Hey all,

So just a quick update here: we got the projector squared away (yay!). This is good news. Just putting this out there that if anyone wants to contribute in any way to help cover the cost at all, it would be appreciated. It's happening either way, so no worries, but just thought I'd ask.

"Habari Yangu"

“My News”

Tuesday, May 25, 2010


Good golly, Miss Molly time sure does fly. Less than a week left in May? I don’t believe it. It’ll be June next week and then I’ll have been gone for 8 months, been 21 for 7 of them and still haven’t had a beer at dinner with the folks. That’s a crime.

I thought I’d write up a little update on how everything’s progressing on my end of the world while I still have the time. This is week 11 of my 12 week internship and it’ll probably be finished by the time I get this bad boy on the web. My dad is coming in a week from Thursday and I feel like hitting the ground running with that old man so I can’t say that I’ll have another chance to update this here blog once we get set in motion. I’ll just go ahead and write this assuming I’ll get at least one more chance between now and then to set the record straight.

I might as well start with what I’ve already started with and say yep, my days are winding down quickly. I have officially changed my return date on my ticket so I will be departing Dar es Salaam on the afternoon of Wednesday June 16th. If I catch all of my flights, I should be touching down at PDX around midnight of the 17th/18th. Kevin Love himself has generously offered to pick me up from the airport so it seems like everything is taken care of on that end of things so I just have to figure out what to do with myself between now and then.

I have been a bit overwhelmed with my internship over the past few weeks as what started as just an inkling at the beginning of the month that I might not finish everything I had originally hoped to has looked more and more like a reality by the end of every week. We keep piling on new things like grant applications or necessary revisions to other work and then just because God has a sense of humor, the power will be out for at least one day every week effectively halting any work I need to be getting done on the computer. I am fortunate enough where this affords me another opportunity to go outside of the office and see another part of Arusha as well as another side of Juhudi. This I have really enjoyed and has been very educational for me though I’m having guilt about not contributing fully to the organization like I want to even though I’m still getting so much out of this experience.

I’m hearing back from all of the different departments and groups back home that I’m accountable to for getting credit for this whole shindig too. I’ve got to get moving on all of these reflective pieces and start wrapping everything up. Like I said, once I finish and my dad is in town, I don’t plan on spending a great deal of time sitting and working on my computer. Some of the stuff I’ve been sent also is about just returning back to the U.S. and how return culture shock is often worse than the initial culture shock of arriving in the first foreign country. Reading this literature, I’ve got some interesting ideas and opinions that I’d like to write more about on here when the time is right. They even sent me something to send to friends and family to help ease the transition. If I write about one more thing before I come home, I hope it’s that and I’ll share all that stuff but the time isn’t right for it yet so hopefully in a couple weeks I get that up here.

I started going to church the last couple weeks and will probably end up going again on this coming Sunday. This has brought a marked shift in the ratio of times I talk about going to church vs. the amount of times I actually go. It feels good to go and I am actually going for the whole God aspect of it though the cultural experience is something too though, I must say. I actually don’t even know where to start on describing that whole aspect of it… it’s all in Kiswahili, I’m the only white dude there, it’s Pentecostal which tends to feel pretty evangelical/gospel-y/etc. and I have been asked by too many people if I have been “saved”. It’s also just on a big concrete slab that is the foundation of the church to be but cannot yet be afforded so they just built some pole frame to hold up the tin roof that keeps us dry. I’ve felt very humbled by my time here in Tanzania and I am very thankful for the things I have in life and the experiences I’ve been lucky enough to have. I go with my neighbor who says about how God provides for him so he feels it’s right to give back as well. I like that.

