The other night I sat down to watch one of my favorite movies of all time, The Endless Summer. For those of you who have yet to experience this work of genius let me give you a brief run down. Basically in the 1960’s this guy Bruce Brown took a camera, and followed two young surfers, Robert August and Michael Hynson, around for a year and filmed them following warm weather and surfing in different locations. Regarded as mother to all modern day surf films. The Endless Summer is probably the most well-known real surf documentary—Blue Crush is not. The first stop on Mike and Roberts journey is Senegal, West Africa.
Having seen this movie more times than I know or would even like to admit, I was totally taken a back when I watched after having actually lived on the continent of Africa for almost 11 months now. At one point Mike and Robert walk down to a beach—where local people are trading goods and fishing—to go surfing. I was amazed to find that even though it is 2011, the local people were still wearing the same clothes and using the same goods they use today. The women were all dressed in brightly colored vitenge outfits and the men were wearing pants and shorts that were clearly second hand from a developed country. The women still had their children strapped to their backs and carried goods on their heads. The fishermen used the same dugout wooden canoes I have seen in use on Lake Nyasa/ Lake Malawi, as well as the same hand woven fishing nets. Even the big bowls and platters in the movie are ones I can buy at the market. Okay, so this may not seem that strange to some of you…. so what things looked the same in Africa over 50 years ago as they do today. Well, now ask yourself this; do things look the same in America as they did 50 years ago. How many of us are still wearing the same style of clothing that people wore in the 1960’s? How many of us are still using the same technology? People here seem to make due with things that have been in use for some time and have not felt the need to change. On the flip side, many of the countries in Africa are behind the developed world. Two areas where I notice this on a daily basis are in education and technology. Text books that are outdated, corporal punishment, number of students who go to college, walkmans, outdated lab apparatuses, typewriters, carbon paper for making copies… (the list goes on). Before living in Tanzania I would have had a hard time imagining how it would be to live behind the rest of the world. So, after watching this movie again I feel even more grateful to live in a developed country that is constantly moving forward.
As for the past couple weeks things have been moving forward. The New Ed volunteers received their site last week. We will be getting three new girls to the Mbeya region, which leaves just TJ and Eric … and 9 (?) girls. Poor boys… This past week I also had shadowers, who sat in on one of my classes and lived at my house for most of the week. It was nice to have some other people around for a change. Last Saturday I also procured pet #3. Her name is Pebbles; she is a tiny gray kitten. As any of you know I have had a pretty bad track record here, as far as pets go, hopefully this one will last longer than a week. I also hope she grows a lot more so she will be bigger than the rats she is supposed to kill.
Add one more thing to the list of medical issues I have had in country…. Two nights ago I had food poisoning. I woke up in the middle of the night with stomach cramps and a small fever. In the morning, I was in no shape to go to school, so I tried to call my mkuu and a counterpart. I ended up getting sick… won’t really share the details, but it involved a bucket and my choo -- simultaneously. I ended up sleeping most of the day. Around 4 I attempted to walk to the duka near my house to get some soda and crackers, but only made it about half way before I came really close to fainting. Thankfully a student went to the store for me as I barely made it back home to my couch. Add to all of this that I had a meowing kitten, who kept trying to butt her head into the bathroom, and I ran out of water to flush my toilet. Thankfully this morning I woke up feeling much better and my 101.9 degree fever had disappeared.
Most days I really do not notice that I live in a different country/ culture because I have pretty much adjusted to things here. The times I notice things are really different is when I am sick. There are very few convinces here that we are used to at home such as ginger ale, saltines, Saved By The Bell reruns and an actual toilet bowl. These may seem like trifles, but when you are sick they can make a world of different. Also, as much as I appreciate my counterparts they do not seem to understand that when a person is sick it is not necessarily malaria, you cannot take medicine for every aliment and you may only be sick for 24 hours.
So lesson learned this week… make sure eggs are fresh and cooked thoroughly (refrigeration also wouldn’t hurt)
I hope the last few weeks of summer are treating everyone well. We are getting the tail end of “winter” here, so hopefully sometime soon it will start to warm up! Also hoping it starts to rain again…really tired of living on the surface of the moon (there is so much dust that it puffs up when you walk, like moon dust).
All my love from TZ.
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