Thursday, April 26, 2012

Dad I'm big but we're smaller than small

Well, I'm back in Arusha, completely finished with my ISP data collection period. I can't even tell you how strange it is to think that I am almost completely done with my study abroad experience. I have taken and learned so much from Tanzania as a country and a people, and I am so grateful for the experiences I have had while abroad. Now, I am a mere five more pages of my paper, a PowerPoint, a mountain, and less than two weeks away from returning home to Massachusetts. It seems almost unbelievable that I have been here since January, but I am honestly excited to return home to see my family and friends!

These past few weeks on the Tanzanian coast have been beyond anything I have ever imagined. Tsunami warning, jellyfish stings, and the roof of the land rover closing on my finger couldn't change the wonderful time I had in Ushongo. Not only are the villagers welcoming, the reefs beautiful, and the fisherman talkative, but everyone in the town was so helpful with everything that we needed throughout the week. Every afternoon when I would walk through town, on my way to my Mama's house to get lunch, other Mama's would yell "Mambo Emma, Habari?", and all were honestly curious how my day was going. Every time we sat down to talk with someone they always had questions for us, and were more than willing to answer the questions we had for them. Especially, Mama's in the village were interested in why we didn't have children yet, or even husbands, and some of the Baba's were even willing to help us with the latter... I played soccer with the village children, played catch with one of the hotel staff's young boy, and taught a school of 200 children why it is important to conserve their reefs. This experience has been unlike anything I have ever had before.
Everyday, my friend Maureen and I would wake up around six and get ready to head out to the reefs while the sun rose above the ocean. We walked over to the village, which was only about twenty feet away from our tents, and sat with the fisherman before they went out on the sea. They would always ask us how our evenings had gone, watch us with amazement as we braided our hair (many women on the coast have shaved heads or cornrows), and bring their young children out to play in the morning. At around seven, the fisherman had prepared the boat, and myself, Maureen, and three fisherman would load into a little wooden boat and prepare for an hour to an hour and a half ride across the Indian ocean to the outer reefs.

Disclaimer: this next section is about to have many movie references.
So you know the point in Pirates of the Caribbean where Jack Sparrow is walking across a sand island and looks around him, and can't see anything but ocean? If you don't, just imagine. That is pretty much exactly where Maureen and I spent our days after we finished collecting data. So once we had reached the island, after our long boat ride, we were "marooned", left on the island to do our data as the fisherman anchored the boat a little ways out, and swam in all different directions to spear fish for the day. The reefs are absolutely amazing. The live coral is everything you could imagine and more. There were bright colored polyps, vibrant individual fish, and massive schools of fish that you could pretty much swim with. However, surrounding these areas were large areas of destroyed dynamite. Many parts of the reef I studied at have been destroyed by dynamite fishing, and are now large plots of coral rubble and sand. Unfortunately, though dynamite fishing is illegal, in many third-world countries it is extremely difficult for regulation, and villagers embracing the lack of enforcement are still using these destructive methods.

Anyway, I really enjoyed almost every day I spent on the reef. The only day I didn't enjoy was the day Maureen and I call "attack of the jellys". Here comes the other movie reference. You've most likely seen Finding Nemo. You know the scene where Dory and Marlin are swimming over the trench when the should have been swimming through it? Well, there wasn't a trench, but that scene is one-hundred percent accurate in terms of the jellyfish practically appearing out of thin air. I looked down at one point to record my data (Step 1: Laminate paper twice, Step 2: Scratch the surface of the paper with sandpaper, Step 3: use a pencil and you can now write underwater!!) and when I looked up, i was surrounded by massive jellyfish. These jellyfish weren't the tiny thumb sized ones that you can easily push away, but rather they were about eight inches wide, with tentacles about a foot long each. And they had surrounded me. Not the best situation when you're trying to record fish on the coral reef, so that day we pretty much just sat on the island until the fisherman were ready to return to shore.


Well, I'm off to climb Mt. Meru tomorrow!!
Be back in three days!
-E
Ushongo, Mtoni

At the school - right after our talk on conservation

Our fisherman, and the boat we went out on every day

Left to Right: Leah (Studying trash) , Jenny (Studying tourism) , Myself (Studying fish) , Eliza (Studying mangroves) , Drew (Studying sexuality) , Maureen (Studying Corals) , Mia (Studying Crabs) , Zoey (studying turtles)

Fish Market

The fisherman I went out to sea with every day

My favorite little boy in the village!

