Tarangire and a new pace

Well I finally have been able to plug back into the cyber world. Our group is now staying in our field research site near Tarangire National Park, living out of tents, dodging scorpions, trying to stay cool, playing a lot of cards and reading, and chipping away at our research. We are doing various projects in the park and around the villages, ranging from water quality to medicine to masculine identity in Maasai men to elephant dung diversity, to park ecosystem edge effect. I am interviewing locals around the villages about the foods they eat, some basic demographics, what tribe they come from, and what they do for a living. So far, it seems the limited availability and price of food in the area influences what people eat more than the culture of their tribe does. But more valuable to me is the process of asking people questions, getting better and better at Swahili (even conducting entire interviews in Swahili!), being challenged by people asking what I am giving to them in return, making friends, and loving more and more the experiences and connections that are possible between people from opposite sides of the world. In this slow-paced, peaceful, different-than-anything-I’ve-lived-before life, I am reminded to laugh at life every day by camp-wide euchre tournaments, goats with buckets stuck on their head, wrinkled old ladies shooing children and chickens, the baffling and worrisome cry of the donkeys waking us up in the morning, and the various marriage proposals offered to members of our group.

I also haven’t posted since getting to the “safari circuit”! We have seen a lot of landscape and wildlife since leaving Dar es Salaam. This is the Serengeti ecosystem, home of so many famous National Parks and movie-perfect images of elephant herds, predator cats, Maasai men in their traditional dress, and glorious sunsets over the savanna. We have seen all of these things and more, and it is indeed quite spectacular. I’ve seen more lions up close than I can count on my fingers, elephants ripping bark from fat humbling baobab trees, hippos yawning, termite mounds taller than me, a leopard eating a gazelle in a tree, and heard hyenas killing a hare right outside our campsite in the middle of the night.

This place is full of surprises and wonders, great and small, natural and human-made, brand-new and comfortably familiar. I’ve had time to remember and miss my friends and family back home, but also to really appreciate where I am right now. And honestly, I can’t say I miss being on the computer all the time

The forest is breathing

From the tropical rainforest of the East Usambara Mountains, where three friends and I have spent our week-long fall break before going into the northern Serengeti plains where we will spend the next six weeks sight-seeing and doing research.

I am sitting in the most beautiful place on earth. Up, layer upon layer of canopy leaves. Bright green palmate leaves, shimmering with the reflection of light from the little pools between smooth, brown rocks below, little refugias from the river, gushing, forced, through two giant moss-bearded boulders. Two fallen bamboo poles leaning into eyesight. To the left, one of the huge river-gushing boulders, one ambitious stranger fig making root at its base and climbing, on its way to swallowing the whole rock. Vines, ferns, lichen adorn both rock and fig, as if aiding the tree ona mission to conceal the rock from vision. Mossy branches, creaking, transforming abruptly into dangling vines, roots, reaching to the pools, the muck, slurping up nutrients for which organism I can’t even decipher. Ferns gracefully balance atop the branches, explosions of green with leaves like plumes of a hat. Sunlight streaming in, speckling the scene. Through the opening between the moss-bearded boulders, above the gushing river, a Hollywood backdrop. Layer upon layer of brown and dark green, the shapes of the forest perfectly juxtaposed, still and painted. Stillness behind this living, sucking river. A maze of rocks, meandering, going nowhere, holding the shimmering, trickling pools, spinning with the current. Spiders webs, also going nowhere, clinging between the rocks, either ignoring the law of gravity or weightless, catching the sunlight more effectively than they catch bugs. Once or twice, a butterfly flitting by, weightless too. A forest living, but muted by the river. An infallible lullaby as this forest mystifies me into a trance.

 

The Commodity of Culture

This weekend our ACM group went to Zanzibar—the famous island off the coast of Tanzania, reached by a 2 hour ferry ride. I saw (and tasted) a lot of incredible things—a night market featuring the day’s seafood catch, a spice farm, markets on the maze-like streets of the old Stone Town, a gorgeous orange sunset over palm trees and the Indian Ocean, the diverse sea life of a coral reef through snorkeling goggles, endangered Red Colobus monkeys in a tropical forest, and more Europeans than I’ve seen cumulatively over the past month.