The place I was able to go to during the first half of my time here where I could use really good wifi has not had any access for the past three weeks or so. This is why I haven’t been able to post those pictures that I wanted to yet or also another blog I wrote up that involves linking some youtube videos but I just don’t have the speed to find the links to them yet. It also caused some pretty severe problems and stress when it came time to change my plane tickets and register for classes for next fall. I got those taken care of but there’s still one pretty important thing I’m trying to get done real soon that has got me a little worried. I’m trying to get a projector that can hook up to a computer and show powerpoints and other things for the place where I’m doing my internship. I’ve set some people out to help me in tracking a used one from home down (it’s like $2000 here for one or $150 to borrow one for the day) but they’ve been quiet lately and time is winding down. I want to get this as a gift which will give back because if they can rent it out to other people and groups even for just one day, that will pay the rent of the entire center and office for an entire month. It’s such an easy thing for us to do at home and something we take for granted but it would make a world of difference here. If I did this and nothing else with my time here, I would feel like I accomplished something. So, I’ve got my fingers crossed on this working out.

I think that’s about all from my end. I leave this amazing place in three weeks from tomorrow. I admit I’m really looking forward to it even though I’m supposed to be really sad to leave. I said earlier that I’m feeling really thankful for the life I have and a big part of that is my friends and family. When I’ve got that to go back to, how can I not be excited?

The Influence

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

This post is the overdue response to the questions asked by none other than Mr. David Yabu about a month ago during that whole “ask me a question” fiasco and I really only heard from him and one other person, the talented and gentlemanly Mr. Michael Lansing. As I sit at my computer now at home without having the actual questions in front of me or any way to access them at this point in time, I feel the need to answer what I remember of David’s questions just based off of how I remember them for two reasons: a) because I finally looked it up again a couple days ago and it’s been on my mind ever since, and b) because I’ve actually got the motivation, inspiration, and rough idea of how I’d like to answer them at this point and this feeling doesn’t always last so I gotta write it out now or else it’s never. So I apologize for misinterpreting them and not remembering their exact wording, but here goes my attempt.

I believe the questions were something like this: Who has influenced you most during your study abroad? And what is the Tanzanian equivalent to Pabst Blue Ribbon?

I’m going to start with the second of the two just because although both have presented a persistent challenge to me over the last few days, this one seems significantly to at least take a stab at. So in answer to your question about the presence of a Tanzanian equivalent to PBR, I would have to say that there simply is none. I can, however, just share with you my experiences and opinions on the beers here. And guess what… I’m going to! (keep reading)

There are basically only about 7 beers in Tanzania and 5 of them are almost identical. Your everyday beers are Safari Lager, Kilimanjaro Lager, Castle Lager, Tusker Lager, Serengeti Premium Lager, and Ndovu which, believe it or not, is also a lager! Since I’ve been here, they’ve added a few new beers, or maybe it just took me a little while to come across them, and they are Uhuru Peak Lager (my personal favorite), Eagle Lager, and Castle Milk Stout.

All beer here is served in glass bottles that are returnable and reused which I appreciate for the environmental aspects though I’ve been longing to just get a pitcher on tap. We saw a small kegerator at a Chinese restaurant once in Dar but we had already ordered drinks before we inquired about it and for all we know was just our minds playing tricks on us. You can also get some beers in cans from a few places which sometimes is the only way they’ll let you do takeaway with them but overall I rarely drink from cans because you get less beer for your money and they don’t recycle them but it is something you have to do at least once because they’re different cans from home with different proportions, ways of opening, and are a little heavier so you always feel like there’s another drink left when it’s empty and this of course fools us Americans at least every time. Now even though all the beers I’ve mentioned again are made by one of two companies, come in almost the same bottle, taste virtually identical and are all sold for the same price which makes it challenging to determine which one is most like PBR, each beer is distinguished slightly in its own way.

