Arusha, Monday & Tuesday, February 6 - 7, 2017

There hasn’t been any rain here for about a week now. All the plants which sprang back to life in the previous rain are looking droopy again, and even though the major part of the road construction has passed us now, there is a lot of dust in the air once more.  The mornings are wonderfully cool and refreshing; however, by 2:00 p.m. it has been getting up to 87º, so we usually take time out for a siesta. Since we are so close to the equator, our days are nearly a precise 12 hours, and by 5:00 p.m. it is cooler again. By 7:00 pm. it is getting dark. That’s when we begin to think about dinner, which we almost always eat out on our little front terrace. The mosquitoes aren’t nearly as rampant as they were last year, but I still have to wear heavy duty repellent or suffer the consequences.

Late Monday afternoon, I put on my NB camo shoes and took a walk with John along the Moshi-Nairobi Road and the little shops on our side of this now double-carriage highway. The first shop going toward Moshi is out kuku cook shack, and then there are tiny dress shops, bars, beauty shops, animal feed stores, building supply yards,tailors, hardware stores, and “pharmacies” (duka la dawa). In front of the shops are the individual vendors, selling peanuts, roasted corn, belts, shoes, and, to our surprise, fish.  One woman had a big wok for deep frying fish, which was  chopped into pieces and stacked on a small stand beside her. She said it came from Lake Victoria, which could be true, and that it was very good.  Since I had already had dinner plans, we passed on fish, but maybe some day we’ll try it.

For some reason, the entrance of our road has become a bottle neck for traffic, and we had the fun of watching pedestrians yelling advice to drivers who were stuck side by side or were trying to get ahead in their line. The drivers here will take either the right or left lane if it looks empty to them, and often they have to back up or risk losing most  of the paint on one side of their vehicle.  Even on the new double carriage highway, there are lines of traffic going both ways on both sides, and occasionally there is a third line right down the middle. It’s as if each side of I-90 were just a two-lane road. I would never ever venture out into this at night!

On Tuesday, John had to get up early, as he had decided that he would attend a conference on African agricultural, which is being held this week at the big blue Naura Springs Hotel, the Chinese built a decade or so ago. (ECHO East Africa 4th Biennial Symposium on Sustainable Agriculture Best Practices)  There will be several hundred people from America, Europe, and a variety of African countries, so John is sure to meet some very interesting folks. Several members of the Arusha Community Church are involved in the planning and running the conference, which is how John heard about it.

Since I didn’t grow up on a farm and can handle unstructured time more contentedly than John, I stayed at Kundayo and did whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. That meant a lot of reading and a chat with Mama Kundayo, who is now eager to act as my party planner for the women’s group on February 16th. If I don’t tamp down everyone’s enthusiasm for this event, I will end up having an inappropriately lavish lunch buffet, which will cost me a fortune. I keep telling my eager advisors that we are to keep our refreshments fairly simple so that women who cannot afford to prepare much won’t feel hesitant to volunteer their homes for our meetings, too.

John returned about 6:00 p.m. full of information about low till methods, invasive noxious weeds, new plant strains, and the interesting people he had met. This is going to be a very good week for him—and for me as well.

Arusha, Sunday, February 5, 2017

As usual on Sunday, Ray came soon after 10:00 to pick us up and take us to church. For a while it looked as if we might be late because the road construction had blocked the route we usually take, and Ray had to back track and try a different way.  Fortunately, however, here “late” is a very relative concept, and we were just fine. I was especially looking forward to today’s service as Dave Sullivan, a Catholic priest who teaches in a seminary in Njiro was giving the sermon. Last year, he gave one of the best sermons I had heard in years on inclusiveness, and this morning he gave an equally wonderful sermon on what it really means to be salt and light, which is very different than being “churchy.” He is a very slight, older Irishman, and I could listen to him all day.  When it was time for communion, he got in line with the rest of us and took communion served by Lutherans and Presbyterians. He lives the Gospel.

After the service, I took some more photos of the people having tea and coffee, and introduced myself to Rogers, who seems to be the head usher.  I wish I were a better photographer, as his face fascinates me. I managed to take one decent shot of him without calling attention to myself—I think. In pursuing Rogers, I forgot to get a photo of the flowers, but they weren’t particularly spectacular today anyway.

