House Visits and the Easter Bunny

Yesterday after doing an interview with an official in the agricultural office in Mto wa Mbu, a few of us went down to Rhotia to visit Chris and Theo. We thought we would only be hanging out in town with the two of them and making plans for Easter, but Chris invited us to his house a little outside of town so we all walked there with him to visit. Walking down the road to his house, we faced one of the nicest views I have seen yet. The rolling hills were covered in maize fields and lines of different crops, all bright green after the recent rain. A huge lone tree towered at the intersection of two dirt roads, and Chris told us that it was the place where village meetings took place. I can’t imagine a nicer place to meet.

When we arrived to his house, Chris’ housemate greeted us and brought us fantas. We took a tour of his house (he has a dog with newborn puppies that are adorableee!) and then sat out in the yard and drank the sodas and looked at pictures of his family together. His immediate family lives far away, but many of his relatives live nearby and we stopped by their house on the way back. The grandmother, a woman who looked older than time, hobbled over and kissed our hands, and I didn’t know what to do so I gave her a hug. All of them were very nice seeming, but it was hard to tell what was going on since most didn’t really speak Swahili and as I’ve mentioned before, the Iraqw language is so completely incomprehensible that I can’t even pronounce most of the words. Most of the words include sounds that I have never heard spoken before… I can’t imagine that anyone is able to learn the language having not grown up speaking it. Anyways, as we left the relatives’ home, a man came running up behind us waving his arms wildly and beaming. We weren’t sure what was going on, and he grabbed our hands and shook them vigorously and then hugged Chris’ legs and kept exclaiming something. After he left we asked Chris what he had been saying/doing, and he said that it was his uncle and he was “just happy to see us.” He also told us that his uncle especially liked beer. Aha.

Today we were invited back to the house, only this time to come a little earlier so we wouldn’t have to rush back so fast afterwards. Chris told us he would make us dinner, and insisted no matter how much we protested, so we left at 4pm today and met him and Theo downtown again. This time Marta (one of the staff from SFS) joined us, and Chris also said that about six friends were at his house waiting for us. We bought a bunch of sodas to contribute to dinner, and walked to his house again to find that there were not only six visitors, but that all the women in his extended family had come to the house to cook for us! They all crowded into the house when we got there, and set the table with a whole feast of rice and meat and chicken and pasta and various types of fruit. What a surprise! They were all dressed in nice fancy clothes, and I was glad that I had made sure to wear a skirt and nice shirt for town. We all ate together and then they all invited us outside and did a welcome dance for us. The whole thing was so nice, I was totally taken by surprise! They invited us to join them and showed us how to do the dance while Chris, Theo, and Marta watched and laughed.  It was a lot of fun and they made us feel so welcome. At the end we all took a “family picture” together in front of his house. What a day!

Family Photo

Learning the dance!

Tomorrow we are going to Theo’s house after Easter mass, since he says it is his turn to host us. I am excited to see what it is like here on Easter- I think it will be a very big deal! They say that it is kind of like Christmas and New Year’s day here, and that they all have big celebrations at home. I’m sure the church will be packed! Just in case you were wondering, the Easter Bunny doesn’t seem to make it to Tanzania. When we mentioned the traditions we have on Easter and described the story of the Easter Bunny, Theo and Chris were dumbfounded and told us that they just celebrated Jesus. Theo stared at me blankly when I tried to explain. “...A rabbit?” Describing our various holidays and how a man dressed in a red suit comes to deliver presents on Christmas was hilarious and made me realize how silly some of our traditions must seem from an outsider’s perspective!

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!

Pics from Directed Research

Ana, Brandon, and Theo on one of our ventures to interview pastoralists.

My favorite area in Mto wa Mbu, where we had lunch every day with the artists. 

Woman selling bananas at the market

Maasai boma before the rain

Two guys I video interviewed. There were kids jumping around in the background trying to get into the video. 

