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”
Monday, May 17, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
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.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
"Maswali"
“Questions”
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Well I guess I’ve written enough about being disconnected now and so I’ll do something I’ve actually wanted to do for a while but now do it for the sake of becoming more connected or at least to clarify some things. I’ll invite anyone who still reads this to either ask me any questions they might have in the comments section or send it to me via email (ScottM.Berry88@gmail.com). My reasoning behind this is that I don’t know if I’ve been clear enough on things or if I’ve just produced a bunch of confusing journal entries. Now is your chance to ask me anything from what it’s like to live here or what I eat for breakfast to questions about what it’s like to see real poverty everyday or anything you really want to ask. I have the last say, of course, on what I choose to answer or not but I’ve been pretty open on here so I’ll try to answer any question even if it makes me uncomfortable.
I’ve got questions of my own too that I’d like to know more about but don’t get the opportunity to inform myself or have discussions with informed people. Here are some things I’ve been wondering about:
- What’s the deal with the whole healthcare thing? I know it passed and that there was some controversy about it, but I don’t know the actual specifics. All I heard is that everyone is going to need health insurance by a certain year but it always seemed to me like the problem was the insurance companies…
- What happened to U of O sports? Bellotti’s gone, Masoli’s a thief, and everyone else seems to be getting fired or abusing their girlfriends. I didn’t get to watch the Rose Bowl but it sounds like UO athletics has been going downhill fast since then.
- What’s new with life in Oregon? Did we have a lot of snow this winter? Is anyone transferring schools or what’s been going on with the social lives of my friends? Anyone have new jobs or change anything? I haven’t been able to keep up with any of this in the least…
- What else do I need to know? What am I supposed to do when I get back?
I don’t know what else to say but that’s why I create a post like this. Things aren’t incredibly eventful lately so I need something to write about. Why don’t you all choose what it is?
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Well I guess I’ve written enough about being disconnected now and so I’ll do something I’ve actually wanted to do for a while but now do it for the sake of becoming more connected or at least to clarify some things. I’ll invite anyone who still reads this to either ask me any questions they might have in the comments section or send it to me via email (ScottM.Berry88@gmail.com). My reasoning behind this is that I don’t know if I’ve been clear enough on things or if I’ve just produced a bunch of confusing journal entries. Now is your chance to ask me anything from what it’s like to live here or what I eat for breakfast to questions about what it’s like to see real poverty everyday or anything you really want to ask. I have the last say, of course, on what I choose to answer or not but I’ve been pretty open on here so I’ll try to answer any question even if it makes me uncomfortable.
I’ve got questions of my own too that I’d like to know more about but don’t get the opportunity to inform myself or have discussions with informed people. Here are some things I’ve been wondering about:
- What’s the deal with the whole healthcare thing? I know it passed and that there was some controversy about it, but I don’t know the actual specifics. All I heard is that everyone is going to need health insurance by a certain year but it always seemed to me like the problem was the insurance companies…
- What happened to U of O sports? Bellotti’s gone, Masoli’s a thief, and everyone else seems to be getting fired or abusing their girlfriends. I didn’t get to watch the Rose Bowl but it sounds like UO athletics has been going downhill fast since then.
- What’s new with life in Oregon? Did we have a lot of snow this winter? Is anyone transferring schools or what’s been going on with the social lives of my friends? Anyone have new jobs or change anything? I haven’t been able to keep up with any of this in the least…
- What else do I need to know? What am I supposed to do when I get back?
I don’t know what else to say but that’s why I create a post like this. Things aren’t incredibly eventful lately so I need something to write about. Why don’t you all choose what it is?
Saturday, April 17, 2010
behind blue eyes (and through clear contacts)
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Going to reveal a bit of my soul here and I’m not sure how comfortable I am with that or how this affects anything but kind of just need a venue to think some things out and I like to stay honest on here about the reality of this experience from my perspective. I can’t say I really know what I’m aiming for here other than just an excuse to sit down and think some thoughts through that have been floating around in my head for far too long now. But hey, what the hell? It’s not like I’m not thinking them and I don’t know how having others know them will make anything change but here’s a way to find out.
Survived six months here now as of about a week ago though I don’t recall if I really did anything special to celebrate. It’s hard to believe it’s been a week since that but at the same time it makes perfect sense with the pace life is going right now. 12 weeks is a really square number that makes it easy to turn life into fractions. I’ve been in Arusha already for a month with three weeks done already at my internship. That’s a quarter of the thing done in a flash like that. By the end of this week, it’ll already be a third of the way and then only two weeks after that I’ll be blowing past the halfway mark. That’s just the way my head is thinking right now.
If it hasn’t been plainly clear through my writings on here before, let me state this explicitly now that I am a very future-oriented person. For about a year and a half before I left for Tanzania, I couldn’t stop thinking about study abroad. In fact, I was even skipping that whole year and the next and thinking about life in the Peace Corps after graduation. Now that I’m here though and I start to see previously lain plans get altered (point and case: this internship rather than a second semester at UDSM,) but I haven’t stopped thinking about the future any less. It’s probably likely that I’ve been thinking about it even more than ever before. For example, I think about home… a lot…
Even though six months isn’t really that long of a time in the grand scheme of things and it never has been before, six months away from home in Tanzania have been remarkably different in terms of how I think, feel, act, and even just perceive the world. I don’t always think I’ve changed a lot because I always imagine the scenario where I’m hanging out with my friends back at home and I can’t imagine myself being any different around them just because that’s the way it has always been. This make-believe situation is significantly different than the reality though in terms of how I am and how I feel. I can say truthfully that I don’t feel like myself often and this is something that was especially true when I was in Dar es Salaam. I feel like I got on quite well with most of my peers as far back as preschool and always wound up in the same sort of role but when I was in Dar, I was taken so completely out of my element that I completely lost any anchor I had, finding myself in unfamiliar waters filling an unfamiliar role. Things are definitely better here, but it’s been a rough process learning that not everything about my personality translates perfectly into another culture and setting or gels well with a group of 10 other random strangers.
I’ve been feeling a lot more like myself since I left that school behind and it’s generally a positive thing in terms of my mental health but even now that I’m much more comfortable in my own skin and in this environment that feels a little less foreign, I’m finding a lot of things missing that were pretty essential to who I used to be and who people know me as back home. It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly they are, but I think it’s just another situation of these things just not making sense in a different context. Also, it’s a lot different to be a gangly blonde guy in Eugene compared to Arusha, I’ll say that. But what I’m trying to get across here is really something like three completely different points that I seem to have started and have yet to finish.
