As I'm sure you can imagine, it's been an absolutely, beautifully, non-stop past several days, with the Programme wrapping up after a very successful testing day on Saturday. Over a thousand showed up to enjoy student-performed entertainment, a football tournament, and of course, free HIV testing and counseling. 530 were tested, and only 4 positives.
A full update is in the works but not yet ready to publish. My instincts towards tradition urged me to at least post a weekly JAMBO! to check in with you, as I gather my closing thoughts.
Asante sana! xoxo
21 August 2007
16 August 2007
Hit Below the Branch
“Tanzania Bila Ukimwi Inawezekana. Kapime.”
I can’t help but giggle at the stereotypical-raised-fist politician photo of President Kikwete beneath this bold headline, proclaiming, “Tanzania without AIDS is possible. Test.” After pingpongballing between the District Medical Officer and District AIDS Coordinator in the typical bureaucracy of responsibility shifting, I managed to secure for our team unlimited free testing reagents, several testers and counselors, and 200 such National Testing Campaign posters, onto which we have scrawled the details of our HIV Testing Day on Saturday: “Pima Ukimwi Bure! (Free HIV Testing): August 18th 2007, Arusha Stadium, 10:30 am – 3:30 pm” (http://www.arushatimes.co.tz/local_news_2.htm)
After forty-eight classroom workshops, one Student Leader Conference, and endless hours of non-stop project talk – strategically among ourselves and commercially to everyone we meet (i.e. we have secured a free DJ all day after dancing onstage at last week’s Nanenane festival) - our team speeds into this pre-Event week on a wave of enthusiasm, pulling each other up as we have our moments of exhaustion, dividing and conquering the responsibilities and putting in admirable extra efforts for not only the Event to succeed, but for the entire team to be a part of this success. We each know from experience, but are learning daily here in Arusha, that sharing the load not only makes the work more enjoyable for all, but more effective and far-reaching than one could imagine.
Take for example the treasured friendship cultivated with Edward Selasini of The Arusha Times back in June, which has now blossomed into a programme partnership. Selasini, also linking us to AJAAT, spent 4 hours with our students at their Conference last Saturday mentoring young writers on AIDS coverage. In addition to publishing more student articles this Saturday and on a regular basis, Selasini assists us now without even asking, securing BBC Radio, The Guardian, Star TV, and pointing us to TVT (National television), all of who are now excited to cover the event.
My dear Dr. Tekle and Baptista, treasured Tanzanian uncles, suggest lists of potential local sponsors, and we pursue them fearlessly. For our students and volunteers, Pepsi will provide drinks, the local Lions Club a free lunch. The Rotary Club will fund the sound equipment, and Vodacom throws us 200 free t-shirts. Discounts are offered on tent rentals and shirt printing, and I am pleasantly surprised by the amount that can be accomplished when you trust your teammates to get the job done, and do not try to do everything solo. We were of course rejected and ignored by many sponsors, but we are undoubtedly better off for having faced the challenge. We have built our constituency alongside and in support of CHAWAKUA, the local NGO who trained us and who we are working with to carry on the programme upon our departure.
Nearly collapsed here at the hostel in my crumpled white button up shirt (that, like all my clothes, I haven’t properly washed in months) and backwards Vodacom baseball cap, I feel like a child basking in the warmth of yuletide anticipation; I am exhausted yet excited, I have much to do yet feel so fulfilled. Despite the long days of ‘work’ and individual challenges, of which there have been many to overcome, even our difficulties feel beautifully choreographed into a greater expression of growth and gain.
Borrowing extensively from camp counselor experience and reflections on my parents’ child-rearing techniques, I tend to cut to the chase with my volunteers. I realize in this role that it may lighten the load to share the work, but if communication ever breaks down, so will the team. So if someone expresses to me a concern about or annoyance with someone else, the necessary confrontation is held. With such a short time frame and such lofty goals I see no time for secrets, for dishonesty, or for pretending. Instead of tiptoeing around potential issues, I have tried to create an atmosphere and expectation that issues will be addressed as they arise and not left to simmer, lest they silently poison the work we have come together to do.
