A Request for Prayers

Yesterday morning my sisters and brother in Toledo met with the nursing staff at the facility where my mother has lived the last few years (and where, despite its unfortunate name -- Sunset House -- my mother has received great care).

My mother, now 86, had surgery for colorectal cancer six years ago, and during the last few years she's also had pretty serious dementia. Lately she's lost her appetite and has been fidgety. Noticing these as symptoms of discomfort/pain, x-rays were ordered. A six centimeter mass is visible on her lung.

My sisters and brother will meet with the hospice folks on Monday.

Say a prayer for Marcella, please, and for us, too, as we embark on another chapter in our life with her.

A Certain Sort of Privilege

Happy Thanksgiving! (Or, Sikukuu Njema ya Mavuno! -- that's my guess anyway; Kiswahili speakers, what do you think?)

Last night, I was reflecting on what I’ve learned over the course of three months in language school. Not enough was the initial answer! I found myself reflecting on what I’ve learned beyond grammar and vocabulary.

One of the gifts of being here has been to gain some small sense (very small, admittedly) – some small sense of what by black and Latino friends often experience in the United States. That is to say, one of the things I have realized is the privilege of having my behavior in the US treated, for the most part, as unremarkable.

Here, I miss is the ability to walk down a street and go unnoticed. I spend a lot of time trying to pretend, knowing full well that all eyes are on my every move. I miss flying under the radar, being able to duck in to a shop and buy a bottle of water without it being a big deal – or any sort of deal at all. It’d be nice not to be a novelty: to be able to take a daladala like other folks, without people raising eyebrows or commenting on how surprising it is that I am riding on the daladala.

So there’s a certain irony here: Even as I attempt to live in some sort of solidarity with the people here, I am being given resources to live in solidarity with brothers and sisters in the United States.

Indeed, a lot to be thankful for.

Fra Rikardo Maria

On Sunday Bart Murphy, SJ, brought me to meet an extraordinary man, Brother Rikardo Maria.

Rikardo, an Italian who has lived in Tanzania for many years and speaks such good Swahili that he was asked by the bishop to head the diocesan radio apostolate, has founded Franciscan communities for both men and women. They might be called Franciscans of the Strict Observance, for their poverty is very close to the poverty of poor Tanzanians. For instance, the men's residence had dirt floors and no screens on the windows.

Rikardo has started two secondary schools, one free and the other very inexpensive. Over 2000 students attend these two (mostly) day schools (there is a hostel, however, for girls at one of the schools). Many of the students are older -- some as old as 40. An amazing project spearheaded by an amazing man and his companions.

Here's a link to their website.

A Well Project

My friend Henry and his friends met one another at the Salvatorian Institute here. After graduating, they started an NGO that puts in shallow wells in villages near Morogoro. Impressive work.

You can see how deep that well is -- and it's unprotected, so anything can fall into it, including animals and children. And what follows is what they end up with, a ring well with a durable hand pump:

One thing I love about the above video is how the slightly older boy has learned about levers -- look at how easily he pumps compared to the younger child before him.

My hope of course is that in ten years I'll be posting similar videos about similar work of graduates of OLQP.

The Gift of Thanks

My friend Margaret Visser's book The Gift of Thanks is featured in today's New York Times. The book was published last year in Canada, and I had a chance to read it when I visited Vancouver earlier this year. It is another remarkable book by her. If you haven't read Sacred Geometry or her other books, do!

I had a chance to visit Margaret and Colin in Paris this summer on my way home from my visit to Tanzania in early June -- a delightful time with them for which I am thankful.

So go out and get the book and read it in time for Thanksgiving!

So What’s Language School Like?

(originally written on 3 November -- Internet problems abound!)

My sister mentioned to me that for her a lot of my postings have been rather a big yawn. I appreciate her frankness, and can understand why. I haven’t written much really concrete “stuff,” and much of what I’ve posted has been the fruit of my trying to figure some things out for myself.