The first is home. I’ve had this thought for months now actually and I think it’s especially true now that things happen like my friends moving locations or definitely with my parents redoing the deck (do we still have the broken hot tub?) Home to me, in the physical sense, exists a certain way with objects and smells and people and everything fixed. What I acknowledge is that this is completely imaginary to me at this point and there are obviously going to be some things that have changed or just aren’t the way that I imagine them. This will lead to some confusion, no doubt.
The second is time. I realize everyday that a larger distance in terms of time is being put between me and my life back in Oregon and this is most clearly evidenced in my loss of memory. I forget more and more each day about how things were said, how things were, or even some basic things like who I even used to hang out with. The point I was trying to make earlier is that six months in a place that you’ve always known, following a path you have always expected to take, and amongst the company that makes so much sense there is considerably different when completely uprooted from all of that. It’s unreal to me that this has only been six months. It seems like it has been years and I feel like I matured more in my first three months in Tanzania than I did in the prior three years (though admittedly I was getting less mature in some respects during that time period – see Bob Dylan’s ‘My Back Pages’ once again…) I feel like I’m changing quite a bit even from just two months ago and a lot of it is just due to environment. Like right now with my internship, I’m having to be extremely professional and adult in comparison with how I used to live and I’m finding it difficult to adapt though it kind of scares me to realize the changes and feel like such an old man. It’s strange to think that if I never would have come here, this would have been six more months like any other for me but instead it has been a whirlwind. As short of a time period as it really is, it feels like years when I look back even on events earlier this year.
The third aspect was just a sense of self. This actually ties together the previous two things quite well in that I lose not only memories of home but even of my first couple months here. Am I shedding these memories as a way of moving on and leaving this old life behind? I’m quite confident that if I went back and read some of my early blog posts from when I arrived in Tanzania, I would feel like I am reading about someone else’s life. It could even been ones from just January even. That’s insane to me. At home, time moves with little change and I can recall events from even years earlier with relative clarity because it makes sense that I lived my life that way. Now, these memories just don’t make any sense when placed in this context. To be able to walk the streets as just any other white guy is a completely different state of mind than I’ve been in for what feels like a very long time. Even the sensation of riding my bike feels more foreign to me now than getting a big plate of meat and deep-fried bananas here. There’s definitely going to be some adjustment involved. There already has been some, actually, as going from student, to confused/depressed/estranged student, to traveler, and now to employee. Moving from role to role with a change of location, climates, communities, environments, and even identities. This has been unbelievable. Unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.
I’m embarrassed to have the bravado to continually be writing statements like that but that’s just the nature of who I am and how this has been. So future-oriented, through and through, that I reflect back on this as if it’s something of the distant past even though it is still happening. It still happens now, just like it did yesterday, and just like it will tomorrow. Time is flying, but I wage war with impatience like it’s going out of style.
Here comes the absolute heart of the matter. The heart. I’m still obsessed with this girl. Even though I’m in a much better state about this than I was before, it doesn’t change everything. I can’t stop thinking ahead and as I get closer to the end of this, it’s not getting any easier to stop thinking about what’s coming. This isn’t the same future that I think about than other things though… oh not at all. I’m much more willing to part with other bold dreams and aspirations than with this one. Everything about this just seems so much more dire. There are so many variables and unknowns involved. There’s too much fate involved whereas everything else was just a matter of hard work and time. This one’s not about will or about determination or about trying again if mistakes are made. This stakes feel a lot higher than with anything else either. This one matters a lot more. I’m probably just looking at it the wrong way, but if you see it like this then it’s impossible not to worry and stress.
I can here the “don’t worry about it” coming now but you know that this blog has never been about that. Just as always, this is not a cry for help or for sympathy, just an insight into the way the human mind really works. It’s education not desperation. I have to muster a bit of courage to be so revealing sometimes but I like to be truthful and let people know the reality. So please, unless you want to make it even more difficult to write freely on here, don’t offer sympathy or psychiatric assistance.
Here’s one last and final truth that I’ll leave you with for the night. I know that all of these things are going to be figured out sooner or later and that time is the real final decider in all of this. I remember this often and it does help me to be more patient (don’t think I’ve forgotten my new year’s resolutions!) I’m doing quite fine here and am generally enjoying the way things are going right now. I appreciate my time here and am happy to be here at this point in my life. Thoughts like all of these above do indeed come up often, but it’s good to finally take the time to sit down, write them out, and just have them arranged in a way that at least would make sense in a second draft. If you want to know what living in Tanzania has been like for me, well, there it is.
Going to reveal a bit of my soul here and I’m not sure how comfortable I am with that or how this affects anything but kind of just need a venue to think some things out and I like to stay honest on here about the reality of this experience from my perspective. I can’t say I really know what I’m aiming for here other than just an excuse to sit down and think some thoughts through that have been floating around in my head for far too long now. But hey, what the hell? It’s not like I’m not thinking them and I don’t know how having others know them will make anything change but here’s a way to find out.
Survived six months here now as of about a week ago though I don’t recall if I really did anything special to celebrate. It’s hard to believe it’s been a week since that but at the same time it makes perfect sense with the pace life is going right now. 12 weeks is a really square number that makes it easy to turn life into fractions. I’ve been in Arusha already for a month with three weeks done already at my internship. That’s a quarter of the thing done in a flash like that. By the end of this week, it’ll already be a third of the way and then only two weeks after that I’ll be blowing past the halfway mark. That’s just the way my head is thinking right now.
If it hasn’t been plainly clear through my writings on here before, let me state this explicitly now that I am a very future-oriented person. For about a year and a half before I left for Tanzania, I couldn’t stop thinking about study abroad. In fact, I was even skipping that whole year and the next and thinking about life in the Peace Corps after graduation. Now that I’m here though and I start to see previously lain plans get altered (point and case: this internship rather than a second semester at UDSM,) but I haven’t stopped thinking about the future any less. It’s probably likely that I’ve been thinking about it even more than ever before. For example, I think about home… a lot…
Even though six months isn’t really that long of a time in the grand scheme of things and it never has been before, six months away from home in Tanzania have been remarkably different in terms of how I think, feel, act, and even just perceive the world. I don’t always think I’ve changed a lot because I always imagine the scenario where I’m hanging out with my friends back at home and I can’t imagine myself being any different around them just because that’s the way it has always been. This make-believe situation is significantly different than the reality though in terms of how I am and how I feel. I can say truthfully that I don’t feel like myself often and this is something that was especially true when I was in Dar es Salaam. I feel like I got on quite well with most of my peers as far back as preschool and always wound up in the same sort of role but when I was in Dar, I was taken so completely out of my element that I completely lost any anchor I had, finding myself in unfamiliar waters filling an unfamiliar role. Things are definitely better here, but it’s been a rough process learning that not everything about my personality translates perfectly into another culture and setting or gels well with a group of 10 other random strangers.
