Mwambao Alliance

This is the final entry, for now. After a 13 to 18 hour flight, respectively, we have all landed safely home in America, but Africa remains ever-present. Only now can I really see, or rather feel the ways in which the past month has changed the direction of all of our lives. To be honest I went into this blank, with no mental landscape upon which to project a concept of Africa before I arrived. I was nervous and ambivalent, and though these emotions certainly popped up throughout our trip, there was a more overwhelming sense that we were protected. Sarah kept talking about the “spirit” of Africa as this physical presence, which at first seemed somewhat of an aloof concept to me. But by the end our journey, I began to understand how all the little things- the butterflies that constantly pervaded the atmosphere, the slightly peppered scent that hung in our nostrils- came together to create something greater, at once whole and permeable.

I think the last day brought this influx of comprehension, to fully enable us to understand what this organization will mean to all of us. We said goodbye to the children at the school and it was heartbreaking. They had so welcomed us into their community that being at the school had felt natural, as though we has always been part of this place. Though only some of them spoke English, it was strange to realize how we had formed this closeness to the children, not through the comprehension gained by language, but in the experience of coloring or playing, of just being.

Saying goodbye to the school, and later to our other friends in the village, morphed from the permanence of goodbye, to the temporary farewell baadaye (“later”). In saying baadaye this word became necessitated, because this project is just beginning, these relationships just forming. So it was goodbye, for now, not forever.

Our friend Ebra told us to tell America (all of America) that he says “hello”. At first we all laughed at the seriousness of this request from him, as though he expected the place we were returning to, to be small enough or interested enough, to receive Ebra’s greeting. In America greeting seem to require that you know, or intend to know, the person you are addressing, and of course very few people in America know Ebra. Yet in Africa, everyone says “Mambo” (“what’s up?), and people assume that there is something wrong with you if you do not greet them in response: “poa” (“cool”).

Mambo is a small thing, a little word, yet it reminds me of the community of this village in Africa, the sense of humanity that stems from saying hello to a stranger as though you know them. The use of this phrase in Bagamoyo seems to assert that we all should share this common interest in one another’s welfare, not based on “friendship” or obligation of some sort, but because we are all human, and thus equally entitled to care for and welcome one another. So we carry Ebra’s “hello” back home. Walking down the street in America people choose to be confined in their separate bubbles and lives, sectioned off from one another, but this is not the only way to live. We should remember that there is community here that brings strangers and friends to a common ground, negating, even for a moment, self-interest for human interest.

I’m not saying I am going to greet each person I encounter on the streets of New York City, but it’s a thought, a consciousness, to carry between Africa and America. After all, we are the Mwambao Alliance. Together.

Wow, we leave tomorrow. My head is buzzing sitting in this internet cafe, hip hip music blaring, I think I have forgotten of other worlds. This has all become so familiar, so full. In this small town, it seems we have somehow burrowed into this community, or it into us, and this is no longer foreign- faces and streets now hold recognitions and identity. Walking down the road today, we stop and talk to new friends and children call out our names as we pass. When I first arrived even the sky seemed askew: looking up at night I remember being surprised to see new constellations, patterns of distant stars that in New York or New Mexico remain constant, but here had morphed in a place where I had expected consistency. Even the moon, when we first arrived, seemed a strange object- the thin curve of yellow lips (grown full in the past weeks)- that at home hangs on its side growing like a pregnant belly rather than filling up like a cup. And now, the sky is our own too.

We have been so busy that I haven't been able to put even half of our excursions into this blog. We took the boys soccer team to Dar es Salaam this past Saturday. It was their first away game ever and they were so excited- not just the boys but the whole town! In the morning we arranged for a local woman to make them a big breakfast and then we all - five volunteers, two teachers, and 36 soccer players - packed into one small van. The ride took about two and half hours, just getting to Dar and meandering through the city and standstill traffic. The boys were arranged to play two games: the first was located on a large dirt field in the middle of a crowded area of the city, down a small passageway that divided the game from the crowds and unstable traffic. The boys played fiercely, they have no hesitations, every player dives into the game with unrestrained effort. The boys lost the first game and we were transported to a second smaller field for the second. This "field" was a cleared expanse of dirt that was intercepted at various points of the game by chickens, oblivious passerby's, and at one point, a truck. It was getting on into the late afternoon, and for this game some of the children were barefoot, even though there were rocks littering the ground. It's also difficult for the children who do have shoes, because they don't fit properly and are very worn. None of the children have cleats- yet they play without a single complaint, completely fearless. They won the second game and had three offers to play some of the best teams in Dar. The boys sang all the way home. The energy and life of the children, even after a full day of soccer and long bus rides, is limitless.

We watched the sunset in the evening traffic. The sky seemed to melt into mellow pastels in perfect contrast to the gnarled inkblot outlines of the African trees. The boys' chants exited out the windows and a truck pulled up next to us with a live band playing from the bed of the truck. There were at least six musicians playing on drums and trumpets and the boys' chant changed into a Swahili song to accompany the music. Along the roads of still traffic, hundred people walked home in silhouetted shadows.