Safari had the highest alcohol content (before I discovered the milk stout and Uhuru) and was probably the beer we drank most back in Dar. Tanzanians say this is a “strong beer” even though it’s really only like .2% stronger than a couple of the other beers but they always seem kind of amazed when you drink it and waiters will do like a double-take or ask if you’re sure if you happen to order this and are female. Dylan and I met a couple Brits in Malawi who had passed through Tanzania before and were convinced that this wasn’t actually a lager but rather a pilsner. They’re right that it does taste a little different and now that I’ve actually seen other places like Malawi and Zambia which each only have 2 or 3 different beers each, I’ve stopped complaining about the lack of variety here in Tanzania. Whether it is actually a pilsner or a lager still has yet to be proven.

Serengeti, or “chui” because it has a leopard on it (“chui” is Kiswahili for “leopard”) does have a little bite to it that we confused for a metallic taste when we were still new here. It does taste different than all the others and boasts itself as 100% malt though by every way that you could interpret that, it doesn’t quite seem true. Still, it’s got a unique flavor to it that makes it hard to mix with other beers so you usually stick with this for a while.

Kilimanjaro and Castle are essentially the exact same thing. They’re both pretty generic lagers alright and the only thing that really separates them is the design, marketing and origins. I won’t drink Castle as much as Kili mostly because it is South African and all of the South Africans I’ve met in Dar or around there are essentially neo-colonialists and I don’t want to support that even though they’re both brewed by the same company and probably are the same thing.

Tusker is a pretty easy going beer that is favored by a lot of people here in Arusha, especially all the old school white guys who were born and raised in still-colonial Africa. I think it’s actually Kenyan and I’ve seen it for sale in Market of Choice in Eugene. Rumor has it that Tanzania Breweries Ltd. just lost the license to brew it or something so they’ll stop brewing it soon. This has yet to be confirmed.

Ndovu is essentially Tusker but in a smaller green bottle with foil wrapped around the cap so it looks fancier but I mean they both refer to elephants and really only get bought by people who want to look fancy or tourists who think it’s different. Reality is that you’re just paying the same price for a smaller bottle (only 375 ml whereas every other beer comes in half-liters here).

So which one is Pabst? Well none of them taste like PBR though some of them do put the awards they received on their labels though I don’t think any of those awards are from 100 years ago. Uhuru is kind of not classy, but isn’t widely available. Eagle is actually cheaper than all the other beers and tastes the shittiest though it’s not widely available either. Safari would be the next unclassy beer but the truth is just that none of the cultures exist here that carry the same connotations as PBR life except for alcoholism and from my experiences, the alcoholics in Tanzania rarely live and die by one particular beer. Tricky question, David. Pabst is more than a beer, it’s a lifestyle or an inside joke or a history or sometimes just flavor. Nothing here really fits that mold.


Okay, that was more than I planned on writing about that which bodes poorly for answering the next question, but here it goes:



Part II: Who has influenced you most during your time abroad?

Real tough question. Nobody and nothing immediately comes to mind when I consider how I could answer this so there’s no one clear role model. I’ve surely been influenced by a great deal of people, experiences, things I’ve read, etc. during my time here and I feel like I’ve changed a lot as a result. Truth be told, by the beginning of my second month in Tanzania, I felt a big change coming on and huge reevaluation of who I am, what I believe in, where my values lie, etc. turning in me which I think probably came through in just about everything for 5 or 6 months there. I feel like I’ve made it through all of the hard parts now and have been much more comfortable in my own skin over the past couple months though there’s been sort of like a rebirth process which I think I wrote about last month.

Now that the dust has settled, I’ve learned what I value most and even in the last two weeks I think I found my dream job. Who I am and how I’ve changed has been the result of many different influences.

In terms of people, I’d say that I was mostly influenced in Dar slightly by everyone I came into contact with. It wasn’t easy for me to just be myself or feel comfortable being who I have always been before when I was living in Dar so I really had to start thinking about who I was, who I wanted to be, and how I was being perceived. I enjoyed meeting such diverse people in the international students and local students who gave me a lot of ideas of who I wanted to be and way too many ideas of who I didn’t want to be. I was inspired by how hardworking some of my fellow students were and wanted to be more like that. I didn’t want to be as socially awkward or socially oblivious as some other people I knew were and I DEFINITELY did not want to be as angry all the time and uptight as this one Austrian student. I never really hit my stride in Dar, but by the end I was living more like I wanted to by taking my studies more seriously, finding time to volunteer in the evenings, taking extra time to learn Swahili, and was doing a little better socially or maybe not.

