TIA (This Is Africa)

It has been almost a year and half since Alfred wrote on the blog. It is a testament to how busy our lives became once Alfred starting working full time. Since May 2009, Bodie turned 4...and then 5. He moved from Little Scholars to the French School and can count to 20 in French but thinks his teacher is bossy. TechnoServe Tanzania has grown from seven employees in 2008 to 65 employees today. Cleo topped out at 100 lbs. and her bite is worse than her bark. Hillary’s bark is on par with her bite and Alfred is working on his bark.

We have returned to the blog for several reasons. First, it proved to be a great way to keep friends and family connected. Ok, really it kept Alfred’s mother connected, who was the most faithful reader. Secondly, we are embarking on a new journey and we thought the blog would be a good way to engage with friends along the way.

As many of you know, we have started the process of adopting a baby girl from Ethiopia. Today was a milestone in that process. A high point for entertainment but a low point for the future of Tanzania. The adoption process requires tons of paperwork. References and clearances and background checks. Nevermind that we are already parents and no one asked us for a single qualification the first time around.

One of the many documents that is required is a police background check. This is a document that says we have not been convicted of anything in Tanzania. To attain such a document, we naturally had to request it from the Tanzanian police. For those of you unfamiliar with Africa, the police of just about any African country are, generally speaking, not known for their integrity.

Case in point:

I asked the driver at our office to find out what was required to secure such a document from the police. He returned the next day to say that the fee was $50. Sounds reasonable. But then he tells me that there is an 'additional fee' of $350. Right. Duly incensed and filled with righteous indignation but cognizant of the way things work in Africa, I asked how low he thought the police would go.

Here is the point in the story where I need to pause and remind those who have never lived in Africa that, while we are in complete agreement that paying such a 'fee' is morally reprehensible and simply wrong, if you are white and you are standing in front of a Tanzanian police officer asking him for something, you will need to pay for it. Or you will not get it. It’s that simple.

So I get the policeman on the phone.

“The $50 fee is no problem,” I tell him. “But what’s the other fee for?” I figured I would at least test to see if the guy had a conscience at all.

“I am sorry, madam, but you are breaking up. I can’t hear you.” Yes, indeed. He tried the old “I am going through a tunnel” trick.

Thirty minutes and 3 counter-offers later, we had a deal.

On Monday morning, we show up at the police station with our documentation and were met by the police officer. It was 8:30 and he was drunk. Not stumbling around drunk but reeking of cheap gin drunk. He ushered us in to various rooms of the dingy police station where, it turns out, each person had received their cut in order to turn the wheels of justice. By 3 p.m. that afternoon, we had the papers.

As people say here, TIA. This is Africa.

On Sturdiness and Death

“Is she sturdy?” I asked Hillary. Not a question one asks generally about someone else, but this has been a time where sturdiness is critical. Hillary reported that she is, indeed, sturdy. She said that Boerboels, mastiffs from South Africa that start as a cute little round puppies, shaped not unlike a baking potato with short straw legs, will grow up to 150 pounds. “Then let’s get her.”

This was a bizarre and expensive decision. It follows a time of inordinate sadness in our house surrounding puppies. Cleo is not our first puppy this year, or our second. Cleo better stay around and grow up with Bodie and be the formative pup that he remembers and talks about when he is an adult. Just like Kiba was supposed to be, and then Ruby was supposed to be.

The passing of two sweet pups is incalculably sad. Kiba was a Ridgeback, like Dexter, but smarter. At 10 weeks, she could open doors by jumping up and grabbing the door handles with her paws. She would curl up in Bodie’s bed with him and sleep. And until she ran under the car in the driveway as I was pulling in from work, I thought she was the smartest dog I knew.

We buried Kiba in the garden and Hillary and Bodie decorated a stone with her name and placed it there.

Ruby, another Ridgeback, would curl up on your feet as you washed dishes, or snuggle into your neck as you were sleeping. She was only 8 weeks old and got too close to Dexter when they were each gnawing on bones. He grabbed her and shook her off to the side, breaking her neck. We buried her in the garden and everyone in the house sunk into a deep funk.

Real tragedy occurs on a daily basis here in Tanzania, making it unseemly to feel wrought over the loss of a puppy. Families are ravaged by malaria, AIDS, and malnutrition across the country. Basic illnesses are not diagnosed or treated.

But losing Kiba, and then Ruby, felt devastating. Somehow puppies embody simple innocence. They prance and play and grab and chew anything remotely within reach. They provide simple, uncomplicated love. Chewy and omni-pissing, but uncomplicated. Our simple job, in taking a puppy, is to safeguard them. Their not reaching adult doghood is damning of our caretaking.

A house with a puppy has a certain frenetic energy. Hairbrushes from the bathroom get dragged off shelves and appear in other rooms, stuffed animals from Bodie’s bed end up in the living room, wet with chewing, shoes end up missing insoles, and there are puddles everywhere. It was clear to us though, after Ruby’s passing, that this chaos was warm and comfortable and you just have to wear flip-flops more often. The house, even with a rambunctious three-year-old, felt morgue-quiet without a puppy.

Bodie has been mulling over the passing of these pups and raises questions about death now much sooner than were prepared to deal with. Bodie asks repeatedly if Ruby is still dead. He tells people, random people in the market or at the beach, that his puppy is dead. Recently he said that he is a good boy because he doesn’t kill anyone. (vs. Dexter, canis non-grata for a while). “You’re alive, and mama is alive and my friends are alive, so I’m a good boy, right?”

Despite the fact that Hillary and I are uncertain about any sort of heaven, we quickly relied on this safe and happy place as the easiest and most comprehensible notion for a three-year- old to grasp. Bodie now knows that Kiba and Ruby are in dog heaven, where they can run and play and chew expensive Italian shoes to their hearts’ content.

The sense of loss is not just about the pups. There is no way to go through this bizarre set of happenings that has at turned our garden into a puppy graveyard without thinking about the fragility of those I love. Perhaps because both instances were a simple breaking of bodies, both sudden and instant, it is too easy to picture tragedy around every corner. The simple assemblage of bones and blood and organs pumping now seem so fragile. I know that Bodie is indestructible -- he tells me so with a dishtowel clothes-pinned on as his cape. My imagining every moving car, swaying tree limb, or animal as imminent disaster will only speed Bodie’s inevitable journey to the therapist’s office.

With a renewed appreciation of the fragility of life, I am almost, not quite, but almost appreciative every time I step in a warm puddle of pee in the hallway.

Piercing the Veil

A definite aspiration I had when coming to Tanzania a year ago was to get to know Tanzanians, to make friends, to be able to return in years and visit my dear friends so and so, in the village, who showed me such kindness when I first arrived. Yet the simple act of befriending people from here has proven very difficult. We have built a warm community of ex-pats – Americans, Australians, French, Swedish, Dutch, German. Tanzanians at shops that know us and are friendly. But still, we have no real Tanzanian friends.

This makes one consider what components are needed in a friendship. It is easy to reel off excuses here: You don’t need socio-economic parity, but it can help. You don’t need educational equity, but that too can help. You need some level of common interest, or life philosophy, and that implies some shared knowledge. But when all these miss – when there is a vast economic divide as there is next to no middle class here, when there is little educational overlap as the system here doesn’t produce many ex-lit majors much less majors… Couple that with the fact that I can’t speak Swahili for the life of me, and finally, maybe I’m not the outgoing bon vivant that I once aspired to be….and there you are.

So despite taking Bodie to school every day, buying petrol or bananas or Luku or dining in the neighborhood, part of me still feels very much outsider looking in while real Tanzania is happening.

I was recently asked to serve as acting Country Director for KickStart, an NGO that I had been doing some work with. It is an exciting organization which focuses on selling micro-irrigation or treadle type pumps. With 80% of the country involved in agriculture – most subsistence – bringing basic irrigation to bear can triple a farmer’s crop yield. Families can quickly move from subsistence farming to selling produce. It’s a simple and logical approach and an exciting organization to be working with.

