Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Close to moving

I'm sitting here waiting for my office computer to load. Today I convinced these guys to cut part of a tree down because it was right in front of the satellite dish that supplies internet. I didn't want to do it, that tree was really thriving on the bandwidth it was poaching. But the more lovely and lush it became, the more dismal the internet was. The signal strength doubled when it was cut, so hopefully it was worth it.








In other news, the accommodation center that the American people paid for is ready for us to move in. So for a mere $1 million and only 3 months overdue, we get some pretty plush digs for 4 months or so. CENSORED So nice to contribute to the community! It's half a kilometer from Kibondo town, so not quite the short walk that the guest house is, but still close, I hope.




I've been trying to volunteer for some of the agencies out here, but some of them are pretty strict about it. The amount of politics and bureaucracy is mind numbing at times. CENSORED. I'm sure that's just a vestigial wave of paranoia that comes from living in a once communist country, but I'm not really that sure. CENSORED. See, the theory is that if refugees become aware of the opening of a transit center for the ones that will be resettled in the U.S., they will no longer want to go back home and voluntary repatriation will drop off. As with many things, there are so many sides to this issue that it comes to resemble a sphere. More like a jawbreaker right before you crack it. The other thing that the taxes I got a six month extension on taking care of paid for is about 400 brick homes for the chosen refugees to live in. The ones being resettled score these beauties partly for security, because they become kind of singled out from the rest of the refugee populace. The first time I saw these, they looked very picturesque and at the same time like the opening credits to Weeds. I got a very emotional feeling coming out of there, but I'm still not sure what it was. Lets just say there was no bile involved.

The dust is rising out here. It hasn't rained for a few days and people are starting to get coughs. The sun sets higher and higher each day because of the amount of dust in the air. When we are driving on the road, it takes less than 2 seconds for a bicycle to vanish in the dust rising from our passing. The dust is red, but it doesn't taste like iron. Someone probably said it is red from the blood spilled in African wars but then it would probably taste more salty. No, it just tastes like chalk, except at night, when it tastes like wet chalk.










I've been trying random eating options in an effort to have some variety. I like the samosas, but they are often cold and that's when the grease gets a little mucky. Samosas are triangular deep fried things with ground meat and veggies or just veggies in them. I've also tried something one place calls a pizza, but its really just a meat pie with pizza dough like skin and a boiled egg inside. They have veggie ones of those, too. So far, nothing has made me sick. A common roadside treat is some kind of meat on skewers and chips mayai. The skewers are typically, upon close inspection, bicycle spokes and the meat can have a kind of woodsy rancid taste after 4 pm. Chips mayai is just french fries embedded in scrambled eggs. Sometimes you get chapati on the road, which is kind of like a tortilla only more greasy and a little more bready. Chapati is the most likely to give you the runs, according to my informal poll. Suffice it to say that they reuse the grease. What they used it for in the first place I will gladly leave a mystery.

If the old rule of thumb about the cleanliness of restaurant kitchens being indicated by the cleanliness of the bathrooms applies, you do not want to eat in Kibondo. The typical bathroom, with its various nesting insects, patchy ruddy color from the dust and mud of which the walls seem to be composed, parts of small animals and birds in various stages of decomposition, floor (if there is a floor) festooned with bits of newspaper (not for reading) and tissue, and enormous maw that somehow still isn't big enough to catch all the human waste spewed at it, makes a very good appetite suppressant. And at most of these places you need an appetite suppressant. Beer, or "Bia" in Swahili (see, I am learning a language), also fills the helps stave off the hunger quite nicely. And it works in conjunction with the bathroom imagery, so the 2-5 hour wait for food seems like a mere 1 to 4 hours. You can order ahead, but then they act surprised when you get there an hour later, and won't start cooking until you've been there for 30 minutes or so. Actually, I'm basing this on only a couple of places. The roadside stands are more responsive. But we did wait five hours for Samosas once, until one guy went and stood in the kitchen until the food got cooked. We dined that night at around 11:30. You also commonly run into the situation where there is no more food. Most of the time you just have to keep asking and something will happen, but sometimes there is just no more food. So Ann and I have started cooking at home. We need to get a gas stove, because the charcoal habatchis that they use around here take a while to fire up.