There have been a lot of other experiences that have influenced me in many ways too. I think any time I talked about getting some fresh inspiration, that meant I was influenced in a way. I saw that “Invictus” movie which made me remember how much Nelson Mandela is a hero of mine. I also got to meet everyday people who had some pretty amazing stories. Most Tanzanians we know would be extraordinary people if placed in our society just in terms of the things they can do and the experiences they have. There are 8-year-olds who can do more with a kerosene stove or a hoe than I can or people like my friend Hamimu who is 19 but has had to deal with more heartbreaking loss in his life than an 85-year-old man. He was already orphaned and in his grandmother’s custody though she’s been slowly dying from diabetes. In the couple weeks I was out of Dar traveling with Dylan, two more people he was living with died too. Or then I think of some of the students I was teaching or even Juhudi here in Arusha who will be very honest about how they haven’t eaten all day because they have no money but aren’t asking for help or sympathy. I went to Juhudi’s two-room house yesterday with it’s sitting room and it’s bedroom/kitchen for his wife and two kids. He’s working on moving into a four-room home which is a significant improvement but still seems dreadful based on our standards and he doesn’t even complain because the family next door has only one room and 5 people living in it. Very humbling moments at all times. I understand the psychological value of complaining for the sake of venting, but our problems are just so petty.

I remember now just a song I listen to a lot here that is kind of about that called “Petty Problems” and I remember that I’m really influenced by music I listen to here. When I’m on my own computer, I most often will listen to Defiance, Ohio and John Lennon who are definitely my favorites right now but I even end up just listening to a lot Blink 182 from time to time as strange as that is. I’ve grown more fond of pop music and hip-hop since I’ve been here just because it’s always on whether it is American or Tanzanian. I’ll say up front that Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” is the best song in the last year and I think it’s even been about a year now since it came out but still has yet to be dethroned. I can listen to that song over and over which is good because Tanzanians like to play the same song over and over. I can’t say for sure how strongly I’ve been influenced by music but it’s definitely laid the soundtrack for my time here and when I listen to John Lennon and here what he has to say in his music, it usually makes me think. Same with Defiance, Ohio even though I’ve only got like 10 or 12 songs by them.

I have to admit that I’ve officially achieved bookworm status for the first time in my life (except for minor two week periods here and there) just in the last two months that I’ve been in Arusha and this has been probably the biggest clear influence lately. I’m averaging about one book per week right now which for me has been really pleasurable and I’m learning a lot. I wasn’t really able to read for pleasure in Dar or have a peaceful setting in which to read until I got here so I’m taking advantage of it. Actually it’s mainly because the VIA house in Moshi has an outstanding book collection. I’ve read some fiction like Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Vonnegut but what’s influenced me most has been the nonfiction. I’ve read the biopics “Mountains Beyond Mountains”, “Three Cups of Tea” and “Banker for the Poor”, all of which I would recommend. I’ve also read “The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey Sachs and last week I finished “Out of Poverty” by Paul Polak. The two most influential books in terms of changing my thinking have been “Banker for the Poor” and “Out of Poverty”. The first one completely changed the way I think about poverty and economics. The second one was not a great book, but I mentioned earlier that I think I’ve found my dream job. I won’t go into it now, but it’s basically what’s going on in this book.