Mto wa Mbu: red banana in one hand, Baobab fruit in the other.

A common sight. This time the car wouldn't start and we were still at camp!

Our guide Theobald and me on our lunch break way out in the pastoralist's territory. The thorns were so bad we had to stop every few seconds to get them out of our shoes! This was the day that the Maasai ladies hit Brandon with a stick and then the leader invited us back.

View walking to the pastoralist area

National Geographic

I will be working for them this summer.
I can't even believe it. I love my life! Every day I feel like I must be at the peak of the best part of my life, and then the next day something wonderful comes up and I realize that it actually could get even better. Is this just what life is like, or am I really lucky?

I emailed National Geographic Television about a week ago and passed along my resume just in case they might need an intern, but figured that it was too late and that I had probably missed my chance. After a few days passed and nothing happened I thought they might not end up responding, but two days ago I got an email asking for an interview! I was very excited, and called for the interview later that day. Again, I figured that my chances were very slim, but the interview felt really good so I started to feel a little optimistic, especially when they offered me another interview for the next day (yesterday). The interview yesterday went well too, and it started to seem like I might really get it but I wasn't sure and didn't really want to let myself get my hopes up too much. It just seemed too good, like one of those things that you put on a pedestal as the best of the best and assume is almost certainly unattainable.

Last night after the interview I was writing two papers with a bunch of other students, one about wildlife management and water resources and the other about my directed research topic, and I decided to take a break and check my email. I saw the word "Congratulations" in the subject of an email and nearly fell out of my chair. I will be working on a National Geographic natural history series titled "Untamed Americas." Just the title sounds amazing! I can't wait!!!!

Today was great, even though needless to say I was too excited to sleep last night and ended up sleeping for about 1 1/2 hours. We had a non-program day, and I finished my papers and then we all went to Mto wa Mbu and watched a painting demonstration, learned about banana brew beer, (kind of gross) and all went to a nice bar to relax. My favorite part of the visit was that I've now gone to the village a few times to do research, so I am beginning to know many of the people in the area and we sat and talked to some of the painters for a long time and traded english and swahili lessons.

It would have been a great day no matter what we did. I am already excited (and a little nervous!) to start work, and I am still in Tanzania and loving what I'm doing here. I have said it before but I just have to say it again: Life is GOOD.

Day 3 of research: from being prodded with a stick to being hosted by a Maasai leader

Today was definitely full of unique experiences. I went out into the areas around Lake Manyara to conduct interviews with the Maasai pastoralists there with two other students, Ana and Brandon, and a local guide/translator, Theobald. The way we conduct the interviews makes it interesting: They are not set up ahead of time, and we find people by wandering across the plains and approaching bomas where we see human activity. This time we were in a beautiful area surrounded by far off mountains and next to the lake. We made very slow progress, since we were wearing sandals and the ground was covered in low thorny brush instead of grass. After a few steps, the bottom of my flip flops were already completely covered in burrs, and every few feet we had to stop because someone had a thorn in his or her foot. When we finally reached a boma, we approached and asked permission to talk to someone, first explaining who we were and why we were conducting the interviews. The man at the first boma was extremely friendly, and answered our questions patiently while all his children (it looked like he had three wives) came up to us and petted our hands and tugged at our clothes.
Our quest for a second interview was more eventful. As we approached the next boma, a group of women crowded at the door of one of the bomas and watched us disapprovingly. I greeted them, but they didn't really respond. Our guide introduced us to the women, who finally greeted us but immediately asked if we had money for them, or at least food or sugar. We told them that we didn't, and that we were only students collecting information. They looked at us disapprovingly and said something about not wanting to see us. The eldest lady, who was seated by the door of the hut, prodded Brandon's leg with a long walking stick and said "Wewe!" ("You!") and then something that sounded relatively unpleasant. Our guide told us we should leave quickly, and we did. As we walked away, the thorns stinging again, we heard a deep voice call us back. We all hesitated; it didn't exactly seem like an inviting idea. Oh well. We walked back after Theobald called us over. A regal-looking man with a kind of scepter hanging from his neck greeted us warmly and sent all the women away with a wave of his hand. "Their behavior is very bad," he told us in Swahili. "They don't know anything." It was starting to rain, so he invited us into his hut, where one of his wives was sitting and cooking something on the fire. He explained to us that he was the Oloibon, or the leader of all the Maasai bomas around the area. He told us about his duties as Oloibon, and how he counts stones inside a calabash each morning to determine what the danger level for all the bomas was each day, and oversees the animal herding. He gave Brandon the special guest's chair and asked us all to sit down. I wasn't sure whether it would be polite to accept, especially as a woman, so I offered that his wife should sit first and we stayed standing and thanked him.
We all talked until the rain stopped, and then interviewed him outside with the help of a few other Maasai warriors who chimed in from time to time. Next to me, the old grandfather sniffed tobacco that he got out of a small plastic container which he kept hanging in the long loop in his ear.
The interview was fascinating, and we learned that unlike most pastoralists, he made hundreds of dollars a week (most seem to make about 20) and had over 400 cows, 200 goats, and 200 chickens. After the interview, he thanked us profusely for the visit and for the work we were doing, and invited us to come back again any time. If all goes well, I'll be returning to interview him for the video I'm starting, which he seemed happy about. As we left, he directed us to another boma to visit next and told us that we should mention to anyone who gave us trouble that he had sent us. What an experience.

