me on my birthday

Me with (from left) Godwin, Mr. Premji and Altaf on my 24th birthday. Check out flickr (see sidebar on right) for other Tanzania photos!

the richest man in India

The richest man in India is named Azim Premji. I have no idea what kind of person he is, but if he's anything like the Azim Premji in Sumbawanga, Tanzania, then he's a pretty fantastic guy.
Let me explain how I came to rely on the kindness of strangers in this little weathered town of Sumbawanga. I got into bed Thursday night feeling awesome. I'd met an american married couple my age who were doing research around the Rukwa valley region and had a fun dinner with them out at one of the nicer restaurants in town--great chicken curry and naan. I'd gotten approval to start my research, I was getting the hang of driving the Landy, things were going well. Probably around midnight though, I started feeling flushed and hot and I kept waking up from very weird dreams. I tried to shake it off, but when I woke up in the morning, I knew something was wrong. My face was as red as a tomato and my head was really hurting. Thankfully, I had found Sister Helena the day before (see last post!), and she had shown me the Catholic center and health clinic, and given me her phone number, saying to call if I needed anything. I called her, told her I felt sick and she said she would take me to the clinic right away.
Cut to the clinic--a few questions and one blood test later, it's confirmed. I have malaria. 15 per 200 cells are infected. I have no idea what this means! Except that I feel increasing horrible. All I want is the medicine. I get into the Catholic center's land cruiser with another sister (Sister Beata), and we are going ostensibly to the pharmacy. But wait first the car has to stop at the sunflower factory to load up on sunflower cakes for the animals. Excruciating. But I'm not complaining because I'm in the middle of NOWHERE in Africa and at least someone is taking care of me. Finally we get to the pharmacy (each bump in the road is like jamming the crowbar further into my skull), get the medicine, get some juice (malaria lowers your glucose levels), buy a mozzie net, and go back to my hotel. I literally fall into the bed. well not until I insist that the mozzie net gets hung up. I am NOT taking any chances!
So the next few days pass by in kind of a blur and well, yes, were pretty terrible. But not as bad as they could have been because what was amazing was the way the handful of people I had only just met in SWA were so unbelievably kind to me. Sister Helena, Sister Beata, Godwin (also from the catholic center), and...in case you were wonderful what the beginning sentence of this entry is all about, Mr Premji. I had met Mr. Premji for just a few seconds outside his shop a few days earlier, and when he heard I was a student of Tim and Monique's (UC Davis, they do research here), he was very excited to meet me. When he heard I was sick, he came to visit, bearing cookies and fruit juice. On Sunday when he came to visit and saw that I wasn't looking much better, he forced me to get out of bed and come to his house and join him and some friends for dinner. I was dubious--I really didn't feel like getting out of bed--but by the end of the evening I felt so much better! His friend Altaf produced a cellphone for me since my crappy Motorola one wasn't working--now I could hear from mom and dad--and Laura! Perhaps the best part was that on Saturday, when I mentioned from my bed-ridden position that it was my birthday, he dashed off only to return later that evening with friends, a card and a cake saying "Happy birthday, Clare", in hand!! We sat in the hotel restaurant and everyone sang, and as local tradition goes, everyone at the table fed me a forkful of cake from the first slice and gave me happy birthday wishes. It was really so, so nice.
So all was not lost--I still feel pretty weak and tired but the worst is over. And I discovered that even though I wasn't surrounded by friends and family from home on my birthday, I miraculously still had a very special one.

Sumbawanga

I think I am losing track of what decade I am living in here. This might have something to do with the fact that I am driving a Land Rover that is almost 10 years older than me--it was registered in 1973!!! (wait for pics, its like a flintstone's car) Or maybe it's because the other day I was asked to locate Sister Helena somewhere in this area and tell her her missionary consignment container has arrived. (didn't missionary stuff happen decades ago?? apparently not, in fact the only other mzungu woman in this town drives a car that says "soma biblia", read the bible). And not to mention the reality of potholed mud roads, limited electricity, brown water and nothing even close to a Shoprite or any other form of a grocery store. The gas station sells fruit juice from South Africa, which I think may be the only packaged product that I consume for the next 6 months. In a way, that is kind of nice, I like idea of detoxing all the preservatives and chemicals that we live on in the States.
I'm in the one Internet cafe in this town and miraculously there was no line today. Yesterday I waited about an hour while mainly high school-aged boys lined up to check their Yahoo accounts, before going home to a house with no electricity or running water. The Internet is amazing.
What else? I've started introducing myself in the villages where I'll be doing my research, and while I haven't ventured into Mbizi forest itself yet, I've skirted around it on my village drives. It looks beautiful, and sort of mysterious as its been shrouded in clouds (mawingu) for the past two days.
I met two Israeli guys who are engineers helping construct cell phone towers across Tanzania. The cell phone industry here is something I will have to save for another blog, but suffice to say it is angering. Apart from ugly towers dotting the wide open African landscape, they charge a ridiculous amount of money to people who can't even afford to clothe their children, but to whom a phone is a huge status symbol. EVERYONE here, i mean everyone, has a cell phone.
More about Sumbawanga to come, and I hope everyone had a nice valentine's day!