We can’t, after all, be hypocrites about our work, something that my continuously sharpened vision sees more of as the Event approaches and the Programme finishes up. If I am going to be encouraging discussion of and attention to one’s sexual health, if I am to field endless questions that reflect an unanswered curiosity, if I am to demand that maintaining health is not only a necessary personal commitment, but a statement of responsible citizenship, then who am I to endlessly put off doctor’s appointments in NYC, “too busy” to have check-up for things that ‘don’t necessarily pain me at the moment anyway. Why should I expect anyone to heed my health warnings if I am to continue childishly feigning an impossible invincibility?
Leaning back in a metal chair on the slick cement floor of Sekei Secondary, one of our higher language barriered schools, Alphayo has just chalked up his thoughts on the ‘cycle of stigma’ that we ask students to develop. As with the HIV/AIDS factual curriculum, most students can talk easily and fully about the dangers of stigma, but I wonder, my mind trailing from work in Ghana, how can students communicate and demonstrate their ideas in the community?
Alphayo sighs and comments under his breath, “Ukitaka kukata mti lazima ukate shinani.”
“Tena? (again?)” I ask, curious.
He repeats, attempting to explain the Kiswahili proverb in English terms. “ If you want to cut down a tree,” he motions, “and you cut the branches, it will just grow back. “ Eyes characteristically wide, he makes a large, low sweep with his arm, “You have to cut from the roots.”
Brilliant. I scribble his words fiercely into my battered notebook, folded notes and schedules stuffed in random pages, his wisdom now nestled into my orderly chaos. His words cling tightly to my brain and I wonder if we are cutting at branches or roots throughout last Saturday’s Conference, and through our KUVA Programme as a whole.
Again at Sekei, at our final session, our suave Shabani offers his guidance as he explains, “We Africans, a majority of us, our fathers and mothers don’t want to talk to children about sexual health. They fear that it will lead the child starting to make sexual intercourse.”
I want to interrupt and assure him that We Americans are just as guilty, but I let him complete his thoughts:
“Last Saturday you have done not just a small thing, you did something different. You decided to let us do dramas, singing…we have to make people understand easily – just a speech is not good – these dramas and songs will simplify things easily” Heads nod and voices buzz in agreement, and I am overwhelmed with relief that perhaps, even if we’re not at the root, we’re hitting below the branch.
“Now we can use this knowledge you gave us and educate our parents, to sit down and talk, not only parents, but our community,” he finishes, and we shift immediately into the students’ roles and responsibilities they would like to assume on Saturday. Alphayo’s eyes shine wider, full moon luminosity, when we tell him his slogan has been printed across the back of our KUVA shirts.
Thinking increasingly about East Village life as Tanzania time winds down, I laugh when I realize how much time I have spent branch cutting in the past year. Surely I am proud of my accomplishments and work, academic and professional, but not proud of the ‘too busy’ attitude I often employed in order to accomplish some of it. Who did I think I was fooling, keeping busy chopping away at short term solutions, looking busy by doingdoingdoing instead of reflecting, thinking, planning.
Branch whacking, rushing to solve a problem, means insufficient time to explore the issue’s real root. The KUVA Programme we have created, the HIV testing Day we will host, they may not be the roots, but they are designed to point people in the right direction, below the branch. Perhaps if we can overcome the stigmatization of HIV Testing, we can also begin to overcome the stigmatization of HIV positive people, a task for which the provision of medical services and the correction of social misconceptions are mutually necessary. HIV testing entwines these aspects in a measurable manner, and both goals require togetherness, an approach that, as Shabani insists, will “make people understand easily” (in which I feel an implication of honesty, comfort, security). Regarding the AIDS crisis, with such a short time frame and with such lofty goals, I see no time for secrets, for dishonesty, or for pretending.
Though we will leave the grounds on Saturday with a number of youth tested, it is not exact numbers but general community approval that has become my measuring stick of success on this short-term project. Here in this place and timeframe I am unable to compile meaningful monitoring and evaluation statistics that are the products of only thoughtful long-term investments. I ask the students if we made the right choice by using Alphayo’s words as our slogan, as they laughed (in surprise, amusement or appreciation? I hope all three) at our choice to conduct the entire day – including t-shirts – in Kiswahili. Ernestina looks up and smiles, “Yes.”
“Kwanini? (why?)”