Importantly, this could be one way for me to break through the Tanzania-friend barrier. And there is a good number of people there to try to find some common ground. On the application for a work visa (I am still classified as the emasculated “dependant spouse”, so can’t work legally), I answered the question that the organization has 85 Tanzanian citizens, and 1 non-citizen, me.

Two weeks ago, I was part of a three-day training for the nine regional sales officers. They came from across Tanzania to Dar for this training and see each other infrequently. Having worked with sales people, I expected loud banter, bragging, and bravado. Instead, everyone was reserved and polite, unnervingly quiet for sales people.

We had a dinner at the culmination for the team. The restaurant was well off any main road and served mishkaki – Swahili-style barbeque of grilled beef, goat, fish and bananas. This was not a place that mzungus might frequent.

The sales team rallied after a few drinks and became loud, boisterous, back slapping, well… salesman. Paul, who is Masai, was asked, solely for my benefit I think, how many siblings he had. He shrugged and laughed. Deo, sitting next to me, explained that Paul’s father had 28 wives. Paul added that each wife generally had at least 9 children, so he wasn’t sure how many brothers and sisters he had, but at least several hundred.

At the other end of the table, a group was laughing loudly and telling stories. Anthony asked me if I had tried locally brewed liquor. He explained that it could be so strong that it quickly loosened every muscle in the body so that it was best to tie your pants legs first.

Finally I had a glimpse on the other side of the curtain. The team was loud and crude and telling stories and acting just like sales people all over the world behaved. I finally felt on familiar territory.

Welcome Deebadaba

Our gardener and his wife, Tom and Martha, either foolhardy or clever at delegating, had told Hillary and me that they’d be honored if we would name their baby. A week before we returned from our trip, Martha had the baby in a typical African style, with an ease that infuriated Hillary.

I remember when we were ready, practicing the drive from our house to the hospital, our parents calling every hour or two to check in on how we were doing. We had rehearsed and practiced every step. We had taken classes and had a bag packed by the door with clothes, snacks and toiletries like we were voyaging on the QE2. We had carefully honed our “birth plan” on how every detail should unfold. Hillary was in labor for 12 hours, and everything in our world, rather the whole world, came to a grinding halt, as well it should, so Hillary could give birth. We spent two nights in the hospital, carefully attended by around-the-clock nurses who saw to our every need, with doctors continuously checking in.

Martha and Tom, on the other hand, grabbed a cab to Muhimbili Hospital last Friday morning. She had three hours of labor, a new son, and was home that afternoon. Nothing to it. And then they sat around for a week taking care of “baby”, since we hadn’t offered up a name.

Tom presented the hospital bill to me afterwards. It was a grand total of $115 and included $50 for delivery and $50 for doctors’ fees. Just like going out for a nice dinner in the U.S. No big deal.

We had decided that rather than just name the kid, since that had the potential to create all sorts of negotiating havoc in our marriage, we would offer a short list from which they could choose. Bodie also wanted to offer up a few names. We prepared our list and Bodie offered up his: Cee-cee, Deebadaba, Sno Sna, Max and Diego. (Which reminded me that our nephew, Noah, was more rightfully named Rocket Boy Weinstein by his brothers.)

We presented the names – the real list and Bodie’s list – to Tom and Martha. Tom read each option to Martha. Minutes passed. Tom poured over the list and was quiet. Martha was quiet. We realized they thought they had to choose one of each. They finally smiled, clearly with relief, when we explained that Bodie’s names were to be funny. I could imagine their wondering how they would explain to their relatives in Malawi why their beautiful son had a name fabricated by a three-year-old.

Of the names on the list, the OT names offered up (Isaac and Jacob) had already been taken by one of their brothers or sisters. Neither Henry nor Edward was picked. Welcome to the world, Christian. To us, you will always be Deebadaba.

Ethiopia Trip 3 – Gondar and Bahir Dar

Our first stop on the trip north would be Gondar, known as the “Camelot of Africa”. There is a tourist circuit which covers the some of the biggest cultural sites in Ethiopia – Gondar, Bahir Dar, Axum and Lalibella – and, as it was Christmas, I was worried that we had better have airline tickets and hotel rooms secured in advance. I had spent a few hours in the Ethiopian Air ticket office in Dar es Salaam to arrange our flights, and had been on the phone for hours trying to call hotels from Tanzania. Even though traveling in Ethiopia is supposed to be challenging, our flights and rooms were lined up, and all in all, I felt pretty proud of myself for my advance planning. My wife and child will not suffer hours in a squalid rip off travel agency or wander the streets of Ethiopia homeless. I am a good provider after all.

But alas, we learned that “reserved” is a very relative term. Trying to get on the flight to Gondar provided lesson one. The desk agent, who puzzled over our tickets while tapping at the computer for ten minutes, answered reassuringly, when we asked if there was anything wrong with our tickets. “Your tickets? No, they are fine. The problem is with the booking, which has been cancelled completely.” Well, as long as the tickets are good.

Even though the plane to Gondar was completely full, the agent somehow managed to find three seats for us. We arrived at the Quera Hotel to check in. Our name was the second noted on a handwritten reservation list that the receptionist showed us; however, no rooms were available. After first saying that it was our fault for coming so late (at 4 in the afternoon), a manager then came out to help us find other accommodation. Luckily, we were told, there was room at the beautiful Atse Bekaffa Hotel, which is newer and just 50 yards up the street.

Since the Quera lobby was dark, with a large TV playing to a room full of locals lazing in old brown lazyboy-type chairs with stuffing coming out, we didn’t mind the idea of moving to another hotel.

We trooped up the street and climbed narrow stairs leading to a small worn desk against the wall, which served as the reception. A few locals sat in a cramped waiting room on more run down, smaller, brown chairs watching a small TV suspended from the ceiling. Welcome to the Atse Bekaffa.

Our room had peeling. yellowed linoleum flooring, ragged red curtains and one dangling light bulb. Hillary’s immediate nuanced comment, “I hate it here”, erased a few of the Good Provider Points (GPPs) I’d awarded myself.

It wasn’t until the beating bass from the disco downstairs started later that night that it became clear how many GPPs were being lost. At 2 pm, Hillary glared at me, unable to sleep, and politely asked, “have I told you how much I hate it here?” The question was made an emphatic, if less polite, statement two hours later.

That morning, we moved to the Goha Hotel, a hotel perched on the cliff overlooking the city, and harmony, but no Good Provider Points, was restored.

Gondar, founded by Emperor Fasilidas around 1635, is famous for its many medieval castles. The battlements and towers feel European, evoking images of chivalrous knights on horseback and of ceremonies laden with pageantry. Our guide told us stories of Machiavellian plots and intrigues, tortures and poisonings, but overall caring and beneficence towards the people as successive emperors between the mid 17th and mid-18th centuries built castles. There were royal saunas, royal swimming pools and royal secret rooms. And to be true to the European model, there is recent damage as a result of the British bombing during WWII in order to hit the Italians, who had used the castles during their invasion.

The next day, a 1970’s-era Nissan taxi showed up to take us the 200 kilometers to our next stop on the shores of Lake Tana, Bahir Dar. The drive was through a beautiful landscape with mountains and vast fields dotted by small villages of round huts with thatched roofs. Everywhere people were walking. People walked with donkeys piled high with goods. People walked with goats. People walked with oxen pulling carts. Man walked holding hands as they talked. It was a Sunday, so we saw crowds of people, all wrapped with white shawls, streaming out of small Christian Orthodox churches.

Men had turban-type wrappings against the sun and shawls. Whether walking down paths, across fields, or on the road, every male over the age of five carried a long stick. Useful apparently as a walking stick, cattle prod or cudgel, sticks were leaned against in conversation, used to tap wayward burros, and shouldered as props to help carry large bundles on one’s head. It felt like an ancient and wild place. We saw a few men toting their Kalashnikovs while out for a Sunday stroll, and bombed out tank cadavers, remains from Mengistu’s rein thirty years ago.

While I imagined that if our little Nissan taxi broke down, I might not fare extremely well in these harsh lands, I also knew that if someone were to transport some of these people to the rough streets of Bethesda, they might not fare so well either. Perhaps they’d order an espresso in the morning, or not know how to properly line up at Barnes and Noble, or how to order a bagel with a schmear. We all have our own street smarts.

