Meet my co-worker....

So the other day, having missed UN transport again, as I was waiting on the side of the road for a dala dala, my co-worker Alfred stopped and gave me a lift. Alfred is Canadian, from Edmonton, and really one of the nicest people I have met here. He is also one of the coolest people I have met here, proof of which is that on another occasion when he picked me up on the way to work he was listening to Pet Shop Boys and then dropped his very beautiful three-year old daughter off at pre-school. His wife is here in Arusha finishing her PhD and working for the World Bank, with another baby at home. Alfred is on leave from the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Canada to work at the ICTR. In other words, in a few years time, I want his life.

Anyhoo, on this occasion we were chatting about how my internship is winding down and Alfred is going back to Canada for holidays. Here is a more or less accurate excerpt of our conversation:

J: So Alfred, when do you think you will go back to DOJ?
A: Well, I’m not sure. I might stay at the ICTR or I might take a job at UNICEF, my application there is being processed.
J: Oooooh! I love UNICEF!!!! (….J blabs on and on for several minutes about her personal love of UNICEF…)
A: (once J finally shuts up) Yes, well, since I was a child soldier and refugee, I really have a personal connection to UNICEF. They saved my life.
J: (stunned silence)
J: (in high-pitched voice) Alfred, where are you from originally??!?!
A: (laughs) Oh, just google me!

So I somehow managed to continue with more or less normal conversation until we arrived at our offices at which point I barged into the intern office and declared “Everyone! Alfred was a CHILD SOLDIER! We have to google him!” And this is what I discovered:

http://www.gordonfn.org/resfiles/Diaspora_Diaries/AOrono.htm

I have to say the thing that impressed me the most about this entire incident is that Alfred was very nonchalant about his incredible story (“Oh, just google me!”). He is also, despite having the international career every intern can only dream of, very nice and always treats the interns on the team as equals (as opposed to some intern horror stories I have heard, but luckily have not experienced). Although I have learned a whole very lot on my internship, I think one of the most important things for me is being able to meet people who are living the type of life I would love to live, and all of my team members with their amazing stories have been more than willing to share their experiences and advice with someone just barely starting out. That alone has been worth the initial agony (and on-going stress due to lack of decent toilet facilities) of my stay in Africa.

Modes of Transportation

Luckily, the area where I live (Kijenge, close to the Impala roundabout) is fairly close to town so I can walk to work, the pool/gym, and various restaurants. I soon learned from several sources, however, that the small bridge I have to cross in order to get to town has been dubbed “Muggers’ bridge” because men have been known to hide underneath and then jump out and grab a mzungu’s handbag, which soon took walking out of my Arusha modes of transportation.

Luckily (or unluckily) the UN provides craptacular transportation to and from work every day in a big UN bus or SUV, which arrives either 20 minutes late or 10 minutes early, so you either wait outside in the cold Arusha morning for half an hour, or miss the bus completely.

In the evenings it isn’t safe to be out walking in Arusha, so if I go out anywhere I have to call a cab. Taxis here are different from home in that they are more or less freelance. From what I understand, drivers have to be licensed with the city or something, but they own their own car and work for themselves, so I don’t call a taxi company, I just had to get the cell phone number of a good driver, call him, and hope he can come pick me up when I need picking-upping. I soon discovered the need for two drivers, someone who works during the day, and someone who works at night. On the topic of night drivers, we once made the mistake of not calling someone we knew and just grabbing a random driver outside Via Via, the local nightclub. I walked out of the gate in the lead and was immediately swallowed by a mob of taxi drivers all clamouring for me to get in their car (ok, maybe I wasn’t exactly swallowed by a mob, but that’s how it felt). We made it home ok, but never made that mistake again.

On the rare occasions that I am travelling across town by myself, my preferred mode of transportation is the motorcycle taxi. I first discovered the joys of motorcycle taxi when I was going to meet Marie and Kevin for church. There is a taxi stand up at the intersection of my road and the road leading to the chapel, not only with cars, but also bikes and motorcycles. I really wanted to try the bike taxi actually, but didn’t have that much faith in my own balance, Arusha drivers, or the bike taxi driver’s ability to haul me all the way to Mianzini. So the next coolest option (or possibly cooler option) was the motorcycle. It is quite a bit cheaper than a car and a whole lot more fun. After negotiating the price (which for me means asking how much they want and then saying ok), I clambered rather ungracefully skirt and all onto the back of the bike and away we went. Although this wasn’t the first time I had this realization, sitting on the back of a motorcycle reinforced the impression that everything I do as a white person in Arusha is highly entertaining to everyone around (i.e. mzungu on a motorcycle taxi, mzungu running to catch early UN transport, mzungu attempting to speak Swahili, and as you will see in a minute, mzungu riding a dala dala). On another occasion I randomly ran into a motorcycle, which may or may not have been a legitimate taxi, just outside my gate on the way to work (after missing UN transport) and so pulled up to the ICTR in style with my hair more or less blown dry to boot (my blow dryer functions very poorly, if at all, here).

The public transportation in Tanzania is called the dala dala and it is basically a 12 passenger van brightly decorated with pictures of Bob Marley and motivational phrases that make no sense like “God is One”. I learned that the owner of the dala dala rents it to the driver and the conductor for a certain fee every day and the profit is whatever remains from passenger fares after the cost of gas and the daily fee. There is no centralized dala dala system, meaning if I wanted to buy or rent a dala dala and start up a route I could, and to be honest you end up getting to where you want to go much faster on the dala dala than any organized public transportation I have taken. Since the driver and the conductor are trying to pay off their fee and make as much money as possible, they often drive on the sidewalk, create a third lane into incoming traffic, and/or cram in as many people as possible (I have counted up to 20). The conductor, who is really more of a hustler than anything else, hangs outside the window or open door calling out the name of the destination and trying to get people in the van. He then takes your money and bangs on the outside of the van or the ceiling (depending on how many people are inside) when it is time to stop. Usually I tell the hustler where I want to get off when I get in and then yell out “Shusha!” (stop) or “Hapa! ….Hapa!” (Here! ….Here!) when we arrive.

