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).