Lake Tana, the largest lake in Ethiopia, is the source from where the famous Blue Nile starts its long journey to Khartoum and on to the Mediterranean. It has thirty-seven islands that house twenty monasteries - surviving remnants of an old, contemplative tradition. Because of their isolation, the monasteries were used to store art treasures and religious relics from all parts of Ethiopia. Tradition says the Ark of the Covenant was kept on one of these islands when Axum was endangered.

We spent most of our two days in Bahir Dar taking a small boat to visit monasteries. The ones we visited were built in the 11th and 13th centuries. Our guide, John, said he shouldn’t go in as he had had milk that morning, so had not kept his fast.

Monks, bearded and barefoot, still inhabit these monasteries as they have for 900 years. They showed us books with goatskin pages illustrated by the monks that dated to the founding of the monasteries. There were crosses – Axumite crosses, Gondorian crosses and others – incense holders and other religious relics that went back between 500 and 900 years.

Bodie, less interested in the history (even though we told him that these books were older than Pop pop and Grammy), liked steering the outboard and dragging a stick through the water.

On our last day in Bahir Dar, we wandered the market stalls. Kuta, or woven clothes, white with colored fringe, dresses, and scarves lined stall after stall in one area of the market. A row away, stalls had burlap sacks of pungent spices, from deep red to orange, toasted seeds of brown and beige, tef and other grains, and knee high pyramids of onions and garlic. There were houseware stalls with enormous ceramic plates to cook injira, ladles, spoons, bowls, pots, and giant pans to roast coffee beans. There was a tool section and a religious items section with candles, bibles, incense burners and rosary beads. Everything that one might throw away had been repurposed. Long bits of rebar had been bent into shapes useful for holding a pot over a fire; jewelry was fashioned from found objects; old tires were turned into shoes and inner tubes into large water bags to be mounted on donkeys.

Bodie’s approach to the market was not to try to blend, but to be a noticed fixture, a loud, attention-grabbing fixture. He had a brass horn and walked through the market, tooting loudly and waving at people. He attracted a crowd and started shaking hands like a seasoned politician. He introduced himself to people and, for some reason, started explaining who all his cousins were. He finally wearied, found a stall he liked, crawled onto a pile of woven throws, and lay down to rest.

Ethiopia Trip 2– Lake Langano

The Bishangari Lodge, on Lake Langano, an eco-lodge that Hillary had found on the internet sounded good. The website had nice pictures and the word “eco”, so we decided to go. Not a whole lot more research went into it. It wasn’t until we were about three hours into our drive, and heading onto a rough dirt road for another hour or so with Bodie bouncing around with an irritable I-should-be-napping whine, that we realized that we should have asked how far it was.

The car, an old Toyota minibus with bordello red cotton curtains and a red velvet dashboard cover with fringe, creaked on half-bald tires over rutted dirt roads. We drove for over an hour past small villages of round mud huts and thatch roofs. Children ran out at us, waving, smiling. Only occasionally the idyllic image was punctuated by a few kids shouting, “give me money”.

Lake Langano is large with milky tea-brown water as a result of mineral deposits. We arrived as the sun was setting over the lake, and hopped into a horse drawn cart to go to our cabin. Bishangari Lodge truly is eco. It has 10 cabins, all with hot water and power from solar, and is on a preserve, so is lush with wildlife. It also has a tree bar, literally a two-level bar built into a 500 year old tree.

It is remote and beautiful. We woke on Tuesday morning as a baboon jumped on the cabin door handle to climb up to the Christmas wreath and snatch the shiny gold ornament. Four baboons, sitting on the porch studied the ornament, testing it and finally biting it. One pushed his face against the window looking in, like a kid making a squishy face.

After breakfast, we went on a trek with a guide. The birds are incredible, with over 450 species identified. We saw silver cheeked hornbills, looking like they carried large fuselages strapped to their heads, white-headed African eagles, herons, egrets, pelicans and more. We learned to identify the sounds of the African bubu versus that of the plover or the red-eyed dove. We saw warthogs and black and white colubus monkeys swinging in the branches high above.

Bodie, who has become increasingly talkative, chose this quiet nature walk to talk and talk and talk. “Why is he making that sound?” “Why are the ants doing that?” To our guide, “Hakim, what bird is that?” and on and on. I finally suggested that we all be quiet to listen to the birds and he quickly upbraided me, “papa, I need to talk.” I have no doubt that Hakim went home to his six quiet children gladly.

Bodie and I took our swimming show on the road and braved the tea brown waters of the lake. Bodie waded in first and taunted me, without even knowing how to taunt, me to swim with him in the cold waters.

The afternoon ended as we sat in a round hut for a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony. Coffee originated in Ethiopia, and it is still prepared probably much as it has been for a thousand years. The cherries are dried in the sun, and then the beans are roasted in a small pan over a fire, then ground with a large wooden mortar and pestle. Incense is burned and accompanies the aroma of the coffee.

Then time for hippo spotting. We walked a mile along the lake to where a rocky peninsula shelters a small bay. Apparently hippos come out in the evening and don’t like wind, so this was a prime spot. We perched on the rocks as the sun set. Just in front of us a baby hippo started turning summersaults with its mother lumbering right behind chomping grass. All in all, it was an amazing Christmas Eve.

We woke for Christmas morning and Santa had miraculously set up a small tree in our room. Or I had gone out at night and pulled a branch from a tree – certainly a fine thing to do in an eco-preserve - and wedged it into one of my shoes. Hillary decorated the tree with ornaments she’d brought from Dar and arranged gifts underneath.

Bodie was thrilled that Santa had come to our cabin and opened his presents with true joy. He was beaming and marveling at his new wooden airplane.

Later that morning, after we had gone for a walk in the forest, Hillary was testing changing the format of her Nikon, not realizing that the word “format” on a digital camera is used as it would be on a computer. More than 900 pictures were quickly erased. A slightly tearful but resolute Hillary marched us back to the cabin to recreate Christmas.

We have pictures of Bodie, tears just wiped from his cheeks as he didn’t want to get back into his jammies, opening his presents with encouragement from us, “show real surprise. Look happy. Pretend that you’ve never seen the plane before.” In the end, Bodie valiantly re-opened each gift and gave an Oscar-winning performance.

Our Christmas has been re-chronicled and, in the future, Bodie will never know the difference.

Ethiopia Trip 1 – Addis Ababa

Nestled between Sudan, Somalia, and Eretria, Ethiopia is not a destination most people think of visiting for the holidays. But time spent in the hot December ovens of Dar es Salaam (which translates to “bake at 350 degrees for three months per year), and Ethiopia, with its balmy days in the 70’s and cool nights in the 40s becomes appealing. We had heard that it is stunning, with amazing landscapes, and incredibly warm people. A few friends described it as going back thousands of years.

Yes and no. After Tanzania, Addis Ababa, at first view, looks downright thriving. Addis is a big city, bustling with traffic, businesses, and buildings under construction. In fact, Addis boasts 128 buildings over 4 stories tall currently under construction. Hillary said she felt like a country bumpkin when we walked through the airport and we were remarking on how the building is big and clean with long marble hallways, shiny steel and glass, and immigration booths that didn’t look like they were picked up at a soviet salvage sale.

Streets have curbs (nonexistent in Tanzania), which means there are sewers. This sounds minor, but is significant. Not only are they paving, they are planning for rain and runoff and water flow. Yes, planning!

And above ground, coffee bars and cafes! While there is significant poverty here, in Addis, unlike in Dar, there appears to be a burgeoning middle class that can support the frivolous things we’ve grown accustomed to, like coffee bars.

Our first few days were spent at the New Flower, a small guesthouse that mostly caters to European and American couples aiming to adopt a child. Ethiopia boasts a combination of significant poverty, stunning people, and liberal adoption laws, making it the top country in Africa from which westerners can adopt. Sassu, who runs the guest house, advises the families on where to go with their new babies, as not all Ethiopians are happy about these children being ‘exported’. The government, heavily involved in all affairs in the country, gets a sizable fee for each baby, so many Ethiopians view the adoption process as the selling of their babies. However, while we were at the guest house, a Danish couple had just adopted their baby, a boy who had been left on the street and found by a policeman. Clearly, the story is complicated.