in search of the mangabey

Yann Martel must have spent some time wandering around in the same kind of forest that I’ve been in for the past few days in order to write his novel, Life of Pi. I kept expecting some of the vines that I was hacking my way through to reach out, curl around me, and tangle me up so tightly that a few of my white teeth would be all anyone would ever find of me. This did not happen but honestly at one point I yelled at a plant to let go of me. It was incredible; I was out with the WCS team in the forest at the base of Mt. Rungwe in search of the new monkey species (“kipungi”) that has just been discovered, and the meaning of “bushwacking” was certainly re-defined for me. Our first morning of work (after a night in a rather damp fungus-smelling tent that miraculously didn’t leak during the intermittent downpours) we started out on a narrow path down a ravine and through thick, buggy vegetation on all sides, following our hunter-turned-WCS guide, who was clad in shorts and flip-flops and wielding a machete. This seemed adventurous enough for me, but before I knew it we had turned off the path and we were literally crawling through vines and thorns and all kinds of trees that Amnon (our guide) would occasionally slash at with his machete. It was wet and humid and almost claustrophobic, being surrounded by that much dense vegetation with no end in sight. It would not have surprised me if King Kong had jumped out in front of me, chest-thumping and roaring. And I have no idea how to vaudeville dance enough to entertain a gorilla, so then I really would have been in trouble. Thankfully, no such appearances, but I was lucky enough to be one of the handful of non-Tanzanians in the world right now to see the new species of monkey discovered here, the Highland mangabey. We spotted them (well not me, Noah and Amnon did) high up in a grove of trees near a gulley, and got to spend some time just watching them, crouched down in the dirt and eating our lunch of chocolate biscuits (us, that is). They are bigger than I thought, with a fairly long coat of grayish-brown fur and a call that is pretty much impossible to explain in words. It was very cool though, to see them, and worth the menacing vines, irritating insects, and unrelenting rain. And it was also very cool to spend some time with the staff, learning a bit of Swahili, finding out that evolution is abysmally taught in schools here (they are basically told that monkeys first evolved into Africans and then later into white people, unbelievable), trying to explain why I don’t believe literally in the Bible, and getting to eat the amazing food they managed to cook around a very smoky jungle campfire—with no shortages of avocados to go with everything which made me very happy!

culinary notes

For fifty cents yesterday morning I had breakfast at a cafe called Mambeu down the street—two cups of amazingly delicious chai (tea made with boiled whole milk, it tastes almost malty), a piece of fried bread ("mandaazi"), a roasted banana ("ndizi choma") and a bottle of water. Then today for lunch I had a huge plate of pilau (spiced rice) with sauce, greens and baby bananas, all for less than a dollar! Food here is cheap and good.

Lil, if you are reading this are you coming to visit soon??

And to everyone, I just posted pics from Dar and here up on My Photos, if you are interested...

foray into the forest

So I’ve realized that the difference between a good day and a bad day in Africa is phenomenal, so much greater than in the West. Today in a way felt like the beginning of my time here, because I got to go into the forest for the first time—and it more than made up for my epic train experience. I still can’t get over that I am really here, that I am one of the few very lucky people from outside Tanzania who will ever get to see this magical, hidden place.
I went along with some of the WCS guys who needed to collect some additional GPS points of forest boundary lines and to re-GPS the location of a monkey trap. After about forty minutes drive we turned off the tarmac road and made our way along a bumpy track (listening to Michael Jackson who is super popular here, along with 50 cent and nelly) past tea plantations and various shambas (ie farm plots) with maize, potatoes and avocados growing. We got to the last shamba, found the farmer, and began the walk, following him along a narrow muddy path up a steep hill, down a ravine, and deep into his land. The landscape is so lovely, it is impossible to describe, really. Eucalpytus trees, pine trees, palm trees all mixed together amongst various crops growing. We finally reached the monkey trap, just at the edge of the forest at the base of Mt Rungwe, which was shrouded in clouds. It suddenly started bucketing with rain, and the farmer yanked off a big banana tree leaf and gave it to me to hold over my head—a “forest umbrella”. It did the job okay, but the rain didn’t look like it was going to stop for a while, so the farmer led us over to this little shelter made of sticks and banana leaves, with a very smoky fire going underneath (in the photo). Finally the rain cleared after a while, and now Mt. Rungwe was in full view! I could hear tons of different bird calls, and watched brilliant blue and yellow butterflies flit past, while trying to keep up with the WCS guys as we made our way back to the car (for some reason i’d worn flip flops on this trip, bad idea)...more michael jackson on the drive back, as we ate sweet bananas (ndizi tuma) and waved to all the barefoot kids and farmers working under the sun and rain in their fields.

