After some consultation (with myself), I’ve come to an executive decision to organize my blog posts in such a way that even my busiest friends can bear to stop by for a few minutes to see how I’m doing, while those of you who want more details can willingly subject yourself to the torrent of my enthusiasm. Behold:
Week 1: in brief—
· I made it to Africa.
· I’m not dead. Yet.
Believe it or not, that second point was nontrivial for a few hours the day before I left. I opened my bottle of malaria medicine to take my first dose and discovered they’d given me 40 malaria pills instead of 90. After a short panic attack and several calls to closed offices and pharmacies, we got ahold of a doctor’s home phone and sorted it all out, so my death sentence was repealed. ;-)
A little more detail on the first point, for those who want it:
My itinerary took me to Tanzania via Boston and Amsterdam, my first trip to Europe within living memory. (A response in advance to the nitpickers in my family: not your living memory. Mine. Mine’s the one that counts. =P) I arrived in Amsterdam at 5:30 local time, dazed with sleep loss. For perspective, the flight from Boston to Amsterdam involves the removal of six hours from your day, taken from the time between dinner and breakfast. 9_9
My first impression of Tanzania was smoky air and a warm night. I couldn’t get a good visual because it was 7:30 and dark. But there were more trees than I expected, and the smell in the air and the non-air-conditioned airport brought back memories of third-world Nicaragua immediately. It was a reassuring touch-point of familiarity. We dropped our medical equipment off at the Training Center and met our host parents there. They greeted us with a hug and interspersed with their excellent English they probably said “Karibu” (“welcome”) every other word. My roommate, Lotte (the only girl of the five students coming here from Denmark—I’m so lucky =) ) and I probably have the best accommodations of any of the others: we live right on the compound, a five minute walk away from the Training Center, and the family gave us our own personal bathroom with hot running water for a shower. *jaw-drop* The generosity and luxury is unimaginable.
The Training Center (TCDC) is beautiful! It’s large and modern-looking, with smooth, white-washed walls and big windows; lots of [African] power strips and wireless internet; a bar and cafeteria and piano and even a gym. It’s entirely surrounded by lush, green grasses, bushes, and trees, many of them in flower or in fruit (and many of which I recognize as imports to Florida gardens, which is fun), and the weather has so far been constantly cloudy and about 68 degrees Fahrenheit. I love it!
Classes have started, and the first day we did nothing but go over Swahili greetings. I can’t tell you how reassuring it is to have something I know I can say right! This chapter is the only one that I read through before I arrived, but when I started meeting people I found that the only word I actually felt comfortable saying was “asante” (thank you)—and after saying nothing but that over and over again, even that began to feel wrong. My first day, on the way to the training center, a man met us on the street. He greeted our host baba (father) and then turned to us. “You say, ‘Shikamoo,’” he said with a big grin showing behind bigger glasses. “Shikamoo!” I said promptly, and he responded graciously with “Marahaba” and continued on past us. I knew that word! “Shikamoo” comes from Arabic, and means “I pay you my respects”—it’s said to a person who’s older than you. “Marahaba” is the way to accept them. But in the moment when he arrived, I didn’t know what to say—it still takes five seconds to do a translation, and after that, there comes the realization: in America, people don’t like to be old. Paying your respects to the elderly looks fine and courteous on paper, but in front of an actual person, a wall of Western etiquette slams into you and binds your tongue and makes you nod and smile and look stupid. And onward it goes…
