Walk at night

I have just finished a meeting and a nice meal and am on my way home. The venture of the meeting is not far from where I stay, the evening is beautiful and so I have decided to walk. The last few weeks the temperature has decreased to Dutch levels. Most days it rains at least for a couple of hours and sometimes it rains so hard you can’t see a thing. My sleeveless shirts are on the bottom of my pile with clothes and I find myself wearing my one and only fleece too often. The locals have changed their wear to winter clothes. People wear warm jackets and a lot accompany them with gloves and a shawl. I do agree with them that it is cold, but since it’s still around 18 degrees I am still comfortable without these accessories.

Today, however, was a beautiful day. After impressive thunders during the night with even more impressive rainfall, the sun appeared from behind the clouds this morning. My meeting took place on a terrace overlooking the lake. Even after sunset the temperature was nice. And so, I walk home. The electricity just went off and everything I can see is darkness. The moon is there and lids my way. There are numerous stars in the sky and I can even see the Milky Way. I walk and enjoy. The only things I hear are insects. Behind me a motorbike appears from the dark, passes me and disappears in the dark again. I leave the main road and turn to a small dirt road. The heavy rainfalls have turned this road in a muddy path with a lot of holes, rocks and puddles. I am careful not to hurt my ankle and see why people in the villages don’t go out after dark at all. Only one moment of carelessness and you can easily wound yourself.

I reach the gate to my house safely and our Massai security guard walks slowly into my direction. I realise he has a big bandage around his ankle and ask him what happened. He tells me he just got bitten by a snake and the neighbour has cut his foot to allow the poison to leave his leg. And I was just worried about stepping in a pothole!

No water

My organisation, Africa Partnership on Climate Change Coalition, works in 3 districts in the region where I live. The place where I live is in one of these district. I have met a lot of people whom I am supposed to work with and a lot of farmers who suffer from the effects of climate change. APCCC organises trainings to teach farmers about climate change and helps them  to adapt to the change and the challenges they face. I start to get an impression about the problems and about my contributions towards ‘solutions’.

Two weeks ago I got picked up from my (still temporary) house to go to another district I am supposed to work in. The pastor from the local church came with his car to take me to his area. Together with someone else I sat on the passengers seat, my bag with some spare clothes for a week on my lap. We stopped at the market to buy food that was put behind my back, on my feet and on any other empty place in the cabin of the car. After 1 hour drive in a very uncomfortable position we left the tarmac road.  I guess we had God on our side, because despite the high speed and the nearly hits of cyclists on the dusty sandy path, we reached the Parish house safely. The landscape in the area is flat, the sun hot and the drought striking. The church ground around the Parish House is very big and is being used to grow corn, bananas and beans. The money made out of selling the crops is used for the church and the church farm does very well. The area does not have running water or electricity. The Parish house has the luxury of a rainwater harvest system. About 2 kilometres from the church is also a water pump that gives water for the people living around the place.  In the evenings the generator is started to provide the house with some power to turn on lights as well as a television. Solar power is generated to charge mobile phones. In the evenings people turn up from the darkness, plug their phones in the socket of the house and come back the next morning to pick it up. The luxury of a rain water tank, a pump on a walking distance and a generator is in this district, however, rare. A lot of people I visit during this week live in a hut made out of mud or a mixture of mud and cement, their furniture is not more than a couple of mats on a layer of grass on the ‘floor’ and everyone is growing vegetables. Drought in this district is a major issue. I am shocked when I see the quality of the water people drink. Most people fetch their water at one of the water pools that, around this time of the year, are nearly dried up. The little bit of water that is available in the pools is dirty and probably needs hours of boiling before it is suitable for consumption. I already get stomach problems when I only look at it. A lot of children have to walk for miles and miles to fetch water before they go to school; the lucky ones have a bicycle to carry the load. The teachers I meet complain that a lot of children arrive at school late because of the lack of water sources around their houses. After my working day that consists of a 15 km walk to visit farmers and see their activities, I am exhausted. So what about all the women who are working in the hot sun on their farm lands, walk miles and miles to fetch water, make their food on a fire outside their mud hut and worry about how to provide their families with food the next day?  

The two sisters that also live in the Parish house are responsible for maintaining and cleaning the church, the household of the house and the farming activities. During the week they are, above all, my Swahili teachers. With a lot of laughter they try and increase my knowledge of their language while I assist them with preparing the evening meals. I enjoy a week in the bush, learn a lot, and get enough inspiration to contribute to improvement of the situation. And, I am happy to come back to the ‘civilised world’ after a week in the bush. The running water from the cold shower definitely helps to get rid of all the dust!

