Something new.

I had an interesting week.

After midterms last week, the students at Kwala Secondary School were given a weeklong break. Lisa and I decided to spend our break visiting Pommern, a community out in central Tanzania. We were interested in this community for two reasons. The first was that Lisa had become connected to Edward, the leader of the Pommern branch of Global Volunteers, a volunteer organization that brings westerners into the Pommern and applies them to various service projects in the community. As we will be hosting NTC’s first large group of volunteers (23 people, including children) this coming week, we were interested to see how an established organization manages such a task. The second reason for our interest was that, because Pommern’s secondary school is one of the best in the country, Lisa’s parents are sponsoring a girl named Dotto, one of Lisa’s former Kwala students, to attend this school and retake some of her classes in order to attend an A-Level school next year.

At the end of Form 4 (depending on your perspective, considered as either senior year of high school or the last year of middle school), students take a national examination to determine their next level of education. If students perform well enough, they can continue on to an A-Level school. Unfortunately, a public school student who fails to pass the test is forbade by the government from returning to the school to retake their Form 4 classes and try the examination again the following year, regardless of circumstance. Unless students can afford to attend a private school to retake their Form 4 year, they either stop their education or continue to an extremely low-quality school.

Kwala Secondary School is in the bottom five percent of the nation in national examination scores. It is in the bottom eight percent of the region. Our students don’t pass the examinations, and they do not have the money to attend private schools. Lisa’s parents, by sponsoring Dotto, are giving her a chance that no other student in Kwala will have. They are, in my opinion, saving her life.

So, with these interests of examining Global Volunteers and seeing Dotto’s new school, Lisa and I took an eight-hour bus ride west out of Dar Es Salaam to Iringa, a beautiful, quaint town where we spent the night. The town was clearly influenced heavily by Western culture, but unlike most other parts of Tanzania I’ve witnessed (an admittedly minute fraction), they were doing it right. I don’t mean that Western culture is the “right” culture, but that Iringa has successfully assimilated aspects of Western culture into a way that has advanced the community.

I made a realization two weeks ago. I was thinking about how most Tanzanians I have met view Westerners, and the warped, twisted perspective they have of our lives and wealth, and where this perspective comes from. I was looking at the technology that they use, and how they use it. If someone receives a call during a meeting, they will stop talking mid-sentence to answer the phone without leaving the room, completely ignoring the assembled bodies present to speak with the caller. In Kwala, if a house has a television, every single meal is in front of the blasting TV, and that often the radio will be blasting at the same time. Both televisions and radios are left on when the owner leaves his or her house, even for extended periods of time, and yet Lisa and I are reprimanded for “wasting electricity” if we leave our fans on while we are out of the room. Every bar has a television and a booming sound system. I know that when I eat dinner or have a drink at any house or place in town with a television, all conversation will be in shouts to be heard. Children who aren’t even speaking full sentences have learned exactly where to find and how to use the remote control. And even though last year’s students at Kwala Secondary School had no food for the last two weeks of the academic year because the school ran out of money, the headmaster bought a $675 television for the school a couple of weeks ago.

Western culture as has been introduced to them, rather than enhancing their lives, is corrupting it. They even have an MTV-style channel. It is sickening and disturbing; their music videos and programming don’t reflect any sort of Tanzanian culture, but rather a disgusting imitation of the worst of Western culture, one that people here seem to believe is superior to their original culture. The educated people in the village, the ones with access to television, embrace this as best and appear to have completely departed from the culture of the less educated people (the culture that Lisa and I drastically prefer). While television is advancing this town technologically, it is destroying them culturally.

But not only that, the majority of Tanzanians I have met believe Westerners have endless pockets. Everybody asks for handouts, shopkeepers inflate their prices fivefold, and street vendors harass mercilessly when a white person walks down the street. Harassment really is the appropriate word. Products are thrust into our faces, people shout at us, and I’ve had artists wait outside the building I enter for me to come out so they can continue trying to sell me their work, walking down the street with me as I try to deflect them. And because she’s a woman, Lisa has it far worse than I do.

However, Iringa somehow had embraced both Western and Tanzanian cultural aspects in a way that didn’t deflate either and harmonized both. This was a massive relief to see. There were more Tanzanian sections and more Westernized sections, but there was clearly an influence of both in each. There was a cute little bookstore with a beautiful shop adjacent selling traditional Tanzanian art at appropriate prices. Grocery stores sold an assortment of both Western and Tanzanian food products. While a television may be on in a Tanzanian restaurant, it would be quiet so that people could talk. It was a place where both Tanzanians and Westerners could be comfortable.

