Buying Electricity

Paying for electricity is done differently in Tanzania than in the States.  Here, we pre-pay for the service instead of getting a bill after the power is used.  The way it works is that when power is purchased, the buyer is given a receipt with a 20-digit code number which must be keyed in to a meter attached to the house.  That will re-load the meter with the appropriate amount of Kwh, which are shown on the meter's digital display.

Sounds simple, doesn't it?  Nothing is simple here.  There is no local office of the electric company where one could make payments in person.  However, there are several ways to make the purchase.  One local bank allows customers to do so through an option on their ATM--the closest thing to internet banking I have seen here.  Unfortunately, that is not the bank where we have our accounts.

Many people do not have bank accounts or credit cards at all, so there has arisen an industry of financial services.  The industry leaders are MPesa, Voda Money, and Airtel Money.  The idea is that a person gives an agent (usually the owner of a small shop) some cash, and the agent deposits it in an account with one of these companies, and links it to the customer's cell phone.  Then, using the phone, the customer can pay bills or transfer money to other people.

I have used one of these agents before.  This shop works as something of a clearing house.  I give them my money and they run it through their own account (I don't know with which company), and then forwards the receipt to my phone.  Last week, I went to pay for more power, but that particular shop was jammed with about a dozen customers, so I decided to "save time" by going to another recommended vendor.

The new shop took my 30,000 shillings (That's less than $20.  Not much, you say, but about 9% of my monthly Peace Corps stipend.), and put it in an Airtel Money account for my phone.  This was the first time I had used that service.  When I tried to access the account, though, the password was rejected and the account locked.  The agent kindly helped me call the company's customer service line and I was told that the password would be reset in 72 hours and then the account would be unlocked.  Those 3 days came and went, but by that time the entire Airtel Money system was down, and it remained down for 5 days.

Can you imagine customers of a financial service in the U.S. tolerating not being able to access their money for that amount of time (short of a natural disaster, like a hurricane)?  I'm sure many people here were in great difficulty.  Happily, my compulsive nature led me to try to make this purchase 10 days before our meter was due to run out.

Finally, a week after my first attempt, my password was reset, and the day after that I was able to use the account to make the purchase.  There was much rejoicing in our household when I finally loaded the new Kwh on the meter.

However....that night we had a thunderstorm and lightning fried our circuit breaker.  The next morning, while stumbling around in the dark, I heard a rustling noise from the pantry.  By the uncertain light of my flickering flashlight, I found a mouse circling the inside of our washtub.  I roused Mark from bed and unlocked the door to let him quickly rush the trapped mouse outside.

Later in the morning, the school handyman repaired the circuit breaker.  So now life is good again, and I am grateful to have power at all.

Iringa and Onward

Iringa seems to be a prosperous town.  Of course, that impression was probably reinforced by the fact that we stayed in an area near some middle- and upper-class homes.  But, still, it is cleaner than most cities in Tanzania, and we ran into far fewer beggars and hustlers even in the market.

We stayed at the Neema Umaki Guest House, part of the Neema Crafts center, where disabled people can learn a trade and find employment.  There is a workshop and the products made therein are sold at the gift shop.  A restaurant, with food designed to appeal to Western travelers, has deaf waiters.  (Customers write what they want on a piece of paper and hand them the order).  And the workers in the guest house have disabilities of various kinds.  This is very unusual in Tanzania, where those with physical challenges have very few opportunities for training or employment.

The Neema guest house hosted guests from several different countries while we were there, but it was at a local pub where we met 3 people who are in Tanzania as part of Korea's version of the Peace Corps.  Two of them are teaching in secondary schools (biology and computers) but the third is teaching Tae Kwon Do to police officers in Dar es Salaam.  We thought that was fascinating.

We did some sight-seeing while we were in the Iringa area.  First, walking distance from our hotel, was Gangilonga Rock, which means "the talking rock" in the tribal language of Hehe.  In the late 1800s, Chief Mkwawa, who led insurrections against the occupying German rule, used the rock as a place of meditation.  It was there that he learned that the Germans were coming to try to capture him.     

