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.