And the town was simply gorgeous. Beautiful mountain town with houses up the mountain face. A park. Tanzanian architecture standing next to Western. The weather was lovely—at night, it was actually chilly. Eight hours west of Dar, we were in a completely different world.

The official driver for Global Volunteers, a sweet man named Mohamed, met us at the bus terminal when we arrived and took us to a very nice, cheap inn for the night. In the morning, the three of us jumped in a taxi and drove the last two hours west from Iringa to Pommern.

Pommern is stunning. The dirt is all a striking red, and the fauna is lurid and profuse. But beyond that, this is a very advanced village, large and developed. Two conflicting groups effectively manage it: the Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Conflicting is an accurate description. More on that later.

We arrived at the Lutheran Mission House, from which this branch of Global Volunteers operates. We met with Edward (the project director of this branch) and Martha, Linda, and Judy, the volunteers currently working there. Martha and Judy are mothers and registered nurses in their fifties; Linda is a grandmother and a database programmer in her sixties. These women had more life and energy than would be expected in people my age.

Martha and Linda were preparing stew for dinner, so Judy walked Lisa and I around town, talking about their experiences in the village over the last two and a half weeks. She described her delights and frustrations with the community and with Global Volunteers.

Global Volunteers has been active in this community for twenty years. They have had 141 groups of between four and seventeen people pass through this community for three-week ventures during that time. They are extremely well established in the community. And yet, this group of three women had to introduce to the kindergarteners the idea of washing hands before eating. This group had to introduce to the nurses in the clinic the idea of hand-washing and disinfecting thermometers with alcohol. Simple ideas that must certainly have been introduced many many times prior by different groups, yet had to be taught again. Why do these basic, crucial elements fall by the wayside? By the end of their stay, Judy, Linda, and Martha began to see a certain futility in their actions.

This idea of futility was enhanced by the fact that the community (let me specify: the community living on Lutheran land and motivated by Lutheran principles despite Edward insisting that Global Volunteers does not have a religious slant) determines the activities and programs that volunteers engage in. This doesn’t necessarily sound bad, until you consider the case of Judy and the Headmaster’s house.

A while back, the community determined that the Headmaster of the Lutheran Private school that Dotto is studying at needed a new, beautiful house, and that the construction of it should be a priority for volunteers. Because when you pay thousands of dollars to fly around the world and make a difference in a community, you want to be building the Headmaster a new house. So, a group of Global Volunteers’ volunteers began constructing it. Global Volunteer’s next group of volunteers continued the project. Finally, the windows were installed and roof placed. The Headmaster then decided that he wanted a giant mural of The Last Supper on one of the walls, and so Global Volunteers painted the wall per request. Then, the Headmaster decided that the windows were too small and knocked them out, destroying the painting. Global Volunteers then installed the new windows and repainted the wall (though without the Last Supper mural this time). Finally, this group arrives and Judy is asked to paint the windowsills and doors. She spends an entire day with an old children’s paintbrush, painstakingly beautifying this house. She finishes, and leaves the paint drying. That evening, before the paint finishes drying, the Headmaster decides to replace the roof. Removing the roof created a significant amount of dust and rubble that promptly stuck to the drying paint, ruining the work.

The worst part of this story is that, as phenomenally and offensively absurd as it is, it did not surprise us. This is how things work here. And other volunteers had similar stories. One of the other organizers for Global Volunteers who was there, a Westerner named Ben, explained to us a similarly absurd situation. He was volunteering in a different Lutheran community way up in the mountains in some other part of Tanzania. The community determined that the school dormitories needed new cement floors, so Ben and the volunteers he was with were told to tear up the existing floors, as the new cement would arrive the next day. Unfortunately, the sand necessary to mix the cement with was never ordered, so the floors remain destroyed and the cement unused to this day. The next task that Ben and his group were assigned was to build an amphitheater for the leader of the Lutheran Church in that area to speak at in his yearly visit the community. This community does not have reliable water, or reliable food, or enough shelter, and yet their assignment was to build an amphitheater. Again, absurd and offensive use of resources, yet not surprising. And the fact that it’s not surprising to Lisa and me is maybe the worst part of all.

The Lutheran Mission House that Global Volunteers works out of in Pommern is suffering the same issue of ass-backward priorities. The house has a bee infestation. At one point, I looked at a windowsill and the ground below and saw over fifty dead or dying bees (Mohamed had sprayed an insecticide earlier). I commented to the women that there were a lot of bees, and they commented that this was nothing—that it must have been swept recently and that there are usually far more. This massive infestation was right outside (and a few bees were inside) the room that Lisa and I shared the nights we were there, and both Linda and I were stung during our stay. However, rather than taking care of this long-standing problem by fixing the massive gaping holes in the roof, putting screens on the windows and chimney, and other very simple, obvious fixes that the house desperately needed, the Lutheran Church determined that the priority was putting up a fence in front of the house so flowers they grow won’t get trampled. This fence is right along the side of the road, where children play soccer. So, of course, they strung up a single line of barbed wire between fence posts, which is extremely difficult to see and phenomenally dangerous for children to play along. Priorities are so phenomenally skewed.