When I first got to Arusha I observed the dala dalas with a kind of fascination mixed with terror and thought that although it would be cool to try I would never get up the nerve to cram myself in a moving vehicle with that many people. Around the same time I learned the reputation of Mugger’s Bridge, however, I was also feeling quite gutsy and decided to give it a go. So on my way home from the gym I hopped into a relatively empty dala dala, figured out the payment and stop system and got out feeling totally elated. I also saved a considerable amount of money, considering that a taxi ride would have been about 2 dollars but the dala dala ride was less than 25 cents. Armed with my newfound independence, I soon took the dala dala again and this time got the full experience. As the dala dala swept towards me I noticed the hustler hanging outside the van hanging on to the door while inside was a tangle of bodies. I told him my stop and then was packed inside with my armpit in someone’s face, my feet hanging outside the edge of the van, and my head bent over at the ceiling. No one else seemed to mind the close proximity, although they all stared at me with the same general amusement of seeing a mzungu doing anything. (Actually, the only sign of annoyance I have ever gotten from someone in a dala dala was when I was just coming back from the pool and my wet hair kept dripping on the person in the seat I was hunched over... which I suppose is perfectly valid). It was the day after Michael Jackson died so appropriately “Don’t stop till you get enough” was blaring on the radio and everyone was sort of bobbing along to the music. It was really a great moment.

The final mode of transportation I have experienced (still haven’t gotten up the courage for a bike taxi) is the day Jeannine learned to drive in Africa. Nicolas, who I met in Arusha and have been dating for a little while now (proper introduction in future post), owns a car here and for one reason or another decided it would be a good idea to give it to me for the day (as a side note, Nicolas is a pilot so I am gunning for “Flying Across Africa” as another future post… keep your fingers crossed for me). So off I went in the car from Sakine to Arusha with absolutely no conception of how close I was to the side of the road seeing as Tanzanians drive on the left. This left-handed driving also resulted in me turning on the windshield wipers when attempting to turn-signal seeing as everything on the car is backwards. Often, however, finding the side of the road isn’t really an issue since it is occupied anyway by people walking, people biking, dala dalas trying to pull in front of you, donkeys with loads of sugar cane on their backs, and my personal favourite, people pulling large pieces of furniture in wheelbarrows. By the time I got to the one traffic light in Arusha I more or less had the hang of it and even managed to smoothly navigate Arusha’s many roundabouts and block out dala dala drivers driving alongside me in made-up lanes

By the end of the day I was pretty confident and awfully proud of myself, which is exactly when it immediately became pitch black due to the fact that for some reason dusk lasts about 60 seconds in Arusha (maybe the sun sets behind Mount Meru?). Street lamps here are only located right in the downtown so the drive out to Sakine in the dark involved hitting lots of speed bumps at high speeds, almost hitting various people on foot or bike, and then finally pulling over into a gas station and calling Nicolas in hysterics because I couldn’t find the dirt lane that is his street. After getting directions I promptly pulled out in front of a dala dala, which honked aggressively at me, and turned on the wipers instead of the turn signal again. I managed to make it home without any further incidents, however, which completed my baptism by fire into an experienced African driver.

Church

After about 5 weeks of non-church attendance I was beginning to feel like a big sinner. Luckily there are two other ICTR Mormons, Marie and Kevin, and Marie served a mission in Zimbabwe before law school, so she has this sort of holy sixth sense for finding church in Africa. (Marie and I actually knew each other at BYU through Model UN and a million common friends and then found each other in Tanzania!). So one Sunday all three of us met at one of the intersections in town and we headed up a dirt path through a very African neighbourhood towards the Mormon church building. After a few minutes Marie commented that we had a following, and I turned around to see about four small children tailing along behind us excitedly, one pushing a little wheel with a stick, and all whispering “Mzungu!” amongst themselves. We smiled and waved at which point they exploded into giggles and we walked the rest of the way to a chorus of small voices chanting “How Are Youuuu? How Are Youuu?”

The church was founded in Arusha about 10 months ago and the only members were the branch president, who is Kenyan, and his family. Sacrament meeting attendance now averages about 70 people per week, so it is growing quite fast. The church building is a nice little house where everyone crams into the living room for Sacrament meeting and Sunday school (I once sat with a sink in my back) and Relief Society is in one of the bedrooms. As soon as we walked in the gate, everyone was greeting us and shaking our hands and introducing themselves. The first thing I noticed, and which Marie told me is a pan-African phenomenon in the LDS church, is that the women and children were all sitting in their own little section of the room. Apparently this is a cultural norm that the church has been trying (not quite successfully) to eliminate in order to encourage families to sit together. To be honest, there weren’t many women to speak of. We asked the missionaries later why that was and they explained it is partially due to the fact that women are not as educated as men and thus less likely to speak English (all church services are in English, with Swahili translation to clarify important points such as date and time of branch activities), but mainly because when they go street contacting, it is only men they meet out on the street, since women generally tend to be at home (and I must admit, one of the first things I noticed about Tanzania is the large number of idle men standing around on the streets).

Despite the very bizarre circumstances, it felt really nice to be back at church and to hear the familiar hymns, which were all too low for me to sing because there is no piano and an Elder missionary gives the pitch. About one minute before the meeting, the BP asked Marie if she would be one of the speakers because the assigned speaker was not there. (Poor Marie! …but she did a really good job). During Sunday School, which is the Gospel Principles class since basically everyone there is a new member, Marie acquired a new friend, 4 year-old Talitha. When Sunday School was over, I was shooed out of the room because this was where Priesthood was meeting and heaven forbid a woman should linger in the Priesthood room (again, gender segregation in Africa). The funniest part is that 4 year-old Talitha was also shooed out of the room with Marie and me because her mother wasn’t there that day and it would somehow be unacceptable for a small girl to go to Priesthood as well.

Relief Society was only about 5 women, all of whom were very friendly. As soon as I sat down, one member of the Presidency asked me to teach a lesson for them one Sunday and soon after Marie and I had been volunteered to teach the monthly Enrichment meeting. (Another Sunday Marie was again asked, or more or less told, with about 1 minute notice to teach the RS lesson… poor Marie again!).

After RS we were invited to stay for a baptism and we acquired another small friend, Talitha’s sister Jeannine (I’m sure she doesn’t spell it that way, but it is pronounced the same) who is 8 years old. We made our introductions (Jeannine meet Jeannine), after which she immediately latched onto my hand for the next hour and a half. The baptism service was really beautiful and when it came time for the actual baptism, we all headed outside the house to find a huge water canister with a small step ladder leading up to it being filled with a garden hose. The very brave men being baptized stepped into what must have been freezing water while everyone watching sort of giggled. (One of the things I love about church in Africa is that everyone giggles when something awkward happens and there is no sort of forced pious reverence.)

We walked home afterwards accompanied part of the way by the two girls and their father, Spear, who had to keep explaining to them in Swahili that we were not coming to live at their house. I really love the walk from church because we go through very African neighbourhoods where mzungus are a novelty and children follow us along like paparazzi. One other Sunday as we were walking we heard quite a loud “HELLO!!!” from across the street and turned to see a very small boy sitting bare bum on his potty outside the house and waving at us cheerily. That was very very cute. Although I don’t make it to church here very often since weekends are prime travelling time, meeting the members in Arusha and seeing how Mormonism thrives in a place that couldn’t be more opposite to where it is centred has been one of the coolest experiences I have had.