The welcome sign for Ushongo, made out of an old boat
-E

Friday, April 6, 2012

We Walk the Plank with Our Eyes Wide Open

Good evening and almost Happy Easter!
Can you believe I'm beginning ISP already? Tomorrow morning I'm off to the coast of Tanzania, to a small town called Ushongo to study Samaki (fish). I do sincerely apologize for not posting about the Serengeti in the past couple days, but I promise when I return from Ushongo, I will have the longest post you won't even want to read it.
As for this week, I just completed finals week, in which I had to write a ten page paper about something that has impacted me while in Tanzania. The paper topic was called "does it work" and we had to take our "it", and write about whether it works for Tanzania or not. I chose to write about hope and its effect within Tanzania. Here is a brief glimpse at my paper for those of you who are interested in the idea of whether "hope works" or not:

Re-reading one of my favorite books My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult during this three month period in Tanzania, I came across a passage about Greek mythology that made me consider why it is a customary human trait to hope. “Zeus created the first woman-Pandora-and gave her a gift, a box she was forbidden to open. Pandora's curiosity got the best of her, and one day she opened that box. Out came plagues and misery and mischief. She managed to shut the lid tight before hope escaped. It's the only weapon we have left to fight the others." Reading this passage, I instantly asked myself the question what is hope? What is hope to me, and how does it compare to others definitions? Even in a small computer dictionary, the word hope is defined in five different ways. Definitions for hope range from “a confident feeling that something desirable is likely to happen” to “something someone thinks will bring success or relief”. Hope is even defined sometimes as a “feeling of trust“. Notice however that all of these definitions of hope rely on a single word: probable. Hope is not something that you wish for, that you know may never be obtainable. Hopes are framed around ideas that people believe likely to come to fruition.
In their lifetime everyone has hopes. Different hopes though, as some may hope their children will grow up successfully, others hope they will earn copious amounts of money. Whether a child hopes for her dad to bring home cookies from work, or even a young man having high hopes that he will play in the NBA someday, everyone experiences this desire or serious yearning for something that may or may not ever happen. My experience in Tanzania has taught me that hope is both a tangible and yet unquantifiable and vague notion. Talking with both young and old Tanzanians, dala-dala drivers, street vendors, mama’s, school children, and even American students, I have finally discovered that hope is an idea so commonplace and so universal, that it is a point of unity for almost all humans on this Earth. People of all different ages, poor and wealthy, educated and uneducated all have the commonality that they have hope for something. Whether they wear this hope on their sleeves or bury it in the deepest chambers of their heart, I believe all humans have the unrestricted fundamental capacity to dream, expect, wish, aspire, anticipate, and overall, hope. So does hoping work? With the millions of people on this planet running around with their hopes and dreams, vying for what they somewhat desperately want to happen, the question begs to be asked. does it work? When you hope for something so strongly, how does it effect how you live? And what happens when hope is lost, when all desire and drive has deserted someone?



You know, I had this idea because Baba Jack told a rather shocking story about a woman who knocked on his door one evening. He calmly told us about how she pointed to her children and asked in the only way she could, if he, a well-to-do white man would feed her children for the evening. After making sure her children were properly fed, and not touching a bit of food herself, we were told that she stripped of her clothes and laid on the floor as an thank you for helping her children. This is an moment in which I believe you see the hopes of a desperate woman slowly sliding away. Her last thread of hope lying in her desire to save her children in the only way she sees possible. And as we were told, even when covered up by Baba Jack, the set of her eyes did not change, as she put her clothes on, took her children and left the house. It is even reasonable to believe that she had lost all hope in humanity as well, not caring whether she had been used for sex or not, as all she cared for was keeping her children alive. This story really made me question whether or not I knew what hopelessness truly felt like, and made me realize truly how lucky I am to be blessed with such an amazing group of family and friends.

Sorry to get sappy on you, but I thought I'd make my last post for a while make you think.
What are your hopes? and I'd love to know your thoughts on the question "does hope work?"
until then,
Gone Swimming,
Emma