I’ve been feeling a lot more like myself since I left that school behind and it’s generally a positive thing in terms of my mental health but even now that I’m much more comfortable in my own skin and in this environment that feels a little less foreign, I’m finding a lot of things missing that were pretty essential to who I used to be and who people know me as back home. It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly they are, but I think it’s just another situation of these things just not making sense in a different context. Also, it’s a lot different to be a gangly blonde guy in Eugene compared to Arusha, I’ll say that. But what I’m trying to get across here is really something like three completely different points that I seem to have started and have yet to finish.
The first is home. I’ve had this thought for months now actually and I think it’s especially true now that things happen like my friends moving locations or definitely with my parents redoing the deck (do we still have the broken hot tub?) Home to me, in the physical sense, exists a certain way with objects and smells and people and everything fixed. What I acknowledge is that this is completely imaginary to me at this point and there are obviously going to be some things that have changed or just aren’t the way that I imagine them. This will lead to some confusion, no doubt.
The second is time. I realize everyday that a larger distance in terms of time is being put between me and my life back in Oregon and this is most clearly evidenced in my loss of memory. I forget more and more each day about how things were said, how things were, or even some basic things like who I even used to hang out with. The point I was trying to make earlier is that six months in a place that you’ve always known, following a path you have always expected to take, and amongst the company that makes so much sense there is considerably different when completely uprooted from all of that. It’s unreal to me that this has only been six months. It seems like it has been years and I feel like I matured more in my first three months in Tanzania than I did in the prior three years (though admittedly I was getting less mature in some respects during that time period – see Bob Dylan’s ‘My Back Pages’ once again…) I feel like I’m changing quite a bit even from just two months ago and a lot of it is just due to environment. Like right now with my internship, I’m having to be extremely professional and adult in comparison with how I used to live and I’m finding it difficult to adapt though it kind of scares me to realize the changes and feel like such an old man. It’s strange to think that if I never would have come here, this would have been six more months like any other for me but instead it has been a whirlwind. As short of a time period as it really is, it feels like years when I look back even on events earlier this year.
The third aspect was just a sense of self. This actually ties together the previous two things quite well in that I lose not only memories of home but even of my first couple months here. Am I shedding these memories as a way of moving on and leaving this old life behind? I’m quite confident that if I went back and read some of my early blog posts from when I arrived in Tanzania, I would feel like I am reading about someone else’s life. It could even been ones from just January even. That’s insane to me. At home, time moves with little change and I can recall events from even years earlier with relative clarity because it makes sense that I lived my life that way. Now, these memories just don’t make any sense when placed in this context. To be able to walk the streets as just any other white guy is a completely different state of mind than I’ve been in for what feels like a very long time. Even the sensation of riding my bike feels more foreign to me now than getting a big plate of meat and deep-fried bananas here. There’s definitely going to be some adjustment involved. There already has been some, actually, as going from student, to confused/depressed/estranged student, to traveler, and now to employee. Moving from role to role with a change of location, climates, communities, environments, and even identities. This has been unbelievable. Unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.
I’m embarrassed to have the bravado to continually be writing statements like that but that’s just the nature of who I am and how this has been. So future-oriented, through and through, that I reflect back on this as if it’s something of the distant past even though it is still happening. It still happens now, just like it did yesterday, and just like it will tomorrow. Time is flying, but I wage war with impatience like it’s going out of style.
Here comes the absolute heart of the matter. The heart. I’m still obsessed with this girl. Even though I’m in a much better state about this than I was before, it doesn’t change everything. I can’t stop thinking ahead and as I get closer to the end of this, it’s not getting any easier to stop thinking about what’s coming. This isn’t the same future that I think about than other things though… oh not at all. I’m much more willing to part with other bold dreams and aspirations than with this one. Everything about this just seems so much more dire. There are so many variables and unknowns involved. There’s too much fate involved whereas everything else was just a matter of hard work and time. This one’s not about will or about determination or about trying again if mistakes are made. This stakes feel a lot higher than with anything else either. This one matters a lot more. I’m probably just looking at it the wrong way, but if you see it like this then it’s impossible not to worry and stress.
I can here the “don’t worry about it” coming now but you know that this blog has never been about that. Just as always, this is not a cry for help or for sympathy, just an insight into the way the human mind really works. It’s education not desperation. I have to muster a bit of courage to be so revealing sometimes but I like to be truthful and let people know the reality. So please, unless you want to make it even more difficult to write freely on here, don’t offer sympathy or psychiatric assistance.
Here’s one last and final truth that I’ll leave you with for the night. I know that all of these things are going to be figured out sooner or later and that time is the real final decider in all of this. I remember this often and it does help me to be more patient (don’t think I’ve forgotten my new year’s resolutions!) I’m doing quite fine here and am generally enjoying the way things are going right now. I appreciate my time here and am happy to be here at this point in my life. Thoughts like all of these above do indeed come up often, but it’s good to finally take the time to sit down, write them out, and just have them arranged in a way that at least would make sense in a second draft. If you want to know what living in Tanzania has been like for me, well, there it is.
Part II
Saturday, April 17, 2010
It hits me like a brick and panic starts deep and low in my gut, climbing upwards, invading my lungs, tugging my shoulders, scaling my throat until finally conquering my mind.
I don’t remember Eugene anymore.
Come to think of it, I don’t feel like I have much a past beyond the last six weeks. All of my memories seem to be in third person and not omniscient. What is this?
I’ve been reading pretty heavily lately and investing myself in these stories without realizing just how much they pull me out of my present. I have no past, I’m out of touch with my present and living entirely in fiction. The fiction I weave is a far off future, thinking only of infinite, and what’s not my own are the tales of Vonnegut and Steinbeck for the time being. It’s nice to get lost in a book from time to time but this is getting ridiculous. It’s time to cease daydreaming and snap back to hear and now. There’s a time and place for the future and it’s called the future. I seem to have forgotten that it’s wise to just resign to the flow of life to carry me through and go with it, enjoy it, and learn from it.
