Confirmation Day

Confirmation is an important event in the Lutheran Church.  It is when, after a period of study, a person (usually a child of about 12 or 13) confirms publicly that he or she really does believe the doctrines of the church, and is accepted into full membership.  There is a Lutheran church next to our school, and we know two people whose children were confirmed a couple of weeks ago.  We were invited to the event and the family festivities that followed it.

Now, I already knew that this is a large congregation, but I was surprised at the number of children being confirmed--there were at least 60!  This is a thriving faith community.

The service lasted about 3 hours, as it was combined with the regular Sunday service.  It was full of singing, as well as the standard liturgy.  Of course, it was all in Swahili, but we've acquired a hymnal in that language, so we could follow along to a degree, although we did not totally understand what was being said.

We had offered to take photos of the event for one of our friends whose child was being confirmed, and we were also invited to the party at their home.  The party location was not far, but up the mountain, so the family rented a dala-dala to take us all there.  More party-goers joined us later.  The family is Maasai, and their clothing varied from traditional shukas (robes) to Western styles.

The party was held outdoors in a tent set up for the purpose, with rented plastic chairs.  After a good meal there was a lull, and I was beginning to wonder if we should leave.  Then, we were told that a cake would soon be brought out.  The cake would be cut, and then gifts would be presented to the confirmand.  Camera at the ready, we watched the procession bringing the cake.  It was uncovered, and we saw that it was...a goat!  A whole, roasted goat, complete with hide, horns, and leaves hanging out of its mouth!  The confirmand, with the help of an aunt, sliced pieces from the side of the "cake", and fed them to the guests.  Mark ate a piece and said it was good.  I declined.

 

Presentation of gifts was an elaborate ceremony.  Guests started a chant (in Kiswahili) that called up family members one by one: "This one is Mama, this one", "This one is Auntie, this one", etc. and that person would walk, or sometimes dance, to the child and hand the gift to him.  Some dropped money into a box covered by a shawl instead.  A large gift was presented with great pomp, carried in atop the head of one of the aunties.

Another cake was brought out--this time a standard pastry--and after it was consumed, the party broke up.  We walked back down the mountain with a group of other guests and managed to get home just before dark.  The day's events had started at 10 am, and lasted until 6 pm.  Longer than we had expected, but we were glad we were there to participate.

Camping Safari

This week we went on a 3 day/2 night camping safari.  Mark and I and our friend Doug left with the driver/guide and cook in a big 4-wheel drive Land Cruiser with a pop-up roof.   

Let me say that I have never especially liked camping.  It has always seemed like a lot of work and inconvenience in order to spend time outdoors.  However, in a camping safari, the tour operator does all the work and suffers most of the inconvenience.  Our trip was highly enjoyable.

The first day out, we drove to the Engaruka ruins.  This is a settlement in the Rift Valley that was occupied between about 1500 and 1700 C.E.  We saw gravesites, the thick rock walls of sizable dwellings, and an irrigation system that resembles modern permagardening systems.  Although that settlement was abandoned, Maasai villages are in the area now, and the tribespeople are protective of the site.

Proceeding on, we stopped for the night at a posh campsite in Karatu, Kudu Camp.  By posh, I mean that it had an internet cafe, swimming pool, pub, gift shop, and more.  Our driver set up the tents and our cook prepared a wonderful meal.

The next morning we drove into the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.  We saw baboons along the road, including a family group with a tiny baby clutching its mother.  Our cook was dropped off at Simba A Camp, where he set things up and starting preparing another feast.  We then went to the Oldupai Gorge, where Mary Leakey's team made 60 different finds of ancient hominid remains, including a skull of Australopithecus boisei, who lived 1.8 million years ago and remains of Homo Hablis and Homo Erectus.  Her team also found 3.75 million year old footprints of Australopithecus afarensis nearby.  This is the same species as the individual whose bones were found in Ethiopia and named "Lucy".  These remains were preserved at Oldupai due to repeated volcanic activity that sandwiched them between layers of lava flows.  Rifting and erosion enabled them to be found in the 20th century.  Fascinating stuff.

We returned to the camp, which is situated on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater.  The view was breathtaking.  By that point in the early evening, quite a few other campers had arrived.  Most were brought there by tour companies, but a few had their own cars.  I was grateful for our guide and cook, not only because of the afore-mentioned work and inconvenience of a do-it-yourself camping experience, but also because they were very good at their jobs.  We settled in for the night, under the visible Milky Way.  It was about 2:30 am when we were awakened by cries of "Help! Help!" from nearby.  A cape buffalo had wandered through the camp and had repeatedly bumped a tent.  Our guide told us that he was the one who scooped up a handful of rocks and threw them at the animal, who then strolled out of the campsite.    