On our first day, a Sunday with much of the city closed, we walked around the Bole area. There were cafes with the scent of Ethiopian coffee wafting out, and real, flakey buttery croissants.

For dinner, we strolled for 40 minutes to a “cultural restaurant” that had been recommended to us. We realized we were lost and hailed a taxi which drove us the final one block to Yod Abyssinia, a restaurant that features amazing Ethiopian food, and a show with traditional music and dancing. The dancing here is unlike anything else in Africa that we’ve seen. While most African dancing is all about gyrating hips, here it is all shoulders. Shoulders and heads move in ways that one wouldn’t think they could move – vibrating up and down, left shoulder and right bouncing separately, shimmying and popping.

Bodie met two other toddlers. While they couldn’t communicate, Bodie’s English and their Amharic not finding common ground, all three stood below the stage, dancing, spinning and hugging, and imitating the dancers’ moves for an hour. I think most people there found this to be cute, but there were definitely some clear glances in our direction that parents should get their children under control. As we were the only farangi there, it was clear that Bodie was ours, so we’d make a show of going over every song or two and bending down to talk to him, hoping it looked like we were parenting. It was halfhearted as we both liked his dancing and had calculated that another few dances and we’d be sure to get a solid night’s sleep.

Monday morning found us at the National Museum. The history of Ethiopian kingdoms – bronze work and weapons from 400 BC from the kingdom of Aksum, which extended into Arabia – shows a vibrant civilization that had broad trade with Persia, India and Arabia.

More mindboggling are the paleological testaments to this truly being the birthplace of mankind. From the findings of Lucy, the 3.5 million year old fossils of a woman hominid slightly bigger then Bodie, to a video showing how all mankind evolved from people here – a film of early man morphing into an Ethiopian face, then a Scandanavian face, an Indian one, Asian..-- it is astounding and forces recognition of the vast majority of commonalities we all share far outnumbering the differences.

We wandered the Piazza, an area that I had thought, based on nothing but its name and the slight knowledge I had that the Italians had invaded here 50 years ago, that it would be filled with Italian architecture and cafes. Instead, it was jammed with a hundred jewelry stores. Hillary mumbled something about justice being served as we walked from one window to the next.

Our dinner was at the family of Hillary’s sort-of half-brother. Twenty-three years ago, when Hillary was 15, her father visited Ethiopia as a journalist. He befriended a family who had a 17-year-old son, and feared his entry into the army. Edward managed to secure a visa for Siele and brought him back to live with the family in Princeton. This was certainly generous, but more importantly, very prescient as we got the opportunity to have dinner at Siela’s family’s house. His sister, Kide, and their mother, Amelework, threw a feast fit for a dozen. The table, laden with injira and a dozen bowls of lentils, chickpeas, shiro wat, beets, and other delicious food, was an amazing feast. After dinner, they drove us around Addis, giving a tour of the neighborhoods, small tin shacks built on plots next to large mansions, panoramic views of the city, and a quick tour of the resplendent Sheraton, where Siela had one of the three ceremonies celebrating his marriage.

We also learned that in Orthodox Christianity, as practiced here, one “fasts” every Wednesday and Friday. This means a vegan diet for those two days per week. In addition, all the holidays are fasting days. In total, there are more than 200 fasting days per year, so more fasting than meat days. This makes Ethiopia perfect for travelling vegetarians who simply need to request fasting food.

On Tuesday morning, Hillary had to wrestle with a proposal due before Christmas, so Bodie and I went to the Sheraton to swim. The Sheraton is not a regular Sheraton – it is huge and 5 star and one of Africa’s most elite hotels. The pool is not so much a pool as a tiled lake. There are peninsulas and tiled beaches and well-heeled people lolling about in shallow water having drinks brought to them. This was not anything that we had expected in Ethiopia.

From this large bustling city, filled with the sounds of horns, goats, cows and music, and the smells of too many cars, injira and spices and the pungent musks of animals, we were launching our trip. First, south to see nature, and then north, to tour historical and cultural sites.

Hot for the Holidays

Nothing tugs at all the senses like the holidays. Smells of certain foods cooking, or the touch of pine needles or cold crisp air, or the sounds of holiday music…

And not having those can create a real longing. So the ex-pats in Dar dig into celebrating holidays in ways they might not as fully at home. Yes it is 90 degrees, and yes, your shirt is plastered to you and the frames on your glasses can leave little red burn marks on your temples. And if you are three years old, you can have an ongoing heat rash that makes you look like a pimply adolescent. But damnit, it’s Christmas and we’re gonna do it right. Sort of like the old Avis commercial, ”we are sweaty, so we try harder.”

Our friend Marion, who is German, invited us to celebrate Martinstag with her. St. Martin’s is a big day in Germany. Apparently, Martin was in the Roman army in 300 A.D. One snowy winter evening, Martin and the other soldiers were returning on horseback to Amiens. A beggar sat at the city gate, so cold in his ragged clothing that he could not even ask for help. Martin did not have any money or food to give him, so he cut in half his heavy red soldier’s cloak and gave him half.

That’s the story. He got to be a saint for giving half a coat. Half! I imagine him, with a New York Jewish accent, “what, a little bit of the lining will keep you warm. Ok, for you my friend…”

The Germans traditionally celebrate with Gluewein, meatballs, and other foods, lots of carol singing, and a lantern parade.

Marion had about eight families over to celebrate. Some families were more clued in than others on the lantern front. I had plopped a candle into a tin cup and tied a wire to it for Bodie to carry. Other families showed up with elaborately decorated paper lanterns. I was heartened a little when Clare showed up with two tea candles tied to string hanging from a stick. Although both of ours efforts completely missed the point, at least I wasn’t going to send my kid up in flames.

Marion anticipated the fact that a few of us didn’t quite get it and had paper, glue, candles, and art supplies ready. Quickly fashioning more appropriate lanterns, we set out after dusk to march the dusty streets of Dar for our lantern parade.

Lanterns bobbed in the dark as we paraded down the dirt streets, singing Christmas songs. It must have been a sight as people stopped to watch a bunch of mzungus walking with lanterns singing Jingle Bells. It was quite beautiful. Each kid treated his or her lantern with reverence. Which is to say, Bodie didn’t immediately turn his into a flying “bopper”, as seems to be his instinct now.

On Saturday, the Yacht Club held a kids holiday party. The party had clowns (I guess no elf outfits exist in Tanzania.) organized games, crafts and music.

The big event was of course Santa. Parents who wanted to could drop off a present ahead of time and Santa would pass them out.

After a few hours of games, music, and organizers wearing thin in the 90-degree heat. A signal was given for Santa. The entrance was dramatic. And slow. Santa was apparently at sea and would be arriving via boat, so all the kids lined the stone wall over the harbor and flocked down to the pier.

Choruses of Santa Santa Santa rang out. Organizers were on their walkie-talkies behind us yelling, “I don’t care. Get Santa here NOW!” Families waited. Each boat that came into sight elicited cheers. Women in bathing suits, out for an afternoon sail had never felt so appreciated.

An interminable half hour later, Santa appeared in the distance on a large catamaran, which slowly approached the pier. The tide was low and the catamaran drew too much water to get to shore, so a dingy was dispatched for the final leg.

Santa finally made a glorious entrance. Wearing the full red suit, belt, hat and beard in the late afternoon heat, Santa tried to plow through the gift giving. Over 100 wrapped presents were piled by his chair. With the fans going, the beard in his mouth, and the combination of accents – Tanzanian, South African, English, American -- kids would tune out or not recognize their names, torturing the wilting Santa.

On Sunday, Hillary, inspired by local crafts, woke Bodie and I early to make ornaments. We walked around the yard, gathering sticks, large fallen pods, and interesting leaves. We crafted ornaments, painting sticks, tying together small twigs, and fashioning pods to wires. And then we baked ginger cookies. Really. We mixed and kneaded cookie dough with cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. I couldn’t find real cookie cutters, so we used Bodie’s Play-Dough cutters and have a wonderful assortment of duck, tree, car, bunny, and dog holiday cookies.