an epic train journey

Maybe one should know that a train journey is not off to a good start when the first thing one's fellow train compartment passenger says is "here is your bra", after its fallen on her head in an attempt to find and pull out one's flip-flops from one's bag.

However, I either ignored or just didn't see this as a warning sign. I was sharing a second class cabin with five Tanzanian women on my way to Mbeya (an overnight train ride), and sure, it was a little embarrasing to have my underwear coming raining down out of my pack onto their heads, but once I had recovered from that and settled myself into the corner of the bench seat by the window, I was feeling fine. I had been told this train ride was one of the most scenic in Africa, and I figured it would be a good chance to practice my Swahili too. And indeed, it did start out fantastically--I watched the slums of Dar vanish; replaced by lush fields of banana trees and maize, farmers in colorful clothing working the red earth, and huts made entirely of thatch dotting the landscape. From the comfort of the train, even the run-down village shops and shacks looked picturesque.
Palm trees and mango trees gave way a few hours later to what I think of as traditional African bush--baobabs and scrubby acacia trees everywhere. And then the animals appeared! I caught glimpses of baby giraffe, impala, wildebeest and zebra as we whizzed by, and knew that simba (swahili word for lion) must be lurking around somewhere. My fellow train compartment passengers alternated between napping and buying snacks and drinks from the local villagers who would come out selling their goods each time we came to a stop at a station--fried chicken, roasted bananas, mangos and coconuts.
Around sunset the spectacular Uruzungu mountains appeared, and it seemed like we were making good time. Haha. Little did I know. Shortly after, there seemed to be some sort of commotion going on, and everyone started talking really fast and loudly. I managed to get out of the one girl in my cabin who spoke some english that there was an accident up ahead on the tracks, and that we would have to wait in a village called Mlimbe till it cleared. How long, I asked? Three days, she said. THREE DAYS!! We were going to be stranded in this tiny village in the middle of nowhere for three days??! How could this be possible?? But it was. We pulled into Mlimbe station and came to a grinding halt. It was dark already, and I went to bed on my top bunk, rather than deal with thinking about the situation.
When I woke up the next morning, we were still, of course, in Mlimbe. But now all the train bathrooms had been shut, the fans turned off and no running water. I asked about other forms of transportation, but apparently we really were in the dead center of the middle of nowhere, with no roads even remotely nearby. After a brief panic, I settled down to being dirty, sweaty, hot, thirsty and bored for the next three days. At least I had my Swahili book and tennis biscuits. I kept myself occupied in the morning by walking around the village with Mwafo (the girl in my compartment who spoke a little english) while she bought fish (covered completely in flies and smelling horrible). She treated me to a big stick of sugarcane, and showed me how to eat it, which is not easy but is delicious! In the afternoon I played cards with some British and Kiwi backpackers in the lounge car, sweating literally buckets with no breeze, no relief, and the smell of shit wafting over from the nearby station latrines. Just waiting.
To cut a long story short, we left Mlimbe around 9pm that night, about 24 hours after we'd arrived. We made it safely to Mbeya, climbing high up in to the mountains, with killer scenic views. I got off the train smelly and tired, but after a shower and nap at the hotel I'm staying at, feeling totally fine. So while actually in Mlimbe I was pretty damn miserable, looking back somehow it doesn't seem so bad. A good reminder of what the phrase "African time" really means, and insight into the way that people here don't seem to be in a rush for anything, ever. A delay like that would make headline news in the States--people stranded in swampy backcountry--but here, no one seemed to give a hoot. It's just life in Africa, african transportation. Mwafo said, well now you will have a story to tell people at home about your train experience, and she was totally right.