Time for tea, coffee and conversation

Three of the many children

ACC Church Ladies

Our friend Sharon, asked if we had plans for the afternoon, and since we did not, we joined her and three very young other Mennonites for lunch in Njiro. Of course, I ordered Indian food since it is far better here than any I’ve found in Spokane. My big splurge was a tall glass of coffee with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in it. Utter decadence. With all the food and good conversation, it was 4:00 before folks were ready to leave.  John and I stayed behind so that we could do some shopping in the Village Supermarket, where there are items one cannot find anywhere else.  However, we only needed very ordinary groceries such as Wheetabix and some pasta. Well, I also picked up a few items we didn’t actually need such as a small bit of cheese and bottles of passion fruit Fanta for me and  Stoney Tangawisi for John.

Neither of us felt like doing anything more when we got home, but I started a bucket of socks and did some mending.  Later, when I went to the garden terrace to connect with the internet, Noriko, who was having dinner there, asked me if we had gone to church again today.  She said she wants to go with us again next Sunday.  Then, we began talking about what we have or haven’t seen in Tanzania, and she wanted to see pictures of my women’s group. One thing led to another pretty quickly, and soon I was showing her photos of my granddaughters and garden back home. Finally, John suggested it might be time for our dinner, so by 9:00, we were having a meal of the remaining leftover beef stew and fruit. John had finished the sock laundry and had them all rinsed, wrung out, and hanging up from our mosquito net frame. This was another excellent day.

Arusha, Saturday, February 4, 2017

This morning I ate another kitumbua, and there is still one more left for tea time this afternoon. (Notice: ki- for singular, vi- for plural) While we ate our Wheetabix, Lawrence O’Donald came on MSNBC and reported that a Washington State federal judge—a GW appointee—had ruled that Trump’s immigration ban was unconstitutional and was immediately suspended. We had a wonderful surge of state pride!  While we are happy to be as far removed as we are from US politics at the moment, we still get enough news on our TV to keep us incredulous at the antics of Trump. Making a high level decision for a disastrous strike in Yemen over dinner with a few friends instead of in the Situation Room with a top level advisors, draws no criticism from those in Congress who screamed “Benghazi” year after year. The Emperor is dancing nude, and no one is stepping forward to confine him to a padded room. Where are the checks and balances? Maybe in Washington State.

This was not going to be a day of outings and adventures. Instead, I put on the shoes I had bought from Rebecca, and John and I took off on a walk in our neighborhood. Kundayo Road winds through a nice and very diverse neighborhood.  There are little shops and bars along the way, and the further back one goes, the more one sees large walled compounds around big, fancy houses. This is a walk I have often taken in past years, so today I paid attention to which shops had been newly painted and what sort of new construction was going on. There is another large compound crowding against my favorite vegetable garden now, and several sheds have been repainted.  Otherwise, all is much the same.

Traditional brooms, charcoal, and charcoal burners

Newfangled painted brooms

Except, I noticed a terrible increase in the number of trees which had had their branches loped off for fire wood. Some very old trees are entirely gone, and many other have been severely amputated. This is a sure sign of both increasing urban population and higher prices for ever more scare wood. Someday, the lovely woods behind us will be completely gone.

 Butchered tree

 

As we reached the farthest point of the walk, I heard someone calling my name. It was Rebecca, who was on her way to market.  All the little neighbor boys stopped to see the mzungu and local lady greet each other. Rebecca and I had a conversation about the elaborate doilies ladies here put on their sofas and chairs, and she promised to bring me some samples later in the day.  (Which she did.)

On the way back to Kundayo, we stopped at one of the small shops, where I had seen some homemade fabric purses for sale. I looked through them and then asked the shopkeeper how much one of the larger ones was. I’m not very good with Swahili, so when he told me the price, I assumed I had misunderstood and asked John to ask again for me. The guy really had said 7,000 Tsch. ($3.20) instead of 17,000, so I didn't even bother to bargain and bought the purse. John took our picture together to celebrate the deal.

Once we were back at Kundayo, one of the two Dutch men I have disparaged in the past came to me with a problem.  He had been told that I have been here often and wanted to know how to treat the tsetse fly bites his partner had suffered while they were pursuing elephants at Tarangire yesterday. John, who was sitting at another table started laughing, so I explained to Martin that I am the most allergic person in the world to tsetse fly bites and had lots of things they might want to try. I warned him that it takes me about three weeks to recover from these bites, so they should not expect an instant recovery. He was tremendously grateful for what I could give him. So, now I am really sorry I had remarked on his babe-in-the-woodsness.

