Arusha, Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Here we are in another month.  These first weeks in Arusha have passed far more quickly than seems possible even though we have done far less sightseeing and exploring. I suppose we could revisit all the old reliable places, but my preference is to spend more time reading and being with people I have come to know and love. Today was the day when Elizabeth, my Maasai friend, said she was coming to visit me.

Soon after 11:00, I got a text message that Elizabeth was nearby, but it took more than half an hour until she actually arrived due to the mess created by the big highway construction project going on at the end of our road. There is almost no control over who drives where, so there may be as many as three lines of traffic on the open side of the two-carriage road, and which line goes in which direction changes frequently.  I have never ever seen such random driving.  If one is in the far left line and needs to exit off to the right, then one simply finds a pause in the traffic and drives across the other two lines and down a temporary dirt ramp to the parallel dirt track in front of the shops which provides access to side streets. And now that it has rained for several days, this is all done in the mud.  It feels as if one is driving in some sort of extreme motocross competition.

Eventually, Elizabeth did arrive and we settled in for a long conversation. Things were a tad awkward at first because as some may remember, I was trying to arrange for hernia surgery for her younger sister Ngaisi last year, but had to leave before that took place. I had left enough money here to cover all expenses, but I never heard further from Elizabeth about what did or didn’t happen. Later, I found out from our friend, Mazo, that Elizabeth had come to him to withdraw $200, which was not enough for the cost of the whole procedure. So, I worried about what was going on since Elizabeth’s father is very patriarchal and authoritarian. I had left the money with Mazo precisely because I feared that if Elizabeth had it, her father would force her to give it to him. I had emailed Elizabeth several times during the past year, but there was never any reply.

However, soon after we had arrived in Arusha, Elizabeth did send an email to me reporting on what happened, and I instantly understood why she had been avoiding that report.  She was embarrassed and humiliated.  Just a day before she was to leave for a conference in Ivory Coast, Elizabeth’s father finally said Ngaisi could have the operation.  Since Elizabeth had to leave the next day, she withdrew $200 and gave it to a brother she trusted so that Ngaisi could get checked in to the hospital and have the surgery.  Elizabeth would then complete payment of the bill when she returned. But, her father waited until Elizabeth left and then changed his mind and demanded he be given the money, which he then used to have Ngaisi circumcised.  He then arranged an engagement and marriage for her with an older man who was not wealthy enough to pay a big dowry and thus would  accept Ngaisi in spite of her flaw. Elizabeth got news of this in Ivory Coast and tried to get an international anti-FGM group to intervene, but it was too late. There is not much which could be worse for Elizabeth than this, as she herself had spent years working in an anti-FGM program and was internationally recognized for her work in that area.

Elizabeth could barely make eye contact as she told me all of this. The complete irony of the fact that the money I had left for something good had been used instead for something so bad was difficult to admit.  I recognized that this was not really Elizabeth’s fault, as she had waited so long for her father’s permission for Ngaisi’s surgery that  she wanted it done as soon as possible. Her father solemnly promised Elizabeth that Ngaisi could go with the brother to Arusha for this operation, and she trusted her brother. However, the brother had no defense against a demand from his father once Elizabeth was gone.  One simply cannot defy a father here as we would in a situation such as this. Now, because of her outrage at what her father did, Elizabeth is distanced from her family. I, of course, recognize that trying to do something good is never safe from a potentially disastrous result, but this story has a particularly bad ending.

Ngaisi is now pregnant, and Elizabeth and I  are worried about how that will affect her hernia.  We both remember that last year the doctor said that even with surgery he could not guarantee that the abdomen wall would not tear again if there was strain on it in the future. So, we can only pray that Ngaisi will not have any complications.

We were getting into the afternoon, so John ran over to our neighborhood cook shack and brought back kuku na chipsie for us all.  Elizabeth told us more about what she is doing now both at her little store in Nymanga, up on the Kenya border, and her rented land near Lushoto, where she is trying to grow big watermelons. She is an excellent entrepreneur but would like to find another position with an NGO. Unfortunately, many organizations are downsizing and not hiring any new staff. Nevertheless, after we had eaten and finished talking, John took Elizabeth to the Mennonite Central Committee office to meet the director, Sharon Mkisi. Sharon took time to ask Elizabeth a lot of questions about her past experience and then asked her to send in her resumé, so perhaps an opening will come some day.

Three days in a row we have heard stories of the difficulty of life here. Everyone who came is a diligent, hard working person simply trying to make a basic living. The idea that anyone can become anything they want to be if they work hard enough has absolutely no credibility here (And, personally I don’t believe it works at home very often either). Put into a Tanzanian perspective, our first-world  “needs” and complaints are selfishly petty and should make us all ashamed of ourselves.