Less is More

I'm really mixed up with all these posts. I think I wrote this in the first week, but it got lost in the Zanzibari interwebs.


Less shampoo, less food, less detergent. Less shampoo means a faster bucket bathing experience (no more tears!), less food down the hatch means less out the... (less sleepyness too), and as for less detergent - today was interesting. I somehow agreed to washing my clothes this morning. I was told that someone 'washed the family' once a week because it can be hard, but that I was welcome to try myself. This confused me because I had seen the kids run out of the bathroom in a towel yesterday. Quick to avoid being washed, I instead found myself washing clothes. The detergent smells exactly like the raspberry-esque effervescence that accompanies Dukoral. For those of you that have travelled to places with high cholera prevalence before, I need not explain. For the rest of you, I strongly encourage the aforementioned travel with all of the necessary medical precautions taken. This stuff is strong - both the Dukoral and the detergent. Put too much and it'll never wash out. Less is more.


Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone on the Tigo Tanzania Network

Pole

Sorry, I've been getting really sloppy with these posts. Work has surprisingly gotten busy recently, and so I've just been posting unedited things I jotted down. They're really incoherent and probably boring to read, but I have another 20 or so to type up and post so I have no time to produce good writing. Let me know if there's something in particular that is more or less interesting and I'll take it into consideration. Most of you fb message me anyway, so that's probably the easier and faster way rather than comments. Baadaye, Adam

Approval

It is my conviction that with all things in life, old Brown ladies are the hardest to impress. Thus, if you get their approval, you have succeeded and nothing else matters. Plus, they all talk so getting one's approval is equivalent to getting them all.
If you don't believe this about old brown women, then I have a short story for you:

I went to a traditional Zanzibari wedding yesterday. Just quickly, the men meet the groom at the mosque, listen to a few prayers and then eat some halua (this warm gooey tough jello thing), sambusa (samosa), and kahava (coffee). The women do something similar at home with the bride, but I'm told there's no food. After, the bride and groom meet at the reception and are then ridiculed by old brown women who don't even know them. It's just tradition.
Everyone makes a tiny speech wishing the newlyweds well. (seriously everyone - this takes a while) At this particular wedding, the father of the groom made an interesting speech. He mentioned that his son had been able to marry the girl of his choice, which is something new in their culture. Now the father of the groom is Ismaili and his wife is Sunni - it's odd that this was an arranged marriage. Although, there aren't too many Ismailis left in Zanzibar so maybe it was a necessity - Nyerere and nationalization, look it up.
But back to the old brown women; they stole the mic after these speeches and made hilarious comments the rest of the evening. For example, when the bride and groom went to kiss but slightly missed, these women said something in swahili along the lines of, "if you can't even kiss now, how are you gonna make a baby tonight?"

So when one old brown lady complemented me on my Swahili skills, I knew that in my quest to speak Swahili, I had succeeded.

Canned cheese is Weird

I should be clear about something: This is NOT a development blog. I may rant about life in the developing world, but that's just me venting. I am not in Zanzibar to save the starving kids, cure AIDS, or fix the broken government. This is a personal blog. Its supposed to be about my life, experiences and my take on everything from politics to cheese. (Its the processed Kraft stuff, but it comes in a tuna can.)
I've noticed that I'm changing - I was never shy, but I'm starting to become more of a self-starter. For example, I started reading a book about Urban Design and failed Colonialism in Zanzibar. And then I started to contact locals that were interviewed by the author. (It's fairly easy to find someone here just by asking - people might send you to 10 wrong places but eventually it works.) And then I found out that the professor who wrote the book is back in Zanzibar for a few months. A little later and I now have his phone number. This is relatively new for me. I think it may be the friendly/ask-anyone-anything culture here that's changed me. Locals call it the "survival of humanity." They see the West as devoid of care and concern for your fellow 'binadamu' (sons of Adam).
Toronto can be cold (temperature-wise too), but I liked it. The concrete city, inside and out. It was efficient and you were free to be yourself, because really, nobody you didn't care about spoke to you anyway. At the same time, I guess that meant nobody was willing to help a stranger. And I have noticed before that in smaller Ontario towns, people are friendlier. (Except for the racist ones, but I digress.) This isn't very coherent, but I guess what I mean is: It's taken Zanzibar to make me realize that a city's stone walls don't have to match the hearts of its people. To be fair, you do have to conform here. Wear shorts or start talking without going through a 5 minute intro of your whole family, and you won't get any help. Back in Toronto - wear a pink tutu on the subway, and you're just from Rosedale.