In addition to appreciating the beauty, history, and culture (plus some uncommon comfort foods such as coffee from beans, cheese, and cereal with milk!), I was confronted with my role as a tourist. In Stone Town where we stayed, there were about as many tourists as locals, and most of the locals I saw were owners of shops or restaurants that catered to tourists. Everywhere I went I was greeted with the same phrases—“Jambo” and “Hakuna matata”—which I know to be tourist catchphrases that locals wouldn’t use to greet each other. I don’t think that being a tourist is inherently a bad thing, but it did raise many questions in my mind. What do they think of me? The woman who painted my hand with a black dye that was definitely not the henna she advertised; the man on the spice tour who climbed to the top of the of palm tree to get us coconuts, dancing and singing in exaggeration for our entertainment; the children in the street saying “Jambo, give me money”; the many Muslims attending routine prayer at the Mosques as tourists revealing an offensive amount of skin take pictures of the pretty Arabic doors.

The sales pitches, entertainment, shops of cultural art, jewelry, cloth, and music are resourceful adaptations in response to an influx of curious foreigners, and many people make their living off of tourism—in fact it is the number one industry in Zanzibar now. I am not unhappy to support this economy. I am however, perplexed and intrigued by the phenomenon of cultural tourism that is quite apparent here.

It’s a strange cycle of stereotypes. They are trying to sell me art, jewelry, cloth, music that fit a stereotype I apparently have, based on the stereotype they have of me, a tourist. It’s kind of a chicken or the egg phenomenon, and I’m not sure what is represented in the tourist marketplace—a real culture that people are living, an African stereotype that foreigners hold, some combination thereof, or something else entirely, created by this cycle of stereotypes and expectations.

In this setting, surrounded by many other Wazungu (white) tourists, I was proud to know at least a little Swahili. Look, I am interested in more than Zanzibar spices, Maasai wood carvings, and seafood. I can take the time to conjugate my greeting words and ask you how your day is going in the language you speak with your neighbors. This is my way of fending off whatever assumptions I fear that you are making based on the way I look. Please, let’s interact as human beings, and forget about stereotypes.

A day in the life

I guess I haven’t really given a very comprehensive description of daily life here. Here’s a typical day:

This morning, after waking up several times in the night to bush babies, frogs, and the security guard’s music (Lady Gaga and other American hits), I got up and did yoga outside in the dorm yard under an acacia tree that is one of many excellent climbing trees on campus. Walked to breakfast with some program-mates at a cafe on campus, had chapati, kitumbua (one of the several shapes of fried dough that people here eat for breakfast), and instant coffee in warm, fresh whole milk.

Had Swahili class for 4 hours (whew), then walked to the cafeteria for lunch. Since it’s school vacation time at UDSM, the students here are a mixture of nationalities. Tanzanian students working or doing research on campus, Mozambiquens studying agriculture, a couple other US study abroad programs…Lunch (same as dinner) is very predictable. Rice, chicken, beans, beef, potatoes, sometimes cooked bananas, chips (french fries), chips mayai (chips omelet–brilliant). Very yummy. In the cafeteria, I test out new slang I learn on the funny guys selling fruit and soda, and they think we are hilarious.

Afternoon brings one class or another–Ecology, Human Evolution, or Research Methods, we never know which one until a few minutes before when our program director texts us. Then time to chill, almost always with other students on the program (who are all really cool!),  and sometimes with our Tanzanian host students, Hamida and Emmanuel, or other locals we befriend. Often we hang out on campus, chatting, playing frisbee, meeting other students, doing homework. Sometimes we take a daladala into town, to a market or a restaurant for dinner (we’ve eaten Lebanese, Ethiopian, and Indian-Chinese!).

Nighttime, we don’t go out much since everyone tells us it is dangerous. More chill time. This place is good for that.

Other commonplace things: I sweat a lot. It rains sometimes, intensely but for a short amount of time. You always have to watch your step because sidewalks are pretty broken up, if they exist at all. Monkeys (vervets) hang out on campus like squirrels do in the midwest. Baby monkeys are funny looking, and the one here likes the solo baboon. Students wear button up shirts and dress pants to class, and sit by the big “Degree Tree” to study and use internet. Bathrooms are squatting toilets and usually don’t have running water or toilet paper. In the dorms, we have western toilets and usually running water, which is stored in big black tanks to get heated by the sun during the day for a nice, tepid shower at night. There are really cool, huge insects here, and I’m fairly certain I’ve already talked about the trees.

So, life’s not so different here in the city. Engaging, challenging, not luxurious but not uncomfortable. People seem quite happy here, and I am too!

