Directed Research week

The last week has been crazy and amazing. I think this might have been my favorite week in Tanzania.

Directed Research has allowed us so much more freedom to explore the area around us. I love talking to people and learning about their lives, and this whole week was all about that. We spent every day walking through the village and asking people if they would interview with us, and after the interviews we often spent some time just chatting.

For my research on environmental education, I interviewed three main interest groups: pastoralists, farmers, and curio shop owners/wood carvers. I spent most of my time in Mto wa Mbu interviewing the curio shop workers and wood carvers, which was very fun and interesting. Just walking around town is a great time, and having an excuse to reach out and talk to people made it even better. After a few days people in Mto wa Mbu started to recognize us and stopped swarming us with things to buy. It helped that our guides could explain to them that we were students and that we were doing research and not buying things. Our guides themselves were a lot of fun; they were all around our age or a little older and went around with us everywhere all week. Lunch breaks were one of my favorite parts of our days doing DR research, because we always met up in one area to eat together, and made friends with the painters in that area.

A painting demo we went to

Our lunch spot in Mto wa Mbu, with the usual crew :)

The row of open stores is filled with wood carvings and paintings and art of every kind lining the walkway, and people selling bananas and other fruit a little farther down. Everyone there knows us now and yells to us out of their shops. Everyone on the street calls me “Simba” (lion) because of my hair, even people I don’t know (this happened in Kenya too.) One of the better nicknames I’ve had.

One painter, one carver, and the curio shop owner who used to be a town official all hung out with us on most lunch breaks and we studied English and Swahili together. I ordered a painting of the world map from the painter, and went back yesterday to find it finished and AWESOME! I am so excited. I paid in money and my water bottle. Don’t worry, I have one left! Andrew, the painter, also gave me a small painting as a gift to take home since we won’t be back often after this. It was so sweet.

Me and Andrew in front of his shop. How SWEET is this map?! 

            Interviewing the pastoralists was difficult because most of them were Maasai and most of our guides were Iraqui, another tribe dominating the area that speaks a language I can’t even begin to pronounce. Although most people speak some Swahili, the Maasai are generally pastoralists and live far from town where they can get by without it. When we went to each boma, it was always interesting to see whether we would be able to communicate or not. Once some students had two translators, to translate between English, Maasai language, and Swahili!  Yesterday, however, we met three Maasai men at the market who spoke perfect English. It turned out that they were from Kenya, and had walked six days to get to the market to buy cattle. I can’t imagine walking that far over the kind of terrain they are traveling on, under this sun.

            Interviewing farmers was nice. We walked around with Paulo, one of the staff here at camp, who knew everyone in the area and was related to half of them. We played with a puppy that one woman had at her house, and we had tea with an older man while we talked. The older man was extremely knowledgeable about the US, and could name every state and its capitol. He was very particular about everything, and insisted that each of us drink two cups of tea before leaving. “You always need two of everything so that you have a back up” he said, “one is only for God.” He then told me off for putting sugar into the tea before tasting it. “How do you know how much you want to put in!?” he teased me. Oops.  Later, he took us into the bushes to show us a plant that is known to cure AIDS in the area. I don’t know what to think of it but it is apparently used by a very famous doctor in the area, and people feel much better after going to him. Who knows what is actually going on but it was cool to find it in his yard.  After our interviews that day all the students in my research group went to a beautiful, peaceful art gallery/restaurant with a really nice view of sunflower fields, and sat on the porch and talked through all of our interviews. It was so relaxing after a hot day in the sun. It also made me think of my family, because I know that my Mom would have adored this place.

Me, a puppy, and its owner who is very confused as to why I am so obsessed with it.

Puppy sleeping in my lap during interviews!

The art gallery shop

Art gallery/restaurant outdoors

            The guides came back to camp with us one day to hang out after we helped them get email and facebook at the internet café in town. I felt weird getting it for them since they will have to pay for minutes in the cafe in order to use it, but they all really wanted it and didn’t really know how to use the computer so I showed them. It was a long and sort of amusing process. It was nice to be able to give something back to them after all the hard work they’d been doing with us all week. It’s also nice to feel like we have friends in the community now. With the amount of work we do here, even though we live close to town and have the option to go, it is hard to find time to hang out there enough to make friends. It can also be hard to tell who just wants to be your friend so that you will give them money. It’s always tricky here knowing that it is possible that people are only being friendly to you because they might get something out of it.

Sharing music with our guides (hereafter named Theo, Chris, and Floridi) was very funny. They were not too impressed by some of the pop songs from the US, but they loved Daddy Yankee (of course I was thrilled) and some hymns on one Claire's ipod. Seems kind of contradictory. Chris said that one hymn, a kind of chanting song, reminded him of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Go figure. Later we had a guitar lesson and Chris remembered that we had sung “Twist and Shout” to him and his comedy group when they came to perform for us, so I taught it to them at his request.  We’re going to have all of East Africa singing that song!

Theobald, Marta, Chris, and me after our guitar lesson

I just got called outside by Askari Burra to see something he called “dudu.” It turned out to be a giant slug. Dudu means bug, but he said Cono-cono means slug. He asked what it was in English, then spent a few minutes repeating “big slug” to me over and over again. So many random things happen here. Guess it’s time to end this post, it is very late and I have stooped to writing about slugs. Goodnight! Don't forget to look to the last post for pictures!