I wish I had more Arms to Carry all this Octopus

I've been confused in class many times. But usually it's because I didn't understand what my mwalimu was saying. Today, I understood his words, just not why he was saying them.

In Swahili, there is a different verb for carrying things on your head, carrying things on your back, lifiting things to carry, taking little things, taking things out, taking things away, bringing things and just carrying in general. And there's different verbs for actively carrying and referring to someone carrying. I said I was carrying a bag and then used the same verb to say my baba was carrying a bag - It took about 20 minutes of my teacher explaining why that was ridiculous before I just pretended to understand and we moved on.
I found this really unusual for Swahili, because so many English words are covered by one Swahili word. 'Kama' can mean If, Like or Such as; 'Juu' can mean Over, Above, On, Top, or Up; 'Nafasi' can mean Time, Space, Chance, or Vacancy, etc.
So the fact that carrying is so specifically defined (and confusing) was initially strange. Maybe this was how they distinguished locals from foreigners when paying for tickets? (For movies, ferries, everything, foreigners pay at least double and up to 5 times as much as locals.) But when I thought about, I realized these different 'carry' verbs must be for practicality's sake. Every aspect of life here involves some carrying. Water doesn't just flow out of the taps in the bathroom (if you even have a bathroom); meat and fruit don't just go from the supermarket cart to your car to your fridge; your baby doesn't ride along happily in their stroller, your fancy executive-style all-in-one laptop case doesn't just swivel, roll out of the elevator and down the marble ramp from your air-conditioned corporate oasis (the SunLife building at Mansfield/Rene-Levesque where my mentor works - go there): Nope, you carry your water, your fresh octopus, your child and your unsold goods however you can manage. With your head, your back, your shoulders, your arms and your pockets. And I guess describing each of these ways would be too time consuming since you have to run home to eat before prayers.

JLo

Yup, you read the title correctly. Everyone here listens to one particular style of music: Local, Arab or Indian (bollywood is huge here); but in addition, they all like the popular rap/r&b artists from the great USofA. Sometimes when I get lost in Malindi, a part of town where the streets are literally sand poured on top of litter, it's quite common to hear Sean Paul, NeYo, Chris Brown, Craig David, and Shaggy (more on Shaggy later). Oh and of course Rihanna. She's like a virus. But here, she's not the only girl in the world. (That was bad, even for me.)
Now someone correct me if I'm wrong, but JLo isn't black. She's not even as black as Obama. (Come on, he was brought up in Hawaii with white grandparents.) Regardless, everyone man/woman/kid's ringtone is JLo. Except for my neighbour; her ringtone is a brown song from my dad's childhood. It's painful. And she's loves to text.
Re: JLo's roots. Of course Africans can listen to a Latina, and Arabs can listen to a Frenchman, and the whole world can live happily ever after. But I was specifically told by a few people that they listen to Jlo because she is "like them." 
Am I missing something here? Is GLo (George) African too? I googled a whole bunch of things and all I found was that Glow is now available in perfume shops across South Africa.
The bank teller's ringtone was 'On The Floor.' 'You Got It' is always blasting from the street vendors' boomboxes. A couple old dudes in Jaws Corner had her first CD. Even the thugs outside my window and the construction Mussas were listening to 'My Love Don't Cost a Thing.' I watched a Kenyan football star's interview - his first crush? JLo.
Her ethnicity is up in the air, but one thing's for sure: JLo has major street cred in Zanzibar.

Edit: According to a couple EWB junior fellows, Celine Dion and the Backstreet Boys are huge in Ghana. I didn't believe this until I started hearing them here too. (Read more about Bailey and Daniela in Ghana - links are on the left!)

p.s. I walked in the house one day and my mama said 'O Na Na' at complete random. Did I mention Rihanna is big here too?

