Close Encounters of Three Kinds

Traveling brings you to the most fascinating people, or you to them. Heck, a trip to the grocery store can be life changing at the right time on the right day, but when I found myself huddled under a thatched roof to escape the pounding rain with my family, Pat and Dave Crowner and 30 Tanzanian men drinking beer, you can be sure there was more potential energy in the air than just the lightning bolts.

Wilbur Kileo grew up in a Chaga household on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro; he was one of 17 children and has 11 of his own. How many grandchildren? “I don’t know. Many,” he guessed. Baba Kileo’s father fought in two world wars in East Africa: first with the Germans to rid Tanzania of the Brits, and then on the side of Great Britain against the Germans. The old soldier died at 114 years old “speaking German.”

Mr. Kileo introduced himself and offered us his table, saying, “Yes, sit. English is my language.” His folded tan army hat, smart African print shirt and obvious control of the service in the place suggested we were with a man of real influence. After another Eagle beer was delivered and the music lowered, we asked our new rafiki all sorts of candid questions. ‘Daudi,’ our friend from Gettysburg new to Tanzania, led the way, asking: Has white people’s Christianity helped or hindered Tanzanians?

“Christianity brought no new ideas to Africa,” Mr. Kileo explained. Before mercenaries and missionaries infiltrated the interior Africans gathered around great trees and mountains to praise the Creator of all things. It is only that this being is called God or Jesus Christ that makes Christianity any different from the old religions, the man said.

Mr. Kileo, a Tanzanian who went to university in London and owns a store selling weights and scales in Moshi, spoke with great conviction and careful thought, including when he delved in to the history of HIV/AIDS. “It is a disease not made by God,” he said, but by scientists who combined strands from five animals and one human to create the virus. Scientists fused the cells of an infected pig, bat, sheep, baboon, wildebeest and human to birth the Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

“Wildebeest?” I asked.

“Yes, wildebeest. Like the cow,” and then he spelled it for me. Mr. Kileo’s version of HIV/AIDS is mostly transmitted by “cannibal bats in the Amazon,” who will infect a person if they are sick and bite him. I sure hope not.

Mama Lema is the happiest woman in Tanzania, I think. She spends her days giggling and gossiping with Mama Solome, the secretary, and singing “Good Morning, Madame” with her young pupils.

“You speak very good English!” she half-yelled to me and Ann the other day.

“Well, thank you,” we replied, “We have spoken English since we were babies.”

“You have all subjects in school in English?” she asked emphatically.

“No, in Swahili!” I said, and we laughed, her deep chuckle rising above the rest.

This woman is the classic modern African queen with her proud head wraps, curly black weave and rotating knock-off purses. The other day I asked about her son, who recently passed the government exams enabling him to continue to secondary school. He will attend a government boarding school costing Mama Lema and her husband 300,000 Tshillings - about US $230 - per year, plus uniforms, desks, books, shoes and blankets.

“I am going to suffer,” she said, her mouth turned in a serious pout.

I asked about politics and the upcoming Tanzanian elections, which she wasn’t very interested in. So, per usual, the conversation turned to “Mister God.”

“Mister God makes the people in America with lots of money and we in Tanzania,” she said, pointing to her black arm, “we have no money. I ask Mister God, ‘Why?’”

Shocked by this statement of inequity, I said, “Mama Lema, I don’t think God loves you any different than me.”

Unconvinced, she hummed and pouted, shaking her head.

“There are black people in America...” I began.

“Very rich?” she demanded, “They have their big car and lots of money, and they don’t come back to Africa!”

“But, their families have been in America for 300 years. They are American,” I said. Then I ventured, perhaps a bit naively, “Do you think Mister God is racist?”

“Race? Like a running race?” she asked, thrusting her arms back and forth.

“No, racism like Apartheid in South Africa when you keep certain people down because of the color of their skin,” I tried.

“Separate; yes, I know. God is not racist,” she said.

Again I suggested my theory that God loves everyone equally, which she quickly shot down. Then she asked I keep in my heart that her son needs just one sponsor from America to pay for school. I said I would do what I could.

My third notable encounter was not so much with a person but a tiny mjusi - lizard - in my bed. We are awoken nearly every night by yapping, howling, horrible dogs outside. It was on one such occasion I was lying in bed cursing their existence when I felt a tugging at the base of my neck. I shifted my head thinking it was an imagined thing. Again there was a very real tugging in my hair, so I jumped up screaming and batting at my neck only to find a tail-less lizard staring up at me on the pillow. I quickly shoved it off the bed and, of course, found its wriggling tail underneath my pillow. I’m sure it was as frightened as I, but now I can hardly sit here without startling at the slightest breeze or buzz.

Now if you’ll excuse me, the dogs are at it again, and I must retire to my bed beneath the mosquito net, where I am hopefully safe from malarial insects and cannibal bats but certainly not tiny creatures who like to scare me half to death and leave their tails behind.