To market, to market

About one month after my arrival in Arusha I went to the grocery store around the corner (not the Stop and Shop: Convenient Store, but another one) and discovered cake mix. It could be that it just happened to be one of the first days I wasn’t feeling quite so depressed anymore, or it could just be that one month in Africa made me disproportionately happy about seeing anything Western because cake mix normally doesn’t have this much of an effect on me. But I was really, really excited to see this cake mix. So I brought it home along with all the ingredients for frosting intent on making a cake. It then occurred to me that I don’t have an oven in my apartment, but the girls downstairs have one, so I was only momentarily deterred. The next obstacle, however, was the fact that I didn’t have a cake pan. So the next morning, I set out resolutely with Elizabeth in tow, to the central market to find a pan.

We walked through Arusha avoiding the usual calls of “Mzungu!”, people following us, and stepping in garbage until we arrived at the centre of town. I was quite proud of myself at this point for remembering how to say “Sokoine wapi?” (i.e. Where is the market?) but was too scared to actually say it to anyone so I made Elizabeth do it (and of course the guy she asked answered in Swahili so we had no idea what he said and had to ask someone else directions in English, but still, at the time it was a breakthrough moment).

As soon as we stepped inside it was all I could do to not vomit and/or cry. The smell of… I really don’t know, was so overpowering I couldn’t stand it. All of a sudden we were squished in a narrow little path between rows and rows of shacks with people crowded all around us yelling “Rafiki!” (friend) and “Mzungu!” and grabbing onto my clothes. At arms length on one side was a man scaling fish, while directly in front of us was a bike with 5 or so live, squawking, flapping chickens just strapped onto the back like luggage. One chicken ran out in front of us and a man grabbed it by the wing and hauled it back to the pen. One man tried to become our “market guide” and began leading us to different stalls. He showed us one where a Maasai medicine man was selling traditional remedies, which was really cool, but by this point we knew that the self-appointed guide would just get us ripped off and then expect a big tip for it at the end, so we told him to leave us alone about twenty times before finally just running away when he wasn’t looking.

I soon found what I thought I was looking for, a kitchen ware store, but they didn’t seem to have any cake pans. The owner attempted to sell me some sort of tin bowl insisting I could bake a cake in it, but I was too excited about this cake mix to risk it in a sketchy pot. Finally we found a place with real pans. The fact that I am white and fairly unassertive is bad enough, but the guy at the stall knew from the stars in my eyes when I first saw the cupcake pan that I wasn’t going anywhere without it. So when I asked how much the pan the guy looked at me and totally straight faced said 30,000 Tsh (25 USD). This wasn’t quite as bad as the 90,000 Tsh sandals, but still, no pan costs $25. So we began the arduous process of me saying I wasn’t going to pay that and him calling me sister and his best customer and asking me to give him my “final price” or my “serious price” and each time I told him a price he would tell me it was too low and ask me to give him my “final price” again. I finally bought the stupid pan for 12,000 Tsh (still overpriced, but whatever) and was one step closer to Betty Crocker cupcakes.

Next we stumbled across an old Maasai woman selling beaded jewellery the Maasai wear so of course I stopped and so did half of people in the market, all of whom were following us around. As I looked at the necklaces, more self-appointed guides started picking them up to show me, so that if I picked the one they had chosen the woman would have to give them a commission. The old Maasai lady was having none of it and pushed all of the men down until they finally backed off. I half-heartedly tried to bargain with her, but she was so awesome and the necklace was only about 2 USD anyway, so I just paid what she asked.

We then walked past some fabric shops with lines of men and women sitting at sewing machines outside and I made a mental note to get something loud and African sewn for me. We also saw stacks and stacks of spices of all kinds and bought some nice tomatoes for Nicole.

At this point I hit my limit and had to go back to my apartment to watch HBO and forget I was in Africa for the rest of the day. All in all, however, it was more or less a success, although I have to admit that after all of that trouble I was so exhausted that I still haven’t actually made the cupcakes.

Safari II

After our successful trek to Tarangire, most of the members of our group decided to plan another excursion, this time to Mount Meru in Arusha National Park. Meru hovers over Arusha and is the fifth highest mountain in Africa. It is actually not much smaller than Kilimanjaro, despite its comparative anonymity and is green and rainforested, as opposed to the barren slopes of Kili. We started off painfully early once again and it was interesting to notice that heading northeast of Arusha provided us with a spectacular green and lush landscape of banana trees and coffee plantations, which was in stark contrast to the barren steppes of Maasai land just southwest of the city.

It was cold, foggy, and rainy for a good part of the morning, which is partially due to the fact that here in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but mostly due to the altitude. Our driver instructed us to pray for sun so that we could get a view of Kilimanjaro from Meru at which point everyone in the car turned to look at me. Whether due to my prayers or not, it cleared up after an hour or so, although disappointingly, the snow-capped peak of Kili remained hidden by clouds the entire day.

Our initial plan was simply to get dropped off at the park entrance and spend the day hiking, but the park is quite a bit bigger than we had expected and so we spent a good part of the morning driving at practically a 90 degree angle up the mountain. The highlight of the drive was seeing this crazy monkey that had such long furry arms they looked like wings. Winged monkeys are definitely my new favourite! We also drove through a tree, if you can imagine a tree big enough that there was a gap in the trunk that would fit a Landrover (and if you can’t don’t worry I took a picture), and saw several small waterfalls.

Once we got about halfway up the mountain, we got dropped off and met up with our mandatory guide, who was this petite and very pretty Tanzanian woman dressed in green army fatigues, combat boots, and carrying a rifle. There are no predators in Arusha National Park except for the very rare leopard, but the gun is necessary just in case some animal gets out of hand. Supposedly hiking up Meru is even more challenging than Kilimanjaro; however, hiking down Meru (ok, half-way down), was actually quite easy. The view was really spectacular and we stopped to eat our picnic lunch looking across the plains at small villages all the way over to Kili. At this point everyone made fun of me for carrying a full jar of nutella along with me on the hike, but the snide comments were soon replaced with friendly requests to dip bread, cookies, utensils, and whatever else available in the jar. Don’t diss the nutella. Near the bottom we saw a huge spectacular waterfall and then managed to walk fairly closely over to some giraffes. Once they saw us coming they all sort of stood up and loped away, admittedly probably scared away by my bright red McGill Law sweater (remember I lost my track jacket to Mr. P, as mentioned in the First Week post, so this was all I had), but it was still really neat to see them so close.

