, so I was really excited to hear that! It's so amazing to think that the research I did on the computer is so relevant to this place in real life, and that I get to do background research on issues in Africa and then go and learn about them in town the next day from the people they directly affect. I love it. I just wish we had more than 7 days to carry out our interviews, because there is so much information I want to collect!
So... you may be wondering about the title of this post. Allow me to explain. A Murran is a Maasai warrior, while you may have just thought that I had lost all my knowledge of spelling in the english language. And as I've found out recently, people here tend to see Mzungus as quite self-centered. Two examples:
I was talking with the Pastoralist interview translator/local guide yesterday, and I told him that I would be making a short film about pastoralists in the area, and asked whether he could help me translate during the interviews. He said yes, and then kind of smirked and added, "I can ask them to give you a stick and you can walk around with it..." I was confused at first, and then slowly started to understand as he continued, "Maybe you can herd the cattle for a while..." It turns out that he somehow thought that I was going to be the star of the film, and would be acting as a Maasai man in the movie. As much as I would love to be a Maasai man, I think I might not be the most believable character.
This afternoon I asked a painter whether he would be able to make a map of the world for me. He said that he could, but that he wasn't sure how it looked. I tried to sketch it out, and then decided it would be better for me to bring him a small picture to use as a guide, and told him I would bring it the next day. He told me that would be fine, but the translator (a different one this time) laughed and said, "Would you like flowers, or something else in the picture? Or just a picture of you, and the map?" Once again, they had somehow understood that I wanted my own image in the middle of the piece of art, and that the picture I would be bringing them was a portrait of myself. Good thing we got that straightened out! In general I think the conclusion can be made that Tanzanians see Wazungu (white tourists) as just a little bit self-centered.
Annnd, as a final note, I am finally catching up with my life plans for this summer, and I already have one possible internship and had one very exciting interview today for another internship. Hoping hoping hoping! Won't say what it is yet because I don't want to jinx it, but wish me luck :) :) :)
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