Right now she is sick in bed. We live with the medical coordinator, Dr. Leul, who we also hang out with all the time and within hours of Ann feeling ill she had both kinds of malaria tests. She got the results back within a half hour of taking them (negative). For comparison, when I started showing symptoms in Seattle, it took 3 hours of waiting in the emergency room to get the test, and another 24 to get the results. There are some unexpected things going on over here, which I guess makes sense in the land where humans became dominant amongst 1 ton carnivores and the virulence that took them down.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Blind bowman

Ann met the president of Tanzania.





Well, things in Kibondo are OK. Every now and then, someone from one of the NGOs leaves and we get to go to a going away party. The majority of the people working at these NGOs are Tanzanian, and so there is a customary process, which involves many speeches, the giving of the gift , sometimes a line up to embrace or shake hands goodbye, food and then the disco. And then, after the disco ends, some people go to a local disco until 5am. Some people.



It is a little strange to be at a local disco as a minority of one, i.e. the only one who can't dance right, but at least you get a lot of room. Which helps because the floor is dirt and uneven and its pretty dark and pocked with ankle breakers.

Last night one of the doctors left, he got a posting in Tibet, I think, to help with the refugees from Bhutan. They meal started with soup, which I ladled into my bowl and took a spoonful without really looking at it or smelling it. Then Ann said "If you don't move that soup further away I will puke." At which point I caught a whiff and the after taste of the broth; that quality you'd associate with a certain ambiance. Somewhere between a slaughter house and a latrine. Then I noticed that the things floating in it looked like unscaled sketches from Gray's Anatomy. There was a trachea, oh and is that an esophagus attached? It is good to eat every part of the goat, but the parts that have some of the stuff the goat has eaten in them...I'm not that hungry. Not ready to experience that part of the culture. The barbecued meat parts of the goat were very good, though.



I've been trying to help with computer problems and network stuff for TCRS and Ann's organization IOM. Also, getting ready to do some teaching of Office applications to locals and Refugees. So I got a tour of Kibondo's Folk Development College. The IT Technician at TCRS, Innocent, took me there. They've got 12 PCs on a satellite dish and the teach Modern Computing, Mechanics (Cars and trucks or Gari's and Rollis in Swahili), and some textiles related stuff, I think. We walked around, checking out the buildings, and greeted some people. Towards the edge of the Campus, an old Kibondan walked by us, and I noticed he carried a bow and arrow. The little arrows. So I looked at him and said Salaama, and he kind of stopped and said something, and I realized he had no pupils or irises and one eye was all brown with some marbling and the other was kind of silvery. "He's blind," Innocent told me, after we'd walked on a little. "But he's got a bow and arrow," I said. Innocent was silent, leaving me to wonder and draw my own conclusions.



The ongoing construction of our future home and the IOM offices is going on. And on. Some of the construction pictures on my album illustrate the pace.





A lot of gravel is made by men with picks smashing rocks, which is then sorted by women into different sizes, including sand. Then the women, some of them with babies on their backs, fill up five gallon buckets and balance them on their heads.




This is how many tons of sand an gravel get transported. You know, I have a really good job.

They use the construction hard hats to mix mortar in, they're too hot to wear.





We went and looked around the other day after a sunset run.


Our house will be the second from the left.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Settling

THis is what we look out over when we eat lunch:



If I turn away from that, I am graced with this beautiful view:



We've both been working a lot. Ann has been teaching classes this week because they had a scheduling mishap and she had to pick up the slack.


Scheduling mishaps are pretty much the norm here. I was trying to find the swahili term for happy birthday but it turns out there isn't really such a phrase because it is impolite to refer to a specific date or something. Like celebrating a certain date violates some cultural more. Also a lot of people don't know their birthday. This is probably changing.



I've been helping with some IT stuff and learning about satellite internet. In exchange, I get to use the internet to keep up with my work for PMI. There aren't internet cafes in kibondo.


Also, we are taking swahili lessons every day and its starting to sink in a little.