We still have two Hanukah parties to attend and two more Christmas parties.

We, like other ex-pats here, are masterfully channeling the longing to be home with family into some over the top holiday-making.

Ex-Pats Re-Patting

Not unlike your first semester in college, or first week at summer camp, as a new expat, your normal social blinders are off and you are open to befriending others. Within a short time here Hillary and I knew more couples with young kids, couples eager to have dinners out or go to the beach together, then all of our college friend-making combined.

There is decidedly an opening of the spirit that happens being pulled out of what one has grown up with. After years of habits at home have become rote – riding the metro without thinking, or going to the store and knowing each aisle – living overseas can truly open one’s eyes in a profound way not only to the surroundings, but to other people.

Like in summer camp, you can find yourself forming fast and deep friendships. But also like camp, perhaps part of the ease comes from inherent time limitations. Ex-pats rotate in and out.

Our friends Teal and Nat are heading back to D.C. after three years here. They arrived in Dar as a couple that could explore the restaurants and night life of the city, and are leaving (find a better verb than “saddled”) with a beautiful 2-year-old, Clara, one en route, and a firm 8 pm bedtime.

Bodie and Clara love each other and I can’t think of a dinner that we’ve had at their house that didn’t end with the four adults jammed in a bathroom, glasses of wine in hand, Bodie and Clara playing and splashing in the bath. Somehow Teal always cadges the prime toilet seat (playing the prego card).

My Dad just celebrated his 80th birthday. One of the amazing things my parents have managed is maintaining friends from their young married days in Boston and Washington. The party, which my mom threw (and unfortunately we could only make a video appearance), had a roomful of people that my sisters and I grew up calling “uncle” and “aunt”.

It is both joyful to make new friends, friends whom you both like enormously as individuals (which might be a way of saying they seem to like me as well as Hillary, who everyone likes anyway), and as a couple. But it is also extremely sad that they are leaving.

Hillary and I have talked about how neither of us is a good as we want to be about maintaining networks over time. We are having a farewell lunch with them this afternoon, and Bodie will say good-bye to Aunt Teal and Uncle Nat. Because Hillary and I are both getting better about identifying things truly important in life, we’ll invite them now to my 80th birthday party.

Puppy!

The Miller-Wise household welcomes Kiba, who is feasting on Hillary's shoes, and making us very glad that the floors are easy-to-clean tile.

Halloween in Dar

Halloween represents classic American childhood. Dressing up and gathering candy is one of those collectively shared memories, part of every U.S kid’s psyche. I didn’t fully appreciate the importance of candy corns and polyester costumes until being here, when they are not an option. When I asked Tanzanians if they celebrated Halloween, miming for them on my knees really scary faces and kids running around gobbling candy, generally I’d get a slight downward cast glance and headshake. People here, old people and even women with kangas wrapped tightly around their legs, are remarkably adept at quickly backing away from you without ever taking their eyes off you.

Not have Halloween? Preposterous. So, we decided that Bodie should have Halloween, and we should have drinks. A party was called for.

Thirty adults heeded the call toting kids and bags of candy (although some of it was fancy-schmancy European stuff, which somehow ended up behind the juice cartons in the back corner of our refrigerator where I hoped no one would find it). We had trick or treating, or a version of it. Parents sprawled out throughout the garden, nursing drinks and doling out candy, as kids traipsed from one parent to the next. Two hours after the five year olds had taught the younger kids how to mainline sugar, a giant Winnie the Pooh showed up.

One of Bodie’s classmate’s parents runs a costume shop/production company and brought along one of her cast members. The kids loved Pooh and chased him around the garden. Once the running starts, the dogs jump in. Now that’s a Halloween tradition right there, I thought, as Pooh sprinted across the garden with Dexter, our 140 pound dog, giving chase, nipping into his cushy foam leg.

Bodie, in mustache, beard and one of Hillary’s poufy white shirts, was a debonair pirate. Lot’s of “argh”, “ahoy matey” and “trim the sails”. We had spidermen, princesses, snow whites, ghosts, super babies, and ladybugs. I tried to remember back to my earliest costume memory.

I remember being 4 years old and playing Batman and Robin with a neighbor. His mom was, as my mom used to say, “artsy”. She dyed long underwear for our costumes and sewed black capes. I always had to play Robin and the one-year-older and bigger Eric got to be Batman. Always. Had I known then what I know now, I would’ve built an annual review into my contract with an opportunity at the big job. Being limited to the Boy Wonder at age 4 is one of my earliest memories, and I’m not sure how it’s limited my perspectives in life.

One of Hillary’s earliest memories, at age 5, is being dropped in a swimming pool by a playful Uncle Doug. He didn’t realize she didn’t swim yet. (Thirty years later, he still apologizes whenever he sees her.) She remembers looking up at the surface of the pool and seeing the arc of her fully clothed father’s dive into the pool to retrieve her.

Do early memories always have to be traumatic?

If we can have first memories of happy moments, Bodie might be in for a treat. As the party got late -- it must have been pushing 8 pm -- things got a little crazy. Bodie disappeared into a bathroom with Salome, a wily 5-year-old, and Marisa, a crafty 2-year-old. He emerged naked save Marissa’s Lady Bug costume and hat. Juiced on sugar, he ran circles from the living room around the hallway to the kitchen over and over for an hour, flapping his ladybug wings, shouting: “Chase me! I’m a ladybug!”

And if first memories must be of the traumatic kind, good parents that we are, some day, perhaps when he is a teenager with a girlfriend over for dinner, it will be time to talk about our time in Tanzania, and bring out the ladybug slideshow. Then he’ll remember.

Obama!

The dawn had yet to come up as we put the dogs outside in a pouring rain, packed up Bodie, a bag of coffee, a dozen eggs, some tomatoes and onions, and headed over to Matt’s house to watch the election returns.

The storm had temporarily knocked out Matt’s TV, which gets Armed Forces Television, so we gathered around a laptop and started preparing breakfast. Hillary watched in her Obama shirt. Matt clutched coffee in his, well matched to his pajama pants. Mason did a sort of cabbage patchy hip wiggle dance shouting Obama Obama Obama. It wasn’t for the faint of heart. Raj, the Australian contingent, filmed the TV once it came back on. Teal and Nat, heading back to DC shortly, cheered loudly with each swing state announcement.

Bodie, indoctrinated by his parents, knows that there is now a “bad” president. Bodie’s take on why he is bad comes from a preschool perspective– “he pushes and he hits” – isn’t too far off. When the anchors said Obama, which was every other sentence or so, Bodie gleefully shouted to us, “he said Obama!”

When Obama gave his speech, tears were flowing. I realized that a little piece of me, a knot, a tension, dissolved. Living overseas, I have to say “I’m American” frequently. And each time I say it, I now realize, it was with a touch of wariness of how it would be perceived, a small dose of embarrassment over the many messes that our country has instigated during this administration.

Certainly Africa, like most of the world, is watching this U.S. election unlike ever before. Tanzanians are exceedingly reserved, yet, when one walks around Dar es Salaam with an Obama shirt, people call out and shout “Go Obama!”. As we watched, Nat received a text message that tomorrow was declared a National Holiday in Kenya.

I’ve known how angry I was over the Bush administration’s mangling of most things it touched, but not realized how I had internalized that as some element of shame. Like good therapy, as Obama repeated “yes we can”, I felt a little weight lift, a sense of pride and optimism replace a knot of shame and cynicism.

The historic fact that Obama is African-American is fine, but the sense of hope comes more from his approach to how this country can care for its people, take a meaningful role in benefitting all citizens of the world, and ultimately create a world that is safer and more hospitable for Bodie and his generation.

I sat next to Hillary, Bodie clutched in her lap, as Obama spoke. A notion of possibility, of a more positive future, is palpable in ways that I’ve never imagined as a result of a politician. While this president is indeed stepping into the deepest assemblage of calamities that the country has seen in many generations, I have a sense of buoyancy that the U.S. will be a country that I feel proud to say I’m from again.