As you can see, I’ve been influenced by just about everything. I came here ready to just open myself up to be influenced and changed. It turned out to be a much more difficult experience than I expected in that sense. One last big influence has just been my memories. I try and remember all of the things I ever learned or how things used to be just to try and give me some support when times are rough or confusing here. I try and think about who is out there reading this blog and what they would say. I try and think about my friends at home or elsewhere and what they might be up to. I try and remember who I used to be and what I’ve been through in different points in my life even if it seems like another person. I’ve basically just been trying to make sense of everything by pulling from every different source that I can from my experiences, things I’ve read, and even my own imagination. I’m influenced by a lot of things but I’ve never wanted to be someone else regardless of how great or inspirational they are. I’ve always wanted to pull together all of the good things from a variety of places and synthesize them into something great. I see the flaws in everything and don’t follow any dogmas, but I also see the positive things and am influenced by them just as much as the negatives.

So I said that I’ve changed and rearranged my values just since November. I’ve learned a lot about what is important to me and what I think I can do or should do with my life. As cliché as it sounds, my most important values are just love and peace. I’ve learned that I want to be a leader and I want to dedicate myself to service. I’ve learned that poverty is the enemy and that we can do a lot more than just talk about it. It’s taken me this entire experience for all of this to come together and it’s really been derived from countless influential sources. What this all means for when I come back, I don’t know, but I guess I’ve only got a month to wait and find out.

Age

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Age has always been a concept that’s presented consistent confusion for me. I remember so many instances where I observe people like my older brother or others with only a few years or even a single grade separating us and feel like that age difference changes so much. Then I reach that age myself and remember how I had previously perceived that time and how I really feel no different despite the time that’s elapsed and the new privileges that entails. For example, I remember the first time I was out at McCool’s with my dad and brother after JJ had turned 21 and to me it was just so strange that he was able to have a beer there. Now I’m more than 6 months past that point myself but I can’t honestly say that the concept seems any less foreign to me or like so much has changed to afford me such a privilege. I remember driving as a sophomore in high school but then just two years later as a senior watching the fresh 16-year-olds drive and being frightened that I was sharing the road with such young people. Age is all relative.

I’ve been thinking about age a lot just in the past few months and I guess the story could start back in Dar or even a couple years before that. I remember entering UBC and finding that some of the other people on my floor were still 17. Fast-forward to UDSM and some of the students in my same year are 25 and this isn’t unusual at all. The real stem of these thoughts tonight really begins on a train heading west from Dar-es-Salaam as Dylan and I were watching the scenes along the track unfold. It seems like everywhere we passed in Tanzania, along every length of track through every town, was inhabited completely by youth. Pre-pubescent people greeted us through every segment with bright smiles and waving hands (though at some points solemn faces and hand gestures that said “feed me!” instead.) Dylan was the first to comment on it and say how we were really seeing just how youthful of a country Tanzania is. This is true and any demographics class will tell you the same story for most developing countries with population pyramids to prove it. This one little comment though was one of four or so small things that people have said in the last three months that have just got me thinking much about the idea of age.

It is definitely true though that Tanzania is a young country. As part of my internship, I was lucky enough to be allowed to join in on a workshop/brainstorm session for this international NGO that is starting a campaign to end child abuse in Tanzania that they call the “50% Campaign”. Why 50%? Because 50% of the population in Tanzania is under the age of 18 which in many contexts constitutes them as adults. I have to admit that it is pretty blatantly obvious that the people here are so young as at any given moment on any day of the week (weekends included) there seem to countless groups of kids in their school uniforms along every street. Or maybe you’ll see several other kids that are too young for school still out playing or in the arms of their mothers. It’s true that it’s everywhere. Most of the volunteers and people working here that I know are doing something that involves kids in some way or another, most often directly. That’s where the second bit on age comes in.