“The people will know that we are doing good work.”
Far from my self that seeks an “A+” across papers and words of praise from professors, I have found work whose system of evaluation is far more fulfilling than a letter or a compliment. My indicators are not precise, as human opinions never quite are, but I am satisfied. Two days till short-run-showtime, and if at the least we are giving our Arusha peers an opportunity to share their expertise – through word, drama, song, art, sport – I believe we will have taken an admirable swing at the base of the tree.
I can’t help but giggle at the stereotypical-raised-fist politician photo of President Kikwete beneath this bold headline, proclaiming, “Tanzania without AIDS is possible. Test.” After pingpongballing between the District Medical Officer and District AIDS Coordinator in the typical bureaucracy of responsibility shifting, I managed to secure for our team unlimited free testing reagents, several testers and counselors, and 200 such National Testing Campaign posters, onto which we have scrawled the details of our HIV Testing Day on Saturday: “Pima Ukimwi Bure! (Free HIV Testing): August 18th 2007, Arusha Stadium, 10:30 am – 3:30 pm” (http://www.arushatimes.co.tz/local_news_2.htm)
After forty-eight classroom workshops, one Student Leader Conference, and endless hours of non-stop project talk – strategically among ourselves and commercially to everyone we meet (i.e. we have secured a free DJ all day after dancing onstage at last week’s Nanenane festival) - our team speeds into this pre-Event week on a wave of enthusiasm, pulling each other up as we have our moments of exhaustion, dividing and conquering the responsibilities and putting in admirable extra efforts for not only the Event to succeed, but for the entire team to be a part of this success. We each know from experience, but are learning daily here in Arusha, that sharing the load not only makes the work more enjoyable for all, but more effective and far-reaching than one could imagine.
Take for example the treasured friendship cultivated with Edward Selasini of The Arusha Times back in June, which has now blossomed into a programme partnership. Selasini, also linking us to AJAAT, spent 4 hours with our students at their Conference last Saturday mentoring young writers on AIDS coverage. In addition to publishing more student articles this Saturday and on a regular basis, Selasini assists us now without even asking, securing BBC Radio, The Guardian, Star TV, and pointing us to TVT (National television), all of who are now excited to cover the event.
My dear Dr. Tekle and Baptista, treasured Tanzanian uncles, suggest lists of potential local sponsors, and we pursue them fearlessly. For our students and volunteers, Pepsi will provide drinks, the local Lions Club a free lunch. The Rotary Club will fund the sound equipment, and Vodacom throws us 200 free t-shirts. Discounts are offered on tent rentals and shirt printing, and I am pleasantly surprised by the amount that can be accomplished when you trust your teammates to get the job done, and do not try to do everything solo. We were of course rejected and ignored by many sponsors, but we are undoubtedly better off for having faced the challenge. We have built our constituency alongside and in support of CHAWAKUA, the local NGO who trained us and who we are working with to carry on the programme upon our departure.
Nearly collapsed here at the hostel in my crumpled white button up shirt (that, like all my clothes, I haven’t properly washed in months) and backwards Vodacom baseball cap, I feel like a child basking in the warmth of yuletide anticipation; I am exhausted yet excited, I have much to do yet feel so fulfilled. Despite the long days of ‘work’ and individual challenges, of which there have been many to overcome, even our difficulties feel beautifully choreographed into a greater expression of growth and gain.
Borrowing extensively from camp counselor experience and reflections on my parents’ child-rearing techniques, I tend to cut to the chase with my volunteers. I realize in this role that it may lighten the load to share the work, but if communication ever breaks down, so will the team. So if someone expresses to me a concern about or annoyance with someone else, the necessary confrontation is held. With such a short time frame and such lofty goals I see no time for secrets, for dishonesty, or for pretending. Instead of tiptoeing around potential issues, I have tried to create an atmosphere and expectation that issues will be addressed as they arise and not left to simmer, lest they silently poison the work we have come together to do.