It’s odd to feel so distant from my memories though and I don’t know what can or will be done to reconcile this. I’m out of touch with almost everyone that I’ve ever known before this last month besides my father. I remember a skinny guy who used to live in a cold apartment, bundled up in coats, cooking quesadillas and watching Blazer games but that doesn’t seem like me. Even as I spent the last two days in an open-air room with only natural light, sitting around nothing better than a bunch of plastic lawn tables in plastic lawn chairs listening to people speak a language I failed to keep up with, nothing seemed foreign or out of the ordinary. Yep, I’ve crossed the threshold where life at home has become more foreign to me than life here. It wasn’t smooth or quick and the differences weren’t subtle, but sure enough it has happened and I’ve identified it. What’s it like to drink water straight from the tap? What’s it like to wake up and not be veiled by a sagging mosquito net? What’s it like to be anonymous again and be able to just do what I want, be who I want, and not draw stares at all times? It’s going to be hard to go “home” after all…
Speaking of which, I haven’t changed my plane tickets yet but it’s looking like I’m under two months now.
It hits me like a brick and panic starts deep and low in my gut, climbing upwards, invading my lungs, tugging my shoulders, scaling my throat until finally conquering my mind.
I don’t remember Eugene anymore.
Come to think of it, I don’t feel like I have much a past beyond the last six weeks. All of my memories seem to be in third person and not omniscient. What is this?
I’ve been reading pretty heavily lately and investing myself in these stories without realizing just how much they pull me out of my present. I have no past, I’m out of touch with my present and living entirely in fiction. The fiction I weave is a far off future, thinking only of infinite, and what’s not my own are the tales of Vonnegut and Steinbeck for the time being. It’s nice to get lost in a book from time to time but this is getting ridiculous. It’s time to cease daydreaming and snap back to hear and now. There’s a time and place for the future and it’s called the future. I seem to have forgotten that it’s wise to just resign to the flow of life to carry me through and go with it, enjoy it, and learn from it.
It’s odd to feel so distant from my memories though and I don’t know what can or will be done to reconcile this. I’m out of touch with almost everyone that I’ve ever known before this last month besides my father. I remember a skinny guy who used to live in a cold apartment, bundled up in coats, cooking quesadillas and watching Blazer games but that doesn’t seem like me. Even as I spent the last two days in an open-air room with only natural light, sitting around nothing better than a bunch of plastic lawn tables in plastic lawn chairs listening to people speak a language I failed to keep up with, nothing seemed foreign or out of the ordinary. Yep, I’ve crossed the threshold where life at home has become more foreign to me than life here. It wasn’t smooth or quick and the differences weren’t subtle, but sure enough it has happened and I’ve identified it. What’s it like to drink water straight from the tap? What’s it like to wake up and not be veiled by a sagging mosquito net? What’s it like to be anonymous again and be able to just do what I want, be who I want, and not draw stares at all times? It’s going to be hard to go “home” after all…
Speaking of which, I haven’t changed my plane tickets yet but it’s looking like I’m under two months now.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
So yeah, I got robbed
Years of bad karma from April Fools past finally caught up to me in a rude way last Thursday afternoon and when I frame it this way, it seems kind of like I deserved it. So, I would like to begin by apologizing to Katie Liebenstein for convincing her a few years back that I got in a car accident and also to anyone else who I enjoyed a cheap and instantly regrettable April Fools joke at their expense in the past. You win this time though I don’t recall anyone laughing. It wasn’t the first thought that crossed my mind but it wasn’t long before I realized it was in fact April Fools Day and no one would probably believe me. Still, it really happened though now I’ve had to tell the story so many times that it doesn’t even seem like something that really happened to me. Here’s how it went down:
It was last Thursday, the first, and I left work a little early because I wanted to mail some postcards and then meet up with some other people for a milkshake. I know that the part of town where I work is pretty poor and dangerous but I’d walked through it by myself several times before and that day didn’t feel any different. Really it wasn’t any different than any other day and I was walking through minding my own business and just doing my thing as usual. I walked through all of the sketchy parts with no problem whatsoever and was a distance of about three blocks away from the main road of town which I needed to go left down towards the post office so I walked across the street because there was a break in the cars passing. Wrong move.
I have to give props to these guys because I walked right into them which is like putting your foot in a waiting crocodile’s mouth. They weren’t targeting me or following me or anything and they really had no more than three seconds to decide they were going to mug me so it was just good luck on their part kind of. The short one kind of says a greeting to me which I get often so I just kind of ignore it and keep walking but then he puts his hand to arm to slow me and make sure I at least stop for a second to talk to him.
“Nipe elfu…” he starts to say, the Swahili way to start saying “give me some money” but before he even finishes saying that, there’s a tug on my bag, a rip, and then release. I lunge for it but my mind kind of freezes up when I see the size of the knife they’re wielding. It was no Croc Dundee mini-machete or anything but definitely bigger than a switch blade. I turn back to the short one and he’s already jogging back across the street with the other two.
“MWIZI!” I shout after a little hesitation (“THIEF!” which you sometimes should be careful about because thieves will get murdered and whatever was in your pockets usually isn’t worth getting some people killed. I’ve since learned that Arusha isn’t really that kind of town though and crime like this is frequent enough where people don’t take it as seriously as they do in some other towns.) They break into a sprint after I yell though and cut through the field just down the hill. I think this one guy is running after them but by the time they’ve crossed the creek and their figures reemerge, he’s just running with them (sunuvabitch!). By this point, I’ve slowly crossed back across the street to just stand on the sidewalk to watch them run off with my stuff. A crowd of other people who were walking along just joined me in standing there and watching them go off.
I get a simple “pole” (“sorry”) from some primary school students and from a few other people but most people just kind of watch me to see what I’m going to do as I just stand there bummed out and staring at the last place I saw them. I was just sort of doing an inventory of what they got and still a little bit in disbelief because it was 1:30 on a sunny afternoon on a busy road, not even 200 yards from the main road of town, with more than 50 other people around. I thought I had no reason to expect it and therefore I just thought he was another guy who wanted to ask me for money because I’m white. There are thousands of dirty young dudes just like them that are everywhere in this town which is what bothers me most because now everyone’s a suspect.