Business Ideas – Continued

I am torn between getting work as a consultant and trying to start a business. The consulting is the easier route – I’ve done consulting, there are lots of groups here hiring consultants and the projects might even be meaningful. Consulting calls my name in a sultry, siren-like voice. “Come do a gannt chart and a budget, you know how, and we’ll give you a nice day rate and you can chalk up a little self-esteem again…”

However, I keep toying with the idea of trying to start something. I have the rare opportunity in life to attempt something new, truly a clean slate. There is opportunity here, but I also know there would be tremendous frustration. Simply grocery shopping or dealing with everyday matters here can be exasperating, so I can only imagine that magnified in running a business.

The business climate here is challenging. With lots of western donor investment, there are countless commissions and committees and ministries all focused on trying to make business investment easier. All this bureaucratic focus on trying to make it easier gives a pretty good indicator of how monstrously cumbersome, bureaucratic, and rife with corruption the process truly is.

Some of the criteria I’ve put in place for starting a business include:

1. Tangible product. I want something to bring home to Bodie besides a PowerPoint presentation, and to be able to say, “This is what Papa does”. This is a reaction to many years of consulting and marketing with everything I’ve done to date able to be erased from a big hard drive.
2. Must be able to sell a customer once, and then, if attention is paid to quality and price, you can keep the customer and not start from scratch. A reaction to zero based budgets year in and year out…
3. Must be a socially minded or a social purpose business. This is the easiest to achieve as any company here that employs people is doing a mitzvah in job creation.
4. The product should be viable long term. A lot of intermediate steps are introduced in developing countries – solar ovens, biomass briquettes – which may be wonderful and helpful, but designed for use until there is real infrastructure in the country.
5. Sleep worthy. That is, a product or service that I could go to sleep feeling like it was a good healthy addition to the world and not slowly withering my soul with each day of further engagement.
6. Money. I don’t need to be rich, but I’d like to make some money somehow. We have friends heading home soon who are scouting pre-schools. Its easy to forget here that the costs in D.C. for a year of finger painting, napping and diaper changes exceed what it would be to build and staff your own school in Tanzania.

I get stymied when I think about the challenges of building a team here. The slightest hint of initiative seems a rare personality trait. Try ordering something just a little different than what is listed on the menu here and you see a look of absolute confusion, followed by frenzied conversations between waiters and cook staff.

A few months ago when navigating the labyrinth of a big hospital with Tom, our gardener and his wife, we were told to go to room 50. Tom went to the door, tried the handle, and stopped cold.

I asked what was up and he said it was locked. That was it. Game over. No effort at an alternate strategy, say knocking, or asking about another room. I’m not sure how long he would have stood there had I not kicked him in the shin.

I’ve been helping a woman entrepreneur write a concept paper to be submitted to a business plan competition here. I wrote and printed out the first draft and reviewed it with her, noting sections that needed her attention. We met a week later and she handed me eight pages of carefully written cursive script. I was thrilled. Until I read them and realize that she had undertaken an elementary school exercise of simply copying, word for word, everything I had written in her own script. Including things like “Need more info here.”

From my understanding, the education system here focuses on rote memorization. I can’t imagine anyone I’ve worked with in the U.S. thinking that copying what I’d typed in careful penmanship would be anything other than a complete waste of time. This is the raw material that an entrepreneurial team must be built from?

The ideas have come and gone and my energy around them has waxed and waned. From solar to biomass briquettes, I finally landed on an idea that hit all my buttons: Dried Fruit. It makes sense as health trends in the U.S. and EU are trending so that people are more health conscious; roughly 30% of the fruit grown here goes bad from lack of processing ability, Tanzania is on the ocean making for easy transport, dried fruit would be weight effective for transport, and the process is relatively simple. I was excited and dug into the research.

I was put in touch with the founder of a company that has been in the business for 20 years. He and his partner started a dried fruit business in Uganda and expanded to a UK-based company that imports and packages. It’s an impressive story and the absolute right person in the world to be learning from. I was excited about writing him and eagerly opened his response, which began:

“I don’t want to be negative, but”, (an inauspicious beginning) “I would not encourage you to work on fruit drying for a number of reasons:

• It is at best a marginal business. I have been working at it for 20 years and it took us 14 years to break even! We will lose money again this year and we expect to lose money roughly one year in three.
• My partner and I still draw salaries roughly equal to those of a UK school teacher despite being in charge of a substantial and risky business.”

He continued in an incredibly thoughtful and analytic approach with another nine bullet points and a wrap up, “Honestly if I had my time again I would not dry fruit! Fruit Drying is only one step above basket weaving in my opinion ... and basket weaving is the last hope of the damned.”

Case closed. Mark that feasibility assessment complete.

Grateful for the candor, I am exploring other options. And I am thinking that a little consulting may be a good route to maintaining sanity during the exploration.

High Holy Days á la Tanzania

While Tanzania is comprised of more than 140 different tribes, not one of them is Jewish. So for Yom Kippur, the Lubavitch Chassidim send over two rabbis from New York to lead services for a small group of ex-patriot Jews. You can only imagine a group of these rabbis, focused on outreach, clustered in a small room in Brooklyn, drawing straws. “I got Greece!” “I got Puerto Vallarta!!!” “I got Dar es Salaam????”

And in Dar, counting the Members of the Tribe doesn’t take too long. For a service to be held, by the rules of, um, well, by the rules, one needs to have a minyon, or quorum, with 10 men. They just managed to scrape that together for the evening service commencing Yom Kipper, the most holy day on the Jewish calendar.

One cannot help but be struck by this crazy contrast of worlds. Driving the few kilometers over to the service, Bodie and I passed Massai, strolling purposefully in their signature red and blue-checkered capes, beaded ankle bracelets, knives tucked in belts, carrying long warrior staffs. Bodie and I pulled into the restaurant and met Rabbi Yaacov, wearing has signature Hassidic long beard and side curls, broad brimmed hat, black suit and white talus over his shoulders.

I wanted to broker introductions. Rabbi, these are Massai, from an ancient tribe of pastoralist warriors. Massai, meet Rabbi Yaacov, from an ancient tribe of pastoralist doctors and lawyers?

Services are held at Nargila, an Israeli-owned middle-eastern restaurant, that serves as the hub of al things Jewish in Dar. It had been set up with a wooden divider in the middle, men on one side, women on the other, and Bodie running back and forth between the two, calling out to each, “here I am.”

A few middle-aged Israelis sat in the back, acting surly as if they were there only to please their mothers. A few eager Americans gave a good show of sounding out some Hebrew. Bodie, hearing Hebrew, tried a version of a Swahili song to see if it would fly with the crowd.

The service was, as in a Chabad, mostly in Hebrew. But Rabbi Yaacov thought jokes and stories were better in English. Maybe they would have been shorter in Hebrew. One, about a Jew, and Frenchman and an Italian in hell (I didn’t know we even had hell!) having the option to boil in chicken soup for 5 minutes a day in exchange for the rest of the day being paradisiacal, went on for 10 minutes with an upshot of how Jews aren’t good at starting things on time. I see a huge market opportunity for good comedic editors among the Chassid.

It turns out that beside myself, two women at the service are also blogging about their lives in Tanzania. (Mahlers on Safari and I didn't get the other) It seems that attending services in Tanzania may certainly have some element of spirituality, but is likewise highly sought after as good blog fodder.

Tanzania for Obama

This U.S. election, the first presidential election that I’ll vote in as a father, is being touted as the election of a generation. Looking at the past eight years, I can’t help but wonder about how the world might have been a little bit more welcoming and a little bit more sane for Bodie had those elections turned out differently. The President certainly doesn’t have all the powers and accountabilities that the public so often hangs on him, but it sure has been frighteningly informative seeing what one person can do to tank a country's morale and its perception around the world.

Thinking about what kind of country I want Bodie to be part of definitely influences how I think of the candidates and the importance of this contest. I don’t want him to grow up in a world polarized by hatred or distrusted because he is American.

Last week I went over to a friend’s house to watch the first McCain/Obama debate being rebroadcast on Armed Forces Television. As I was racing to get there, about as excited and filled with anticipation as I’ve been in a while, it occurred to me what an absolute geek I’ve become. Not enough to wake up and watch it at 4 a.m. in real-time (which, truth be told, I might have done had we had a television), but based on level of excitement, pretty damn geeky nonetheless.