It may sound like I’m tearing into the Lutheran Church. I don’t intend to, they are simply giving me great fodder for examples. In reality, these are simply the general practices of Tanzanians that I have witnessed. I emphasize “that I have witnessed” because I can only speak for the limited communities I have visited; however, of the communities I have visited, these are very commonly the standard operating procedures by those in charge.

After the tour, Lisa and I wandered to the secondary school. Lisa took off towards the dormitories to find Dotto, and I went towards the football field and taught the kids how to throw a Frisbee and play hacky sack. It was a good day.

The next day, Lisa and I were given the opportunity to choose where to help with the Global Volunteers’ various projects. Neither of us had thought to bring close-toed shoes, so we couldn’t go to the construction site with Linda. Lisa ended up going with Judy to the Roman Catholic kindergarten, to the protests of Edward who insisted that the Roman Catholic Church wouldn’t want their help and that they should stay on Lutheran property, which turned out to be entirely false—the Roman Catholic Church was phenomenally gracious, inviting, and accommodating. They are also doing far more for the community in terms of general outreach and long-term influence than the Lutheran Church. I went with Martha to the clinic.

It was fascinating. We had about an hour to kill when we first arrived because Doctor Godlove, the village technician, was running typically late, so Martha showed me around the facility. It was the doctor’s office, and the dentist’s office, and the medicine dispensary, and the nursery all in one, and Doctor Godlove was responsible for everything. He is also a father of four, including a three-month old baby. His support staff is a crew of slightly lazy, untrained women who act as nurses but have only a vague, cursory understanding of medicine and health. Doctor Godlove himself is a slightly crazy, very sweet man who works his ass off 365 days a year and who gets only a few hours of sleep each night, but is a bit of a disorganized mess. Despite not going past Form 4 in formal education, he has had medical training, but not enough for him to refer to himself as anything more official than a technician.

He loves Global Volunteers because it often brings him qualified nurses, doctors, dentists, and med students for him to learn from and work with. He absolutely adored Judy and Martha’s help, and completely and unabashedly acknowledged that, had they not been there, many of his patients would have died from misdiagnosis and inadequate treatment. He learns from each Global Volunteer he works with. His nurses…not so much. They are the ones responsible for sticking papers together and posters to the walls with band-aids, rather than the two staplers and the rolls of tape on his desk.

After an hour of waiting, Doctor Godlove showed up and informed us that he had lost his keys, which restricted us from several rooms including the medicine storage room. This was not good. He asked us to begin rounds without him. We washed our hands, grabbed the stack of patient charts (actually student workbooks, one for each patient’s history), and headed to the nursery.

The first woman we saw gave birth to twins the day before. Martha, whose job for twenty years was helping women give birth, didn’t find out this woman had gone into labor until she was finished because this woman did not make a peep during the birth. Twins, her first children, and she did not make a sound. This is completely normal—Tanzanians do not show pain. A man came into the clinic two days before with a knife wound running from above his right eye to the left side of his chin, which had almost cut the tip of his nose off, and had also sustained minor stab wounds to the neck and head. His wife was drunk and angry—though I never found out why—and attacked him. Despite Judy’s and Martha’s persistent requests, the staff nurses never got around to providing this man with the available codeine as he patiently waited for several hours to be sewn up. Finally, Doctor Godlove squirted some lidocaine into his cuts and he, Judy, and Martha as a team patched the man up. He did not make a sound.

But the newborn twins were adorable, and the children and mother were all healthy. Martha took their temperatures via armpit thermometer, and checked the mother’s blood pressure. Smiles and “nzuri”s (good).

The second woman had had a miscarriage the day before, with extensive bleeding. She had actually been carried into the clinic, extremely weak. Under the instruction and with the help of Martha (who Doctor Godlove thankfully listened to, as the treatment regimen he would have went with would have been inadequate), she was cleaned out, gauzed up, and pumped full of saline. When Martha and I saw her, she was doing far better. Still dizzy, and her heart beating fast, but completely normal symptoms considering the amount of blood she lost. And the part that I didn’t expect—I successfully translated to Martha how the woman was feeling, and translated what Martha said back to the woman. It was by no means a complete translation, but the woman understood what I was saying and smiled so appreciatively. It carried me through the rest of the day.