Maji

(A while ago...)
I was washing my clothes today and thought "wow, I can't wait to get back so I can have hour-long hot showers and do a massive load of laundry." Not exactly the typical response to such an experience. Usually the response is more like, "After living in [developing country name here], I appreciate [basic human right] so much more!" Perhaps I'm not as close to my int'l development degree as I thought.
But in a way, I do appreciate the river of drinkable tap water in my dorm much more now. (And I guess those people don't always say they're going to conserve from on.) I guess the difference is in what I do about it, if anything. Because appreciating it and working towards universal access are two very very different things. I don't have an answer right now and I suspect I won't do anything when I go back. But at least I'm now aware of how very different life is without running water. And maybe someday in the future I'll remember this day and I might be in a position to do something about it.
I think I may just have gotten back on track to that int'l dev't degree.

Anyway, here's a great pic of me getting all sudsy and wrestling with a pair of jeans. Oh, and I thought I was being stupid and colourblind when I saw blue and green water left behind, but today there was red too. Anyone want to pre-order a complete set of white clothing? I suspect it'll be available in about 9 weeks. (You could use it to remake a really bad 80s music video.)
Correction: The pic won't upload, but the clothes are still for sale.

Jaws Corner

(a few days after the last one - these are actually really old, i'm doing a bad job of updating these)


Zanzibaris have a pretty traditional idea of gender roles. Mama and Farida cook and clean all day while Baba works and the boys go to school and the Madrasa (Quran School). I occasionally see Farida going to school, but not every day. As well, the men eat first, then mama, the boys and finally Farida. And of course, you eat with your hands.
There’s almost no alone time. If your entire life isn’t unfolding in front of the whole family’s (and neighbours’) eyes, then you must be sick and that’s why you’re in your room writing a blog. The kids play with the neighbours’ kids and they rotate houses (which helps to give mama a break). The front door is essentially left open all day long, because so many people from the area will visit for just a few minutes. Come to think of it, nobody seems to have a job. Even in town, people just walk around for hours meeting all their friends. (Edit: Since I wrote this, I've read a book that talks about how most people spent a few days every week visiting the palaces and government offices as part of their obligation to the Sultan. If people didn't show up regularly to talk and have chai, they would lose their trading rights.)


Maybe they spend so long walking around because they keep getting lost. When people go out for a walk, they say they are going 'Kutembea.' Instead, I've started saying I'm going 'Kupotea,' literally to get lost. This is a major problem for me so I thought navigating deserved a post of its own.
There are no maps. People have tried. But it would take a lifetime before you could walk every street and alleyway. The roads all intersect at arbitrary angles, at random times and occasionally never at all. I've noticed the locals aren't too concerned with the fastest or shortest way - they usually just walk to a place they know and then go from there. Most people choose the same spot as their reference point - Joe's Corner. It's appropriately named because you meet every average joe here. (There's even a few tables set up in the middle where you can get a cup of joe and play Bao, a Swahili game that I'll try to explain later.) For some reason it's written Jaws Corner and there's a painting of a shark on the wall just in case you weren't confused yet. It's the only 'intersection' with almost perpendicular streets and so acts as a sort of Zanzibari compass.
I too have my reference points for the route I take to work, and surprisingly it doesn't go through Jaws Corner (which saves me lots of time I would spend saying Salaam to everyone). There are no street names, but to give you an idea my route passes the Ice Cream shack, 'Bra St.,' Darajani Market, Spice St., the Fake IKFL (Its a shack called the Institute of Foreign Languages and Kiswahili, IFKL, that tries to imitate the university I study at.), Jewellery St. and the Old Fort. For a Toronto boy like me, working without a perfect grid and transit on every corner is definitely a new experience.

Context

After our walk in Stone Town, I was talking to Bwana Sallum about how I'll be working at the STCDA. While we were walking he pointed out a few renovated buildings and lots of new buildings on land that the government had sold. Stone Town is a very dense area and so the existence of land for all these new buildings was hard to believe. He explained that the government had been selling off old buildings to a few wealthy Europeans who demolished them and built hotels in their place. Despite the implementation of a conservation area and the designation as a UNESCO world heritage site, the government itself was causing the destruction of Stone Town.
"Great!" I thought - Not because of what was happening but because at least now I had some context before I started work tomorrow.

My findings: All toilet paper is wet in Zanzibar. It's just the humidity. Also, when Zanzibaris say "just a little rain," they mean full on thunderstorm. And when they say it's cold, they mean 30 degrees Celsius.