Being this far from the action, from the relentless political advertising, the minute-by-minute media critiques, and from the regular dinner table updates on gaffes, we feel removed from an important campaign. We cheered Obama’s PowerPoint approach to the economy (Tactics 1, 2, 3 and 4), and jeered McCain’s patronizing. We rooted like it was a World Cup soccer match.

Last night, we got as close to the action as we could by going to a “Tanzania for Obama” party designed to be “a celebration and show of support for Barack Obama.” Situated at a beachfront restaurant, the party was not so much a political rally as an excuse to sit under a thatched roof by the ocean, listen to loud club music and drink a beer.

A table to the side had a full line of T-shirts with a picture and slogan “Tanzania for Obama”. Since kanghas, large squares of bright fabric, are the standard dress for most African women, someone had produced a line of red, white and blue ones with Obama’s picture, and slogans printed around the edges “Yes, we can” and “Change you can believe in” in both English and Swahili.

I was thinking that this party would be an absolute YouTube bonanza for the Republicans. ”Look,” might say Sarah Palin, “You betcha those people in Tanzanistan love Obama, cause he’s one of them, not ‘Merican like you and me.”

While driving the baby sitter home afterwards, she said, “it would be the first time that we Africans have had an American president, so that would be good.” An interesting perspective, although doubtful one that would be helpful in the campaigning in, say, Ohio.

Speaking of Ohio, we are offering our guest room as a nice vacation spot close to the beach for the first 10,000 McCain supporters from Ohio. Availability is limited to the first week in November.

African Sting Bug

The sharp, stunning sting of a bee seems a rite of passage of childhood. Bodie had yet to experience this uniquely shocking moment. Until today.

Well, at least that’s at first what I assumed it was when he first screamed from the garden while he was helping Tom to water the plants. The familiar sharp shriek is clearly distinguishable from other cries unburdened with pain and fear. I ran from the kitchen to find out what had happened. Like any good mother, the 30 seconds it took me to get from the kitchen to the garden were rife with images of blood and hatched plans involving towels, pressure and an ambulance.

I, instead, found my child standing in the middle of the garden, in one hand a limp garden hose dousing nearby shrubs, tears streaming down his face, and a fantastic tale already hatching.

“A GIANT STING BUG, MAMA!” he wailed. “HE STUNG ME!”

Sure enough, I could see the pinprick of a stinger just above his left eye. I whisked him into the kitchen with more drama that the situation called for, and began to treat the wound, somehow comforted in the utility of my role, however overblown.

As we applied ice and a topical, organic antihistamine that surely can only be sourced in the few co-operative-loving, nuclear-free zones in the U.S. like Takoma Park, the story of the encounter with the sting bug began to grow.

“It had EIGHT legs!” Bodie proclaimed, at which point I knew the situation had downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical depression. “And it had wings like bat!”

“It was a big as a bicycle!” he said with full conviction. “But it had a little mouth,” Bodie said, adding the probable to make the improbable seem plausible.

It occurred to me that his storytelling was helping to ease his pain, but I also questioned the wisdom of encouraging his fabrications. At what point does stimulating imagination become encouraging lying?

I erred on the side of imagination and fed the flames.

“What color was it?” I said in exaggerated tones. “BLACK! And RED! And GREEN!” he exclaimed.

While it’s entirely possible in Africa that Bodie was stung by a black, red and green bug the size of a bicycle, I assumed it was more akin to the standard American bumble bee and decided that as long as his imagination distracted him from the pain above his eye, I had made the right parenting decision to encourage his imagination and allow the pain to become epic only in the re-telling.

On Chaos and Order

It is only after returning to Dar es Salaam after a few weeks home that some of the truly distinct differences of life in Tanzania vs. in the U.S. become readily apparent.

Yes, there are the obvious things that as I write about them I start to tear up. The immaculate inviting aisles at Whole Foods – all the earth-friendly, organic, fair-trade, goodforyou products perfectly lined up at the front edge of their shelves eager to jump into your cart and fill your body with antioxidants, the coffee shops playing cool jazz with comfy couches that don’t harbor insects; bagels, sensuous chewy everything bagels that delicately tickle every taste bud on the tongue. Throw a schmear on there and what used to be a daily breakfast at my desk has become pure food porn for me now.

But aside from “things”, there is pervasive difference in a notion of order and how individuals connect into society. I was at the bank the other day and the teller had enough American inflections that I asked him where he had been in the U.S. He had lived in Dallas for a few years, but came back, he said,” because there are too many rules there. You have to do things every day, every month. Here there are no rules.”

In the U.S., we all tacitly agree to a certain linear order and progression of things. Streets are edged with curbs, and there are distinct lines where streets begin and end, and they have names as demarcations., Buildings and houses have straight horizontal and vertical containing lines. And we behave with an acceptance of linearity: cars ahead of you get to turn the corner before you. We all agree to pay credit cards or rent or utilities once per month. These are all unsaid agreements that are understood to create a certain level of daily order.

There is no such unsaid agreement in Tanzania. Roads, if they are distinguishable as roads at all, don’t have edges. Just because there may be a car, or several, in front of you, that is no reason that you shouldn’t pass them and try to get around the corner first. And you pay for everything with cash up front as the idea of credit would impose a rule.

Entering Dar’s airport after the plane ride from Amsterdam, late at night after 27 hours of travel, Bodie a zombie-eyed limp rag from nonstop airplane seatback videos, the lack of order is palpable. This isn’t the overwhelming chaos of a war-torn country. Rather an implicit shared understanding exists that permeates every part of living here. One is charged with getting by. And the boundaries of how one does that are much looser and less proscribed than the storylines once can follow in the U.S.

Hillary picked us up at the airport. On the road leading from the airport to the city, traffic slowed at an intersection, two people ran up to the car, and, before we knew what was happening, stole the driver’s side mirror, and ran off.

Welcome home.

It turns out, that there is a significant, theft-driven, market in side mirrors. I went to the Nissan dealer and they could order the mirror from Japan for $165. A friend told me that you could go to Kariakoo, a part of town that is the biggest market in the country, but also has a brisk trade in stolen things, and try to get a mirror there.

One of Hillary’s colleagues, Michael, took me to Kariakoo. It is chaos manifest – small streets, crowds of people on foot swarming around cars and motorcycles, stalls teaming with all manner of auto parts, vegetables, and electronics.

In the midst of this teeming disorder, I discovered the one area in Tanzania in which there might be a comprehensive, real time tracking system. You can provide your make of car, the approximate date and location of the theft, and within a few minutes, someone will come out and fit a mirror back onto the car. It will fit exactly because, for $70, you just bought your own mirror back. It is like they have some massive database tracking system under one of the tin-roofed sheds.

While there, Michael insisted that we have the mirrors etched with the license plate number. This might not dissuade thieves, but it does make it easier to get the right mirror back. So our car is now tricked out and Africa-ready. Not in the way I’d once imagined -- big safari lamps, roof racks and bull bars -- but with mirrors etched, the rubber side bumper guards and rain guards newly riveted to the doors, to prevent theft (they’d break during removal so have no market value.)

As I was fuming on the car ride home about having to buy back my own stuff, Michael, wise beyond his twenty-some years, explained that Tanzanians are good people. “The problem is hunger. With few jobs, people do what they have to do to survive.”

A Glimpse into Tanzanian Health Care

Tom, our gardener, told us that his wife, Martha, is pregnant. He was concerned because apparently she’d been pregnant before but had a miscarriage. We thought that something radical, like prenatal care, might be in order, so took them to a clinic that is used by many ex-pats.

“They’re going to do an ultrasound, okay?” I told Tom. He nodded and said that was fine. “Do you know what an ultrasound is?” I asked. “Not exactly”, he said. I explained how they work and he got excited.

The doctor at the clinic told me that the obstetrician who worked at the clinic and was very good, also worked at Muhimbili National Hospital. And if he gave the okay for Tom and Martha to go there, even if it was out of their district, they’d get the same treatment and service at a fraction of the cost.