We can’t, after all, be hypocrites about our work, something that my continuously sharpened vision sees more of as the Event approaches and the Programme finishes up. If I am going to be encouraging discussion of and attention to one’s sexual health, if I am to field endless questions that reflect an unanswered curiosity, if I am to demand that maintaining health is not only a necessary personal commitment, but a statement of responsible citizenship, then who am I to endlessly put off doctor’s appointments in NYC, “too busy” to have check-up for things that ‘don’t necessarily pain me at the moment anyway. Why should I expect anyone to heed my health warnings if I am to continue childishly feigning an impossible invincibility?
Leaning back in a metal chair on the slick cement floor of Sekei Secondary, one of our higher language barriered schools, Alphayo has just chalked up his thoughts on the ‘cycle of stigma’ that we ask students to develop. As with the HIV/AIDS factual curriculum, most students can talk easily and fully about the dangers of stigma, but I wonder, my mind trailing from work in Ghana, how can students communicate and demonstrate their ideas in the community?
Alphayo sighs and comments under his breath, “Ukitaka kukata mti lazima ukate shinani.”
“Tena? (again?)” I ask, curious.
He repeats, attempting to explain the Kiswahili proverb in English terms. “ If you want to cut down a tree,” he motions, “and you cut the branches, it will just grow back. “ Eyes characteristically wide, he makes a large, low sweep with his arm, “You have to cut from the roots.”
Brilliant. I scribble his words fiercely into my battered notebook, folded notes and schedules stuffed in random pages, his wisdom now nestled into my orderly chaos. His words cling tightly to my brain and I wonder if we are cutting at branches or roots throughout last Saturday’s Conference, and through our KUVA Programme as a whole.
Again at Sekei, at our final session, our suave Shabani offers his guidance as he explains, “We Africans, a majority of us, our fathers and mothers don’t want to talk to children about sexual health. They fear that it will lead the child starting to make sexual intercourse.”
I want to interrupt and assure him that We Americans are just as guilty, but I let him complete his thoughts:
“Last Saturday you have done not just a small thing, you did something different. You decided to let us do dramas, singing…we have to make people understand easily – just a speech is not good – these dramas and songs will simplify things easily” Heads nod and voices buzz in agreement, and I am overwhelmed with relief that perhaps, even if we’re not at the root, we’re hitting below the branch.
“Now we can use this knowledge you gave us and educate our parents, to sit down and talk, not only parents, but our community,” he finishes, and we shift immediately into the students’ roles and responsibilities they would like to assume on Saturday. Alphayo’s eyes shine wider, full moon luminosity, when we tell him his slogan has been printed across the back of our KUVA shirts.
Thinking increasingly about East Village life as Tanzania time winds down, I laugh when I realize how much time I have spent branch cutting in the past year. Surely I am proud of my accomplishments and work, academic and professional, but not proud of the ‘too busy’ attitude I often employed in order to accomplish some of it. Who did I think I was fooling, keeping busy chopping away at short term solutions, looking busy by doingdoingdoing instead of reflecting, thinking, planning.
Branch whacking, rushing to solve a problem, means insufficient time to explore the issue’s real root. The KUVA Programme we have created, the HIV testing Day we will host, they may not be the roots, but they are designed to point people in the right direction, below the branch. Perhaps if we can overcome the stigmatization of HIV Testing, we can also begin to overcome the stigmatization of HIV positive people, a task for which the provision of medical services and the correction of social misconceptions are mutually necessary. HIV testing entwines these aspects in a measurable manner, and both goals require togetherness, an approach that, as Shabani insists, will “make people understand easily” (in which I feel an implication of honesty, comfort, security). Regarding the AIDS crisis, with such a short time frame and with such lofty goals, I see no time for secrets, for dishonesty, or for pretending.
Though we will leave the grounds on Saturday with a number of youth tested, it is not exact numbers but general community approval that has become my measuring stick of success on this short-term project. Here in this place and timeframe I am unable to compile meaningful monitoring and evaluation statistics that are the products of only thoughtful long-term investments. I ask the students if we made the right choice by using Alphayo’s words as our slogan, as they laughed (in surprise, amusement or appreciation? I hope all three) at our choice to conduct the entire day – including t-shirts – in Kiswahili. Ernestina looks up and smiles, “Yes.”
“Kwanini? (why?)”
“The people will know that we are doing good work.”