My anonymous-Winchester, Massachusetts-residing sister suggested that I get more concrete about my experience of language school. I’ll do that here and will post some pictures later.

As you approach Morogoro from Dodoma you see the Uruguru mountains before you. Before actually heading into the town center you go left at a kipilefti (a roundabout – they used to have signs in English “keep left) and head southeast on the road to Dar es Salaam. The sisal fields (what used to be a cash crop and might return to being such with the organic movement) are on your left. Also on the left, just about three kilometers from the campus of the language school is a soko la ng’ombe, a Maasai cattle market (where two cattle thieves had their heads roll down the dirt road a few years back). After passing the Old Morogoro Road on your right, you see the campus of the Lutheran Junior Seminary, on which campus the language school is located. (Many high schools that were founded in the seventies here have the name “seminary” attached. The reason for this, as I understand it, is that the government’s nationalization of private schools did not include seminaries.)

It is a campus that has seen better days, which is to say that there’s a lot of deferred maintenance. The first thing you notice is that the red of the brick is the same red-orange color of the soil – the buildings don’t stand out. The language school is a small part of the school and consists of six or seven blocks of housing, a common room, and a dining hall/kitchen. The rooms are comfortable. I’m in a single room and walk down a few doors for the bathroom; there are some rooms with en suite bathrooms and also larger spaces for couples and families.

My day begins at five o’clock in the morning. After praying for twenty or so minutes, I study for an hour and then take a shower (I can’t get into the wiser practice of a shower at day’s end – though a good foot bath is always in order after a day of walking in sandals through the red soil.) I celebrate Mass before heading to the dining hall for breakfast.

Every day for breakfast there is uji. Uji is a type of porridge made from ground finger millet (the verb used with porridge, incidentally, the verb is kunywa – you drink it, even if it’s in a bowl and you’re using a spoon); the uji here is served with homemade yogurt and granola. There’s also always white bread (called milk bread here). There’s often something else: French toast, scrambled eggs, hardboiled eggs, etc. People tend to sit at the table for about a half hour before heading back to their rooms to collect their things before heading over to sala ya asubuhi, morning devotions at 7:45 a.m.

I used my experience of morning devotions as an example some weeks back during a class on Tanzanian culture. The teacher asked me to describe Tanzanian attitudes toward time. I noted that morning devotions are scheduled to begin at 7:45 a.m. (which is a quarter to two as time is counted in Swahili, incidentally – 8:00 being two hours after sunrise), and that I’d learned that at 7:45 I should begin to think about heading over to the classroom for the prayer. The prayer, most often led by one of the young assistant teachers (though I have led it) usually consists of a hymn at the beginning and one at the end with a piece of scripture (read first in English and then in Swahili) in the middle. The hymns are a highlight for me – some beautiful singing (though I’m not a fan of the sentiment of most of the hymns that celebrate a sort of individualism in faith life).

From morning prayer we head to class. With the exception of the one cultural class mentioned above, all mine have actually been tutorials, with a different teacher each week. My teacher and I head to what can best be described as a thatch-roofed gazebo where we share the three or so minutes of greetings (Habari za asubuhi? –how are things with you this morning?-- Umeamkaje? – how did you wake up?, etc.). Then we get down to business.

The morning kipindi cha kwanza combines the introduction of vocabulary in a given context (places like home, dispensary, shop, game reserve, etc.; and activities like building a house, painting it, cooking, changing a tire, etc.) with some grammar rules. After slogging through reading about just what Rehema, Kazimoto, and Hans (characters in these various settings) are up to and covering the related grammar, we move to mazoezi, exercises.

Then its time for chai! And at chai we move from mazoezi to maandazi! Maandazi are fried doughballs – think jelly donuts without the jelly, and a bit heavier dough. Very good, but not so good for you. Other things served with the coffee and tea available at chai on various days are bananas (you can’t get them fresher than here!), roasted peanuts, keki (I bet you can guess what English word that comes from – but here it is actually a sweetened cornbread), and chips (either banana or potato).