There is much more to share but it's our last night so we have to go to dinner and then to a goodbye beachy fire. Lots of love.

Last night I couldn't sleep. My head was full of expectation for the coming year, pervaded with the insistence that comes from the close of a journey and the anticipation of what lies ahead. Eyes open, our midnight room hummed with buzzing mosquitoes and the sound of a radio that played through to dawn when it was replaced with the waking sounds of foreign tongues. I was reminded of the way I used to feel before my first day of school, when I would lie in bed anticipating the changes that would gap into the three months of summer. At Mwambao, the children returned this Monday from a month of winter break and I felt as though their anticipation might be seeping over the town, through the air and into me.

In the past weeks since we have been interacting with the school it has been only sprinkled with children: a few classes in session over break, and those who come regardless of whether or not there is school, seemingly preferring Mwambao to home. Yet this morning the school was filled with children, not quite the full 750, but still full with tiny uniformed bodies weaving through the white stone buildings.

When we arrived they were using small brooms to clear leaves and generally all working to tidy up the central quad. To begin the day, the children gathered in a wide circle and sang the Tanzania national anthem accompanied by a group of boys who stood in the center playing on drums and tambourines. Afterwards the students filtered into various classrooms, only half of which had teachers. We have the books now and so we discussed forming a more structured curriculum with some of the volunteers. It was really great to know that we are really able to improve the learning environment at the school. These books allow them to have a curriculum, which both volunteers from abroad and Mwambao teachers can now follow and build on.

We spent the morning moving through the classrooms and playing with the students. They have so much energy and excitement. We took a lot of pictures that we want to use for the next fund-raiser and the students were having a lot of fun posing for the camera. Being with the children makes this so much more real. We have to be so official arranging book orders and running numbers, but with the children that fades to the background.
At snack time Ansel, Kelsey, Sarah, and I were sitting with one of the classes: some of the students eating popsicles and others crawling over us asking to have their pictures taken. One of the little boys was playing with my hair and kept miming, silently, for me to take his picture. Sarah quickly realized that he was deaf and walked with him back to the special needs classroom. We learned that there are at least three deaf children but they sit at the back of the class and can neither read nor write. Tomorrow Sarah is going to begin teaching them sign language and work with the volunteers who are staying longer on a program to help integrate them into the classroom. It’s really hard to see this sweet little boy coming to school just to sit in the back of the room completely detached from the education process, but it’s also understandable how, when resources are so limited, things like this become overlooked.

While Sarah was taking with the special needs teacher, I was sitting next to the most beautiful little girl who was sitting quietly next to me, slightly disengaged from the other children who were excitedly pawing at us and our camera. They speak little English so it was difficult to ask what was wrong but when the group of children had slightly dissipated she looked up at me and said “Teacher…hungry.” So many of the others were running around with snacks that I assumed this an easy solution: “lets go get a Popsicle” I said cheerfully, just assuming they were provided, today, for everyone. She happily grabbed my hand and we strode towards the snacks but she slowed and turned to me as we walked: “no money.” Suddenly I realized that it wasn’t by choice that some of the kids weren’t eating, but because they couldn’t pay for the snacks which were not being provided by the school but being sold by local people. My eyes had been half closed and only now did I see just how many children who were looking longingly in the direction we were walking. We had been discussing a food program with the headmaster, and how difficult it is for the some of the students to concentrate on school work when they are so hungry, but I hadn’t fully gauged what that meant until this little girl was holding my hand. For ten cents, I bought her a large samosa and a bag of nuts. For $7.50 a day we could feed every child at Mwambao. We have done so much during this trip that seems truly wonderful, but the more time we spend at the school, the more immediacy our actions take. The more weighted the importance of the fund-raisers we have been dreaming up in whispers as we fall asleep.

This is Africa. That we are actually here, with these children, among these people and this world, gets lost quickly in the natural way we have eased into this community. This world is so full of life that it seems to envelope the realities that lurk beneath the surface, not to negate the realities of happiness but to slightly conceal where the suffering lies. This joy, this spirit, opens you, and more often than not, there is a communal nature of humanity that dims the differences between our lives in America and their lives here. I think it is in the communion between differences and similarities that the possibility for two separate worlds to give to one another exits, not to Americanize or Africanize one or the other, but to help ease the suffering. We may have money and industry in America but I have yet to see this kind of spirit. I think it is a complex and extended process to understand how we can help this community without allowing our presence to negate what organically exists, but we are beginning.

This last week has been a rush and a roller-coaster. Here there is such intensity to each act that things seem both impossibly wonderful and incredibly stressful within the space of a single hour. We have done so much I feel as though the days have stretched into some separate realm of time to allow everything to fit and yet to be passing so rapidly . Finally things with the school have really come together. Everything is different in Africa, so the entire process of getting the supplies seems opposite from the conventions we know.