Far from my self that seeks an “A+” across papers and words of praise from professors, I have found work whose system of evaluation is far more fulfilling than a letter or a compliment. My indicators are not precise, as human opinions never quite are, but I am satisfied. Two days till short-run-showtime, and if at the least we are giving our Arusha peers an opportunity to share their expertise – through word, drama, song, art, sport – I believe we will have taken an admirable swing at the base of the tree.
08 August 2007
Tandem To-Dos
10,000 feet in the air and the plane door swings open, wind rushing in at every angle furiously filling the tiny cabin, and I inch eagerly towards the edge. Legs dangling, ears overwhelmed by static, eyes enraptured by heavenly clouds before me, I pull back and lunge forward, a triple somersault into mid-air, disoriented and smiling like mad. I can’t satisfy my urge to laugh, lungs struggling to find oxygen at 120 mph, but I manage to roll my eyes in self-deprecation, amused with my spontaneous decision to log skydive #2 on birthday #21. I do so tandem - comfortably registering as skydive #5,496 for Elio, my charming Venezuelan instructor – and after the rush we float carelessly through thick clouds in a few minutes of pure post-dive exhilaration. I whisper to myself in an enormous sigh “Happy 21st, kiddo.”
The euphoric peace of skydiving was one of countless birthday blessings I received over the past several days. My family here – Work the World staff (Marion and Baptista), medics living at the House, friends in Arusha and most recently and selflessly, my volunteer team – spoiled me completely with thoughtfulness and love. I returned home on Thursday to find bright balloons filling the canopy top of my mosquito net, welcomed by homemade posters and the olfactory delight of fragrant yellow roses. Despite the busy schedule I have arranged, they managed to secretly buy me gifts – Tangawizi bottle cap earrings (my favorite local soda), Ghana-colored bead hoop earrings (they’re well versed in my Accra obsessions), 2 key chains, and a photo frame carved from ebony wood, containing a handwritten recipe for my favorite Tanzanian dish, Ndizi. Knowing they would be on a pre-booked safari on my actual birthday, and aware of my last minute diving plans, they inscribed each of their names on the inside of a beaded anklet for me to wear “so that we’ll be with you!”
We trekked up to the WTW House for a birthday BBQ – medic Sarah was also celebrating – and my dear Marion, who has been fighting illness for a week, added to her already time-consuming feast creation an extravagant flower arrangement of bursting rosebuds and bold daisies, a draped and decorated veranda, and a sugary-sweet birthday cake - anything besides fruit for treats is rare here, and I had more than my fair share, savoring the sweet granules grating satisfyingly across my tongue. Prohibited from paying a cent the entire evening at ViaVia, my favorite local live music bar, we danced, laughed, and drank through our midnight countdown, when bartend Mr. Bean brought me over a special cocktail as the band serenaded our crew with a bongo-flava style “happy birthday”.
Late on Friday, a surprise ring from my KCA family moved me to tears of happiness beyond my control. I dragged out our good-byes with “Asante sana”s and “I love you”s, and after reluctantly pressing down C to end the call, I realized, a bit disheartened with myself, that I had not mentioned a single thing about the Programme, my entire ‘purpose’ of pausing from KCA to come here. No updates on work progress, lessons learned, relevant experiences. But I shook off the oncoming bout of work-a-holism and reassured myself that it was not a business call but a family check-in.
But the feeling crept back up again the next morning when, in an involuntary reaction of human foolishness, I proved how easily I receive and then tend to forget the selflessness and generosity of others. I sat down to a pile of Programme work after diligently following the strictly enforced no-work birthday policy, and immediately felt tied down by to-dos. Typing furiously, surrounded by surveys, contracts, budgets and worksheets, I gave precious Marion a cold shoulder as she (obnoxiously, I thought, at the moment) hung about me to see what I was doing on my laptop. Marion who goes out of her way for me; Marion with whom I made a birthday-slumber-party pact sharing a tiny twin bed that “people should always come first”, that we are sisters forever.
Not even 24 hours away from overabundance of love and I did my Kate thing! I made her feel like she was annoying and bothering and distracting me so that she would go away without me having to be outright rude and say it.