Nobody really won in this situation. All that was in my bag was my notebook that I’ve just been taking notes in for work (valueless to them) two Swahili-English dictionaries which they probably won’t even get five dollars for (though I paid about $16 for the two of them) and my rain jacket which I just happened to describe a couple posts ago. I don’t remember how much that costs but they probably won’t even get like five bucks for that either but this is just the wrong season for me to lose that. There were also the five postcards that I was on my way to mail (a month late, I know) which are also valueless to them. Gotta say sorry again to Karly Harding, Ali Caufin, Brittany Morris, Michael Lansing and Paul Corey because those aren’t going to make it anymore. Lastly, they took the bag which was that cool single-strap backpack thing I’ve had for almost four years that I got back in San Antonio
I still went in to work the next day even though everyone else had the day off and I really didn’t feel like coming in, but I said I would. I told Juhudi (my boss) what happened and it really bothered him. He told me that they were probably expecting a digital camera or a laptop or a passport or something better because I’m a whitey. Also, because Easter was coming up they were probably just hoping to make an extra buck for the holiday. We walked around the neighborhood that Friday which was good because I was having a hard time paying attention and was also good because I got to see just how poor and rundown the place is that I’m working. I was definitely seeing things through fresh eyes and I’ve been numbed to the extreme poverty that I’ve seen just since day one in Tanzania
The part of town where I’m working is probably one of the poorest wards in the whole Arusha municipality. It does have a bad reputation for crime and such which I’ve heard about from day one. I’ve seen the guys before who don’t have jobs and just spend their days doing exercise and practicing boxing/karate in the open fields around town. I’m not going to win a fight with them and I’m happy that it didn’t come to that (I do wish I at least socked that short guy in the face once even though he still would have gotten away… just for my sake.) I have to admit I definitely don’t feel as comfortable walking those streets as I did before and I’m feeling more paranoid seeing all the different looks and pairs of eyes shooting my way all the time. I stick out a lot and that gets me a lot of unwanted attention. Sometimes it gets me privileges too but based off of the stories I’ve heard, it doesn’t mean you’re less likely to get shanked.
That’s why I’ve gotta be a little serious here and tell the truth in that I have been hearing bad stories since day one about the area where I work but I won’t give you the details and more reason to worry than I have to because it’s already discomforting enough for me. More and more people are making it sound like this town is kind of going to the dogs right now and getting more dangerous/violent than even a few months ago. This is the slow season for tourists too which means there’s not as much cash coming in so people are bound to get a little edgier. I’m trying to be safe and smart and I can guarantee you that I don’t want to die here so don’t worry about that. I’m just a little concerned because it was just any other Thursday afternoon in broad daylight in front of a lot of people. If you can’t even feel comfortable then, when can you?
The important thing is that I’m still okay and no damage was done. I miss my things and wish those postcards would make it (they were pretty cool) but I know they’re just things after all and it could have been a lot worse. It definitely pissed me off and I’m disappointed that I can’t say “I’ve never been robbed” anymore but I’ve gained a new perspective so I’ll count that as something beneficial. I don’t want this to ruin my experience or make me paranoid or anything. I think the work I’m doing is really positive and valuable so I’ve got to keep doing it, see this through, and do the best job I can despite whatever enemies try to slow me down or intimidate me.
Still sucks though, don’t it?
Friday, April 2, 2010
Another Bizarre Night in Tanzania
31 March 2010
I’ve had an incredible compilation of strange events occur in my life and my fair share in Tanzania as well though it seems like Arusha may just be a magnet for these kind of odd experiences. If you recall, it was here where I spent the waning minutes of 2009 unable to leave a wedding party for some people I have never met or seen before in my life. You probably weren’t aware of the night I spent last week (or was it the week before?) sticking back at the café/bar talking with the bartender/owner and his friend about some fictional heist while the other guy pretended his camera suitcase was firing bullets and missiles (sound effects included), long after everyone else had already left to go to some dance club. But last night reminded me of something I wrote about damn near seven years ago when I was a lowly high school freshman with a xanga account on a school orchestra trip to Vancouver B.C.
I described what I called “the most diverse moment of my life” as being a dinner of Hawaiian pizza, an Italian/American dish which we shared with a family of Taiwanese immigrants to the west coast of Canada who were speaking Mandarin Chinese while I bumped shoulders with my Vietnamese-American friend and partner in this homestay, Kevin Trinh, while I represented the stars and stripes but spoke the language of the colonizers. I know it’s a bit of a stretch – it was now and it still is then – but it would be pretty cool to track down those old musings of a 15-year-old Scott Berry and his friends.
Since coming to Tanzania, or even before back at UBC, I haven’t had to exaggerate so much to draw so many different connections from all the corners of the world. Last night was an exceptionally globalized night though and all the signs just reminded me too much of that old memory that I just shared. Let me paint the picture for you and show you just why it was so reminiscent though also incredibly unique and absurd as things tend to be here in Tanzania whether in the company of expats or not.
I place my order for some seafood yakisoba though the Tanzanian waitress at this Japanese restaurant says some things to me about pork that I don’t understand and I give her a response that was incomprehensible and she probably didn’t understand which must explain why the dish arrived later with both some surf and turf on it. I sat there, in the city central to East Africa that is constantly referred to as the point halfway between Cairo and Cape Town, taking slow drinks from a nice bottle of cold Tusker lager. To my left is Stephanie, my former coordinator though she kind of quit over some disputes regarding my orientation… eep! To her left are two people immersed in a conversation in Swedish, one of which is my roommate Åsa who is enjoying a glass of red wine which probably was produced in South Africa. Across from the table sits Ariana, a new volunteer hailing from Mexico who just arrived in Arusha the day before and is now talking with Hannah, a Briton, who just got back to Arusha after three months in Nairobi, Kenya. They’re talking with Kala, another (kind of former) roommate of mine who also comes from the UK but has pretty much spent the last 8 years in East Africa. I don’t know the two girls to her right who sit across from me, though I’m pretty sure they work at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda which is here in Arusha as well. I thought I heard the younger of the two say she’s an intern there but she grew up in Munich or Zurich or Brussels or some place like that and she occasionally speaks French to the girl next to her whose nationality I just cannot place; her English could have been North American though her ancestry makes her look Egyptian to me or somewhere north and east of there. They don’t really mingle with the rest of the group much and I’m not sure who they know at this dinner. At this point, David has been with us for a while and Richard and his friend Mr. Elvis (I can’t make this up) have recently joined us as well. David is British as well though he was born and raised in Malawi and has spent most of his life either in Kenya and Tanzania or on the sea as a chef. Richard is a new volunteer from Scotland originally and has recently arrived but already has made quite a few friends and acquaintances including this Mr. Elvis guy who is a Tanzanian P.E. teacher that he works with and there’s plenty more on him later.
