A New World

June 9th

So Marta and I have been in Arusha for four days now and what an emotional rollercoaster it has been. One minute everything is amazing, the next you are soaked, cold, muddy, frustrated and wanting more than anything to use a washroom that has toilet paper and flushes.

Monday was one of those days where everything just seemed to be going wrong. First of all it was pouring rain – not enjoyable on the best days, however a bazillion times worse when you are working in a village essentially made of mud. Then we ended up walking what seemed like half way around the world. By the time we arrived home after dark, we were exhausted, starving and caked with mud from head to toe. Here are some pictures from our world. The first shows the outside front of our house with laundry hanging to dry. The second is a view of our street and the third is the garbage pile we walk through everyday to get to town. Although hard at first to understand how people can live this way, it is now home to us. The people are absolutely lovely and it's now normal to us too.

We started the morning nice and early. We met with a local Woman’s group in one area very interested in taking on this project. It was a productive meeting and quite encouraging, then what followed was a long convoluted day of confusion. We had a series of other meetings with various groups in which we were unsure of the purpose. As it was our first day on the job really we figured it was procedure only to find out there was absolutely no point in any of the meetings we had that morning. These meetings were all over town and as we walked from one place to the other we slowly built an exterior layer of mud all over our bodies. Finally we had a few hours of freedom before the next series of meetings so we decided we would venture to find a bank and get our internet sorted out – both tasks proved to be unnecessarily painful. First stop, or should I say first 8 stops, consisted of banks that were either jam packed or not capable of completing the simple task of producing cash for two innocent travellers. Then came internet. Although it was quite easy to purchase it turned out to be the biggest headache to install and set up – more on that later. With very little time to spare we managed to hike back to the area where we had to catch a dala dala (African public transportation – a sketchy 12 person van that is falling apart and jammed with people – quite the experience) to the location of our next meeting about 30 minutes from town. As we were standing around waiting to head home we noticed the most spectacular view behind us - Mount Meru as the backdrop (see picture below). We took a minute and just absorbed our surroundings. It was quite amazing! By the time we finished up there and arrived home it was dark and we had walked perhaps the distance of a marathon.
Everything about this day was frustrating – the weather, the convoluted confusing meetings, the slow pace of service, the tardiness of every meeting, the laid back, indecisive tendency of operations, the continuous haggling by locals. It was quite the day. After a shower of cool water from a bucket I was ready for bed. Then to top everything off, as we snuggled into bed to respond to emails and check in on the rest of the world, the wireless internet drive we purchased for a ridiculously expensive price was of course not working. What a day!

As I fell asleep that night frustrated and discouraged I realized that we were completely amerced in a culture quite different from the one we knew. The day had been filled with many unnecessary procedures and cultural norms that we were just not accustomed to. I realized then that I was going to have to embrace it.

Tuesday was sunny and much warmer. We spent the morning meeting government officials and explaining the project. The afternoon we had some time to ourselves and went into town and relaxed by the pool of a gorgeous, old hotel we stumbled across. We decided to become members of the pool and gym and use it as a place to go and stay active but more importantly shower with warm water and use a toilet that flushes. We spent the rest of the afternoon waiting around to get our internet organized which was terribly frustrating but we are finally all set to go – well on African standards! So we had been five days without internet – what an experience haha How lucky we have it in Canada.