Fortified, we return for another 1.5 hours of study, moving on to kipindi cha pili – the second section of the unit, which includes a dialogue followed by comprehension exercises. We break at noon for 2.5 hours, returning at 2:30 for more exercises. Until about two weeks ago, I was managing to get through about 1.25 units a day. With Unit 31, however, I hit a bit of a wall and have slowed down considerably. I do love grammar, and I do very well with the drills. However, once I get out of my seat it all seems to fall out of my head, and we often end up reviewing what was just covered earlier in the day. (Just to illustrate how bad this can be, let me share the following: On Saturday a lady stopped by the common room looking for one of the workers. I froze when she asked if he was around. I couldn’t manage even a hayupo, he isn’t here.)

Yesterday was an exception – I was for the most part in the groove, and managed to remember most all of the verbs we covered. I’m having difficulty memorizing verbs – and when I do manage to retain them it is mostly passively; i.e., I recognize them but can’t initiate their use.

The food here is good. It is a carb lovers paradise. Take last night for instance: homemade dinner roles served with rice, potatoes, a sort of tomato sauce, and beans. Ugali, the staple, is only served occasionally to us – twice in my months here, both in the past week; I think this is principally because a lot of wazungu find it difficult to eat. What is ugali? My mother and those of her generation would call it mush*, but it is stirred until very, very thick (thicker than mashed potatoes). I don’t quite understand the aversion of non-Tanzanians to this. It must be its consistency because it doesn’t have its own taste, really – it tastes like whatever sauce it is served with. It’s the perfect dish for a place where there isn’t always a lot to eat because it is very, very filling – so filling, in fact, that it is not customary to serve it at the evening meal.

Some days after lunch I take a siesta. Even when I don’t, I usually rest, spending the time reading (when wireless is working I download the New York Times on my iphone and read it – I haven’t read news or heard it or watched it in over a week now) or writing. The half hour before we return for the last session of the day, I review vocabulary in preparation for the afternoon exercises.

Chai follows the afternoon exercises (you can see why I’m not losing weight as quickly as I expected – if snacking is considered eating outside of mealtime I’m not doing it; I just have five meals every day here!). We eat at six o’clock, so I spend the 1.5 hours between chai and the evening meal reading, writing, praying, etc.

After the evening meal I spend 75 minutes reviewing and preparing for the next day’s lessons. Then, when the Internet is in service I’ll also spend time writing emails, stopping by Facebook, posting here, and checking out some news websites (still a news junky, so this Internet/wireless issue is a challenge for me.)

I’m in bed usually by ten, sometimes an hour earlier sometimes an hour later. With the exception of a few nights it has been comfortable sleeping – getting downright chilly about four o’clock in the morning. I do sleep under mosquito netting, and I also have a few small geckos that hang out around my window sills – they help to keep the mosquito and spider population down. There are two things that wake me in the evening: the trucks on the Dar es Salaam – Morogoro Road that is about 75 meters away (there’s a speed bump, so I hear the breaks) and the bush babies. I now know why they are called such – they have a cry that does sound a bit like a crying baby, mwah, mwah, mwah, mwah.

*There’s a funny story about my mother in this regard. I was so proud that I’d become an adequate cook, and even prouder that a certain dish I’d learned to make was a hit among a lot of people: a polenta casserole (make polenta using milk, butter, and parmesan rather than just water in order to make it a little richer; put it in the bottom of a 9 x 11 greased pan; add sweet Italian saugage and tomato sauce; top with mozzarella cheese; and bake at 350 degrees for 40 mins). She watched as I prepared the delicacy. As I stirred the polenta with a proud smile on my face, Marcella burst my bubble: “Dear, I know it has a fancy Italian name, but what you’re making is cornmeal mush.”

At Last!

Seems our Internet problems might be taken care of, so expect some posts -- even some less "yawn, yawn" ones, as one straight shooting sister referred to some of the recent ones.