The evening continues with continued conversation filling the time before food slowly arrives and people slowly start consuming it. As our plates slowly become more barren and we add another drink, some more people arrive. They’re a group of Tanzanians, mostly women, that Richard apparently knows though they’ve got this one white guy with them who I swear I saw just a few days ago. Turns out his name is Chris and he’s an American who has been here in Arusha for just a few days and has no plans really. He can tell I’m American too and I try to make him guess from which state or even which part of the country just for fun. He guess all parts of the east coast (Noooooooo!!) before I have to steer him to the other side of the country where he guesses “California?” “No.” “Washington?” I raise my hands, holding them horizontally and parallel to each other indicating “in between”. “Oh Oregon!” He says it right… bonus, but before we can talk about that Mr. Elvis, who had been mostly silent up to this point and who I thought was maybe only 25, starts joining the conversation… as in interrupting what we were talking about and asking questions that are completely unrelated to the previous topic.
It turns out this Mr. Elvis figure has been putting away a few drinks while none of us really noticed as we were all engaged in our own conversations that he wasn’t a part of. Now he’s come to life and the group has since dispersed, some to another table, some to other parts of this table, the U.N. people may have gone home and Åsa’s inside singing karaoke by herself. We start learning all sorts of things about this guy who seems very adamant to dispel myths and stereotypes about Tanzanians that he was very adamant we possessed regardless of how many times we told him otherwise or tried to change the topic. He didn’t like us to talk in Swahili to him and found it degraded. He insisted that he was related to several very important people including the current president of Tanzania (his cousin?), the first president of Tanzania (his uncle?) and all of these other people that he wanted us to believe he could just call up if wanted though the truth in his statements to me seemed either exaggerated or imagined though I guess it was possible. This was not the extent of his connections, however.
I can believe that he really is a P.E. teacher here and I can believe that he really got his education in Zimbabwe or wherever it was that he said. I can even believe that he is an accomplished athlete martial artist, trained in Judo, Karate and also skilled in general athletics. I can even believe that this has allowed him to travel the world where he may or may not have successfully competed. Throughout the night, he would consistently begin just listing places where he’s been. “I’ve been to the U.S., I’ve been to Europe, I’ve been to Hong Kong, I’ve been to Cuba,” he says as he touches his fingers together like he’s counting the lists he keeps forming. “I had Castro – do you know Castro? – I had Castro put a medal on me.” One of his many claims including meeting all sorts of influential people in Tanzanian athletics and depicting himself as being just as renowned and important in this realm. All of this he almost forcefully conveys on us, completely oblivious to our discomfort with the situation. He keeps drinking, now onto whiskey from a little porcelain container that you normally see being used for sake at Japanese restaurants. We keep drinking too, but only to be polite…
“Too many Tanzanians see white people and they think they have a lot of money. They are beggars but I am not and I want to prove to you that we can pay for things too and we don’t just take like beggars. Let me buy you a drink.”
“Oh no thank you, I’m fine. We’re actually going to lea---“
“For my sake! For my SAKE! FOR MY SAKE! FOR MY SA---”
“Alright! Alright! I don’t think Tanzanians are beggars though…”
He commands the waitress bring me another beer which arrives soon later.
“Asante.”
“Don’t speak Swahili! You degrade me when you do! I know my English is bad---”
“Oh no it’s fine,” we all say and we mean it too. He’s better than most Tanzanians. Situation defused… temporarily. He goes back to talking about some other things that he has already said though now we’re trapped because he bought us drinks. Chris gets some warm sake that he clearly never requested or intended to drink but Mr. Elvis puts on the pressure, aggressively making it too awkward and tense for him not to drink any of it and he sips politely just to appease this man who used to be so quiet. I take moments to steal out as I can, and I did honestly want to go inside to see Åsa singing karaoke (though I failed to realize the doorway had been built to Japanese height standards and didn’t learn my lesson until the third time, explaining the sore crown of my head the day after) or sometimes have to go to the bathroom. I’m trying to enjoy what would otherwise be a kind of frightening situation and I could see a bit of terror and discomfort in the face of others and though it was fun for me for a bit, I do somewhat regret involve getting Ariana roped into the conversation. He insists on buying everyone else drinks to prove that Tanzanians aren’t all “beggars” and there’s a tense standoff between him and the British girl who just got in from Nairobi and is on antibiotics, therefore cannot drink and had to persistently refuse the pressure. He quickly became convinced that he is going to marry Ariana and we were having fun asking how many cows he would pay to her father (the twelve he offered is insultingly low). He seemed to seriously believe he was going to marry her too and she was a good sport about it the whole time though it was too much for me. He insisted on buying another drink for me even though mine was ¾ full still and Ariana wasn’t drinking.
“For my SAKE! FOR MY SAKE! FOR MY SAKE! FOR MY SAKE!” He starts chanting.
“For my sake,” I counter, “please let me just be thankful for what you already brought me.” He looks confused. “For my sake, I don’t want to get drunk or stay out late because I have to get up early and go get Ariana.” He looks a little offended and I can tell quickly that I’m not going to win this battle. Thank God for Ariana though who quells him by saying we’ll share it. It arrives and I pour some into a glass for her and take the bottle for myself.
Eventually I was able to free myself and I just camped out by the karaoke machine with Åsa for a while though she made me sing. Even though my microphone didn’t work, she made me sing with her. David sits by her, clearly without any intention to ever sing karaoke but as her boyfriend just sitting nearby why Åsa stares at the screen, white words turning yellow in time with the song while the worst (WORST!) videos play in the background; she sings on as if completely unaware of the oddity of the whole situation or even just oblivious to her surroundings. She makes me sing again with her and even when she somehow winds up with the microphone that doesn’t actually work and starts to get frustrated because her voice isn’t sounding from the speakers, but I quickly trade her microphones fully aware that mine won’t work and even though she’s just learned this, she still makes me sing into it, pushing it into my face like it will make a difference, giving me a fat lip in the process. All the while, I can’t stop staring at the Sears family portrait style photo of the Japanese owner and some of his staff, in their surgical scrubs-like Japanese restaurant uniforms, that is hanging just to the left of the T.V. Pure gold, I tell you. I have to get a photo of this.