She read my body language and walked away, still smiling of course, and my stomach dropped out. “Lighten up!” I screamed silently at myself, immediately unable to focus on work. I know my inner instinct is to be lighthearted, but I have been unable to remove the guise I’ve been designing over the past several years, a mask of false purpose, proclaiming to the world (and anyone who blocks my progress), “This is really important work I’m doing!” simultaneously generating and excusing my aloofness and rudeness.
How selfish, I think, disgusted. I’m so obsessed with how much I am capable of doing that I forget everything that others have already done and continue to do for me. I jump out of a plane without a single care or worry, yet I can’t drag myself away from my laptop without a string of tasks still dangling from my fingers and cluttering my brain?
I apologize to Marion, and of course she is forgiving, but I make myself a promise that rather than allow my to-do list dictate my schedule, control my happiness, and consume my thoughts (How many birds can I kill with one stone?), I will understand my to-do list as humble, self-prescribed how-tos towards achieving even bigger goals than I can put into words.
I test my thesis on Sunday morning as I venture off at 5:45 am to Anna’s home in Tengeru to prepare for and celebrate her niece’s first communion. I am trusting that if I dedicate myself to Anna’s family for a day, I/the Programme will wake up Monday morning, unharmed, and I banish my to-dos out from my brain, continually reminding myself that I don’t personally check the parachute.
I basked gratefully in invisibility, quite hard to come by as an mzungu in Arusha, as Anna explained to her family that I have come to help (“Napenda kupika!” “I just like to cook!”, I assure them) and am honored to share the day with them. The teasing quickly faded away over the 6 hours spent working over three open fires in the front yard. From chilly morning through the pounding midday sunshine, I sat and peeled chandeliers full of ripe green bananas, hands covered in sticky glue that I peeled off like dried Elmer’s by the time we had filled two enormous basins. Waterlogged hands as my cutting board, I diligently sliced tomatoes, peeled carrots, skinned root ginger, chopped peppers. I listened intently and tried to follow conversations, and without a to-do in mind, I accomplished so much more than I could have ever scheduled in for the day.
One of the most common questions I field from students and project partners in Arusha and in Accra is wondering why, despite the media campaigns and education programmes in, AIDS is still stigmatized and spreading in Africa, and not such a crisis in my homeland. Though a laundry list of potential reasons and opinions continues to build in international literature, I discovered quite a few powerful anecdotes by sitting silently and cooking quietly with these batik-wrapped mamas.
Looking up from my peeling, I note the suffocated goat hanging from the rusty tin fence, his slit throat dripping blood onto the ground. Cooking here is certainly just as sanitary, everything boiled and cooked properly, but preparations are not in strict standards –machetes and knives lie about, used and reused on any item, everything is done by hand, sans blenders, toasters, electric stoves. I can make a bit more sense out of the hesitancy to share meals with people who have AIDS, eating in a place where food is prepared as such and take-out is not a back-up option, consequently leading to a social stigma that can spiral out of control.
Now and then the mamas riddle me with a few questions in Kiswahili, most expressing a shock and disapproval that I am twenty-one and not yet married. They relentlessly try to set me up with Anna’s nephew, Derrick, even introducing me to his parents as Derrick’s fiancé. (I have never met Derrick, for the record. He might even spell his name Derek, for all I know). The overbearing expectation of marriage and child rearing settles in my mind, and I think to last week’s sexual health session in schools. An overflow of curiosity in our anonymous question exercise regarding the ‘proper’ age for sex and marriage may not have factored into my Cumberland H.S. sex ed, but plays a powerful role here in the effective communication of the curriculum and concepts.
Our army of women sat crouched over bubbling pots of n’gombe na wali, ladles as tall as the stirrer, pounding ginger and spices, and scooping out lard into the stews. All of their men – including Derrick, I’m sure - gather at the other side of the yard. Some are setting up a few chairs, most are lounging and chatting. The existence of pre-determined plans and priorities for girl children (the kitchen over the classroom) create a subsequent tension in the academic atmosphere. Stereotypes and superiorities (and inferiorities) are deeply engrained, and I felt a bit more responsible and ready to work after logging these observations.