After a few hours we met up with our car and driver once again and since we still had some time he took us around the lakes, which are all volcanic and this pretty blue-green colour. This was probably the highlight because they were so beautiful and full of pink flamingos! I once again got to experience my favourite African feeling of sitting on the roof of the safari truck and even spotted three giraffe on top of an enormous mountain peak in the distance. And to top it all off, on the way out of the park we saw quite a few super cute monkeys. Despite being dead tired and coated in dirt, it was another perfect African day.

Furry winged monkey! I don't know why this picture loaded green...

The tree

Starting our hike

The view at lunch. Kili came out from the clouds somewhat

The waterfall

I know this is a bad picture of me, but LOOK HOW CLOSE I AM TO THE GIRAFFES!

Our guide with her big gun and I

Flamingos!

Giraffe on top of the mountain

Judgement

Not too long ago the ICTR was abuzz with news that the judgement in the Kalimanzira Case was about to be delivered, so pretty much everyone headed down to Courtroom I for the verdict. Some other interns and I arrived early and so we had front row seats in the public gallery right in front of the defence table. The ICTR courtrooms are actually quite small and crappy and the public gallery is long and narrow and separated from the courtroom by glass windows although everyone in the gallery can see in and everyone in the courtroom can see out.

The highest penalty at the ICTR is life in prison, as the UN is anti-capital punishment. This is actually one of the reasons the international community refuses to hand the remaining cases over to the Rwandan government, as Rwanda still uses the death penalty. Life is reserved for those most responsible for planning and orchestrating the genocide and for those who planned but also executed with particular enthusiasm. Additionally, the ICTR created the precedent in international criminal law of including rape as a crime against humanity and a tool of genocide. Kalimanzira had been charged with genocide and conspiracy to commit genocide and as the judgement was read, it became apparent that he had not won his case. It actually wasn’t until the court asked him to rise and hear their verdict that I realized I had been sitting directly in front of Kalimanzira the whole time.

I don’t know what this says about me as a person, but as soon as I made this realization and the man stood to hear his sentence, I did not feel excitement, righteous satisfaction that justice was being done, or even interest. Instead I had goose bumps all over and felt an overwhelming desire to be anywhere other than that public gallery. I was embarrassed to be sitting watching the determination of this man’s fate become a public spectacle. It was like he was an animal in the zoo and all of the people at the ICTR with nothing better to do that day came to see the rare (or maybe not so rare) species called génocidaire.

More than anything else, I felt sorry for Kalimanzira. I am aware that Kalimanzira is responsible for the deaths of at least thousands of people, but all I could think of was the guilt I have felt in times when I did something I knew was wrong, and the pain of the ensuing consequences, and obviously I have never done anything nearly as bad as orchestrating the extermination of a people. Maybe I was just emotional that day, but I feel like having to live with all of that guilt on his conscience is far worse punishment than anything the UN or “international community,” represented I suppose in that moment by the small gathering of mainly Western interns in the public gallery, could ever mete out.

Don’t get me wrong; I chose to do an internship at the ICTR, and in the Office of the Prosecutor in particular, for a reason. And I believe in fighting impunity and seeking justice and sending a message and everything else the ICTR attempts, and often succeeds, at doing. I guess it was just the first time I realized that what happens at the tribunal is not just an academic exercise like a term paper or an exam question. The lives of hundreds of thousands of dead Rwandans, and hundreds of thousands more who are scarred emotionally and physically, and the rights of all human beings who deserve to live without fearing the consequences of their own ethnicity, are weighted against the lives and freedom of a handful of other human beings who did terrible things. Yet somehow, my gut reaction was still to feel bad for one of those very bad human beings.

Kalimanzira as the judgement was read

Ninajaribu kusema Kiswahili (…I think this means, I try to speak Swahili)

So the first indication that my Swahili skills are not quite up to par is the fact that the name of my blog: muzungu diaries, should actually be spelled mzungu diaries. Oops. And apparently mzungu does not actually mean “white person,” but the literal translation is “traveller”. It just so happens that most of the noticeable travellers in Tanzania are white people, thus “white person” and “traveller” in Swahili have become synonymous.

Although most people here speak some English, I am surprised at how often I am misunderstood or feel unable to communicate. More than simply being frustrating, not understanding the language can also be scary. I noticed this soon after I arrived as my taxi driver Edward was stopped by armed soldiers on our way out of the airport. Of course they conversed in Swahili and while I’m sure they were probably just saying “Hey Edward, how was your day? You must make good money driving those mzungus who get abandoned by the UN to and from the airport” for all I knew they were saying “Drive the mzungu abandoned by the UN over there so we can slit her throat and take all the money from the money belt she is trying to hide under her pants.”

My next must-learn-Swahili moment occurred soon after I moved into my new apartment when I went to the “Stop and Shop: Convenient Store” next to my house to buy groceries. I asked the guy stocking the shelves if he knew where the matches were and he stared at me blankly. So then I start repeating the word “Matches. Matches? Matches!” and attempting to make a lighting a match hand gesture like the silly mzungu I am. Finally he referred me to the lady at the counter who said “He doesn’t speak English” and then asked him in Swahili to go get me some matches. I was totally embarrassed, and couldn’t wait to get out of there and curl up into a miserable ball of non-Swahili speaking shame, but when he came back with my matches and said something which to me was unintelligible, the lady who was at this point packing my groceries into bags said, “He told me to double bag it for you do it doesn’t break. You see you have made a new friend here.”

Even despite these thoughts, I did intend to learn Swahili before I arrived, so I signed up for the free classes offered by the UN at lunch time. Our teacher, Almasi, is a very cute person and very patient with our complete inability to pronounce anything because despite the fact that Swahili is a phonetic language, basically every second letter is an m or a w or a string of consonants. It’s also a language where the pronoun, the negative and all sorts of other things, rather than being expressed by a different word, are just strung along onto what is called the verb stem. So while “kwenda” means “to go” “ninakwenda” means “I go” or “I am going”. I think the best example of why this makes Swahili difficult to learn and makes me feel rather ridiculous is the word “kumbuke” which means to remember and by itself does not make me feel so ridiculous, but if I want to say “I did not remember you” it becomes “sikukukumbuke.” Yeah.

Our second favourite taxi driver, Peter, has also become our surrogate Swahili teacher and is somewhat obsessed with forcing us to speak Swahili and scolding us when we speak to him in English. We later discovered that he is actually a teacher who took up cab driving because it was more lucrative, which might explain the no-English rule and scolding. I nearly lost it at one point when I got in the cab tired and late for work and said “Hello” to him in English, to which he replied “I think you are not so serious about learning Swahili.” It did the trick, however, and so I made a point of learning to say “You are late” in Swahili as my private revenge.

