An update letter from Dr. Margaret Thompson who will be serving along side the veterinarians in Tanzania for 3 years.  

 

Greetings from Tanzania! I have completed half of my language lessons! It is recommended that language learners take a break about half way through their classes. So I took a few days off (at my own expense) to travel to the north and east of here to a couple of national parks.

Here are some thoughts on my experiences here:

About travel:

I have gotten very used to being crammed into a dala dala (mini bus) with 24 or so other people in a 14-16 passenger vehicle.

I’d rather be in tight quarters in a dala dala for 40 minutes at a cost of about $0.70 than take a taxi and not be crammed at a cost of $12.00 for the same trip. (It costs Tanzanians $6.00)

One day going into Iringa there were 32 (!!!) passengers crowded into a 14 passenger dala dala. I wondered if the “conductor” was trying to set a record. I was smashed up against a window. I was glad it was a short trip.

About being different:

Though I’m sure I appear odd to the Tanzanians (I have met only two other white skinned women my age or older), I feel quite comfortable walking through the market and other streets in town.

A really cute little Tanzanian girl about four years old tried to engage me in a conversation, which was drowned out by the music in the church. She settled for feeling my hair.

About shopping:

 It is no big deal to go to town and to market alone.

The cost of most things in shops and the street market are not marked. So the price varies with the color of your skin and perhaps even which way the wind is blowing at the time. (OK, so I’m being facetious.)

About learning Swahili:

There are at least seven “noun classes” in Swahili, each with its own demonstrative &  possessive descriptors, adjective prefixes, subject prefixes, object infixes, words for “of”, “both”,  “all”, “any”, “many”, “another”-all of which depend on whether the noun is singular or plural.

It’s hard enough to remember the vocabulary without having to remember the class of each noun.

The easy parts of learning Swahili are that the letters are all pronounced just one way; I don’t have to learn a new alphabet or characters; and so far I’ve encountered only one sound that is foreign to the English language.

Its fun when, outside of class, I say something correctly in Swahili.

About fellow ex-patriots:

It continues to be quite interesting to meet and visit with campers and language learners from other countries.

Among the resident ex-patriots I have met, a frequent topic of discussion is how wastefully money is spent by churches and NGO’s. For example, the money spent on a building could have been used to help the poor nationals learn about nutrition or health care or to start a sustainable agricultural project.

Sometimes development projects are successful; sometimes not. Sometimes the funds for projects get diverted (disappear into someone’s pocket).

About living conditions:

Laundry service is available here at the campsite. But they iron everything, even socks and underwear, to kill any mango fly eggs that might have been laid on the clothes while they were drying on a line. Because I don’t like to iron, most of my clothes are made of material that should never be ironed or must be ironed on a low setting. When I was in TZ last year, the household helper tried to iron one of my camp shirts and put a few holes in it. So I choose to do most of my laundry by hand in the sink. I dry my clothes indoors so the mango fly shouldn’t be an issue. The camp owner says that there shouldn’t be any mango flies down here by the river because there are no mango trees here. Nonetheless, she has her clothes ironed.

The culture dictates that underwear should never be seen when out to dry. If you do put clothes out to dry, underwear must be put under another item so that the underwear isn’t seen by passers-by.

About my study break:

I traveled with another Swahili language student to Mikumi. . The first day after arriving in Mikumi, we went to Udzungwa National park and hiked to the top of the tallest waterfall in TZ national parks. The next day we took a half day safari in Mikumi National Park. Sadly, the next two days I spent in the motel dealing with GI issues. Now it’s back to more Swahili lessons.

I will try to attach a photo of the pregnant lioness that approached our truck and stood about 15 feet away looking at us for an uncomfortable (for us) few minutes. There were four of us sitting on an open platform at the back of the truck. I took the photo after she decided to walk away.