Hot Hot Heat

Talk about a sultry New Years Eve. While most of you were bundled up with your lovers and loved ones battling freezing rain and blizzards, the Matthews rang in the new decade in some hot, hot heat. We set off fireworks, danced on the beach, swam in the ocean and finally crashed in our beds gasping for breath through the sweltering heat of tropical Pangani on the Indian Ocean.

Weather-wise, it’s been an odd year. You in the northern hemisphere are hunkering down for the most severe winter in decades, while parts of Tanzania are experiencing drought and famine. Pangani, the fishing village and former slave trade port, has seen one rain shower since May. I spent May and June on a soggy, foggy schooner in Maine. We saw three days of sunshine in the month of June. It was, to date, my coldest summer, while celebrating my birthday (23!) and the beginning of 2010 six degrees south of the equator is by far the hottest “winter” of my life.

The people on Tanzania's coast do what they can to survive the droughts. Their drinking water comes from wells, but the water is almost as saline as in the ocean.

It was our first time to the Indian Ocean! In tune with the tropical air of the place, the water was almost unpleasantly warm. I wondered if we would need a wetsuit to scuba dive, but our suntanned, hunk-of-a-German instructor, Alex, told us not to underestimate the depth of the water.

My family rarely performs menial tasks without a small drama overshadowing the main event - I broke my foot Christmas day three years ago playing tag on a jungle gym - and this snorkel/scuba exhibition was no exception to our family rule: it’s no fun unless someone gets hurt.

Dad and I were partners and managed to follow Alex the instructor to the bottom where we realized we were three, not five. Ann hadn’t been able to equalize her ears to the pressure underwater, so Mom and Ann had somehow been left in our bubbles. Hunky Alex was quickly losing props in my book.

Dad’s nose bleed saved the day. Sometimes Hugh-go has trouble with his sinuses, and while underwater his sinus becomes blocked, causing severe pain and lots of blood to flow in to his snorkel mask, not only obstructing his view but hindering his scuba ability. After we resurfaced Dad, Alex and I hovered a bit until we saw two blobs on the water with scuba tanks on their backs. Mom and Ann had been dragged far away from the boat by the strong underwater current. On the surface it was next to impossible to fight the flow, so Alex sent the boat to retrieve the wayward divers. Mom and Ann hopped in the boat then came to meet us.

Alex decided our only hope for a successful dive would be to find the reef from the boat. This he accomplished with some lackadaisical, sun-baked Afro-German logic. Dad, Alex and I grabbed on to a tow line while Mom hollered at the drivers that they should tie the line to the boat. Instead, the man wrapped our tow line around an old post and away we went, gulping salt water and slipping further away with every crashing wave.

In the end it was a great two dives for Mom and myself; Dad, Ann and Will stayed at the surface to snorkel and sunburn. Alex, Nellie and I drifted with the current next to a stunning 40 foot reef, the rose garden so-called because of the white coral heads shaped like spirals. Of course, there was also the plethora of purple fan coral, iridescent blue, yellow and red parrot fish, angel fish and starfish. We saw a few poisonous lion fish as big as small dogs with their wild red and white fins fanning out in every direction to ward off big fish or overambitious divers.

Some say the Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanzania and Zanzibar is the best diving out there. After battling with our slightly inept team of instructors, a wicked underwater current and Dad’s token nose bleed, we did manage to enjoy the beautiful life hidden unda’ da sea. It is a world we rarely visit. Scientists know more about our universe and those beyond than they do about the deep oceans of Earth.

Hopefully, this breach of knowledge will change soon, and we can focus on what we’ve got right under our noses.

Bona Fide

Africa has made me a bona fide meat eater.

Over the summer I ended my compulsory-if-you’re-going-to-call-yourself-a-liberal-college-student vegetarian stage, so I can eat meat in moderation now. The timing is perfect, because my family devoted our Christmas Eve to killing, exsanguinating, shaving and curing a pig raised on the Faraja farm not 200 yards from our house.

While living in Senegal, my religiously vegetarian college roommate, Molly, had to make some big exceptions to her non-animal diet. She woke up one day and realized there was no bleeting outside from their pet goat. She asked where her four-legged friend had gone: it was dinner the night before. Another time while she walked to and from school she witnessed a camel being butchered; freshly killed on the side of the road in the morning and hunks of meat strung up on market stalls at the end of the day. The human-animal bond in a developing country is one not so dependent on fraternity or friendship but on necessity and survival.

My brother - the voracious hunter - was in his element to kill the pig. Dad and Will walked right in to the stinking, squealing pen, chose their meaty target and grabbed her hind legs. Mom, Ann and I huddled behind a shed while they cracked the animal in the head with a hammer and dragged it to a tree where they hung her upside down and slit both carotid arteries.