Despite my regular attendance in class, I have to admit my conversation has not progressed much past general greetings. Lucky for me, however, Almasi informed us that in Tanzania, people will often greet each other for approximately one-half hour, so I actually have a half-hour’s worth of conversation under my belt. I have also mastered useful words like "wikendi" (weekend) and "checki" (check). And at the very least, I can now enter the Stop and Shop with pride and ask my new friend “Habari?” (How are you?”) and respond “Nzuri” (Good) when he asks me the same thing. I still, however, do not know how to ask for matches.

Almasi and I after class. Please don't judge my appearance... half the time I don't even have power...

Update

So, just as a brief update to the microwave panties post, yesterday I put my underwear in the microwave and they CAUGHT on FIRE and the elastic melted and my apartment smelled like burnt rubber. Sometimes I hate Africa.

Safari I

Upon discovering that weekends in Arusha are depressing beyond belief, some other interns and I concluded that aside from leaving Tanzania altogether, going on safari was the only viable anti-depressant. So one Sunday six of us pooled together to hire a Landrover and guide and headed to Tarangire National Park. We got off to a typically African start with the guide arriving about 40 minutes later than planned and discovering upon our payment that he needed to change our Tsh for USD because apparently the “national” parks don’t accept the national currency. So after another stop at the bureau de change and yet another to fill the gas tank (at this point, Chloe, who had spent 40 minutes waiting outside in the rain for the guide to arrive, commented “What, is he going to get a haircut next?” to which Nicole replied “No, he already got one on the way to get us”) we were on our way.

Tarangire is about 120 km southwest of Arusha and although Arusha is very lush and green on the foot of Mount Meru, to get to Tarangire we drove through the slightly barren Maasai Steppes. It was still incredible scenery, and although I see members of the Maasai tribe all over Arusha (including in nightclubs, well… nightclub might be a strong word, in full-on traditional garb) it was really breathtaking to see them on their traditional lands herding cattle and goats across the plains and the little groupings of thatched roof huts of their villages.

We made one pit stop along the way at which I dutifully headed to the “bathroom” and upon seeing, or rather, smelling the definition of “African toilet” I immediately returned to the car. This was my day for learning that putting the adjective “Africa/n” before a word is used to warn the mzungu to lower or eliminate all expectations. So “African toilet” generally means “smelly hole in the ground”, “Africa time” means “at least one half hour after you were supposed to be somewhere” (as demonstrated by our safari guide) and “African road” means “unpaved dirt path one can only really drive on with a Landrover or other vehicle that is looked down on in Canada for being environmentally unfriendly”.

Despite the nice scenery on the Arusha-Tarangire drive, I was sunburned to the point that wearing clothing was causing a great deal of pain, coming down with a awful cold, and just feeling generally low (which the fact that it was cloudy and I have an extreme case of self-diagnosed seasonal affective disorder (SAD) was not helping). Once we arrived in the park, however, all of that was forgotten. Our guide lifted the roof of the car so that we could stand with our heads sticking out the top for better viewing. I am ashamed to admit that most of my pre-two-weeks-ago African wildlife references come from the Lion King, but I am pleased to say that Disney did not disappoint. Tarangire looks a lot like the pridelands, despite the fact that we did not see any simbas, which in Swahili actually means “lion” (see, I told you Disney did not disappoint). The trees are those cool umbrella-shaped acacias and baobabs, which I had previously only ever seen illustrated in Le Petit Prince. I bought a new camera before I left which gave me some really awesome close-up shots of the animals, so shout out to the Canon PowerShot SX110 and to the 18 year old guy with braces at Circuit City who knew nothing about cameras, but managed to sell this one to me nonetheless. The first animal I spotted was an antelope, which is pretty cool, but then all of a sudden right in front of us about 20 million feet high and eating off of trees were GIRAFFES!!!! We saw so many zebras that by the end of the day they began to get annoying (although the little ones are really cute) and spotted families of elephants from afar. I even saw a bird that looks just like Zazu, some ostriches (with heads in and out of the ground) and various other less exciting animals like wildebeests, warthogs, and buffalo.

We stopped for lunch on a cliff with a spectacular view of the park and I had heard from other interns that at this place, often monkeys will come try to snatch your food. Anyone who knows me knows how excited I was at this prospect and anyone who knows my mother knows that she somehow, in her well-intentioned way, managed to pray all of the monkeys away, so we didn’t actually see any. I was pretty disappointed about this, but we still had the afternoon for my goal of seeing a monkey and an elephant up-close.

After lunch I discovered the joy of sitting on the roof of the safari vehicle and I have to say that being up there in the wind with a 180 degree view of the park gliding past and that Africa smell I first experienced when I landed at the airport, I felt like I was flying. It was the first time I felt really happy since I arrived. My safari dreams were then realized as a whole troupe of probably fifty baboons sauntered over to where we had stopped the car and crossed the road right behind us. The males were actually quite big, and I hear aggressive as well, so I was glad there had been no lunch-snatching, but they were really super cute to watch. The little ones would scamper around everywhere and then get lazy and ride on a bigger one’s back. We also saw some other monkeys, although I don’t know which kind, climbing around in the trees and generally being bad. The best moment, however, was just as we crossed the river in our Landrover, we came very close to a herd of elephants making their way slowly past. I literally felt my heart catch. They were so majestic and so beautiful.

On the way home we drove through a Maasai village at market time and the car was immediately swarmed with people shoving necklaces and bracelets through the windows. Being the sucker that I am I nearly got stuck with a handful of jewellery (new lesson: don’t look, don’t touch), but it was really awesome to see. By the end of that day I felt like maybe I could understand how someone could fall in love with Africa. (Still not quite sure, but maybe).

Feeling colonialist

Being a white person in Africa is definitely a strange experience. I obviously became aware of this early on, considering that as soon as I stepped off the plane people started harassing me to take their taxis (see post 2), buy things from them (see post 3), marry them and take them to Canada/America with me (potential future post), etc. A few experiences, however, have been particularly off-putting.

When I first arrived at my guesthouse, the gatekeeper carried my extremely heavy suitcase up the stairs on his back (see post 3). [As a side note, when he asked me why my bag was so heavy, I responded that my husband was inside. No one laughed, however, so I deduced that either i) the joke was lost in translation ii) Swahili culture does not get sarcasm or iii) that despite my best efforts, I am not very funny.] Anyway, considering that carrying this bag was quite the task, I gave him a 1USD tip. He seemed happy, and I was happy. A few days later I came in late and was groping my way up the staircase in the dark when he sidled up beside me out of nowhere and said, “Do you have a thousand shillings for me?” (1,000 Tsh = about 0.70 USD). I was totally scared out of my wits and said “No I don’t have any.” To which he responded “US dollars are ok too.” Got to hand it to the guy for being versatile, but being approached and straight up asked for money by someone made me feel super uncomfortable with my “status”.