Darasa (Class)

Yesterday for kiswahili class we took a daladala to Mwenge (a market) with the assignment to practice bargaining and learn the names of things that are sold there. I wandered into the wood carver’s market, and got a tour of the back where all the work takes place. It was very cool–a whole bunch of people, mostly men, sitting on the ground soaking, chiseling, and sanding ebony wood. The ebony trees come from a region in (I think) northern Tanzania, and are white on the outside but deep brown (ebony) on the inside. The figurines and jewelry they make are beautiful. I made friends with a guy named Maurice, who I commissioned to make me a wooden sign that says my name–Furaha. Using my freshly-learned vocabulary, I talked him down to a third of the price he originally gave. The market is quite the practical classroom!

Furaha, my name. It developed quite naturally. Every time I introduce myself to locals, they think I am saying “Happy”, so I’ve adopted Furaha, the word for “happiness” in Swahili. I’m told it’s fitting to my personality too, and I would agree–I have little reason not to have a lot of Furaha here!

I also bought some fabric and took it to a tailor’s to have a kanga made for me. I’m not really sure how well I communicated the style I want, so we’ll see what comes back. The fabric here is beautiful!

Adaptations

This program, Ecology and Human Origins, attracted a mix of biologists and anthropologists. The different perspectives have made for some very engaging and thought-provoking conversations.  From one point of view, every living thing is solely a collection of adaptations for survival and reproduction under changing environmental pressures. From this perspective, a human, or a society of humans, functions under the exact same forces that a grasshopper or a tree or a fungus does. Everything humans and their cultures create are adaptations in order to survive and reproduce.

Or, are humans really something special? Exempt from the laws that govern other living things in nature? Are we the only species with a culture? Are abstract thought, religion, art, music, and technological revolutions more than products of evolution that serve the same purpose as the adaptations of other organisms?

I’ve heard an argument that cultural anthropology is useless and anthropocentric, because culture is nothing beyond biological adaptation, and differences between cultures are merely different manifestations of the same processes at work. But really, I think adding in the functional, biological perspective makes anthropology much more interesting and important. In fact, I’d even say the discipline of cultural anthropology is itself an adaptation. In an increasingly globalized world, it is impossible to avoid interacting with people who come from different cultures, with different understandings of the way the world is. To tune into these differences and to accept them all as functional, none of them better than any other, is also a way to find the essentials of human nature that connect us all, and enables us to communicate and interact in constructive, collaborative ways.

Whew. This is all very idealistic and theoretical. I am eager to apply this thinking to the world around me, here in Tanzania, to pay attention to the people and ecosystems around me, to become aware of what I don’t yet know about the world.

Laundry

Everyone does it. I like doing laundry by hand. It puts us all on equal grounds. My clothes are dirty, just like yours, and I’m scrubbing them clean, just like you. And as long as we are here in the washroom together, or outside around the washtub, we can communicate as equal human beings. Maybe in a language in which I have very minimal vocabulary and sketchy grammar, but some things don’t need a language. It doesn’t take words to notice together the cute boys over there, or to help each other hang up wet clothes, or to empathize when you drop your shirt in the dirt. Tunafua nguo pamoja.

The sponge phase

Habari gani za Tanzania!

I feel very much like a sponge. Every day, new sights and sounds to absorb, more culture to sink in and try to understand. I’ve been here a week now, and definitely am starting to feel like I know the city of Dar es Salaam a bit more.

Our student guides Emmanuel and Hamida took us into Mwenge, a nearby town, where we saw a big marketplace and a really impressive, beautiful woodcarver’s market. We were very popular, as everyone here has the impression that because we are Wazungu (white people) we have a lot of money to spend. We also spent a day a very nice, expensive private beach, which I understand is nicer than any beach in Mexico. First time in the Indian Ocean! On Friday night they took us to see a live Afro-pop/Reggae band, which was the most phenomenal, energetic, talented band I’ve ever seen. We danced so hard, and exchanged dance moves with some Tanzanians. They love to dance, but their movements are smaller, more finer and calculated in the hips and feet.

To get to all these places, we take daladalas. Oh, the daladala. Not recommended for the paranoid backseat driver–seeing the corners they cut, the spaces they try to fit through, and the speed at which they move makes you certain you will not make it in one piece. Also not recommended for the claustrophobic. Never would have guessed 25 could fit in a van the size of an American 12-seater van. Also, the door fell off of the first daladala we rode.