After singing “Guantanamera” with Ariana and reliving my days of high school Spanish class in the process, I have to fend off pressure to go to another bar from this place. I wasn’t kidding about having to wake up early for work the next day or being tired from the previous two days. They eventually take off without me, Åsa, David and Hannah though Åsa has no intention of relinquishing the microphone or to stop singing. We stand around awkwardly for a few more songs (which she also makes me sing with her) and I can’t stop thinking about just how bad these videos they play are and how bad Japanese karaoke is in general (IT’S HORRIBLE). They kick us out eventually because they’re closing, much to everyone’s pleasure who’s not named Åsa, and we get to go home. It’s still after midnight on a Tuesday night which isn’t that bad by regular standards and I usually go to bed later than that, but I just get exhausted around here every week so it’s hard to think about anything but resting and relaxing outside of work anymore.
All in all, the whole evening was just so strange and unique compared to anything I can say that has ever happened to me before. And to think that I wasn’t going to go because I’ve been spending too much money lately (and the ATM decided to withdraw some money without actually giving me it the week before). Strange things just seem to happen all the time…
Even today I saw a man riding a tandem bicycle alone and also another man walking his goat down the main highway, then the rope around its neck came undone but with a quick lunge he grabbed its back leg and got it tied back up like a nice leash. I manage to see plenty of strange things back home in Portland and Eugene, no doubt, so this is really just a different setting for madness. You gotta love it though. It’s good to get nice and perplexed every once in a while but then shrug it off and have a healthy laugh at how absurd life can get sometimes though it never ceases to surprise me.
I’ve had an incredible compilation of strange events occur in my life and my fair share in Tanzania as well though it seems like Arusha may just be a magnet for these kind of odd experiences. If you recall, it was here where I spent the waning minutes of 2009 unable to leave a wedding party for some people I have never met or seen before in my life. You probably weren’t aware of the night I spent last week (or was it the week before?) sticking back at the café/bar talking with the bartender/owner and his friend about some fictional heist while the other guy pretended his camera suitcase was firing bullets and missiles (sound effects included), long after everyone else had already left to go to some dance club. But last night reminded me of something I wrote about damn near seven years ago when I was a lowly high school freshman with a xanga account on a school orchestra trip to Vancouver B.C.
I described what I called “the most diverse moment of my life” as being a dinner of Hawaiian pizza, an Italian/American dish which we shared with a family of Taiwanese immigrants to the west coast of Canada who were speaking Mandarin Chinese while I bumped shoulders with my Vietnamese-American friend and partner in this homestay, Kevin Trinh, while I represented the stars and stripes but spoke the language of the colonizers. I know it’s a bit of a stretch – it was now and it still is then – but it would be pretty cool to track down those old musings of a 15-year-old Scott Berry and his friends.
Since coming to Tanzania, or even before back at UBC, I haven’t had to exaggerate so much to draw so many different connections from all the corners of the world. Last night was an exceptionally globalized night though and all the signs just reminded me too much of that old memory that I just shared. Let me paint the picture for you and show you just why it was so reminiscent though also incredibly unique and absurd as things tend to be here in Tanzania whether in the company of expats or not.
I place my order for some seafood yakisoba though the Tanzanian waitress at this Japanese restaurant says some things to me about pork that I don’t understand and I give her a response that was incomprehensible and she probably didn’t understand which must explain why the dish arrived later with both some surf and turf on it. I sat there, in the city central to East Africa that is constantly referred to as the point halfway between Cairo and Cape Town, taking slow drinks from a nice bottle of cold Tusker lager. To my left is Stephanie, my former coordinator though she kind of quit over some disputes regarding my orientation… eep! To her left are two people immersed in a conversation in Swedish, one of which is my roommate Åsa who is enjoying a glass of red wine which probably was produced in South Africa. Across from the table sits Ariana, a new volunteer hailing from Mexico who just arrived in Arusha the day before and is now talking with Hannah, a Briton, who just got back to Arusha after three months in Nairobi, Kenya. They’re talking with Kala, another (kind of former) roommate of mine who also comes from the UK but has pretty much spent the last 8 years in East Africa. I don’t know the two girls to her right who sit across from me, though I’m pretty sure they work at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda which is here in Arusha as well. I thought I heard the younger of the two say she’s an intern there but she grew up in Munich or Zurich or Brussels or some place like that and she occasionally speaks French to the girl next to her whose nationality I just cannot place; her English could have been North American though her ancestry makes her look Egyptian to me or somewhere north and east of there. They don’t really mingle with the rest of the group much and I’m not sure who they know at this dinner. At this point, David has been with us for a while and Richard and his friend Mr. Elvis (I can’t make this up) have recently joined us as well. David is British as well though he was born and raised in Malawi and has spent most of his life either in Kenya and Tanzania or on the sea as a chef. Richard is a new volunteer from Scotland originally and has recently arrived but already has made quite a few friends and acquaintances including this Mr. Elvis guy who is a Tanzanian P.E. teacher that he works with and there’s plenty more on him later.
The evening continues with continued conversation filling the time before food slowly arrives and people slowly start consuming it. As our plates slowly become more barren and we add another drink, some more people arrive. They’re a group of Tanzanians, mostly women, that Richard apparently knows though they’ve got this one white guy with them who I swear I saw just a few days ago. Turns out his name is Chris and he’s an American who has been here in Arusha for just a few days and has no plans really. He can tell I’m American too and I try to make him guess from which state or even which part of the country just for fun. He guess all parts of the east coast (Noooooooo!!) before I have to steer him to the other side of the country where he guesses “California?” “No.” “Washington?” I raise my hands, holding them horizontally and parallel to each other indicating “in between”. “Oh Oregon!” He says it right… bonus, but before we can talk about that Mr. Elvis, who had been mostly silent up to this point and who I thought was maybe only 25, starts joining the conversation… as in interrupting what we were talking about and asking questions that are completely unrelated to the previous topic.