I chopped, sliced, and diced as I put aside my list of to-dos with big empty boxes next to them, taunting me for attention. But just like I hopped into that tiny plane, never once thinking anything at all would go wrong or that I wouldn’t make it safe to the ground, completely undeterred and undistracted, I hopped onto that early morning daladala without a single regret, worry, or consideration of what else I could or should be doing. I had dedicated this day to Anna no matter the length or quality of the event that I knew very little about, and remained fully present, undistracted, involved…and it was, in a somewhat comparable way, exhilarating.
Later in the evening, over dinner, I am again surrounded by the laughs and love of my team who have returned home. Between their hysterical safari stories, my brain gets lost in the implications of an unshakable analogy to my fear of underachieving: the only fool who is afraid to skydive is the one who fails to realize it’s a tandem jump.
The euphoric peace of skydiving was one of countless birthday blessings I received over the past several days. My family here – Work the World staff (Marion and Baptista), medics living at the House, friends in Arusha and most recently and selflessly, my volunteer team – spoiled me completely with thoughtfulness and love. I returned home on Thursday to find bright balloons filling the canopy top of my mosquito net, welcomed by homemade posters and the olfactory delight of fragrant yellow roses. Despite the busy schedule I have arranged, they managed to secretly buy me gifts – Tangawizi bottle cap earrings (my favorite local soda), Ghana-colored bead hoop earrings (they’re well versed in my Accra obsessions), 2 key chains, and a photo frame carved from ebony wood, containing a handwritten recipe for my favorite Tanzanian dish, Ndizi. Knowing they would be on a pre-booked safari on my actual birthday, and aware of my last minute diving plans, they inscribed each of their names on the inside of a beaded anklet for me to wear “so that we’ll be with you!”
We trekked up to the WTW House for a birthday BBQ – medic Sarah was also celebrating – and my dear Marion, who has been fighting illness for a week, added to her already time-consuming feast creation an extravagant flower arrangement of bursting rosebuds and bold daisies, a draped and decorated veranda, and a sugary-sweet birthday cake - anything besides fruit for treats is rare here, and I had more than my fair share, savoring the sweet granules grating satisfyingly across my tongue. Prohibited from paying a cent the entire evening at ViaVia, my favorite local live music bar, we danced, laughed, and drank through our midnight countdown, when bartend Mr. Bean brought me over a special cocktail as the band serenaded our crew with a bongo-flava style “happy birthday”.
Late on Friday, a surprise ring from my KCA family moved me to tears of happiness beyond my control. I dragged out our good-byes with “Asante sana”s and “I love you”s, and after reluctantly pressing down C to end the call, I realized, a bit disheartened with myself, that I had not mentioned a single thing about the Programme, my entire ‘purpose’ of pausing from KCA to come here. No updates on work progress, lessons learned, relevant experiences. But I shook off the oncoming bout of work-a-holism and reassured myself that it was not a business call but a family check-in.
But the feeling crept back up again the next morning when, in an involuntary reaction of human foolishness, I proved how easily I receive and then tend to forget the selflessness and generosity of others. I sat down to a pile of Programme work after diligently following the strictly enforced no-work birthday policy, and immediately felt tied down by to-dos. Typing furiously, surrounded by surveys, contracts, budgets and worksheets, I gave precious Marion a cold shoulder as she (obnoxiously, I thought, at the moment) hung about me to see what I was doing on my laptop. Marion who goes out of her way for me; Marion with whom I made a birthday-slumber-party pact sharing a tiny twin bed that “people should always come first”, that we are sisters forever.
Not even 24 hours away from overabundance of love and I did my Kate thing! I made her feel like she was annoying and bothering and distracting me so that she would go away without me having to be outright rude and say it.
She read my body language and walked away, still smiling of course, and my stomach dropped out. “Lighten up!” I screamed silently at myself, immediately unable to focus on work. I know my inner instinct is to be lighthearted, but I have been unable to remove the guise I’ve been designing over the past several years, a mask of false purpose, proclaiming to the world (and anyone who blocks my progress), “This is really important work I’m doing!” simultaneously generating and excusing my aloofness and rudeness.
How selfish, I think, disgusted. I’m so obsessed with how much I am capable of doing that I forget everything that others have already done and continue to do for me. I jump out of a plane without a single care or worry, yet I can’t drag myself away from my laptop without a string of tasks still dangling from my fingers and cluttering my brain?