Arusha, Friday, February 3, 2017

We awoke to a wonderful surprise this morning, While we were still sleeping, Ray went to a woman who makes vitumbua, my newest food addiction, and bought several, which he brought to Kundayo for us. When we awoke, Beatrice delivered them to us.  They were still warm, so I immediately changed my breakfast plans and, instead of toast, had two vitumbua with my coffee. I will need to pace myself with these little calorie bombs.

We spent most of the morning reading.  John has discovered Ann Patchett through her collection of essays, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. I had suggested that he read her essay, “The Wall,” which is about how she decided to try to pass all the requirements for admission to the LAPD police academy. It’s a terrific story, and John liked it so much, he has kept on reading other essays. I’m finally reading Bel Canto, which had been on my shelf at home for over 15 years. Somehow, it never appealed to me, so I brought it here where my limited book stack pushes me to read books I might not otherwise. So far, I’m enjoying it very much though it is so different than Patchett’s other novels, it’s hard for me to remember she’s the author.

John suggested that we go to George’s Tavern for lunch, and I readily agreed, as it is a lovely venue and has really great pizza and amazing build-it-yourself salads for very reasonable prices. This was our third time there, and as in the first two times, we had enough food to box up half of it for lunch tomorrow.  I get really hungry for a good salad here, and it’s much easier to let George’s kitchen assemble all the ingredients than for me to buy them myself, especially the greens. We sat out on the terrace area and read and enjoyed the breeze until our food arrived. After the meal, I ordered coffee and was overjoyed when it arrived in a press.  Usually in Arusha, coffee means instant, which is better than instant at home—maybe more like Starbucks Via—but still not the rich brewed or pressed coffee I get when we are on Zanzibar. All that bliss for only $1.80. Now, I’m convinced that George’s is the best place to eat in Arusha!

George's garden terrace

Huge salads and delicious pizza

We called Ray to take us back to Kundayo and on the way stopped at John’s favorite produce market. We got a small bag of potatoes, a big bunch of carrots, several more mangoes, and two big purple avocados, all for just about $5, and I’m sure John overpaid. (Those market ladies love to see him come.) We had one of the avocados for dinner tonight, and it was absolutely perfect. I wish there were some way we could get such wonderful avocados at home.

This week has gone by even faster than the ones preceding it. It’s hard for me to realize that tomorrow is Saturday already, which means it’s almost Sunday, my favorite day here.  This Sunday at church, a Catholic priest will give the message. I am really looking forward to that since when I heard him last year, his gentle, but clear, call for open inclusion of all persons was such a balm after the silliness of arguments at home. I wish there were some way to replicate ACC in Spokane.

Arusha, Thursday, February 2, 2017

My day began earlier than usual because I needed to be up by 7:30 to be certain I would be ready to go to the Impala Hotel before 9:00. It was time for another women’s group meeting, and Margaret, my friend from Uganda, was going to pick me up at the Impala for the drive to Mary Bura’s house. Ray got me to the Impala in plenty of time, and soon Margaret and I were on our way, stopping by Miriam’s house to pick up Grace (Don’t ask about that.) and then braving the anarchy on the Nairobi-Moshi Highway, where the construction makes for new adventures every day.

I had been to Mary’s a week before with Colette, so I thought I knew the basic landmarks on the way.  Margaret had been there sometime ago but thought she also had a general idea of where we were going. We also had the directions Linda had sent out to all the women:

To get to Mary's house,. Come on the Moshi-Nairobi road towards Nairobi.  Pass the two lights and the technical college road.  Then look on your right for the BP gas station and the AAA night club.  Turn right immediately up the mountain just after triple A.  Follow this road until you get to the white rose garden hotel on the right, pig slaughter house and water tank.Go until there is a grinding mill and a sign for Chadema club (this area is called Mangulueni). Here you turn left (if you get to the Elkuirei church and primary school, you have gone too far) and go to the second left and turn again. There is a big gate on the left and we will try to have the guard there to look for you.

The turn off from the highway wasn’t hard to find, but getting onto the road was, as we had to drop down sharply to a makeshift bridge to get across a deep excavation. Margaret uttered a prayer for her car—and I suppose for us as well—and we banged down and then climbed up onto the regular road, which is ungraded dirt and very narrow.  There were no thoughts of zoning or access to properties when the various houses and shops were built, and so the road has to wind and turn between buildings however it can. Some homeowners cannot access their houses with their vehicles. And, of course, there are no street names or house numbers. Between the two of us, Margaret and I spotted all the landmarks (at one place, it was a large rock that Margaret remembered she had almost hit the time before), and we arrived at Mary’s without any detours or backtracking.