Another time, I was standing on the curb waiting to cross the street when a group of girls in their school uniforms came down the sidewalk behind me. One of the bigger ones shot her hand out as she passed and touched my hair, which apparently emboldened the others as they all started touching my hair when they walked by too. That was actually pretty cute.

Soon after I arrived, a couple of South African hunters (see post 3) took me out around Arusha and to their home base in Usa River for the day. The trip to and from Usa was really beautiful as we passed rows of people walking and biking down the road past banana and coffee plantations. The women were all dressed in colourful cloth with huge burdens of everything imaginable (water, sacks of rice, bundles of clothing) on their heads and then men were often herding goats, cows, or donkeys. We saw rows of small brick shanties with corrugated metal roofs that housed everything from barber shops to restaurants to butchers to churches to family dwellings. I was really happy to get this glimpse of real Africa, despite the small regret that it was from the back of a Landrover with a local driver up front and guns in the back seat.

This twinge of regret was blown away by how I felt when we arrived at the TGT. TGT stands for Tanzania Game and hunting something or other and is basically a big old-fashioned white boys’ country club. The grounds are absolutely stunning with tennis courts, golf course, etc. and when I walked up to the bar it was exclusively white South Africans and other ex-pats watching rugby. The only black people in sight were serving drinks and our own driver, who is black, sat in the car and waited for several hours while we had drinks and watched the game (which, by the way, I found super boring, but was somehow meaningful to the South Africans watching their local team rise above adversity and beat the English).

I think the worst part is that I always feel somewhat relieved and more comfortable in a situation like that than I do trying to make my way around like a local in Arusha. In Canada I would never just waltz into a country club or luxury hotel and hang out in their lobby or garden, sit by their pool, or join their gym (well let’s be honest, I would never normally join any gym for any reason anyway, but I was super bored), but here the fact that I am white means that no one blinks an eye when I do these things, and I find myself quite often needing to do these things because I find the poverty and the sheer enormity of the difference of being in Tanzania to be overwhelming. I guess the good news is the longer I am here the less often I feel that need and the less patience I have for white people here who act like it still is a colony. Just don’t take away my satellite TV.

Work

All of the difficulties aside, I absolutely LOVE my internship! I was assigned to an appeals team (ALAD) in the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) (note the UN’s excessive use of acronyms). My two supervisors are the team leader and her senior advisor, who are Swedish and Canadian women, respectively. They are both really amazing, super competent women. (Yesterday I watched them take on a whole room of men criticizing their brief and they basically took them all down. It was awesome.) They are both also very nice, make me feel a part of the team, are always open for questions, and actually ask for and respect my input. They are also both mothers of young children and happily married career women, which makes me think that maybe being a woman lawyer does not necessarily preclude having some sort of personal life.

Right now we are working on an appeal for the Zigiranyirazo case. Ziggy is the brother-in-law of the assassinated Rwandan President Habyarimana and was an integral member of the akazu, which was the clique of Hutu political elites in Rwanda who planned and orchestrated the genocide. (As a creepy side note, just a few years before the genocide occurred, he was studying in Montreal and apparently had an altercation with a Tutsi man in the Montreal metro.) At trial he was found guilty of genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity, and not guilty of conspiracy to commit genocide, complicity in genocide, and murder as a crime against humanity. He was sentenced to 20 years.

The interesting thing about the ICTR trials is that the prosecutor can’t just get up and say “This person planned and was involved in the genocide” and then tell the story of what happened in Rwanda. The accused needs to be charged with specific crimes related to specific events during the genocide (for example, the massacre of several thousand Tutsi at one particular location on one particular day) and then needs to provide evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused was involved. This is why, for example, Ziggy could be found guilty of genocide but not of conspiracy to commit genocide, because although basically everyone knows he conspired, the prosecution couldn’t provide enough evidence to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that he attended meetings where the genocide was planned. The trial becomes very technical, and can hinge on small details like what he did or did not say at a certain roadblock at a specific time.

Both the prosecution and the defence appealed this decision and since I have arrived I have been helping with the response to the defence’s appellant brief. Since I am working in appeals, I mostly look at previous ICTR and ICTY (Y = Yugoslavia) judgements to find legal arguments against the defence position. This is really interesting from an international criminal law point of view, and is good practice in legal research and argumentation.

Since appeals tend to be bigger picture issues, however, sometimes it is easy to forget I am working on a genocide case at all. A fellow intern, who works in defence at the trial level, on the other hand, spent a whole day reading witness statements from a young girl who had had both of her arms cut off, and basically broke down at the end of the day. So from a mental health point of view, my assignment is very fortunate, but I find I need to remind myself just how awful the crimes people like Ziggy committed in order to “stay hungry” as the Chief Prosecutor Hassan Jallow put it.

It would also be pretty cool to get sent on a fact-finding mission to Rwanda as a couple of lucky interns at the trial level have been able to do. One intern told me about interviewing a witness on the side of the road as he pretended to give them directions so that he wouldn’t be seen talking to ICTR people. (I edited out the rest of this post because I probably write too much...)

Getting started

I figure it’s about time I talk a little a bit about the reason I am here: my internship. The fact that I had been abandoned at the airport and that I received no answer to my frequent email requests to begin working a few days early (I wanted to beat the rush of interns, and to be honest, I was pretty bored) made me a wee bit nervous, so when I showed up at the visitor’s entrance to the ICTR I was pretty relieved that the guard told me I was expected. The internship coordinator Felicia took me to get my UN ID badge and then escorted me to the Office of the Prosecutor (which is actually several floors of a building, not one office) for my assignment.

I’m not sure if it’s the UN or Africa (probably actually a combination of both), but getting started was extremely slow and complicated. To get my assignment I had to talk to one person, but to get my computer I had to talk to someone else, and to get a computer log-in I had to talk to yet another person, etc. etc. and everything has to be done in a particular order (i.e. before you get your computer you have to get a log-in), but no one really tells you what you need to do, who you need to talk to in order to do it, or where those people are, and if you do manage to find their office, they probably aren’t there anyway. Some other interns arrived before I did so they helped me through the process, but I still spent a few days without an assignment, then with an assignment but with no computer, then with a computer but it didn’t work, and even now sometimes I don’t have all of the programs I need and everything is more or less 2 small steps forward and one big step back. The comforting part is that everyone is in more or less the same boat so we try to have a sense of humour about it. One girl I work with quipped that EDP, which is the UN tech department, stands for “Everything Doesn’t Perform” and another, noting that the elevator doors are the doors of death and are always shutting abruptly on people, said “They are the only thing that works fast here.” And one day the fire alarm went off, but rather than being alarmed we were all giggling uncontrollably because no one was really surprised that the ICTR would, with all of its other malfunctions, catch on fire. (Turns out it was just a fire drill and that we need to reduce our exit time from 12 to 3 minutes). To be honest, I shouldn’t complain because I was more or less set up in three or four days, whereas some of the interns who came later than me were waiting weeks for a computer.