It turns out this Mr. Elvis figure has been putting away a few drinks while none of us really noticed as we were all engaged in our own conversations that he wasn’t a part of. Now he’s come to life and the group has since dispersed, some to another table, some to other parts of this table, the U.N. people may have gone home and Åsa’s inside singing karaoke by herself. We start learning all sorts of things about this guy who seems very adamant to dispel myths and stereotypes about Tanzanians that he was very adamant we possessed regardless of how many times we told him otherwise or tried to change the topic. He didn’t like us to talk in Swahili to him and found it degraded. He insisted that he was related to several very important people including the current president of Tanzania (his cousin?), the first president of Tanzania (his uncle?) and all of these other people that he wanted us to believe he could just call up if wanted though the truth in his statements to me seemed either exaggerated or imagined though I guess it was possible. This was not the extent of his connections, however.
I can believe that he really is a P.E. teacher here and I can believe that he really got his education in Zimbabwe or wherever it was that he said. I can even believe that he is an accomplished athlete martial artist, trained in Judo, Karate and also skilled in general athletics. I can even believe that this has allowed him to travel the world where he may or may not have successfully competed. Throughout the night, he would consistently begin just listing places where he’s been. “I’ve been to the U.S., I’ve been to Europe, I’ve been to Hong Kong, I’ve been to Cuba,” he says as he touches his fingers together like he’s counting the lists he keeps forming. “I had Castro – do you know Castro? – I had Castro put a medal on me.” One of his many claims including meeting all sorts of influential people in Tanzanian athletics and depicting himself as being just as renowned and important in this realm. All of this he almost forcefully conveys on us, completely oblivious to our discomfort with the situation. He keeps drinking, now onto whiskey from a little porcelain container that you normally see being used for sake at Japanese restaurants. We keep drinking too, but only to be polite…
“Too many Tanzanians see white people and they think they have a lot of money. They are beggars but I am not and I want to prove to you that we can pay for things too and we don’t just take like beggars. Let me buy you a drink.”
“Oh no thank you, I’m fine. We’re actually going to lea---“
“For my sake! For my SAKE! FOR MY SAKE! FOR MY SA---”
“Alright! Alright! I don’t think Tanzanians are beggars though…”
He commands the waitress bring me another beer which arrives soon later.
“Asante.”
“Don’t speak Swahili! You degrade me when you do! I know my English is bad---”
“Oh no it’s fine,” we all say and we mean it too. He’s better than most Tanzanians. Situation defused… temporarily. He goes back to talking about some other things that he has already said though now we’re trapped because he bought us drinks. Chris gets some warm sake that he clearly never requested or intended to drink but Mr. Elvis puts on the pressure, aggressively making it too awkward and tense for him not to drink any of it and he sips politely just to appease this man who used to be so quiet. I take moments to steal out as I can, and I did honestly want to go inside to see Åsa singing karaoke (though I failed to realize the doorway had been built to Japanese height standards and didn’t learn my lesson until the third time, explaining the sore crown of my head the day after) or sometimes have to go to the bathroom. I’m trying to enjoy what would otherwise be a kind of frightening situation and I could see a bit of terror and discomfort in the face of others and though it was fun for me for a bit, I do somewhat regret involve getting Ariana roped into the conversation. He insists on buying everyone else drinks to prove that Tanzanians aren’t all “beggars” and there’s a tense standoff between him and the British girl who just got in from Nairobi and is on antibiotics, therefore cannot drink and had to persistently refuse the pressure. He quickly became convinced that he is going to marry Ariana and we were having fun asking how many cows he would pay to her father (the twelve he offered is insultingly low). He seemed to seriously believe he was going to marry her too and she was a good sport about it the whole time though it was too much for me. He insisted on buying another drink for me even though mine was ¾ full still and Ariana wasn’t drinking.
“For my SAKE! FOR MY SAKE! FOR MY SAKE! FOR MY SAKE!” He starts chanting.
“For my sake,” I counter, “please let me just be thankful for what you already brought me.” He looks confused. “For my sake, I don’t want to get drunk or stay out late because I have to get up early and go get Ariana.” He looks a little offended and I can tell quickly that I’m not going to win this battle. Thank God for Ariana though who quells him by saying we’ll share it. It arrives and I pour some into a glass for her and take the bottle for myself.
Eventually I was able to free myself and I just camped out by the karaoke machine with Åsa for a while though she made me sing. Even though my microphone didn’t work, she made me sing with her. David sits by her, clearly without any intention to ever sing karaoke but as her boyfriend just sitting nearby why Åsa stares at the screen, white words turning yellow in time with the song while the worst (WORST!) videos play in the background; she sings on as if completely unaware of the oddity of the whole situation or even just oblivious to her surroundings. She makes me sing again with her and even when she somehow winds up with the microphone that doesn’t actually work and starts to get frustrated because her voice isn’t sounding from the speakers, but I quickly trade her microphones fully aware that mine won’t work and even though she’s just learned this, she still makes me sing into it, pushing it into my face like it will make a difference, giving me a fat lip in the process. All the while, I can’t stop staring at the Sears family portrait style photo of the Japanese owner and some of his staff, in their surgical scrubs-like Japanese restaurant uniforms, that is hanging just to the left of the T.V. Pure gold, I tell you. I have to get a photo of this.
After singing “Guantanamera” with Ariana and reliving my days of high school Spanish class in the process, I have to fend off pressure to go to another bar from this place. I wasn’t kidding about having to wake up early for work the next day or being tired from the previous two days. They eventually take off without me, Åsa, David and Hannah though Åsa has no intention of relinquishing the microphone or to stop singing. We stand around awkwardly for a few more songs (which she also makes me sing with her) and I can’t stop thinking about just how bad these videos they play are and how bad Japanese karaoke is in general (IT’S HORRIBLE). They kick us out eventually because they’re closing, much to everyone’s pleasure who’s not named Åsa, and we get to go home. It’s still after midnight on a Tuesday night which isn’t that bad by regular standards and I usually go to bed later than that, but I just get exhausted around here every week so it’s hard to think about anything but resting and relaxing outside of work anymore.
All in all, the whole evening was just so strange and unique compared to anything I can say that has ever happened to me before. And to think that I wasn’t going to go because I’ve been spending too much money lately (and the ATM decided to withdraw some money without actually giving me it the week before). Strange things just seem to happen all the time…
Even today I saw a man riding a tandem bicycle alone and also another man walking his goat down the main highway, then the rope around its neck came undone but with a quick lunge he grabbed its back leg and got it tied back up like a nice leash. I manage to see plenty of strange things back home in Portland and Eugene, no doubt, so this is really just a different setting for madness. You gotta love it though. It’s good to get nice and perplexed every once in a while but then shrug it off and have a healthy laugh at how absurd life can get sometimes though it never ceases to surprise me.
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