After we picked up art supplies in Dar, we spent a morning drawing with the children. They were so excited to use the color pencils and erasers! While we were with the kids, the teaching supplies came in and we were able to see the ways the teachers can now really use these things to help the children learn (like being able to use an actual clock in order to explain how to tell time). We also took the kids to the beach and played rafiki-rafiki-simba (duck-duck-goose or literally "friend-friend-lion"). One of the boys brought his pencil and paper to the beach and continued to draw a really detailed picture of a helicopter- he was so intent upon his work. So far we have just played with this one class who have come in to Mwambao even though school doesn't actually open until Monday. Its been nice to meet a small group of them and really begin to see their personalities and interests.

We repainted the bathrooms and are now getting new doors made for the stalls. The textbooks should also arrive this evening, which is really exciting. We've made so much progress and now we can physically see who it's for.

We have also seen a lot of the village and become more immersed in the local culture. Our friend Ebra took us all around a back village of Bagamoyo and we saw the traditional houses built from a sort of mud and stick structure that almost resemble adobe frames. He then lead us out to the rice fields and we saw the pastures where they gather crops right at the edge of people's homes. The children followed us out into the fields as we meandered through the grass and saw the crops of sugar canes bordered by banana and mango trees. There was something so grounding about seeing where these food staples- that in America we see produced only through market bins- actually growing from the earth and used to sustain these people lives.

That evening we went to a beach fire where Ebra and his friends put on a drum and dance show for another volunteer group. The tide was out and so the beach stretched in a open stage. The boys gathered palm trees as kindling and lit a fire into which they wedged their drums in order to loosen the cow-hide surfaces. They performed complex fire dances with tall torches. As the music continued Ebra and Mashaka pulled Sarah, Kelsey, Ansel, and I out of the crowd and we all danced in a circle at the waters edge. We even tried to learn to dance with the (very heavy) flame torch! Ebra and Mashaka have been teaching us to dance, so it was really cool to be able to recognize the choreography while they where performing. Music and dance is such a huge part of this culture. It seems to course through these people. When we go to eat with Ebra and there is music playing, he will get up and start moving and completely forget about lunch, the music becomes part of him. If there isn't music playing he will rap in Swahili or broken english: "so hot like chipati- understand that?"

There was also a benefit at Hunter's club a few nights ago to raise money for the local arts school. The students of the school performed traditional African dances and theatre skits in Swahili which were funny even though we couldn't understand the language. The dancing was absolutely captivating.

I feel like I am piecing together sections of a puzzle with each aspect of the culture that I see. Seeing the beach fire and the performance and learning the steps ourselves, there is a spirit to the movement, as though the intensity with which they live their lives is expelled through their limbs when they dance. Or when they drum. The music is another piece of the puzzle. Because it is not the steps or the music but the way they are created for one another. The movement is not put to music nor the music put the movements but the two exist simultaneously for one another.

When you beat the drum here, you keep your wrists loose- like when beating an egg- but the force with which you drum requires such power that with each beat the drum reverberates and shivers back from the cow hide into your own flesh. It becomes part of you. And it's so much fun! I am seriously considering a career as beach musician. As I became comfortable drumming, Ebra stood up and began to dance to the music I was creating. I've never been on that side of dance before, to actually be making the music. But it was more than that, because it was being able to learn the rhythms that are so integral to life in Bagamoyo, not just the steps or the beats or the voice, but the spirit which rises forth from it.

Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world, and Bagomoyo considered a deeply impoverished region, but I don't see poverty here.

Today we have been in Tanzania for a week and are beginning to get into a bit of a routine: running on the beach in the morning, having tea with the teachers from school, and biking around Bagamoyo site seeing and working on the project.
Kelsey came in from California on Wednesday and we went to pick her up in Dar es Salaam. When we first came in last week we rode through the city on our way to Bagamoyo but I think I was too exhausted to really take in all that we were seeing. Before picking her up we went into the depth of the city to find art supplies for the children. It feels completely different than Bagamoyo, which is rural and open: the lives of the people we see and meet seem organic- people smile and greet us in the streets and welcome us into their homes. Yet in the city the people are condensed and you can feel the weight of their poverty. The streets in the city are slick with dirt and waste and there seems a struggle between commerce and survival. In Bagamoyo there is laughter everywhere. It was a stark contrast between such a short span of space. I think it is probably just as it feels between New York City and the more rural areas of America, but we saw it from the outside, and from that lens it felt much harsher.
Regardless we are all just living and for the most part you don't see it as poverty here, just people who are living the lives they know with happiness. I'm sure if we spent more time in the city of Dar es Salaam the hollow sadness would open up into a better understanding of who these people are, but often the intensity of city life does not allow for that opportunity.
Currently Ansel is sitting next to me and playing with two children who are tickling him and asking him to dance with him. This three-year-old boy is trying to teach him dance steps and then gets bored and begins to draw patterns in the sand. The children are so loving its easy to see the reasons Sarah loves this place and originally began the organization. Every time we come to the school they run to us and swarm us in a giant hug. They are so curious and open.