Volunteer Amani
28th Dec 2006A One Hour Christmas And Still Nore Mud! Well it is December 28th now and Christmas is over and done with! I can`t really say that it lived up to all of its expectations but I forget sometimes that this is Africa, and things often never work out exactly the way that you wish them to! I will explain further by saying that the background to this story is the appalling wages that people are paid here, in return for jobs with incredibly long hours and no holidays! The friends that I invited around to my house to spend Christmas Day fall into this category. 50 to 60 hours a week, working 6 days a week, one day for 15 hours, with only one day off a week, and no paid holidays! It really is a different world, and I feel so very sorry for my friends who have to endure this way of life and are paid the equivalent of 16 English pounds a month! I can`t even begin to explain just how the normal, everyday people of Tanzania struggle to make ends meat. It really is very hard to put into words. I have been here for over 4 months now, and I have to admit that being here is beginning to get to me a bit now. I`m told that this is quite a normal feeling for longterm volunteers, but it doesn`t make things any easier when you come across the sights that I do on a regular basis. Being a whiteman here in Tanzania, and having some money, can be very hard sometimes. The very colour of your skin means `money` to most people here, and I am asked by people virtually everyday for money. Often these people are in a really bad way, severely disabled, or living on the streets. It really does give you an amazing sense of guilt, of just being white and having money. I help out people where I can, but it is impossible to help everyone. I am a complete volunteer here after all, earning no money. Yesterday is a good example of what I mean. Taking the long walk down into town I came across a lady close to the centre who needed serious help. She had obviosly been sleeping rough and was covered in mud, with no shoes. She also very obviously had a mental health problem, as she was wandering down the centre of the road talking to herself. My pleas for her to come out of the road were ignored, and she was dangerously close to being run over, so what could I do? Nobody else even tried to help her. I had to leave her in the end to the perils of the traffic. A little further down the road, I came across another lady who was in an even worse condition. She was crawling on her hands and knees along the dirt pavement. She was missing both of her lower legs and it would also appear, most of both hands also. I gave her a little money for which she was very grateful and carried on my way. Further into town I saw a man well-known for his behaviour in town. He has quite a serious mental health problem, and talks to himself whilst standing in the middle of the road, and throwing his jacket on the ground. He obviously sleeps rough, has no shoes, just a filthy pair of trousers and a jacket. His hair has not been cut for months. I saw him picking through rubbish the other day. There is nothing that you can do but carry on your way and hope that he is ok, as he does not respond to anyone. There is a serious lack of provision for people with mental health problems over here. I eventually made it into town where, yet again, I came across another mentally unwell lady who was clutching a picture of Jesus, and was standing in the central reservation of the double road in town. I couldn`t really make out what she was shouting, over and over again to the passing crowd. Again, here was another mentally unwell person, in serious need of some proper mental health care. I again felt helpless to do anything positive to help her. That is just one day in my life here, and maybe now you can begin to understand that every so often, living and working here in Moshi can really get to you. Just trying to come to terms with it all is difficult, and as the days go by I have begun to develop an incredible sense of guilt of why it is that I am white, and so fortunate in my life, compared to the vast majority of the black population here. It is something that I think I will never really fully come to terms with and has caused me a lot of angst recently. I have just come back to this entry after the Christmas and New Year Holidays and have made a few major decisions about my life and work here. The huge sense of guilt that I have developed about being in a house way too big for my own needs, when friends and neighbours struggle to exist in single and double rooms has just become too much for me. I no longer want to be seen as the mzungu who lives in the big house, and whom presumably has a lot of money, because basically I am not and I don`t have! I have managed to negotiate with my landlord, and will shortly move into a single room in the same compound, with the use of an outside African style toilet and wash room, just like my African neighbours. I am now looking for a real, genuine mzungu to take over the rent of my over-large house. My imminent move will make me feel so much better. I may be a whiteman in a blackman`s country, but I am longing to shake off the mzungu name tag and all of the presumptions that go with it. I have also joined my local Lutheran Church, having recently been to introduce myself to the local pastor who does have some links to Amani and its children. I was introduced to the congregation during last Sunday`s service, which did me the power of good and will hopefully help me to become more a part of the local community. My walk to church at 6.30am through a local rural area with a superb backdrop of a clear Kilimanjaro summit, with fresh snowfall, also set me up for the day. It was an amazing sight to see long lines of people all come from their rural homes and walk to attend either the Catholic or Lutheran Churches, which are very close by to each other. Everyone is always dressed in their Sunday best which is also very colourful, this being Africa, especially the women. It must be something about the hot climate that brings out the colourand design in native dress. The congregation were very friendly, me being the only whitemen in church, and we had the usual short auction at the end of the service to raise a little more money for the church. I will be trying my best to attend each week now. Now that I have got my `mzungu issue` off my chest I have just realised that I have seriously diverted from the main story line which is Christmas Day, or a lack of it really! The run up to it was quite promising with my invited friends saying that they, unbelievably, had to work all day, but that they would negotiate 2 hours off to come and have lunch at my place. 2 hours is better than nothing I thought, so I set to work buying, on Christmas Eve, and cooking Christmas Day morning some appropriate food. Everything didn`t really go to plan though. The cooking went well and my friends finally arrived, only to tell me that they only had half an hour to spare, before they had to leave back for work! I didn`t know what to say really. On one hand I felt incredibly sorry for them, but on the other totally fed up that I had gone to so much trouble just for half an hour! We made the best of a bad deal and ate what we could. I have to say that I wasn`t in the best of moods, which later I really regretted, when I thought how my friends had gone to so much trouble! The half hour stretched into almost an hour, and as I walked back down to my house, from seeing my friends to the dala dala stop, I thought well that is that! I have just had a 1 hour Christmas. To make it worse it poured down Christmas Day morning so there was also serious mud around! So ended Christmas Day! I was told that things were very quiet at Amani on Christmas Day too. With so many children on home visits the real Christmas celebration happens just before the children start to leave at their Christmas Party, which I have peviously written about. Changing the subject, the reference to mud in my title refers to the really quite changeable weather that we have experienced for a couple of weeks over the holiday period. Sweltering hot days usually giving in to often very heavy rainfall at some stage each day. The ground can only really take up so much water and then the baked earth turns to serious mud again! I lost count of the number of times that I had to scrape and then wash my shoes! I think that they will rot before my time in Africa is over. They are beginning to show serious signs of wear and tear now, and I know that I will have to buy some new ones in the very near future! So I will end this diary entry on that note (the worn-out state of my trusty walking shoes!) More interesting tales from deepest Moshi next time!
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