The second place we went, somewhat outside of town, is a spot where prehistoric rock paintings were discovered in 2010.  (Discovered, that is, by a Western scholar.  The local villagers have known about them all along.)  Although there are many more, and more elaborate, rock paintings a couple of hundred miles north of this location, these were fun to look at, with their identifiable zebras, giraffes, and even, perhaps, an elephant.

The road from Iringa to Dodoma is still under construction.   Only about half of it is paved, but it is graded, and reported to be much better than in the past, when it was very rough.  It winds through low mountains, and there are many hairpin curves--with no barriers on the side of the road.  Along the way we must have seen hundreds of baobab trees, with their massive trunks to hold moisture in the dry season, and high, small branches out of the reach of herbivores.

Dodoma, the capital of Tanzania, is a planned city with wide boulevards.  We treated ourselves to lunch at the New Dodoma Hotel (a very snazzy place indeed!)  There, we met an Italian pediatrician who has lived in this country for 30 years.  Turns out he knows a couple of our Peace Corps colleagues, and was eager to talk about the area.  He ended up taking us in his car to see the University of Dodoma, which is brand-new, modern, and enormous.  His particular interest was in the almost-finished diagnostic hospital that is going up on campus.  We were impressed by the building, but all three of us wondered where the funds will come from to run it on a daily basis.

While walking around the city, looking at impressive churches, mosques, and government buildings, we saw a small guest house.  The sign proclaiming it the "Chinese Safari Lodge" included a painting of the Statue of Liberty.  Even in the booming capital city, Tanzanian quirkiness abounds.

Leaving Dodoma was an adventure.  We bought bus tickets for a trip leaving at 8:15 a.m. the next morning.  We arrived at the bus station before 8:00, only to find that the bus had already pulled out.  Helpful young men at the station (there are always "helpful" young men at bus stations)  beckoned us to a taxi and told the driver about the situation.  We confirmed the price (5000 shillings, or just over $3) and jumped into the cab, which went racing through the streets.  We caught up to the bus, which pulled over at a bus stop.  Leapt out of the taxi and ran to the bus before it could leave.  Climbed aboard only to find two men sitting in our assigned seats.  The bus company had sold our already-reserved spots!  Luckily, there were a couple of extra on the bus, so everyone ended up sitting, not standing, for the trip.

We arrived in Singida about mid-day.  Checking into the guest house, we met 4 South Africans who were touring East Africa on their BMW motorcycles.  Now, BMWs are huge, sturdy machines with comfortable rides, but still...  Buses and trucks give no room to smaller vehicles of any type here, and regularly force them off the road.  Ironically, the South Africans thought we were brave for taking buses around the country.     

The next day, after our experience in Dodoma, we arrived at the bus stand 30 minutes before our bus was due to leave....and sat there for the next hour and a half until it pulled out.  You just never can tell.  Guess that's why the Peace Corps training emphasizes that we must be flexible and patient.      

That was the last leg of our trip, and we arrived back at our Tanzanian home tired, but happy that we had seen so much more of the country.

Mbeya, Tukuyu, and Njombe

Our school holiday started in early December and ran for a month, and we decided to use the time to see some more of Tanzania.  The southwest part of the country is said to be very pretty, so that was the area we chose.  It's far from where we live, though, and we didn't like the idea of spending more than half of our vacation on buses, so we started by taking a low-cost flight to Mbeya.

Mbeya is within a couple hours' drive from the borders of both Zambia and Malawi, and it gets a lot of traffic from both travelers and commercial transport. Major roads into and out of the city are congested, but the central city is very pleasant and walk-able.  The altitude is high (about 1700 meters, or 5500 feet), and the surrounding area is lush with plant growth.  It rains 9 months of the year, and the region grows bananas, tea, avocados, and maize.  Cows and goats are fat, unlike in our region, where their ribs are visible even after our shorter rainy seasons.

