Compilation

6/26

I have not posted in a few days because I have been sick and too tired to think about blogging, so I thought I'd make this post a compilation of the past few days.

DHE work has been going well. Nik and I visited the Lulu VICOBA and decided we want to work on a pilot project with them for the summer. When we arrived, the VICOBA members eagerly showed us the briquette press they had built all on their own. I was really impressed- it was larger than the one we built and more than half the cost (the beauty of mzungu prices). They also have access to coffee husks, a major component we were looking for in our pilot project location. It doesn't hurt they are the VICOBA closest to the mountains in a gorgeous and vividly green setting farthest away from the city!

I've been noticing that the feral cats hang around restaurants (very smart- it is easy for me to feed them) and the stray dogs hang around the streets (not very smart- I have no access to food to give them). One dog, who we named Frank until I told the guys the dog was really a girl and then we named Ingrid, seemed to really have an affinity for us. Not sure if it was our smell or what, but Ingrid Frank followed us around all day. We would walk for a good 20 minutes and Ingrid Frank would follow us the whole way. We would go into a restaurant and come out an hour or so later, and Ingrid Frank would be sitting down waiting for us. We didn't shake her until the next day, when we walked out of our hotel and she wasn't there. I must admit it, I miss Ingrid Frank.

One day, we locked ourselves out of our room (not uncommon for our group) and I went downstairs for a spare key. As I was waiting, a young mzungu woman walked in with a local chatting away in fluent Swahili with him. She grabbed her key and noticed me waiting, so she asked if she could give me any help, correctly assuming I was not fluent in Swahili. After explaining my situation to her, she offered to wait with me until the hotel staff found a spare key to unlock my door. I soon learned that Lauren was from Wellesley, grew up in Michigan, and had been spending the past 2 years in Tanzania as a Peace Corp volunteer. She is actually leaving her village in 2 weeks for the end of her service work. She has been working on environmental and other aspects of improvement in the village (about five hours away from Arusha) and has completed tasks like building a library and water tanks for the community. We chatted and I told her of my interest in joining the Peace Corp after (fingers crossed) getting my degree at Dartmouth. She invited me to have a beer with her at the hotel bar and ask her any questions I had about the Peace Corp. Of course, I accepted.

It was really great talking to Lauren about her experiences before and during her stay in Tanzania. Her friend joined us as we talked, and I soon learned he was a teacher in the village where Lauren volunteered. When I found out he was married, I asked about the Tanzanian “dating culture”, sine PDA is frowned upon here and I don't even see many men and women together when I am walking around. It turns out Tanzania has no dating culture, and the traditional courtship includes a bride price instead of a dowry. A bride price is where the man's family has to pay before the man can marry a woman, thus many families prefer daughters and consider themselves wealthy if they have many. With Lauren's friend, he was best friends with his wife through their schooling, eventually became secretly romantic for a short time and then married soon after. There is no word for “boyfriend” in Swahili, only "friends with benefits” and “engaged/married”. Now in cities, though, dating is getting a bigger hold in the culture, because of American television. Yes, High School Musical is as realistic as it gets!