Becoming an egotistical Murran (and other research topics of interest)

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 :) :) :)

Final exams (again) and visitors

I am officially done with exams for the semester! Woohoo!!! I think they went well, but who knows... last time I thought the same thing and then our whole class did quite a bit worse than we expected even though we all prepared like crazy. Oh well. What a tough academic semester. Seriously, I don't think I've ever done this much work in a semester. I guess it's mostly due to the fact that we are cramming all our learning into a shortened semester, and we are also shortening it even more because the last part (starting now) is dedicated to our directed research. I'm so excited for the research! I have to pick my topic and write a proposal tomorrow- so the work never really ends- but I'm not sure what it will be yet. Something about tourism and its effects on wildlife conservation because of the economic incentive it gives people to protect the animals. I think I'm going to try to base my senior film thesis on the research I do here... would be a lot of extra work but so worth it! 

On a different note, yesterday some girls appeared at our camp- mzungu girls! They said they had seen us in Mtowambu and that they were doing research there with SIT and had asked about us and how to get to our camp. As it turns out, as we talked we found out that the SIT program in Tanzania is completely and totally different from the SFS one. I never would have guessed they would be so drastically different- I almost applied to the SIT program, thinking they were similar! Apparently, they barely have classes, have had one paper and one test, and have a very lax program. They stayed in Arusha with host families, wandered around the city alone, and went out clubbing in the city at night! Our program doesn't even let us out after 6pm, and we have not stayed in a city. The SIT program also sent these three girls off for a month to do their own research in Mtowambu, where prostitution is known to be common and there is a big drug scene. While I am jealous of their freedom to wander and explore and do homestays and get to know the area better in a more independent way, I also think it seems quite unsafe! Sometimes I know that the things I wish I could do and am not allowed to do here are actually things that I should not do in the first place. This program just ensures that everyone stays safe and behaves according to the local cultural norms. Still, I wonder what it would be like to stay in an extended homestay here or take public transportation or explore a city. I guess every program has its pros and cons. Our pros far outweigh the cons: not only are we safe, but we do ridiculously cool things every day and get a fantastic education on top of it that will really prepare us for the things we want to do. I feel lucky every day to be here! We played soccer today after a long time of not having enough time to play, and it started out sunny and then a downpour came all of a sudden and drenched us in water and mud. So much fun. I was so elated to just be there running around in a soccer field surrounded by cornfields, and slipping and sliding and being in Africa. Life is good.