From Mbeya, we traveled south to the town of Tukuyu, where we hired a guide to take us to the local sights.  Mark wanted to climb to the rim of the Ngozi Crater, an extinct volcano 2629 meters high with a lake in the middle.  Now, I don't have a lot of confidence in my athletic ability, and was originally against the hike, hearing that it was steep.  However, climb we did, through the rainforest, listening to birds and unseen monkeys announcing our progress.  I felt like I was in one of those old movies set in Africa--"King Solomon's Mines" or such--as we clambered over rocks and tree roots, hauled ourselves up by holding on to branches, and teetered along narrow paths next to scary drop-offs.  But we made it to the top and down again, dirty, sweaty, with me puffing like a steam engine, but unscathed.   

                                                        Inside the crater       

The next day our guide took us on a somewhat less challenging hike to Daraja la Mungu (the Bridge of God), a natural bridge formed eons ago after volcanic activity. Upriver from the bridge is the Cooking Pot, where fast-moving water plunges into a hole, comes out a few meters away, then flows into an underground cavern.  It finally emerges several days later.  After this excursion, we went to a local garden restaurant and ate "kitimoto" (pork) for the first time in a year and a half.  (The strange thing about the word is that "kitimoto" also means "hot seat" in Swahili.  No one can explain why it's the word for pork).  The meal was excellent--the meat grilled and served in a tomato, garlic, and onion sauce.  We went back to the hotel after our excursions and collapsed.

The Bridge of God

Near Tukuyu is a village called Bagamoyo.  That is also the name of a town on the east coast of the country from which slaves were shipped out of Africa.  The village was named after the coastal trade center because it was a point where captured people were held for a time during their long trek from central Africa to the coast.     

We moved on to the low-key town of Njombe a few days before Christmas.  Njombe, still in the region of lush growth, has a Duka la Maziwa (milk store) that sells fresh milk, yogurt, and cheese.  Such an amazing thing to us!  In our region, fresh milk and cheese are only available in Arusha at stores that cater to Westerners.  (We don't buy it even there, as our electric service is so erratic that we haven't invested in a refrigerator.)   Njombe also has a lovely waterfall just off the side of the main road into town.  But the most interesting thing I saw there was not part of the town.  The guesthouse we stayed in had a TV turned on in the dining room.  Gospel videos were playing as we ate breakfast, and we watched 2 videos of groups singing "Silent Night" in Swahili.  The first one featured an African female singer and had still shots of a white Madonna and Child in the background.  I found that discordant.  The second video was more moving.  A group of singers stood around African men dressed as shepherds, who were crouched around a campfire and were looking into the dark sky.  I feel that depictions of Bible stories should be personalized to the population, to make the message more meaningful.

After Njombe we went to Iringa, Dodoma, and Singida...but that's a blog for another day.

End of Year Musings

The school year has come to an end.  Exams ended last week, and I have finished grading nearly 200 tests and marking and equal number of report cards.  Now we have a holiday until January.

We arrived at our school in the middle of last school year, so this is the first time I have spent a full year with my students.  It's fun to see how they have grown in that time.  Some of the boys have shot up noticeably.  I was taller than most of my students in January, and now perhaps a third of the boys tower over me.  Some of them never will, however, the result of early childhood malnutrition and disease.

I always swore I would never teach high school, yet here I am, and I love my students.  They are cheerful and curious (about me, if not about their studies).  They don't sass, as it's unthinkable in this culture to talk back to an authority figure, but they do tune out when they are bored or overwhelmed.

It being the end of the term and a time of assessment, I have been wondering how much of a difference we have made here.  We have completed a rainwater harvesting project at the school, but the rains have not started in earnest yet, so we have not been able to judge its benefits.  As for our teaching--who knows?  The bright kids could learn from any teacher, and I don't feel I have been able to reach the slowest ones.  (Me, two weeks ago:  "What is 9 plus 7?"  Student:  "3.")  We do provide them with teachers, though, and without us the school would have to scramble to cover the classes.  Mark and I form one-half of the math department for our school of 800 students, and there are very few Tanzanian math teachers available. 