All of this, however, has made me realize that just the enormity of the UN is probably the main reason that it hasn’t always (ok, usually) been successful at solving the world’s problems. Being down at the bottom of the enormous UN totem pole (unpaid interns don’t rank very high), I now have a much better grasp of just how hard it is when something goes wrong to pinpoint who exactly is responsible or, at the very least, who to complain to. I did consider calling up Ban Ki Moon if my internship goes awry, but somehow I don’t think this would be effective as I’m sure he has more important things to deal with, like civil wars, AIDS, denouncing Israel, etc.

Microwave Panties

So I feel the need to qualify my last post before everyone assumes I am living a life of luxury and can’t really claim to be having an African experience with amenities like satellite TV. Yes, I have satellite, but seeing as the power goes out for extended periods about 3 times a week, I’m not really watching satellite television most of the time. Plus, most of the channels are in Hindi and Afrikaans. As proof of this, I once watched the same Ellen episode three times in two days. Luxury schmluxury.

My first night at the new apartment I was woken up in the middle of the night by the strangest and creepiest wailing sound I had ever heard and as per usual, curled up into a miserable ball wishing whatever it was would stop. Turns out I live near the local mosque and it was the (daily) 5am call to prayer.

And despite the fact that the maid picks up my dirty laundry and brings it back washed and pressed, for some unknown reason, they will not take my underwear. They take men’s boxers, since it is on the laundry list, but when I crossed out men’s and put women’s all I got was a pile of unwashed underwear back on the bed. Considering all of the other amenities I have it doesn’t really bother me to wash my own underwear, so I took it all in stride. I am slightly uncomfortable when all of the neighbours shamelessly watch me hang rows of panties on the clothesline, probably assuming I am some sort of western prostitute, but whatever.

The problem, however, is that apparently, when one hangs clothes to dry in Tanzania, there is some sort of insect that will lay eggs in them. Then, once the clothing comes into contact with the person, the heat from the body causes the eggs to hatch UNDER ONE’S SKIN. This is probably the most disgusting thing I have ever heard. The only solution is thus to expose one’s clothing to high heats which kills the eggs. So once a week or so the neighbours shamelessly watch me take in my underwear off the clothesline and then I stick it all in the microwave. What a place.

Living

Not that I checked, but I’m pretty sure there is no Craigslist Arusha, so by the end of the first week I was becoming a bit concerned about finding a place to live. Additionally only one phone number actually worked on our list of potential landlords. I had been in touch with another intern, Saswati, from Toronto and we had agreed to live together, so I told the lone landlord, Mr. A, she and I would tentatively move in to a place of his that weekend, subject to her approval.

The house was located in Njiro, about 15 minutes outside Arusha on a dirt road. There were dead flies all over the concrete floors, roaches in the kitchen, and unidentifiable grime all over everything. And all for the low low price of 300 USD a month (plus electricity, plus maid, plus the cost of sheets, pillows, mosquito net, etc.). So we turned it down, thankfully, since one of the interns who did decide to move in now has like leprosy or some other weird type of illness.

The problem was we now had absolutely no idea where to live. As we were lamenting our fate in the back seat of the taxi and contemplating simply driving back to the airport (I did have all my luggage in the trunk after all), our taxi driver/guardian angel, Moses (how appropriate), began driving around to various apartment complexes and asking the gate keepers if they had any vacancies. We finally struck gold at a full-service building that had one vacant studio and one vacant one-bedroom in the same apartment block.

Saswati, upon discovering that the manager is Indian, put all of her negotiation and brown skills to use calling up “Auntie-ji” and informing her we were poor students with nowhere to go. We finally agreed upon a price and Saswati, another intern Elizabeth, and I had a place to live that includes all dishes, sheets, towels, mosquito nets, as well as microwaves, satellite TV (with about 1 million brown channels), daily maid service, and in-house laundry. I even have my own little balcony perfect for reading and we are within walking distance to the ICTR and next door to a grocery store and a luxury hotel with restaurant and pool. As I walked up to my little studio for the first time I saw a cute Indian family playing cricket in the courtyard and thought, thanks to Moses, Elizabeth, and Saswati, how glad I was to finally have a place to call home.

First Week

Morning comes early in Arusha, partly because they don’t have daylight savings so the sun rises at like 6 am, but also because dogs, roosters, cleaning ladies, and African dance radio don’t really grasp the concept of sleeping in. So despite the fact that I had prayed I would not awake in this place, that I was sick and hadn’t really slept in a over a week, and had no idea what to do with myself when I awoke, awake I did. The fact that I had promised to inform my parents that I was still alive was the only thing that pushed me to get out of bed rather than hiding under the covers and wishing I was dead (well that and the fact that I was still trying hard not to touch anything, including the covers).

I asked the hotel owner, let’s call him Mr. P, if I could get a taxi to town and he gave me a weird look and told me I could walk. He took me to the end of the road and gave me vague directions to get to the city centre. Considering the state of the roads outside Arusha it was more of a hike than a walk, but luckily I was wearing my trusty moccasins. This came back to bit me in the ass exactly 2 minutes later when I reached the main road and men began yelling “Muzungu!” (white person) “Hey Muzungu eye liiike youuuur shooooes!” and “Cowgirl!”. As became a regular occurrence whenever I walked anywhere alone, a random guy started walking along and talking to me all friendly-like and then proceeded to try to sell me things. This one in particular led me to an Internet café, where I realized later he got a commission and I got overcharged for him bringing me there. I sat on the computer sending frantic S.O.S. messages to my parents and sisters and forced “Hey how are you? I’m fine” emails to friends.

My self-appointed guide was waiting outside when I emerged about two hours later and “invited” me to his shop. I told him the sandals were nice at which point he told me they were 90,000 tsh (about 75 USD). Shocked, I put them down and attempted to leave while he began the painful process of bargaining down from a price that had been inflated about 10 times. I finally escaped, or thought I had, when he came running after me down the street, sandals in hand, and grabbed my wrist telling me I had money and he didn’t so how much was I going to pay for the sandals. I gave him 45,000 tsh which is still about 5 times what I should have paid and cried again.