The next morning, the Land Cruiser was loaded up and we drove down into the crater.  This was the highlight of the safari.  The crater is about 20 km wide and holds thousands of animals.  Most of them can and do migrate in and out, but the crater has food and water and is a comfortable place for them to live.  Our guide was expert at spotting animals that we wouldn't have noticed on our own.  He and the other guides also share information on where exciting things might be seen.  Like the lions sleeping in a clump of tall grass right next to the road.  Or the cheetah surveying the landscape from a small rise on the plain.  We saw elephants (one about 30 feet away), warthogs, hippos, ostriches, gazelles, cape buffalo, zebras, wildebeest, and much more.  We took lots of pictures.  We are grateful to Doug for sharing the photos from his camera, which has a longer zoom than ours.

After lunch we proceeded home, tired from this amazing experience and from bumping along dirt roads, but extremely happy that we had this opportunity.

Mount Kili and Tingatinga

Last weekend, we spent a day and a half in the town of Moshi, which is at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro.  The mountain is the tallest in Africa, at around 19,000 feet, and its peak is usually hidden by clouds.  The days we were there, though, the sky was clear and the view was spectacular.  This is actually a bad thing.  The clouds shade the snow at the peak and protect it from melting too much.  The slow snow melt and other precipitation provides water to the area.  I have been told that there are fewer clouds now than in the past because of deforestation and climate change, resulting in less snow on the mountain than at the same time of year 50, 40, or even 20 years ago.

 

Gloomy thoughts aside, we enjoy Moshi.  It is a walkable  size, is less intense than Arusha,  and has several restaurants that appeal to Westerners.  This time of year, the poinciana trees are in lush bloom, covered with red-orange flowers.  The town also has a small concentration of artists, and we wanted to spend extra time this trip to explore what they had to offer.

We started by going to a shop we had seen back in August, when we were too overloaded with baggage to consider a single extra purchase.  This time, we hoped to pick up something  to brighten the walls of our little house.  Tanzania is famous for Tingatinga-style paintings, which are cheerful, primitive, and very appealing.  We went to the shop we had remembered and found that it and its neighbors have formed an association of artists.  There are 4 or 5 shops in a row, and the artists themselves work in the same building complex behind the storefronts.  We spoke to them, and ended up buying several pieces of art.  We are delighted with our purchases, and I'm sure the artists are delighted we stopped by.       

The Day We Saw the President

Friday morning, our headmistress called to me as I stepped into the office at school.  It seems that the president of Tanzania would be coming to a nearby event Saturday, and that our headmistress would be able to attend and bring along about 15 people.  She asked if Mark and I would like to go.  Absolutely!

So, at 7:30 the next morning in a light drizzle, we presented ourselves at her office, along with a few other teachers and several students.  A nearby private school had received the same invitation, so we were able to ride to the event with them in their small bus.  The bus was allowed only to the entrance of the gravel road leading to where the event was to be held, so we went the rest of the way on foot.  As we walked, the rain began to come down harder.

Arriving at the spot, we saw that two tents for spectators and one for officials had been set up.  There were many other attendees, but our headmistress was able to snag seats at one side of a tent for me, Mark, and herself.  I handed my umbrella to another teacher, and sat down to wait.

The wind started blowing, so that we were getting wet even under the tent.  The organizers of the event were kept busy applying a squeegee to the red carpet and rearranging chairs in the officials' tent.  At one point, we were shooed out of our seats so that bomb-detection dogs could patrol the area, but we were allowed to resume our seats shortly.  We were surrounded by military troops, but there were no metal detectors or other searches for weapons.  

Finally, the rain was so persistent that we were told to take our chairs and move to the auditorium of a nearby building.  (And, why we weren't there from the beginning, I do NOT know!)  By then, the grounds were mucky and difficult to walk through.  One of our students took my chair and led me in the right direction.  I became separated from Mark and our headmistress, and soon the mud started sucking at my feet.  I was wearing flats, and my foot came out of one, which rapidly filled with muddy water.  I lost my balance, and put my hands on the ground to keep from toppling over completely.  I rescued my shoe, and ended up walking to a bit of pavement barefoot. I put my shoes back on for protection, but by now they both had more mud inside than out.  I found a gravel path to the building, and was met there by the student, who showed me to a chair and offered to get water to wash my hands.

Feeling a little better, I sat down to wait again.  I learned later that the rain began to let up at that point.  The president was due at 9:30, but did not arrive until over an hour later.  A group of Maasai women in elaborate jewelry greeted him with a song.  He gave a nice speech about education, health care, and roads, as far as I can tell--it was entirely in Swahili. 

