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.
*
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.
*
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.”
