I get up about 7 am. Sometimes later if it’s rainy and grey. In my grogginess I realize that I must turn on the hot water heater if I want a warm shower later. I stumble into the kitchen and manage to get some granola and yogurt into a bowl. Shuffle to the living room and plunk down in a chair (stuffed red velour). Somewhere around the third bite I begin to wake up. I make coffee or have a glass of juice. It dawns on me that I’m going to be late if I don’t hurry up and get in the shower. I dump my dishes next to the sink and hurry to my room only to realize that my bed is not made and my mosquito net askew. I tidy up and hurry to the shower praying there’s enough water and I won’t have to yell to get my roommates to turn on the pump just when I’ve lathered shampoo in my hair.
Much time (and water) is wasted standing around in my towel letting the water run until it gets warm even though I’ve turned on the heater about 30 minutes before. I just can’t deal with a cold shower on dreary mornings. I get out of the shower realizing I only have about 15 minutes to get ready and out the door before I’m late. A flurry of getting ready and usually running about 10 minutes late, I dash out.
Negotiate the muddy road in front of the house and around the corner to where I can catch a daladala (public transportation – really a minibus that should only hold about 14 people, but up to 20 are often crammed in – more if there are kids). If I’m lucky I get a daladala with an empty seat. If not, I have to squish in contortions that leave me cramped after 10 or 15 minute ride in bumper-to-bumper traffic. If it’s really muddy or I can’t get a daladala with 14 people or less I say screw it and pay for a taxi. Daladalas cost the equivalent of about $0.20 and a taxi is about $2.50, so I go for the cheaper route as much as possible.
I get off the daladala about 2 blocks from work. I could get off closer, but I like walking for a bit in the mornings. Of course, I often have to negotiate the myriad of hawkers who want me to buy batiks, painted banana leaves, bracelets, or whatever always at a “volunteer price.” I’ve perfected the say-hi-in-passing-and-ignore-whatever-else-they-say routine. Even so, it’s still a nice walk. I go down a path through a beautiful green space and try to ignore the trash and occasional guy taking a pee break. Then I trundle up a hill and around the back of the building (it’s a short-cut). If I’ve timed it right everyone else is just leaving the daily morning prayer or mass so I don’t have to walk past the chapel window while everyone else is inside watching my heathen self saunter in (soooo glad I’m not Catholic – it’s hard enough to try and get there before 8:45am).
My office (double telephone booth) is really on the second floor, but in true holdover from the European colonialist style, the bottom floor is “ground” and the next one up is 1st. Whatever. I like my small space. There’s no room for anyone else to bug me, look over my shoulder or crowd me while I type, or go in after and change what I’ve done. I’m the only one with keys to my office. Well, I guess that’s not true. Sister Wenceslaus has an extra key just in case (yes, really, like “Good King Wenceslaus”). Her office takes up most of the rest of the room that my old storage space (office) is in. She does the accounting, so I trust her. The annoyances of working in a shared space in a different office on a computer that has been described as “a bomb that should be sent to Osama Bin Laden to blow up” were all part of the first month or so after I started work. So now I have some privacy and things are starting to happen.
Despite my much-treasured solitary space, I get a lot of visitors and the occasional yell from my boss, Sister Agreda, to come see her. There’s no such thing as a phone at every desk. In fact, there’s only one phone for the whole floor. I guess the fax machine counts too – but it’s right next to the phone. I’m now the resident English expert, so everyone in the building asks me to double-check their work or edit their newsletter. I usually can fit in my own work too. Sometimes I sit in the reception/registration room visiting with clients. On occasion I will go to the counseling rooms to see how things are going, but I don’t like to invade other people’s privacy. We don’t really offer too much anonymity to clients, but it’s not because we don’t want to. The current system set up is to assign each client a number that they have to use when they come in so we can find their file (student exercise books). Most people have trouble remembering their number, so our backup is to use their name. The counselor who is in charge wants to change the system, but we need more money to do it. She needs a computer and software. That goes on my list of things to find money for. It is telling that a large portion of the clients we, a Catholic organization, serve are Muslims. Tanzania has about a 30-30-30 divide among Christians, Muslims, and Animist or Tribal religions. The Catholics probably all know each other and HIV is such a private issue, especially considering the high levels of stigma here, so it’s not surprising that “outsiders” find us a safe place.
I’m lucky that my job serves lunch. Apparently they didn’t always. People would go out for lunch and often not return to work, so the Archbishop announced that he would feed everyone on-site and that seemed to solve the problem. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday we get rice with beans, peas, or meat and Tuesday, Thursday is ugali with meat sauce. Ugali is like a thick (almost solid) corn meal porridge. It’s utterly flavorless on its own, but soaks up the flavor of whatever you put with it. Tanzanians eat it with their hands. I’ve tried, but it’s too hot and messy. I prefer a utensil. We’ve only been served meat in the last week and a half. There was a Rift Valley Fever outbreak when I got here, so everything was vegetarian. I thought I would be happy to see meat, but they use EVERY PART OF THE COW. Including tubes of some sort. Eww. It’s also quite tough and stringy sometimes. I’m not a fan. Vegetarian is ok with me. I’ve taken to bringing floss to work for use after eating meat.
Lunch is at 1pm, so that makes the rest of the day go by very quickly. Closing down time is 4pm and sometimes I would like to stay later to finish something, but they lock the front doors soon after, so I have to leave or sleep there. I go home. The heavy rains are all at night, so by afternoon the day is usually very nice. I walk home. It takes about 35-40 minutes and it’s usually a very nice walk. The only thing I don’t like is the black exhaust that comes out of at least half the cars and trucks on the road. I know North America pollutes way more than Africa, but that diesel has to account for something.
If I don’t have to stop at the market or run any other errands, I get home around 5pm and usually crash for a bit. Sometimes I go for a walk or a jog (who am I kidding, I’ve gone jogging once). I start thinking about what to make for dinner about 6 or so. We cook on our gas tank with a burner attached or the electric stove. The stove takes a long time to heat up and it is difficult to control the heat, so we use the gas more often. Both of my roommates are vegetarians, so we really only eat meat if someone is feeling a lack of protein. A plethora of vegetables are available and among the three of us, we have a lot of cooking ideas. Never using a microwave is growing on me.
We have fallen into the habit of watching TV shows on DVD on the computer during dinner. We’ve seen almost all of the Sex & the City episodes at least twice and we’re all currently addicted to another HBO series called Entourage. It’s awesome. If anybody wants to send me things, send me tv shows on a DVD. We love them!!
It’s a tossup who does the dishes – usually the person who didn’t cook. Then I’m usually totally beat and I check my email (or write a blog entry like today) and I crash.
Tuck in my mosquito net and good night.
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