Of course, quite a few of the farmers huddled around pointing and smiling about the prospect of smoked pig for dinner. After she bled out and the coagulated blood sloshed in to the bucket below, Will cut a long, straight line from her gut to her throat from which he extracted the steamy entrails. Dad gave a mini biology lesson on the limp lungs, tubular esophagus and bile- producing gallbladder. We gave the gilt’s head and intestines to the happy farmers and trudged back up the hill to our house reeking of the newly slaughtered beast.

Then we spent Christmas day shooing the dogs away from our succulent smoking swine.

Dedicated to the 2009 Lewis R. French crew, who knew the importance of a balanced diet: Swine, Lobstah, Swine.

On a Mission, But Not a Missionary

I have been in the land of Lucy and Ardi, the original Garden of Eden, for only two weeks. I have met extreme doubt, an elephantine language barrier and the earsplitting squeals of delight from the 85 students we live with and teach.

The students at Faraja School in Sanya Juu, Tanzania, are a hand-full and, at times, heartbreakingly adorable. There is teeny-tiny Fausta, who sashays around the halls and fields, swinging her arms and clapping her hands as she goes, demanding and receiving attention. She, like all Tanzanian children, is bald except for a short buzz cut. She wears pink pajama pants with a dress overtop.

“Kate! Kate! I miss you!” she yelled from her tire swing one day after school, beckoning for me to come and push her higher.

“Oh, Fausta. How could I resist?” I replied, dutifully hurrying to the swing set.

My parents, 13-year-old sister and I live in a three-bedroom house in the valley between two magnificent mountains: Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa, to the east, and Mount Meru to the west, which the sun descends each night.

“Mom, come outside! Come quickly!” we exclaim, as the setting sun hits the top of snow-peaked Kili, turning its summit pink and picturesque. Then we turn to the West just in time to see the fiery globe drop behind Meru.

During a recent sunset Dad and I were sitting on our back porch enjoying a Serengeti lager when all at once heaven showed her mystical face. I caught a glimpse of yellow, green, pink, orange and blue, and I leapt from the bench to get a better view. But, this was no ordinary rainbow. These rays of light bouncing and bending formed a circle of colors outlining a hole in the rain clouds, as if an artist dipped eight brushes in different colors and drew a ring to separate sky from cloud.
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My roles here - teacher, volunteer, daughter, sister, student, journalist - are every day pliable and challenging. One minute I am singing and dancing “The Hokie Pokie” with 20 Kindergartners. The next, I am planning a Literature lesson for my sister’s home-schooling. Then, I am chastising a boy who barely understands English for hiding another child’s wheelchair behind a tree.

“Are you a missionary?” a holy rolling Floridian asked me in Moshi this past weekend. We were at a Christmas bazaar with four students and two teachers to sell arts and crafts to the wazungu - white people - of the big city.

“No!” I replied hastily, “I’m a volunteer at Faraja,” pointing to our table littered with bracelets, postcards and God’s Eyes, a Christmas tree decoration made of colorful yarn.

Westerners, I have found, come to Tanzania for a couple of reasons: to climb Kilimanjaro and go on a safari, to use their knowledge and professional degrees to volunteer at a hospital, school or with farmers and pastoralists or to spread the word of God.

“God brought me here,” explained Alice, a local missionary, before relaying her personal history ad nauseam. “I’ve been here seven years, and Africa wouldn’t be my first choice!” she said, “I’m a dolled up kinda gal. I need make-up and sit down toilets, you know.”

Alice runs a women’s center for under-educated, divorced or neglected women who want to learn to sew, speak English or start their own businesses. She does good work, but I have trouble taking seriously this woman who prayed proudly for five minutes over a man who had misplaced his car keys.

I am not a missionary, but I am on a mission. And, I volunteer at a very Christian-centric establishment.

So, what am I? Why am I here?

Some days I am here to read a book aloud in English to kids who know if they master the language their employment opportunities increase tenfold. Other days I am here to lift little Ester out of her wheelchair so she can spin, dance and laugh upright with the other children. And, still, other days I am here to watch, learn and question.

I will learn Kiswahili, the language of over 50 million East Africans. I will learn to distinguish the poisonous from non-poisonous nyoka - snakes - around our house.

More importantly, and with the help of my wonderfully proactive parents, we will learn why two under-qualified young men are in complete control over 40 boys in the dormitories. Why, at a school surrounded by verdant fields of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, the children eat an unwholesome diet of boiled beans, ugali and more beans. And, why, at a school run by Westerners with our Western philosophies, physical punishment goes virtually unnoticed by the administration.
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After all, we would never accomplish a thing were it not for pure, relentless agitation. Can I get an “Amen?”



Dedicated to Stephen Hill: “You enjoy your enchanted life.”