The trees on campus–acacia, I think–have branches that produce vines that hang down to become roots when they meet the ground. They make for excellent swings and Tarzan-style vines. The trees themselves are great for climbing, and I’ve spent a good deal of time in their branches.

The associate dean of students at the University had a welcome dinner at her house. Here, we saw “other half”–a nice house, big, gated, whitewashed, structurally sound. They roasted us an entire goat. And I mean entire–the appetizer was intestine soup. Goat stomach, anyone? Mmm.

We finally started our Kiswahili class today, after a week of getting by on minimal greetings and the few nouns we’ve picked up. It feels really good to be learning a language again, especially because we need it here! It’s study time!

I am very happy to be here. Though I often feel uncertain, cautious, or shy here, I have felt that there is no other place I could be. And though I remember where I come from, I am eager to establish some roots here. Salama,

Abby

Trust no-one, guarantee nothing

(So I thought I succeeded in posting this blog last week, but apparently I didn’t. This is as written from Day 3, sorry it’s late. Also, I forgot to explain the title–our first orientation involved a lot of late and last-minute re-scheduled sessions, our American director Dr. Roberts telling us not to stress about this “Tanzanian time”, and officer Emmanuel Wombura warning us repeatedly to “trust no-one.” It became the phrase of the week. Here’s the blog…)

Mambo!

Well, it has been quite the fiasco to actually obtain internet here, but I now have a student ID for the University of Dar es Salaam, and access to (very sketchy, inconsistent, slow) wireless!

I am staying in the dorms here at the University, which is public, attended by thousands of very studious, well-dressed Tanzanians and a handful of foreigners like us–Wazungu. The students are very friendly and we have some guides who show us around and answer our many questions about Tanzanian culture. We have yet to start our Kiswahili course, so pretty much the only thing we can say to the locals are “Mambo,” (What’s up) “Poa,” (It’s cool) and “Asante” (thank you). Turns out a phrase I learned several years ago–”Poa kachizi kama indizi” is a real Swahili phrase and means “crazy cool like a banana.” Go figure. Since there are 20 other Americans to get to know and none of us know Swahili, I haven’t really had the opportunity to talk to many Tanzanian students (though most speak English), so I definitely have much to learn and experience as far as the local culture, but there is time.

Besides being jet-lagged, I’ve woken up in the night to monkeys howling, and very vivid, dreams from malaria prophylactics. Last night (in my head), some other folks from the program and I were in a cave making pancakes on a camp stove.

As far as I can tell, the entirety of the diet consists of rice, beans, a cabbage/spinach stirfry, chicken, beef, ugali (gluey, starchy corn-flour paste that you roll around in your hand and eat with other dishes), and fruit. The fruit, though, is yummy! Banana, papaya, avocado, orange, so far. Probably more in the markets, which we will get to visit eventually. One meal costs the equivalent of a little over $1, and a drink is about a third of that.

The trees are driving me crazy. I keep asking locals what they are, and no one knows. Beside me is a baby baobob, palms, and I’m sure there are several varieties of acacia, but I don’t know what the ones are that look like bottle-brushes, or the ones that have flowers but no leaves. The ecologist in my is craving an adequate field guide.

Computer is about to run out of battery. My next task is to figure out the power outlets and adaptor.

Waiting

On Saturday I depart for Tanzania! 45 hours in transit. 8970 miles covered. 22.5 hours in Zurich, Switzerland. Whew!

I will be there until December 18 on a study abroad program called Ecology and Human Origins. I’ll be learning Swahili and taking classes at the University of Dar es Salaam (capital city), camping in the Serengeti plains while doing a 6 week independent research project (probably an anthropology project on the relationship between local people and plants/ecosystems), and then doing a homestay with a native family.

So in case you are unfamiliar, Tanzania is in East Africa, just south of the equator, bordered by Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Mozambique, Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika, and the Indian Ocean. It is a very peaceful, ethnically diverse country, home to the many wildlife conservation parks such as Serengeti National Park (think safaris), Africa’s highest peak Mt. Kilimanjaro, and famous archaeological sites Laetoli and Olduvai Gorge where the earliest evidence of hominids was found.

This week, in addition to packing, I’ve been reading a lot, trying to learn as much as I can about the country and the people and the history. This animal, the elephant shrew,  in the picture below? It’s closest relative is, you guessed it, AN ELEPHANT. Whoa.

Elephant shrew