Night life

view from behind my new temporary house

Another encounter with a bat is the last straw. ‘Slightly’ in panic I put some clothes on and run outside to ask the neighbours for help. Suddenly I am happy with the bar next door where a couple of men are conversing loudly while having another shot of their local gin and disturbing my night rest. At this somehow unpleasant hour of 1 o’clock at night on a simple Wednesday, the average Tanzanian already has been asleep for a couple of hours. The visitors of the bar next door don’t seem to plan their (and my) night rest yet. At the moment that I escape my room, I am grateful for that. My biggest challenge is to express my urge in Kiswahili. However, the visits of friends of the bat earlier these weeks, somehow help me. I have looked up the words for ‘bat’ and ‘afraid’ in the dictionary to tell there was a bat in my room and I was scared. The only thing I have to do know is change the past tense in the present tense. So, with a lot of embarrassment and hesitation, while shaking all over, I manage to tell the men that there is a bat in my room. The answer is something in the lines of: ‘then kill it’. And that is just my problem. 1. I don’t dare to go back in the house and 2. I wouldn’t know how to kill the bloody animal. In another attempt I am able to tell them that this white woman just doesn’t know what to do anymore. Finally 2 men stand up, laughing out loud, and walk into the house. They observe the situation and one of them leaves the house to come back with some leaves of a banana tree. With my last courage I run inside, stick some breakable stuff under my arms and run back outside. Good thinking! Like 2 drunk men that are not really in control of their movements (which is probably right considering the time they’ve spent drinking their gins next to my bedroom window), the guys run around the room with their leaves and, not long after that, leave the place with the leftovers of the bat. ‘Sleep well’ is their final greeting. They celebrate their victory with more gins and laughs while I am trying to get back in control of myself.

The next morning, I strap one of my suitcases on the back of my motorbike and drive to the house of another VSO volunteer. I tried to live in a zoo but have to acknowledge I can’t do it. The combination of rats, bats, noise and continuously people staring through my windows is just too much for me. So, the next evening, I am in a more comfortable bed in a more comfortable house in a quiet environment. Boing, boing, beng, beng..... While I am wondering what this noise is, it disappears slowly and I can enjoy the silence in and around the house again. I think of my first exploration of the environment and house and the lovely view of Lake Victoria. Another half an hour later more noise... An elephant? No, they don’t live in this region. Another big animal? No, crocodiles don’t make this noise and hippos don’t climb a hill. And bats don’t make this noise, is what I know from recent experiences. I decide to explore the cause of this noise and it doesn’t take long to find out. Julius, the security guard of the house is the cause of this noise. Julius is a 28 year old Masaii who looks after our safety. When my Kiswahili gets better I need to ask him why he walks around like an elephant at night. During the day I am often surprised to find him standing next to me while I haven’t heard him coming, while at night he walks around as if he wants to scare all the wild animals in the wild park 600 kilometres away where he comes from. At least, I can go back to bed now and get some extra hours of sleep to make up for the last weeks.

Zoo

I have arrived in my new home town, Kemondo Bay. Although you can find it on Google earth, it's nothing really. A fishing harbour, 3 mosques, lots of little huts in a market place, even more noisy people and me in my house. My first week was full of new impressions. I got to know lots of locals, know which stall sells spaghetti, have bought my first fresh fish and am already sick of eating the bananas that are grown here and everyone offers me as a present. My Kiswahili is getting a little better now that I'm forced to try and speak it a lot, the children in town all know where the Mzungu (Obruni) lives and stare through my windows a lot, and my living room often is the place to meet other locals although I never told people this is the new community centre. This weekend I drove to the nearest town on my pikipiki (moto) and bought some necessary food stuff that is not available in my village. The road going to the town is good and goes over hills full with banana trees, coffee plants and sometimes allows a great view on Lake Victoria. There is hardly any traffic on the road. Every now and than a minibus (too) full with people who also want to shop in town, children walk aroundwith goats, some pikipiki riders are trying the maximum speed of their bikes and in the fiels adults and children are busy planting potatoes. The rainy season has started and it's nice and cool with every day some or a lot of rain.

My house is being baptised: 'Zoo'. At the beginning of this week I woke up by the noise of a bat that appeared to be my room mate. The bloody animals was screaming and flying around with a speed I thought was dangerous is this tiny dodgy 'room' of mine. I chose to be the weakest, blew some air in my inflateble mattress and slept together with 50 musquitos in my living area. Because I didn't dare to go back into the room to get my mozzy-net, I woke up with a couple of bites of these new friends. A colleage came to the house the next day and managed to find the bat and chased it away. Two days later I heard the voice of this former room mate again and am wondering how long it will take him/her to find the entrance to my room again. I hardly survived the first shock of house mates and found another friend in my living area the next day: Mr Rat. It was walking through my room as if it was not used to doing anything else and didn't seemed to be bothered by my presence. I had enough by that time, left the house and slept in the house of a another volunteer the next night. I have asked VSO and the employer to solve my living situation by finding me a proper house. Whether the rat and/or bat are still around? I will soon find out. Perhaps they have fallen in love and have decided to move to their own place to create their family. I just hope they did and that they will happily live ever after.