Later on that day a white South African hunter named George found me like a stray dog on the side of the road and took me in, as in took me for lunch at the Arusha Hotel, which is very modern and like an oasis in dirty downtown Arusha. As he told me how he hunts elephants and performs vigilante arrests of poachers, I felt like I was living some sort of weird Blood Diamond Leo Dicaprio-Jennifer Connelly type scenario, minus the phoney accent. Despite our divergent interests, it was quite nice to have someone to talk to.

The first few days felt very long. I ventured out a bit during the day, but in the evenings stayed in my room and read. This was fairly unpleasant because the power would go off between 7 and 10 pm. Mr. P would show up at the door with a candle and I hated opening the door alone in my room in the dark. I seemed to be the only guest at the hotel besides a man who had come up from Dar es Salaam on business, and so I assumed this was the reason Mr. P was so attentive. I also assumed it was some sort of cultural norm to ask young women whether or not they were married, seeing as both the business man and Mr. P did this to me fairly early on. I began to become a bit concerned, however, when Mr. P began to insist that I make myself at home and offering me free wine because “I love you”. This concern became alarm as one night while eating dinner downstairs in the dark as usual, the business man informed me “I will miss you” as I was checking out the next morning to which I responded “I’m sure you won’t” and then made an awkward attempt to say something about going to bed at 8pm while heading for the door. The alarm became outright panic when I realized the doors from the dining room to my part of the guesthouse were locked and I was trapped with the business man and Mr. P moving around somewhere inside.

It turns out the doors were actually just stuck and the businessman called Mr. P who had to come hammer them open (literally, with a hammer), but I still ran to my room and locked myself in until the next morning when Mr. P was banging on my door asking to borrow my cell phone charger. Thankfully I checked out a few hours later. I think I might have left my track jacket there, but at this point I cut my losses.

Arrival in Arusha

When I stepped onto the tarmac at Kilimanjaro International Airport the first thing I noticed was the smell. I had never smelled it before. It was like wood and earth and heavy air and will always be the smell that for me embodies Africa. (Soon after I discovered lots of other, less pleasant African smells, but for the moment that’s beside the point.)

Despite the images “International Airport” might conjure, KIA is basically two rooms: one for arrivals and the other for baggage. I made it past my fellow travellers to fill out my visa forms and thought I would be the first one through until I got in the wrong line and had to start all over again, but I somehow avoided paying any visa fees, so I was relatively pleased, mostly that I wouldn’t have to take any money out of the money belt mom made me wear and that made me look misshapen.

Considering I was on a direct flight from Amsterdam and my bags had successfully made six connections from the time I started my trip in Charlottetown about a week previous, it didn’t even occur to me they wouldn’t come until I heard the dreaded sound of the baggage belt coming to a stop and still didn’t have any of my luggage. A porter suggested I look around on the floor for my bags so I wandered around trying not to totally lose it and start bawling in the middle of the airport. All I had in my carryon were a few extra pairs of underwear and my malaria medication and I was about to spend three months in Africa. Soon after I got in the lost luggage line, resigned to the fact I would never see my possessions again, the belt came back on. Turns out they hadn’t unloaded everything because the plane was continuing on to Dar es Salaam. Hallelujah.

So I got my bags and tottered out to where all of the safari operators were standing with name cards looking anxiously for my own name or at least the familiar blue UN crest. Everyone knows how much I love the UN, but all of my dreams of the noble world government were shattered in that moment. They weren’t there. Soon I was surrounded by men saying “Taxi? Taxi?” and I was responding “No, ICTR, UN” and holding on uselessly to my “Intern Information Sheet” that indicated that the UN transport would pick me up at the airport. The taxi drivers or whoever they were started crowding around me, looking at my sheet and saying “Eye See Tee Are” and one even phoned the number of the internship coordinator, of course to no avail since it was 10pm. Despite the fact that they were all at worst harmless and at best helpful I was so overwhelmed I pretty much fled (as best I could with a luggage trolley) back into the airport and asked an airport staff/soldier (he really could have been either considering he had a rifle) where I could get a taxi. He pointed to one of his friends and told me he would take me for 50 USD and heard the voice of the guy on Unsolved Mysteries in my head saying “No one ever saw her again.”

As I slumped in the back of the taxi feeling sick, scared, and alone I looked out the window and realized that even the stars are different here. I had never been so depressed in my entire life. The cab driver Edward was nice and weirdly kept telling me “You are welcome” [which I later learned was because in Swahili, the word “karibu” means “welcome” but like the Quebec “bienvenue” can also mean “you’re welcome” (as in post-thank you)]. We arrived at my guesthouse in the pitch dark and I signed in, noting that I was the only non-African on the guest list and feeling this did not bode well, and went to my room with the gate person carrying my heavy suitcase on his back. It was actually quite decent even by Western standards, certainly not luxury, but functional. But after spending a week in pristine Bavaria with Miriam I felt like I had just been kicked out of the Garden of Eden and sent right to hell. They had turned on the TV for me to some Latin American soap opera dubbed into English and as I looked at the mosquito net hanging over the bed, the windows that didn’t quite close (thank goodness I was on the second floor), the Spartan furniture, and the drain in the floor that marked my shower, I really did cry. When I got into bed under the mosquito net I had my money belt and flashlight beside me and tried very hard to touch everything (including net, sheets, pillows, blankets, etc.) as little as possible. I curled up into a miserable ball and prayed that when I woke up I would be back in Montreal about a month previous when my life was still intact.

Prologue

So I know it is cliché, but I have decided to start a blog. I had always resisted the idea, but I am really doing a crap job at writing in my journal, want to hold on to the experiences I have here, and I figure journal writing to an audience might force me to organize my thoughts somewhat and keep on top of things. I am also doing a crap job at sending emails (partially because UN computers and African Internet are so slow, but I’m just generally bad at it anyway) and this way I will be able to update everyone on what is happening. Also, the AUCC Students for Development, which is mercifully funding my African jaunt, recommend blogging as a public engagement activity that makes up part of my responsibility as an award recipient. Finally, to be perfectly honest there isn’t much to do on weekend evenings in Arusha when the power is out, so this is a creative project to keep me occupied. I figure since only people who love me will read this anyway, at least none of you will be judging me based lameness and lack of writing ability (hopefully).

So as a basic intro, I am spending three months this summer in Arusha, Tanzania working at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is the UN court for government, military, and other leaders responsible for the 1994 genocide that resulted in over 800,000 dead in under 100 days. This blog will hopefully be a more or less accurate picture of my experiences working at the tribunal and living in Arusha. Enjoy!