I apologize to Marion, and of course she is forgiving, but I make myself a promise that rather than allow my to-do list dictate my schedule, control my happiness, and consume my thoughts (How many birds can I kill with one stone?), I will understand my to-do list as humble, self-prescribed how-tos towards achieving even bigger goals than I can put into words.
I test my thesis on Sunday morning as I venture off at 5:45 am to Anna’s home in Tengeru to prepare for and celebrate her niece’s first communion. I am trusting that if I dedicate myself to Anna’s family for a day, I/the Programme will wake up Monday morning, unharmed, and I banish my to-dos out from my brain, continually reminding myself that I don’t personally check the parachute.
I basked gratefully in invisibility, quite hard to come by as an mzungu in Arusha, as Anna explained to her family that I have come to help (“Napenda kupika!” “I just like to cook!”, I assure them) and am honored to share the day with them. The teasing quickly faded away over the 6 hours spent working over three open fires in the front yard. From chilly morning through the pounding midday sunshine, I sat and peeled chandeliers full of ripe green bananas, hands covered in sticky glue that I peeled off like dried Elmer’s by the time we had filled two enormous basins. Waterlogged hands as my cutting board, I diligently sliced tomatoes, peeled carrots, skinned root ginger, chopped peppers. I listened intently and tried to follow conversations, and without a to-do in mind, I accomplished so much more than I could have ever scheduled in for the day.
One of the most common questions I field from students and project partners in Arusha and in Accra is wondering why, despite the media campaigns and education programmes in, AIDS is still stigmatized and spreading in Africa, and not such a crisis in my homeland. Though a laundry list of potential reasons and opinions continues to build in international literature, I discovered quite a few powerful anecdotes by sitting silently and cooking quietly with these batik-wrapped mamas.
Looking up from my peeling, I note the suffocated goat hanging from the rusty tin fence, his slit throat dripping blood onto the ground. Cooking here is certainly just as sanitary, everything boiled and cooked properly, but preparations are not in strict standards –machetes and knives lie about, used and reused on any item, everything is done by hand, sans blenders, toasters, electric stoves. I can make a bit more sense out of the hesitancy to share meals with people who have AIDS, eating in a place where food is prepared as such and take-out is not a back-up option, consequently leading to a social stigma that can spiral out of control.
Now and then the mamas riddle me with a few questions in Kiswahili, most expressing a shock and disapproval that I am twenty-one and not yet married. They relentlessly try to set me up with Anna’s nephew, Derrick, even introducing me to his parents as Derrick’s fiancé. (I have never met Derrick, for the record. He might even spell his name Derek, for all I know). The overbearing expectation of marriage and child rearing settles in my mind, and I think to last week’s sexual health session in schools. An overflow of curiosity in our anonymous question exercise regarding the ‘proper’ age for sex and marriage may not have factored into my Cumberland H.S. sex ed, but plays a powerful role here in the effective communication of the curriculum and concepts.
Our army of women sat crouched over bubbling pots of n’gombe na wali, ladles as tall as the stirrer, pounding ginger and spices, and scooping out lard into the stews. All of their men – including Derrick, I’m sure - gather at the other side of the yard. Some are setting up a few chairs, most are lounging and chatting. The existence of pre-determined plans and priorities for girl children (the kitchen over the classroom) create a subsequent tension in the academic atmosphere. Stereotypes and superiorities (and inferiorities) are deeply engrained, and I felt a bit more responsible and ready to work after logging these observations.
I chopped, sliced, and diced as I put aside my list of to-dos with big empty boxes next to them, taunting me for attention. But just like I hopped into that tiny plane, never once thinking anything at all would go wrong or that I wouldn’t make it safe to the ground, completely undeterred and undistracted, I hopped onto that early morning daladala without a single regret, worry, or consideration of what else I could or should be doing. I had dedicated this day to Anna no matter the length or quality of the event that I knew very little about, and remained fully present, undistracted, involved…and it was, in a somewhat comparable way, exhilarating.
Later in the evening, over dinner, I am again surrounded by the laughs and love of my team who have returned home. Between their hysterical safari stories, my brain gets lost in the implications of an unshakable analogy to my fear of underachieving: the only fool who is afraid to skydive is the one who fails to realize it’s a tandem jump.
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