Understanding

Note from Cassie:

Eileen posted this updated for her friends and family aside from the updates she has provided for TEP. As an organization we focus so much on given our donors proof that we are doing our best to make their money and efforts go as far as possible. We shower you with budget progress, project details and facts to illustrate our dedication in action. However, this is also important to share with you because this is Tanzania and these are the people we are helping. Bringing to light our cultural differences provides a necessary prospective in order to understand our role as a people who can help. Although many of their struggles are no different than those in our own nation, being honest about their poverty and overall heartbreaking situations reminds us why the fight is worth while.
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Salutations!


Dearest friends and family, its from soggy Bunju A, Tanzania that I greet you once more. Its only just struck me that I have given you virtually no report of the weather since I have been here, other than to say that I am in the tropics, you are not, ha ha-ha ha. However, I know that as Midwesterners, this is probably your top concern, along with, “what do you eat there?”. I watch the weather report every evening when Babu has the news on tv, but of course the temperature is always given in degrees Celsius, and since this is a simple and uncomplicated way of measuring, much like the metric system, and used by most of the world, then of course as an American I have no use for it. I simply say “Oh, 34 degrees, that can’t be too warm”, make a sort of unintelligible “der de-der der” sound in my head and go on with the day, not noticing the heat because “34” is, relative to Fahrenheit, a low number.



However, conveniently enough for someone as lazy as I and ignorant of conversions, there is a large poster of a thermometer in our lab at Fanaka. When I knew the temperature to be close to 37 degrees Celsius that day, I happened to glance at the elementary school thermometer hanging in the lab. As it turns out, 37 degrees Celsius is close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This explains, perhaps, why I have been so sweaty. Huh.



Anyhow, I remain unperturbed by the muggy temperature. The conditions are only aggravated by the previous nights rainfall, which causes the mud (usually dirt) roads to congeal and turn into a sauna. (Rainfall is good though! We have completed Phase One of our Hydrate 2 Educate project and now have tanks hooked up to three of the school buildings! Check out all the details at www.tzeducationproject.blogspot.com) The main difference with this sauna, though, and maybe your average YMCA sauna, is that this one is scented with eau d’cow, goat, chicken, unwashed human, and miscellaneous rubbish. This is truly a thrill for the senses, and will never quite be able to be properly conveyed to the typical reader unless you have experiences with developing nations or farms. The more urban areas, like Dar es Salaam, smell much the same, except less cow and more unwashed human.



I do not mean to sound flippant about the poverty that runs rampant here. But as my director, Cassie (founder of the TEP, if you recall), has wisely told me: “If you can’t laugh about some of these things, what else can you do?” Sometimes the best way to really accept the horrible things in Tanzania is to realize how silly some things are, otherwise you’d be reeling from the despair of it all. It is hilarious to see a child strutting proudly with an indignant chicken under its arm, the chicken screeching wildly and nearly half the size of the child. Of course, chickens are filthy and that kid will later make a toy out of a disposed plastic bottle and roll in the dirt making shapes much the way children in the US make snow angels, but its still a kid and kids everywhere get dirty. I can’t save all of the kids here; I can’t afford to put them all into nice schools, to give them clothes that fit from year to year- or even from month to month. Working with a project like the Tanzanian Education Project means that we want to stretch a dollar as far as possible, in a way that will help the most people possible. This means that I can’t choose one child, no matter how dear to me, and bestow upon him and her gifts and chances that I can’t offer to the hundreds of other children around me. Its tragic. But giving all my money to just one child will only make me feel good; it won’t help a developing nation. It is a band-aid, not an immunization (or some other such health analogy... you all know I can’t science!). So here’s to laughing at the kids who make toys of sticks, empty tubs, dirt and chickens. Because, relatively speaking, it is hilarious. In the global theatre where Tanzania is the second-poorest nation in the world, it really is tragic; cars made of bottles and caps being pulled on a string by a naked kid with a potbelly means that families don’t have enough money for clothing or food, let alone medication for when that child gets malaria. In the meantime, though, we do what we can, and laugh when that kid comes tearing around the corner once more, thrilled by the sound of its own voice, and bellowing at the top of its lungs.



Well, that’s enough touchy feely crap for one day. My appeal as a volunteer, is, I think, largely due to the fact that I try to stay away from sugar-coating the conditions here and stick to practical situations coated only with sarcasm. Its important to remember though, that even as a volunteer in a developing nation, I am still somewhat sheltered by my family here. True, our neighbors across the road and a few houses down live in mud-brick huts or shacks made of clapboard, but the fact of the matter is that I don’t live there, and I don’t know what that’s like. I can see the poverty, but because of being blessed to be part of a middle class American family, I will most likely never have to experience it, and never have to experience poverty to that degree. I will be sheltered and cushioned by my family, by social institutions, able to receive healthcare, loans and assistance. I have it easy, and most likely always will. I say this not with self-assurance, nor with any sort of pompousness, but to caution those who think they know what its like for people here. Please sympathize, and lend your aid, because the folks in Bunju A deserve help, as does Tanzania. But even I cannot know what it is like to have no end in sight, no certainty about what tomorrow will bring for me when I am middle-aged, elderly or sick.



So the word of the day, friends, is 'understand'. Understand that things are difficult here, understand that you and I have no frame of reference, and understand that understanding these things is the only thing that will get us anywhere.