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Red Runs Through My Veins

Its finals week! We’re back in Arusha after our two week long safari, and I’ve got so much to say from the trip that I’m planning to write multiple blog posts this week. Starting with this post, an introduction into Maasai lifestyle through the lens of my camera. For three days this week, starting early morning on March 25th to the morning of March 28th, I lived in a Maasai boma on the shores of Lake Natron in Ngaresero, pretty much the heart of Maasai land. The area was beautiful with the Mountain of God rising in the south, and flamingoes constantly flying overhead, and the time I spent with my homestay family was simply incredible. Our task during homestay was to live and experience Maasai lifestyles and take as many photographs as we could. In return for our families hosting us, they have asked for a photo album of the pictures we take during our stay. But for those of you that don’t know much about the Maasai, let me give you a brief introduction before I describe my experience.
The Maasai historically do not originate in Tanzania. From the period of 0 to 1500 A.D. the Massaians began to emerge from regions around the Nile river and move south towards Kenya. Then, around 1700 A.D. they began to expand to Tanzania. Now the Maasai land encompasses a large region of Northern Tanzania and part of southern Kenya. As Maasai culture is polygamous, the men are expected to have many wives, simply in order to care for their cattle. Cattle are some of the most important and most valuable possessions to a Maasai, and they are extremely expensive in the Maasai community. Maasai believe power within the community is determined by those who successfully own and graze the highest number of cattle, thus it is understandable that one cow is worth over 600,000 Shillings, or equivalent to nine goats.
Maasai age sets and dynamics are also very interesting. One of the important sayings in Maasai lifestyle is “Mejool emurt elukunya” or “the neck will never overtake the head”. This basically means that the oldest men in the Maasai culture will always be the most respected, most revered, and most looked up to in the community. Maasai loiboni are respected because they have experienced almost an entire lifetime, learned from their past and are able to guide the younger men and women the most successfully through their younger years. Men in the Maasai culture follow a very specific age hierarchy, beginning with young boys, moving to warriors, junior warriors followed by senior warriors, elders, and finally loiboni. Women follow a similar schematic, starting with girls, young wives, middle aged, and elder women.
Men become junior warriors once they are circumcised. Circumcision periods switch on and off every seven years. Thus, men in the right age group during a circumcision period will be circumcised and become junior warriors. At this time they begin flirting with the younger girls, and begin looking for wives for when they become senior warriors. Junior warriors learn traditional dances and songs in order to perform for the young girls. The warriors who jump the highest, throw their spears the furthest, and perform physical feats the most successfully will be the top of the class and most likely to have a larger number of wives, and become more success in the community.
Women are married at very young ages and begin having children almost as soon as they can first conceive. As young girls, they are constantly courting and being courted by the young warriors. Once they reach maturation, women are circumcised and enter the young wives stage. Once they are married, they will build their homes with mud and sticks that they will collect, and begin to have children and care for their husbands cattle.

So, with a little cultural background, here’s how my experience went. My mother Saumbai, and sister Anna dressed me in robes while I was practically still in the doorstep. I had imagined the loose Maasai robes to be cool and comfortable, but once the polyester skirt had been tied around my waist, all my previous beliefs were out the window. Wearing six layers in 90 degree heat without a tree in sight for shade is not the most comfortable environment I’ve ever experienced. My first day, we arrived home at around noon, and sat inside for a good portion of the day. It was too hot to begin any physical activity and we simply enjoyed each others company until the evening fell. My sister, is fifteen years old, and about to enter her phase as a young wife. Thus, as the sun began to set, we made our way over to a Maasai tradition called "the Esoto". The Esoto is a meeting between the young warriors and the girls at which the warriors jump, chant, and sing, in order to impress the young girls or their soon to be wives. The girls in return dance and sing as well. This was some of the most impressive dancing I have ever attempted, and I’ve found I certainly do not have the “moves like the maasai”.
We headed home, and slept, pretty restlessly on a bed of sticks. I found myself tossing and turning throughout the night in order to find a comfortable position, and by the end was even wishing for my college dorm room mattress. But waking up to watch the sun rise over the mountain of god was more than worth it. Our second morning we left the house early after having rice for breakfast, and collected firewood for about two hours. With machete in hand, we cut through branches and tied them up with two thin pieces of leather. Then, get this, we carried all the wood we had collected on our heads. I walked side by side with my sister for about a half an hour with a bundle of wood balancing precariously on top of my head. But because of this my poise, I believe, has greatly improved. We spent the rest of the day beading, and I continued to take photographs of the children running around the boma during the day.
Just a quick fact: There are two definitions for a boma in maasai culture. A boma is both the individual house built by the women in the village, and the entire home unit surrounded by a fence. Interesting right?
Anyway, we spent our last day taking pictures of the cows, of my mama, my sister, and beading two new anklets. Our last day was incredibly hot and we really couldn’t do too much physical activity without dehydrating almost immediately. But early in the morning we did take an hour hike to an amazing waterfall! Ill post a picture below! On that note, while we were beading one of the elder males in my boma had what we believed to be a heart attack. He was carried out of his home and laid on the ground. Within the first few seconds of chaos, almost every single woman in the area was running out of the house towards the sick man. It was absolutely incredible to see how close knit the women in a boma truly are.
Once the man had recovered, in the early evening, the women in the boma took the students staying nearby, including myself, and taught us some of the dances that they traditionally do during their courting rituals. I took many pictures, and even some videos because I am absolutely positive I wont remember the dances when I return to America, and I would like to teach friends and family some of what I learned!!

Overall, I am still trying to wrap my mind around my homestay, and my feelings towards the Maasai culture. It is a culture unlike anything I have ever experienced before, so different from my own, but so strong in its own way. The beliefs and the values of the Maasai people are so varied and so new to me that I think its going to take some time to sort through the confusion that is currently wracking my brain. But as I work through the static I’ll be sure to keep you updated on how I’m feeling!
I’ll post soon about the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater, so keep checking! for now, here are some photographs from my homestay!


My mom - Saumbai



Learning some Maasai dances


Waterfall!!

My mom, cooking Ugali!


Looking at my Boma from the campsite

In the meantime keep wandering. You never know when something is going to grab hold of you and pull you completely into something new, unimaginable, and entirely unexplored.