I met my friend Hannah here one night and she invited me to come out to this open mic event they were holding at her work to say goodbye to the place they could no longer afford to pay the rent on. She teaches art at a center (now closed) that also offers some music classes and I took her up on the offer, arriving the next evening to a scene of a bunch of 12 and under kids and their parents. It was a little odd to me but I’ve played that middle ground before enough times at family reunions as it seems like all my cousins are older than me and their kids too young for me to really know what to do with. At some point I commented on all of the kids to Hannah and she replied by saying something about how it must be to be one of those kids. This really threw me, to the point where it still just blows my mind a month-and-a-half later even though I can’t remember the exact words.

It was on that same train ride that I reread Siddhartha and it got me thinking about fatherhood a lot for some reason. I was just feeling like I was at a point in my life where I’ve made enough mistakes and accrued enough wisdom to be a patient and understanding dad to some kid and I was appreciating my own dad or the challenges of fatherhood. My friends are getting to the age where they’re getting engaged and married and I know people with kids now which is pretty strange. This is a monumental shift in thinking though where you completely gear your mind towards something else that I think most people refer to adulthood. Adulthood, by definition, is just the polar opposite of childhood and here is where things start getting really confusing.

Aging does not follow a linear progression. Maybe physically it does, but there’s a huge disconnect here between physical maturity and social/mental maturity. All of my childhood, I was led to believe that we were all on a path towards adulthood which as I said earlier is everything that childhood is not. They tell you that you’re an adult when you’re 18. They teach you that these people are adults and these people are not. Strange, but to me even 19 felt a lot like 17. Even weirder is that I get to know these people who are older than 30 but they seem to act a lot less mature than I did when I was 16. In my own head, it’s really confusing to deal with the realities that are in conflict with the expectations I remember holding. A lot less people live truly independent from their parents than I expected and a lot of them are older than I thought was appropriate. Even then, the parents don’t seem to mind and encourage this. Then I think about how I expected 20 to feel and it’s true that some of the expectations were fulfilled, but so many other things felt no different at all. That’s what it is. “Maturity” and “immaturity”, just like “adulthood” and “childhood” are just a way of polarizing things which grossly oversimplifies the reality.

No “adult” ever fully embodies “maturity” or else no one would enjoy being around them (I would say something about lawyers at this point, but I met lawyers here and several of them had some very severe “immature” aspects about them so I guess it’s only that stereotypical view from TV and movies that applies here.) We’ve just classified everything as being either this or that which is okay for certain characteristics, but when you use these labels to describe people and not just their activities then it gets challenging. So I’m at a point where I feel very mature in some ways, but there are some other things that go against everything I was ever told to believe composes an “adult”. This has confused me for years now.

The third thing that has stuck with me is what one of my housemates said about Arusha and the expat community here, how it is just a vortex of age. When we’re out at expat hangouts, I’m usually at the bottom of experience list at 21 but there are other people there past 50 and I’m sharing a table, a drink, and a conversation with them. People I consider friends. In some ways the people I meet seem less together and less mature than I feel even though they’re more than 20 years older than me. If I were at a bar with this crowd at home, it would be the oddest place I’ve ever been. People of this age range just simply don’t mingle in that other context. Yet here it just works. One of my former housemates who recently moved out is in here early 30s but she just moved in with her boyfriend who is over 50. Age in this expat community just isn’t the same thing.

So my physical appearance and my behavior from time to time has allowed me occasional glimpses into the world of “adults” finally and here’s what I discovered: the veil gets lifted and with a grin they tell me “we’re full of shit!” This whole “adult” act seems to be just a way to control children or exercise some sort of authority over them or something. “Adulthood” is just an in-group that only is enforced when trying to make others feel insignificant, inexperienced, or just like they have any less of a right to be empowered that you do. So even though I have been allowed to peek in at this secret world, there have still been wayyyyyyyy too many other times along the way when people to draw that “adult” line between myself and them.