In addition, we are the first Americans most of our students have ever meet.  Unlike tourists who can be only glimpsed riding in Land Cruisers on their way to the wildlife parks, the students, teachers, and townspeople can see us shopping for produce in their markets, riding daladalas, and washing our laundry on our doorstep.  They can talk to us casually, ask questions, and get to know us.  (I had a wide-ranging conversation with two teachers last week which started when I told them about Thanksgiving.  The subjects touched on were religion in America, the separation of church and state, volunteerism, the status of blacks in America, and what Mark and I will do when we return to the States, among others.)  The Peace Corps believes, and I hope it is true, that this person-to-person communication is as powerful a mission as our primary job of teaching math.  It's what keeps me going on those frustrating days when students are unresponsive, the electricity is out, and there is not even a trickle of water coming from the tap.

GHSP Volunteers

Aid organizations of various kinds are thick on the ground here in Tanzania.  Faith-based groups run clinics, schools, and orphanages.  Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) work on everything from building cross-cultural awareness (like in my last post to this blog) to saving an endangered species.  And, of course, foreign government groups like the Peace Corps and the UK's VSO focus on education, environment, community development and health.  One unique new program is the Global Health service Partnership (GHSP).  This a public-private partnership between the Peace Corps and SEED, part of Massachusetts General Hospital's global health center. 

The volunteers are doctors and nurses who have chosen to train doctors and nurses in developing countries with limited resources.  They are posted in medical schools and hospitals and are teaching a new generation of medical professionals, which are sorely needed in this part of the world.  Currently, the program is up and running in Tanzania, Uganda, and Malawi.

We went to Mwanza a few weeks ago and met with the volunteers.  They have been in Tanzania for 3 months now, and were brought together for a conference to give them a chance to compare experiences and best practices with one another, ask questions, blow off steam, and get a second wind.  Mark and I were asked to give a presentation to the conference participants on the Tanzanian education system.  The volunteers wanted to know the educational background of their students.  I hope that the information we supplied gave them some insight into their students, who, the volunteers report, have difficulty with critical thinking and analysis.  Students here have learned by rote all of their lives, and tend to rely on that, even those in medical schools, who are among the brightest in the country.

The GHSP volunteers differ from regular Peace Corps volunteers in significant areas.  First, they are recruited by SEED and given professional support by that organization.  They have committed to a volunteer stint of one year, rather than the 27 months of a Peace Corps volunteer.  And, while the Peace Corps has health sector volunteers who work with communities' health education (raising awareness of HIV/AIDS and malaria prevention, or promoting maternal and baby care) GHSP volunteers teach medical /nursing students in hospital settings and get involved in delivering babies and treating illness.

We were impressed with the GHSP volunteers.  They are all committed and experienced, and the program has the potential to make a significant positive impact on  health care in this country.           

A Special Trip

One  of the teachers and two of the students from our school went to the Netherlands recently,  on a trip sponsored by an NGO whose mission is to expose young people to different cultures.,  The NGO has sent European students to Tanzania several times, and brought students from Peru, Tanzania, and Asia to the Netherlands for two weeks this November.

The teacher and students have never been out of Tanzania before this trip.  Since I have spent the last 18 months recording my impressions of this country, I was especially interested in the teacher's reactions to visiting a first-world country.

Here are some of the things he had to say, with my comments:

·       People would see them and say, "Jambo, Tanzania!".  (That reminded me of the way Tanzanians who don't know us see our white faces and say, "Mzungu (white person)!  My friend!"  or how little children will say, "howareyouhowareyouhowareyou..." mindlessly until we are out of sight.)

·       He was amazed that Amsterdam is below sea level:  "Can you imagine?"  (I think it's amazing, too.)

·       He was impressed by the trains.  They are fast ("Zip-zip!") and the ride is smooth.  Very different from bus rides here, most of which are not fast, and which are very bumpy, especially over dirt roads.  (The road between our town and Arusha is being resurfaced, so there is a dirt road detour of at least 10 km.  After a bone-rattling trip into the city and back I feel wobbly for hours.)

·       They toured churches, and he found them beautiful and huge, but sadly only holding a few elderly worshippers.  (Religious devotion is much more a vibrant, living thing here in Tanzania.)

