Email No. 13: May 10, 2005 / Rambling Thoughts 2

I am amazed and delighted as to how quickly I've been able to get back into the work mode and just living my life here in Mtwara since I came back from Moro just two days ago. It feels really nice and makes me feel like this is truly my home. I think that sometimes in the past two years I tried to force or sugarcoat things sometimes. It was as if I believed that if I told myself I loved my life here enough, eventually I would fool my heart into believing it. And while I may have been lying to myself from time to time, there were definitely aspects of being here that I did fall in love with... other wise why would I have stayed here a third year? ... it's not until now, well into my third year here that I can honestly say that I can't think of any place else I would rather be right now in this moment in time. Tanzania, and Mtwara in particular is the first place that I seem to have just managed to just slow down my life and enjoy all of the particulars of living it from day to day... or rather hour to hour. I usually start off the morning with a huge list of things that I want to accomplish, and if I get about half of them done, then it's been a really successful day. In the past I have recognized that as being a success but not been comfortable with it... it's always felt like settling. But now, it doesn't. It feels like winning. It means that in addition to doing my job and working, that I've also gotten to enjoy all of the little bits of life that make being here so precious, most of those bits of which center around talking to people. It means that I stopped and asked the guy who sells me tomatoes how his family was doing, and what's changed in the past two weeks that I've been gone. Although I know the answers to both of those questions ahead of time (they're fine, just as everything else is that you ask about in Tanzania, and nothing much has changed here... "everything continues well"), it really means something and adds depth to my place in the community here. I almost feel as if I am more recognized and appreciated here, in a larger city than I was in my village, just because I think that I can safely say I'm one of the few mzungu that takes the time to ask those questions lately. And my relationship building doesn't seem to be limited to the tomatoe guy as well. The street that I used to dread walking down, due to the combination of hot sun with no shade, and the chorus of Mzungu isn't so bad anymore. The sun is still there, but the cries that drive me nuts seem to have dissapated. The only reason I can come up with for this occurance is that people are getting used to me and that also I must have spent enough time greeting the people along that street and actually learning people's names that they know I don't like to be called "mzungu" and that the reason why I sometimes don't stop isn't becuase I don't like them, but because I'm in a hurry. Although, if they call out my name they can easily remind me the importance of just being here and sharing a smile... and I'm starting to stop more and more to do so. Workwise I feel as if I got more accomplished in a period of two hours today than in my first three months combined. Went to a meeting of NGOs today and although the general attendence was poor, I feel as if I learned a ton about Mtwara and how things work here. People were so extremely helpful to me as well when I told them what I was doing here in Mtwara with the Femina Hip project and the Si Mchezo magazines, it totally blew me away. Everyone wanted to give me contact information and had ideas as to how I could reach all of the NGOs in the area. It was wonderful really, and refreshed me for the task ahead. It also made me realize just how big the task I have before me is as well. I am looking forward to it though. Everytime I think I have things figure out here... either in a good or a bad way, something else surprises me and shows me yet another beautiful part of this culture... or maybe I've been seeing these things all along, but just didn't have the tools in place to be able to value them properly. I knew how much they value working together and sharing, yet couldn't appreciate it until I was the direct recipricant of their generousity. It makes me feel like an outright stingy pig sometimes. I had another fear moment this past week while I was in Dar. But it wasn't my own. I am actually not certain when I last had my own moment of fear living here... that residue that seems to coat almost every decision that every person makes these days.... That is an amazingly good feeling that I love about being here. But I digress. Went to dinner at a really nice restuarant with another volunteer, just us two girls. When it came time to go back to our hotel, she was pretty adament about wanting to take a taxi; it was too dangerous to take a dala dala. The thing was it was only eight thirty, and tons of people were still out and about. In fact, tons of Tanzanians were still using the dala dala. One stopped as we were discussing, and due to this good luck my side of the discussion won out. We got on, and a few stops later the dala became extremely overcrowded as a bunch of teen agers started to go home from some kind of concert or other event. As the dala became more and more overfilled, the volunteer really started to freak out a bit, telling me that she wasn't comfortable with that many people on the dala as she didn't know what they would do. They made her uncomfortable. That's all well, but when I asked her if she would be uncomfortable if it had been day time with that same number of people, she insisted it wouldn't be so. Just because of the change in the time of day, her perspective about the whole situation had completely changed. We got off the dala to find loads of people in the streets, although it had been a dark for over a couple of hours. We walked the next two blocks to the bar where we were meeting another volunteer, despite her protests to get a taxi. For juxt two blocks! I understand some of her initial worries, and also PC does a great job of trying to scare the shit out of everyone with their safety and security sessions, but geez... these places are safe because the Tanzanians are all too scared themselves to go out. ... and with so many people out and about, it was really no worse than three o'clock in the afternoon. And then whene they do actually go out, there are so many people around to help you if something did happen. I really think that in general these days people all over the world are much too afraid of their own shadow... even before there's a hint of the light shining behind them that is needed in order to cast it. This fear propogates a lot of our resent ment towards those we don't understand and inhibits our abilities to even want to get to know people different from ourselves. This is why I think a lot of Americans live in a bubble. We're fed so much propoganda as to all of the evils all of these people different from ourselvse are doing that whenever we finally (and it is sadly becoming rarely) come across someone different from what we grew up with even (yes, we can limit this to our home towns... don't tell me that people from Dunsmuir don't have a certain "opinoin" about people from Mt. Shasta, and vice versa) we are convinced that the opposing forces' only goal in life is to change us or harm us or do us some wrong, and so we become afraid of the unknown. But if we would just stop a minute and take a leap out into that unknown or strange, I am sure that given time, or in many cases very quickly, that unknown would become familiar and understandable.

Love to you all! This was written a couple of weeks ago in my journal, but I thought I would share it. A real letter about my comings and goings here in Tz is in the mail. jessica