I’m just about the youngest person in this expat community here and somehow I’m even younger than a lot of the Tanzanians I interact with frequently. For some people, this means nothing but for others for reasons I can only guess it becomes an issue. I’ve had to defend my maturity so often here and especially now that I’m doing my internship and trying to do it in a way that I have been taught to believe is “professional”, I alter my actions to fit the impressions I have had of what this entails. This has been another huge shift in terms of the way I think and have to think just to uphold this image. (It’s not just an image though, it’s something that I am living and embodying.) So as I’ve been in a position where I start changing my mind to think more like an “adult”, it threw me completely when Hannah made that one little comment about being a kid.

Everything else seemed to be saying that it’s time to start thinking more what it’s like to have a kid instead of thinking like a kid. I think this is the greatest tragedy of “maturity”. We put so much stress on being a mature adult that one is forced to break all ties with thinking like a child that we forget completely. Then, as is the next step in social stratification, we forget that we forgot. I was in this process when I got bucked off the horse and thank God that happened. Remember elementary school how you used to hate the teachers that you thought had completely forgot what it was like to be a kid? Remember when you hated your parents for acting like they were never a kid but rather were born adults and never made mistakes and never did anything independently but rather always did exactly what their parents wanted them to do? Remember just how awful it was being told what to do and how to be by people who think they know so much about you but really have no idea anymore? Well I do now.

I remember thinking about how I would grow up and teach elementary school because I knew I would be nicer to the kids than my teacher was being. I remember vowing to never be like the adults who I called out for forgetting what it is like to be a kid and then claiming that they didn’t (I don’t blame people for this because everything in society tells us we’re supposed to but I think too many adults say that they remember even though they just think they do.) I remember clearly how I felt towards adults who thought they understood kids and used their “knowledge” to exert authority over them and were so much more empowered because they knew how to do things like write checks and drive cars. I know we glorify childhood a lot and innocence but I think we should glorify children for their knowledge instead. I’m realizing now as I write this just how dead-right I was at times and how we fought the good fight even though the system was so stacked against us. Society is designed and controlled by “adults” and children are possibly the most marginalized group you can find, hardly a tier above animals in terms of decision-making. The system is set-up to enforce that all notions of “adulthood” are correct and all adult knowledge is superior to that of children. Kids talk, people hear “cute” things. Kids talk, but people don’t listen. People preach about listening, especially to children, but no one ever actually does it.

There is just so much to say about the topic of age and I could go on forever. I feel bad that I didn’t organize this in a nice thoughtful and coherent way or even really complete most of my thoughts but there is just really too much to say on it all. Today, my former housemate who is dating the guy who is 49 or something stopped by my work to help present this gift to the kids and take photos. She said “Ooh I love children” and I waited for the “I want to have some” to follow next. But it didn’t. “I want to be one” she said. Blew my mind again. That’s at least 4 times now so here I am typing up something I think about a lot and have had so much to say about for so long. Four times is just too many though so it’s time I stopped thinking about it and actually sat down and wrote some things out. Unfortunately one thought just led to another before I could finish typing the other one and we’ve got this big jumbled mess on our hands now. And I’m not even done!

It’s all relative! I felt young a few years ago around people who were the age that I am now. Now I can make other people feel young who are that age. Those other people from before can still try and make me feel young but I’m not as foolish as I once was. I know that I’ll get there in a couple years and it’ll hardly feel any different than it does now. I’m not even letting 36-year-olds play that on me anymore. I’m not going to be disrespected, I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of authority, and I know that you can be humbled by somebody who’s older than you. I respect those who are wise and experienced, but this makes no one superior. That’s the same type of belief that supports racism, classism, and too many other –isms that you can consider if you want.

What is a year, anyway? So you’re a year older? How do you know? You trust a calendar? Why are there seven days in a week? Why are there 12 months? Why do some months have 31 days and some 30? So you’ve been around the sun how many times? How do you know where we are around the sun right now? Have we really ever been in the same point in space for more than a split second? Isn’t the whole thing in perpetual motion, the sun too? I get that there are seasons, whether winter/spring/summer/fall or just wet/dry and I get that we’ve created a system of numbers that we can use to count them. Isn’t it just a little much that we’ve assigned all of these other unrelated traits and abilities to these numbers? Sure it’s easier but don’t act like it doesn’t create other problems.