·       They visited schools, and he remarked on the fact that they had special education classes for slow learners,  (Here in Tanzania, such children are lumped with the rest to sink or swim.  They mostly sink, but are promoted from year to year anyway, until they fail national exams at the end of 7th grade or their sophomore year in high school.)

·       They were given cheese sandwiches for lunch.  He didn't use the term, but his reaction was "Eeew!"  (Cheese is rare and expensive here, and most Tanzanians have never eaten it.  Some find the smell, texture, and taste disgusting.  They  are used to hearty meals of beans and rice or ugali, which is made of corneal and is similar to polenta.)

I'm sure he had many other new experiences that he is still processing.  What an opportunity for him and for the students!  I expect they will remember this trip for the rest of their lives, and that it will alter, if only slightly, their worldview.

It Takes a Village ... to Finance a Wedding

We went to the wedding of a good friend last weekend.  Lemjini is one of our "counterparts" --- Tanzanian colleagues who have been asked to help us fit into the school and community.  Lemjini is also the head of the math department at our school.  Since we both teach math we see a lot of him.

A couple of months ago he asked us to be on his wedding committee, and we accepted.  Weddings are planned and financed differently in Tanzania than in the States.  Here, a wedding committee's main task is to collect contributions from the groom's family and friends for the wedding expenses.  The groom comes up with an estimated budget for the event, including reception venue, food, entertainment, cars, bridal gown, and so on.  Lemjini estimated he would spend $3500 to $4000.  Each member of the committee is expected to contribute at least $37.  Obviously, the larger the committee, the better.  But the contributions do not stop with the committee.  One of our first tasks was to order contribution cards.  These cards look almost like invitations.  They state who is getting married and when, and invite the recipient to contribute.  The committee members hand out the cards to anyone who knows the groom, even remotely.  People who choose to contribute (usually about $12) will later receive an actual wedding invitation.  If they don't contribute, so sorry, but they will not be invited. unless they are very close family members of the bride and groom.

 The groom is expected to pay for a significant portion of the expenses himself, perhaps as much as half.  And, he also must pay the "bride price".  (He is not actually purchasing the bride, but compensating her parents for the loss of her services and companionship.  A subtle difference, but a real one.)  The bride price varies from about 10 cows, or the equivalent, for a 14-year old girl, to 50 cows for a fair-skinned young woman.  (Yes, that is what I said:  fair-skinned.  Racism, or rather, color-ism exists here, despite beliefs to the contrary.)   A cow is worth about $400.  That is about 8 months of income at the minimum wage, or 2 months of salary for a public primary school teacher.  We didn't ask what Lemjini paid in bride price, as we thought it would be rude.

I can imagine my friends with daughters in the U.S. thinking that this is a pretty good deal, but the family and friends of the bride have expenses too.  First, there is the "Send Off" party, sort of a pre-wedding reception that primarily includes the brides' side of the community.  The groom does show up, but few others from his family.  Traditionally, this event was when the bride was taught how to be a good wife.  Then, there is a Kitchen Party, similar to a bridal shower.  Again, the bride is taught the essentials of running a household.   These may have been necessary cultural and instructional events in a society where girls were married around the age of 14 (which does still happen in some rural communities), but Lemjini's bride is in her 20s, and I'm sure she needs no instruction.  But they are good excuses for a party, and the brides' family and friends finance them both.

Besides contributions, gifts are expected from guests to the wedding as well.  In our school, there is a social welfare committee which uses money deducted monthly from staff salaries to buy gifts for wedding, babies, and funerals.  Most of the staff is young and healthy, so we have many of the first two, but few of the last.

Wedding contributions can be a burden for people who have many young friends.  In our school there have been 3 weddings since August and there will be one more in November.  Two of our friends confided in me that they were strapped for cash because of it.  On the other hand, people can confidently expect help when they themselves marry.

So, what about Lemjini's wedding?  It was beautiful.  All our hard work and anxiety over collecting enough money resulted in a lovely event.  Nice venue, good food, and a bride and groom who were obviously enchanted with one another.  What more could anyone ask?