Travel plans and et cetera

Emma's boyfriend, Marek, is coming to visit next week. He'll arrive on the seventeenth, and he and Emma will climb Mt. Meru over the course of three days and two nights. After that, we will travel together. Here is the itinerary:

23 October. Depart from Arusha to Dar es Salaam
23/24 October. Overnite in Dar es Salaam
25 October. Depart from Dar es Salaam to Stonetown (Zanzibar)
25/26/27 October. Overnite in Stonetown
28 October. Depart from Stonetown to Jambiani (also Zanzibar)
28/29 October. Overnite in Jambiani
30 October. Depart from Jambiani to Stonetown, change bus toward Dar es Salaam
30 October. Overnite in Dar es Salaam
31 October. Return to Arusha, and back home to Monduli. Marek leaves.

I hadn't been certain about planning trips this early on, since my research is all but stagnant. But the Doc has not been making appointments for me to speak with anybody really. I have been doing whatever work is possible on my own, but if nothing significant can be accomplished without going over the Doc's head, then I might as well travel in the meantime. So, this is our plan. I'm quite excited for Jambiani, which is a coastal area with beachfront huts. We will take a day trip to a coral reef to snorkel, if it doesn't end up costing more than the sugested 30 USD from Lonely Planet's guidebook.

And aside from travel, what is new? Perhaps I will recount some journal entries to pass the time, and to give you some updates. I do not know what to write otherwise, when I sit down at a computer here.

October 3, 2006:

Yesterday, there was a frog in the bathing basin. Emma picked it up with her hands after my attempts to shovel it into a bucket with a dustpan proved futile. I wanted to just pick it up with my own hands intially. Why did I resort to the dustpan?

Today, just walking, I fell on the dirt road that runs between the Teachers' College and Moringe Sekoine Secondary School campus. Lost my footing, tried to catch my footing, and in trying to catch my footing, I tripped myself. My left knee is cut rather deeply, through probably most layers of skin, but only in about a .5 square centimeter area. More tragically, my second favorite pair of long pants is now torn. I'll need to mend the left knee and reinforce the right knee as soon as I find some thread.

We bathe with buckets of warm water here - have I mentioned this? Makes things complicated, sometimes.

Found out that Mama D's mother is so glum because she lost her youngest daughter to HIV five years ago. Makes me remember not to be so quick to judge.

Over dinner tonight, the Doc talked about the importance of gender equality education in primary and secondary schools; it is actually a part of the curriciulum! This conversation popped up after Emma and I expressed concerns about two young men who joined us, Jake and Rena for drinks tonight, and who tried to convince us to marry them. The Doc said, "Try to make this a part of your study - do not get angry or frustrated, but realize that this is the sort of treatment all the young girls must withstand. That's why equality education is so important."

Oh, how we learn at least one new lesson every day...


October 6, 2006

I would like very much to write a letter to someone, but as I sit out on the front porch here, and I consider the steppe which extends past the horizon, there exists this feeling that no one would ever receive such a letter. At least no one would understand such a letter. I think of writing to one specific person, as I believe that this person's mind might begin to comprehend or to appreciate this existence.

For the first time in my life, there is not a single person here with me in spirit. Even alone in Belgium, I felt more accompanied. Here in Tanzania, in the constant presence of two other students, my emotions can only speak to themselves. Emma and I have discussions on our families, our friends, and on our hopes for the future almost nightly. This is important for me, and I think also for her. Especially since it has been so long for her since she has seen her family (nearly a year). But so far as our exchanges in the way of nature here - how the breeze bends my thoughts past anything material or comprehensible even; how the distant call and answer of some melodic bird answers something unanswerable in my jumbled contemplations; how my hands feel fresh from hand washing my laundry in buckets behind the Msinjilis' house; how the unidentifiable drum beats that stream up our hill from Moringe Sekoine Secondary School make me want to dance in some new way, yes unlearned by myself; all of these things remain undisclosed, as I feel no ability to communicate them to either of my two very understanding peers.

These are thoughts and emotions which must be cafefully shared, iuf shared at all, with an individual capable of a certain something. A certain comprehension that is not approached by means of logic or reason, but by transcendence. And should these transcendent realizations ever be conveyed? Might they ever be shared and grasped or appreciated in their fullest possibilities? I think, perhaps, not.

Thus, I believe that these thoughts, these never before realized items which are truthfully inexplicable anyhow, must remain something for myself, my soul, my own person. Perhaps it is simply something that becomes part of a person's glare when she stops mid day in order to daydream. Is my time in Africa a daydream?

A small ant, which actually proves to be quite larg for an ant, with a grey peachfuzzed abdomen has paced back and forth along the edge of this top step upon which I sit. So funny that I appreciate his presence as a foreign and welcomed bit of company, simply for the small difference in his appearance; when I project this scene (my sitting here, writing) onto my front porch at home, a pacing ant might seem so ordinary and unnoticed, in his black, shiny, exoskeletal casing, searching for bits to eat. It is this Tanzanian black ant with grey peachfuzz that keeps me company, however. What a difference.

The breeze is blowing stronger now than when I previously mentioned it. This is due to a passing storm cloud. Although I have just hung my laundry to dry, I had hoped that the could would stay overhead and perhaps bring some rain. Monduli is becoming drier and drier these days, and few people have the luxury of purchasing cartons of water to drink. At least the breeze is cool, and perhaps it is refreshing. I consider it so.