Okay, out of steam now. Don’t oppress me because of my age. Don’t oppress anyone because of their age. Age is just a concept. Age is relative. It’s a social construction and the more you treat it like a real thing, the more real it becomes. It is only as relevant as Santa Claus. People are still people. We can put numbers on them and give those numbers meaning and if we believe in them hard enough, then they’ll matter enough. We can tell other people they matter and then they’ll change themselves to fit what they’re supposed to. But for some of us we just can’t do that and it’s confusing when it doesn’t work out the way everyone’s pretending it does.

And with that, like always, listen to “My Back Pages”

Well I’m not a detective or anything, but I’ve deduced that either this blog’s readership is down to two people (who either make me or themselves or all of us look like alcoholics) or everyone is just shy or apathetic.  I’m not sure which but that whole “questions” thing really backfired.  That won’t stop me though.  That just means I’m writing for my audience of Michael and David.

I guess it’s been a few weeks since I wrote anything on here and I suppose I ought to update things.  Life has been somewhat eventful lately, I guess I could say.  One big change is that the population of our house has completely changed.  Stephanie, the volunteer coordinator person who quit right after doing my orientation has finally moved out and I took her room.  So I’m in a new room which is a little noisier because the sound from the bar’s sound system next door sneaks in better but overall it’s such a better room.  Definitely the nicest room I’ve lived in for a while and I have to admit I’m satisfied if you couldn’t tell.  This new Austrian guy moved in to my old room and I’m not sure about him yet.  We just haven’t clicked or anything but we get along alright I guess.  My Swedish roommate just up and moved out a week ago from Monday without any warning or anything.  She’s lived here for just about 2 years but she kind of got freaked out by some recent events that happened in our neighborhood so she wants a change of scenery.  I guess she was already trying to move out anyway, but that just kind of pushed her over the edge.  When I first moved in two months ago, there were 7 people in the house and I was the only official male tenant but now we’re down to 3 people with only one female.  Probably the most male tenants in this house’s history.  It’s been a bit of a swing, I’ll say.

I’m down to less than a month left at my internship and time is flying fast now.  I plan on changing my airline ticket about the same time that I post this blog and if I do indeed change it to the day I have in mind, then I’ll have less than a month left in this country by this time next week.  The thing about that too is that the couple weeks are going to be spent traveling with my dad visiting so they’ll fly by even faster.  It’s insane to me how fast the days are waning now but you know I’ve been ready for this for a long time now.

I am really excited that my dad is going to come and I mostly just look forward to having someone else witness all of this because I really have not adequately captured the experience within this blog.  Just having someone else be here who can testify a bit to what it is like will be good for my own sanity because I can actual reference things to someone and they’ll bring up memories for him.  I haven’t figured out the exact schedule for our time but I’ve started writing up a rough itinerary, packing list, and basic Kiswahili.  I also took some notes of things to expect, but I’m thinking maybe I should just let everything be fresh and unexpected.  Or maybe I’ll post it on here the day he comes because it’s a good list and I want someone to read it.

I was finally able to get my photos off of my memory card for the first time in three months so I’ll hopefully get some of those posted on facebook for those of you who can look on there.  They include the ones from when I was traveling in between school and my internship and I’m really happy I could finally get them onto my computer without losing them.  I’ve also got some good shots from campus in Dar as well as a few from around here in Arusha.  Check them out when you get the chance.  Maybe look at them and read along with the old post I wrote up about our travels.

Other than that, things are going well here for me except I lost my phone on Saturday and now I kind of have a cold and allergies at the same time or something.  Okay I guess things could be better in those two respects… the phone thing really is quite frustrating.  Still, I can’t say I’m not happy so let’s just say all is well.