Afterwards, we walked back to the paved road and the bus in the rain, which again was falling heavily. By now we were thoroughly drenched.  At home, I washed my feet and my shoes in a bucket of water.  I am still waiting for them to dry.  (The shoes, not my feet).  In spite of the chilly rain and mud, I would not have missed this experience.  Seize the day!

 

Rain

It seems that the rainy season has started.  Since we arrived in this country in June, it has been dry, dry, dry.  The area where we are posted is especially arid, and keeping a thick layer of dust from accumulating inside the house has been a continual challenge.

Now, though, the short rainy season is here.  (There are two--one in November and December, the other from March through May).  We've had occasional rain during the last week or so, but two days ago there was a real thunder-boomer Florida-summer-like rain in the afternoon, and our shoes were caked with mud after walking across campus.

That's because all of the paths are dirt, the campus quad is dirt, and the side roads are dirt.  Thus, the dust during the rest of the year.

So, last night it started to rain in earnest--hard, steady, and continuous.  I do believe it rained all night, and it is still raining this morning.  But, strangely, no water is coming from the tap in our house.  This does happen frequently, and then usually the school handyman adjusts valves and such and it comes back on.  But I am told that water supply interruptions happen more often in the rainy season because pipes break.  Poor infrastructure. 

(Yes, yes, I know I should be grateful that I have water piped to my house at all while serving here, and I am.  Many of our friends have to fetch water from elsewhere.  The Peace Corps is kind to older volunteers.)

(And, I am especially grateful that our little house has a good roof.  We have not seen any leaks.)

But we are prepared.  We have five 5-gallon buckets of water stored in our pantry, and another couple of gallons of already-boiled drinking  water, as well.  We were told from the beginning of our service that we would need to be patient and flexible.  It's the patient part that gives me trouble.

Form IV National Exams

Form IV students are sitting for the National Exams, which take about two weeks to administer.  About 1/3 of our teachers are involved in proctoring the exams at other schools.  As a result, I have gone from teaching math to 3  Form I classes to teaching all 5 of them, just so they don't lose out in these two weeks.  Mark is busy, too.  But, with so many teachers absent, quite a few of the lower level classrooms have no teachers.  There is no other organized activity for these students, they just sit and (supposedly) study.

Tanzania takes these exams very seriously. They determine if, how, and where students will be able to advance in education.  They have much more impact than the SAT does in the States.  Each subject exam is 3 hours long, and the sciences include both a theory test and a "practicals" or labwork  exam.  It's so competitive that teachers are not allowed to proctor in their own schools, to prevent cheating and favoritism. After each exam is finished, the papers are collected from each student and locked in the school safe.  ALSO, we have police guards at the school, armed with rifles, to monitor the handling of the exams and ensure against leakage of the questions.

The Form IV students graduated two weeks ago, so after the exams they turn in any equipment they have borrowed or been issued--such as their desks and chairs--and are cleared to go home.  Exam results will come out in March.  Then, they will know if they can go to Form V (similar to community college), go to a vocational school, or just try to get some sort of job. Like in the rest of the world, good jobs are hard to come by without education.

Being foreign in a small Tanzanian town

We live in a small town.  Larger than a tiny village, but small enough that the residents don't see many white people, up close.  There are several Americans who teach at a school a few kilometers outside of town, and then there are me and Mark.  So, white people are objects of attention, curiosity, and sometimes misconception.  Mark and I try to take it with good humor.

I teach math to Form I students, who average about 14 years old.  A few days ago, I gave a set of problems to one of my classes, and went around the room giving advice and encouragement.   I stopped at a girl's desk and was pointing to her work with one hand while resting the other on the paper.  Then, hesitantly, she and two of the neighboring students started touching my fingers and fingernails.  I said, "My skin is just like yours, only a different color."  Then, "My nails are just like yours, only longer."  The reply was, "They're so white!"    I've also had my hair stroked a few times.  I don't generally mind.  They are learning about the world.

Another incident happened a few weeks ago.  Mark and I decided to take the long dala-dala trip into Arusha.  We met another teacher as we walked to the bus stop, and sat with her in the rear of the bus as we rode.  She is a lovely, educated woman in her 30s who speaks excellent English.  On one of the many stops along the way, 3 young Caucasian men with short brown hair boarded the bus and sat near the front.  They were speaking English, and from what I could hear of their conversation, they sounded Australian.  Our friend considered them for a few moments, then turned to me and said, "I think they're Chinese."  "Um, nooo...," I replied gently.  "Chinese people have black hair."

In our peaceful small town, a difference in skin or hair color is a source of curiosity and a good conversation topic.