Most importantly, it carried me through the third woman. She had been in and out of the hospital repeatedly for various illnesses including pneumonia and various infections. To add to that, she had just had a miscarriage which resulted in a major infection in her uterus. By the time I saw her, the infection had entered her blood stream. And though Doctor Godlove had returned by this point, he still had not found the keys to the medicine storage room (his wife was tearing apart the house looking for them). But the worst part was this woman’s screams of pain. The woman in the room next door had given birth to twins without making a sound, and a man got stitches across his face without a grimace. This woman was moaning, screaming, vomiting in pain. We couldn’t do anything for her. Even if we’d had access to the medicine cabinet, she would have likely needed much stronger and more specific medicines than were available here, and to be on a strong saline drip which wasn’t available. We didn’t even have any more codeine available. She needed to be in an actual hospital, but she lacked the money for and transportation to one. She is probably already dead.

As a side note, the codeine had all been given by one of the nurses to a woman with dizzy spells. Not having a good understanding of medicine or what the pills would do, the nurse simply knew that they were valuable and powerful and gave them to the dizzy woman because her father had helped build the clinic.

We continued through various inpatients. A secondary school girl had recovered from something making her vomit, and was sent home. A child with an infection, thanks to Martha who insisted on upping the child’s antibiotic intake, had recovered and was ready to go home. Others were still recovering, or in limbo. Finally, we finished the inpatients. Doctor Godlove returned home to continue looking for his keys, and Judy (who had finished at the kindergarten), a nurse with decent English, Martha, and I began seeing the long line of patients queuing in front of the clinic.

We had a woman who had run out of diabetes medicine. A mother insisting that her child wasn’t eating, but who showed no signs of illness and spent most of its time in the doctor’s office suckling. A mentally disabled child (no specific diagnosis) who was feeling hot and clammy but wasn’t able to respond to questions about how she felt. A teenage girl with a yeast infection. A construction foreman who had sprained or strained his back and possibly had a herniated disk. The nurse wandered in and out of the room, leaving me to translate to and from the patients with limited success. I was able to convey enough through gestures and my limited Swahili to somewhat suffice, but it was phenomenally difficult. And all through this, we didn’t have access to the medicines, so anyone who needed anything had to wait patiently for the doctor to return.

At 12:30, we left to the Mission House for lunch. At 12:45, Doctor Godlove ran in excitedly, announcing he had found his keys—they had been on his bed under the sheets. We told him what he had waiting for him at the clinic, and he dashed off. A good, well-intending man, but a bit of a mess.

After lunch, Ben took us on a walk that ended up at a waterfall. I never would have expected to find one here, but lo and behold, only a ten-hour drive away from Kwala, a beautiful cascade.

Afterwards, we wandered back to the school and Lisa and I sat in on a school wide debate. Past debate topics Lisa and I have witnessed or heard of at Kwala Secondary School or other schools have been: “Which is better, Tanzanian or Western culture?”; “Which are better, doctors or teachers?”; and “Who is responsible for AIDS, men or women?” Apparently, these are questions provided by the government for student discussion. Lisa once tried to introduce a debate topic that would have arguments based on fact and reason, and was struck down because it wasn’t a government-provided prompt.

Fortunately, this debate topic was actually both viable and significant: “Should abortions be allowed?” If a girl becomes pregnant in Tanzania, she is kicked out of school. So, the choice to have an abortion becomes a very significant issue. Very interestingly, the pro-life panel of four students had three girls and one boy, and the pro-choice side of the panel had three boys and one girl. Dotto was on the pro-life side, so Lisa sat next to her before realizing that she was sitting on the wrong side. She nonetheless frequently raised her hand and spoke up in favor of choice, to the great amusement and appreciation of the assembled students. Dotto was amusedly frustrated by Lisa’s doing this, but it was a great experience nonetheless.

The next day, Friday, we left with the Global Volunteers back to Dar. On the way back, we drove through Mkumi National Park and saw giraffes, elephants, warthogs, baboons, and the like. Nothing close enough to take a picture of, but I’ll be doing a proper safari in May so I should have some good shots from that. We arrived in Dar at Mwenge Market, where Lisa and I helped the volunteers with some shopping and did some preparatory window-shopping for when we leave the country and want to fill our bags with souvenirs. Of course, we were harassed by the shopkeepers and asked for far more money than things were worth. And later, as I walked past the Holiday Inn towards the YMCA hostel where I spend my nights in Dar, one of the Holiday Inn doormen asked me for money.

I guess that’s Tanzania.