Perhaps because of location, not as many of the women as usual were present, but we still had a great time catching up on everyone’s news, and even spending a bit of time looking at the first six beatitudes in Matthew 5. From time to time someone would contrast the beatitudes with Trump’s behavior. Mainly, however, the women reflected on how the various “belesseds” were or were’t reflected in their own lives. It’s humbling for me to hear all of the burdens or difficulties many of the women have had.  Margaret is still struggling to get her South Sudanese husband to return to Tanzania. Linda is worn thin from all the hassles her husband has been having as a hospital administer with government regulations, absurd tax demands, and the hassle of getting supplies out of the port. Angela does not know if she and Stephan will be allowed to stay in Tanzania for another year or two or will have to return to Germany because of program changes and visa issues.  They’ll find out next week. Others had concerns about children or grandchildren. Everyone continues to pray for Carol, who is in South Africa receiving chemotherapy for a very aggressive form of leukemia. I then discovered that the “little girl” at church with Down’s syndrome, Marissa, is actually 22 years old and the daughter of Carol, the woman in South Africa. Marissa has been left in the family home with the housekeeper so that she can stay in her school, and, as I had noted on Sunday, people in the church make sure to monitor and take care of her, too.  In this community, everyone depends on each other to cover any emergencies or needs. It’s one of the things I like best about them.


After the discussion, we had our usual light lunch.  Mary had made a fruit salad with watermelon, bananas, and pineapple and had bought vitumbua, delicious deep fried fritters made with rice flour. She also had cashews, peanuts, two kinds of baked tubers (potatoes?), white and yellow. I decided that even though they looked dreadfully dry and tasteless, I would try the yellow one; to my surprise it was quite tasty, so I went back for a second serving. As always there was fruit juice, coffee, and milk chai. I’m still trying to figure out what I’ll serve on the 16th, when they all show up at Kundayo.

Margaret dropped me back at Kundayo, and then Ray came to bring me the rest of the way home.  I told Ray how much I loved the vitumbua (I didn’t mention that I had eaten three), and he said they are made by Swahili women who sell them at little stalls around town. I shall certainly look for them from now on.

The rest of the day was dedicated to reading, perusing the internet, and heating up leftover beef stew for dinner. Simple, and relaxing. Life is good here in Arusha.

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.

I've skipped over Monday, as some of the events were too sensitive to publish in my blog.

Arusha, Tuesday, January 31, 2017

It rained a lot during the night and continued raining most of the day.  While this impinged a bit on what we chose to do, it felt wonderful to have a much cooler day and to know that finally so much badly needed rain was falling.  When John and I finally went over to the garden veranda as we do almost every morning, there were a couple of monkeys frolicking on the roof—which is metal— and the noise was thunderous. They ran back and forth, jumping in and out of trees, and making enough racket for a herd of kudu. Maybe they were happy for the rain as well.

Near noon, John decided to walk downtown and go to a place which seems samosas and buy some for our lunch.  I stayed with the monkeys and eavesdropped on the two Dutch guys and their African friends? guides? who were talking to them as if they were idiots. I have no idea how two adults could have arrived here with less awareness of where they were going and what they might be doing. How they ended up with this particular nefarious pair of Tanzanians is also a mystery. Still, I felt I shouldn’t break in and warn them how gullible they are being or tell the Africans to stop being such con artists. They are all consenting adults after all.

Soon John was back with some absolutely delicious samosas, which were still nice and hot because they had been freshly made for him, and he took a taxi back to Kundayo. There are few things more delicious than a hot, crispy samosa, and we each had three. I decided that for dinner in the evening, I would use the last of our carrots and potatoes and make beef stew with meat I had bought at Meat King last week, so we would get at least one vegetable for the day.

Last week, Agape had said she would find out if Rebecca had any second hand sports shoes she would sell me.  Around 5:00, the two of them showed up, so while we had tea and cookies, Rebecca showed me her wares. There was one fairly worn pair of New Balance shoes which fit me quite well, and I decided that even though they were a bit shabbier than I had hoped for and were camouflage fabric, they would be okay for the next 6 weeks. I didn’t bother to bargain, but paid the first price, which delighted Rebecca, and then I gave Agape a finder’s fee. I felt very pampered having my own personal shopper coming right to my home.