Martha's appointment was set for two weeks out.

Coincidentally, the day before we went, the local newspaper had a headline that read “Mental Patient Kills 2, injures 5 at Muhimbili”. Apparently a patient “clobbered his victims to death as they slept” with a drip infusion stand. The article noted that the incident follows several recent mishaps, such as: “a horrendous mix-up early in the year that saw two patients subjected to wrong surgical operations.” A man who had his very-working knee operated on instead of his head to remove a suspected tumor (and then died), and a man who needed a knee operation but received a head operation and is now in a wheelchair.

Muhimbili is that largest hospital in Tanzania and serves up to 1,400 patients a day. It is a sprawling mass of buildings across a hillside, many in a state of either construction or deterioration. There is little signage to direct anyone, so trying to find where you need to go - which involves one building to pay, another to check-in, and another to see a doctor -- is complex game of asking anyone official looking over and over where to go.

According to it’s website, “Hospitals are complex organizations and Muhimbili National Hospital is no exception. It has been and will continue to be necessary to manage and coordinate many changes which are taking place. It will be the task of management team to maintain a comprehensive health care services during this period of changes.”

This is on a website and supposed to make a prospective patient feel comfortable? Well, health care here, except for the rare few, is a nationalized affair and you take what you can get, public management upbraiding and all.

We wandered the grounds trying to find where to go. Open air verandas had patients sitting or sprawled out, waiting, some with clothes over their head to protect them from the sun. Gurney’s with patients were lined up like the entrance to a freeway by the front door of one building. The grounds were littered with open trash cans that looked like they had to many types of hospital waste in them; construction debris littered the grounds and had to be navigated to get from one building to the next. We waited through several lines and several hours.

We were directed to room 50, which was locked. And then to room 78, which had someone checking an old man’s stomach. There is no master schedule of which doctors are using what consultation rooms, so we were reliant on which administrators had been paying attention to who might be where. We finally found the the obstetrician.

It seems Martha is doing ok. She is due in January and her next appointment is in a month.

Tom told Hillary and me that they would be honored if we would name their baby. Our marriage saw perhaps its most trying times in trying to come up with a name for our baby. Now we have to name theirs? Of course, it could prove a good way to use a name that I can’t stomach, but Hillary simply won’t let go. Tom and Martha, we want you to meet your baby, Enzo.

Karagwe and Pedal Power

Somehow I thought Karagwe was a 5 hour drive from Dar es Salaam, but as I’m flying to the northwest corner of Tanzania, to Mwanza, where I switch to a small propeller plane to go to the farther northwest corner town of Bukoba, on the western side of Lake Victoria, close to Rwanda, I’m realizing how important it is to check the spelling of a town name (Karagwe not Korogwe?) before committing to something.

I was introduced to Gary Zieff, who runs a firm called dissigno, that focuses on appropriate technology solutions in developing countries. Gary and team are launching an initiative in Karagwe to install a system using human powered generators - Pedal Power -- which will charge battery-powered lights that will replace kerosene lanterns and candles. Most of the region, like 95% of Tanzania, is off the grid and so households use kerosene lanterns (which are toxic and expensive). The Pedal Power initiative aims to set up a system so that people can rent these human power-recharged batteries and lights at a price below kerosene cost.

Dissigno was one of the sixteen winners of the World Bank Development Marketplace Lighting Africa competition. They competed against 500 participants, were selected and awarded $200,000 to test their pilot project in Tanzania.

Flying from Mwanza, on one side of lake Victoria, to Bukoba, on the other, took 40 minutes. The lake, the biggest in Africa, is truly vast, covering 26,000 square miles, making it the largest tropical lake in the world. It is bordered by Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya, and is home to more than 3,000 islands. Rocky outcroppings dot a landscape of folded hills with occasional villages of scattered houses of cinderblock and tin or thatch. I learn that this land is well suited for the coffee and bananas that grow here.

Gary had asked if I could meet with their NGO partner, KADERES (Karagwe Development & Relief Services) to assess their level of enthusiasm and interest in the project. I spent my first afternoon with the Executive Director. This should have been familiar territory as I’ve done this due diligence questioning with a hundred nonprofits in the U.S. But this somehow was different.

Questions I asked, such as - how do people choose which Savings and Credit Organization (SACCO) to join, were met with answers beginning with, “we don’t do things here the way you do in America...” There is a decided tension to this development work (based on my, oh, one or two data points). On one hand, western development work is truly needed and welcomed. The government of Tanzania relies on western donors for 45% (!!!) for its annual operating budget. On the other hand, I get the feeling that there is a real desire to develop and implement home-grown solutions, and a touch of resentment of mzungu efforts.

The Pedal Power project is, like so much of the appropriate technology work being done here, designed to be an intermediate step. Using rechargeable batteries is not a hoped for permanent solution. But until billions of dollars are spent on infrastructure - to wire the country and get clean water - it will be many many years before most people have access to basic services.

I was put up in the $13 a night Hotel at Home. Water in the bathroom was in a large plastic tub for washing, and in the morning, they’d bring in another tub of hot water. This was as remote as I’d been. I was out of safe ex-pat comfortable Dar and in real Africa. It was exciting and surprisingly, didn’t make me as nervous as I thought I’d be. (Although if I start an NGO here, it will be called Hot Shower-Aid, because in my book, you gotta have a hot shower in the morning.

Hotel at Home did have a bar with plenty of cold beers, and I spent the evening talking to the local priest, who apparently was at the bar each evening. He asked me if I wanted to go to mass. When I told him I wasn’t Catholic, he started a guessing game, “Muslim? Anglican? Bahai?” When I said Jewish, he started laughing and said, “I know about that from studying at seminary.”

I travelled with Optatus, the accountant at KADERES, who provides technical assistance to the SACCO’s in the region. We drove out rutted dirt roads for many miles to visit three of them. When we went in, each a small office the size of two office cubicles, we were formally handed a guest book to sign. I signed, and scanned the names above. On each page, Optatus’s formal sign-in over the past few months was officially noted, and little else.

Each of these SACCO’s had about 2,000 members, and served as the regional savings bank and lender as farmers weather the cycles of crop harvests. I learned that virtually all of the members of the SACCO’s depended on kerosene for light in their house. I also asked for estimates of the amount spent per month, and all replied that approximately 5 liters were used per household per month, costing about $12. This is a huge burden for families getting by on under $400/year.

Before the visit, I thought the project was innovative but maybe cute. After the visit, I realize what a significant difference in so many lives, such a simple idea can have. The groups were excited. The biggest issue that they believe will need to be addressed is the initial plan to serve 3,000 families when so many more will be demanding the batteries.

Goat Races

Yesterday found us crowding the outside of a track with 10 goats who, with no strong proclivity toward moving herd-like in any single direction, much less any interest in movement at all, were being shooed and pushed from behind around a race track. Over three thousand spectators cheered at the Dar es Salaam Charity Goat Races, but the goats didn’t seem to be relishing their moment in the limelight.

Launched in in 2001, the Goat Race was loosely modeled on Royal Ascot, but with noble racing steeds replaced by ornery goats. There is betting, of course, and tents serving champagne and drinks, and spectators in big floppy hats, loud music, and a kiddie area.

One of TechnoServe’s volunteer consultants (“volcon’s” is what they are called in Hillary's office) stayed with us for 6 weeks while she worked during the break in her MBA studies. Young and single, she quickly tapped into a nonstop nightlife culture -- late night restaurants, clubs, music and dancing -- that Hillary and I had no idea existed in Dar. There is a party society that parents of toddlers aren’t told about, much less invited to.

The goat races contained a melding of these different worlds. We saw some of Bodie’s young friends scrambling around with parents chasing after them. Hillary ran into colleagues from agencies with which she was working on projects. We also saw denizens of the night scene - women in strappy little dresses drinking champagne, and couples in dark shades (it was afternoon so unwelcome sunlight to the vampire crowd) crowding the bar tents.

Bodie jumped and cheered on the goats. As he did so, I thought that if his intellectual pursuits don’t work, he he may well have the perfect build to be a fine goat jockey.

The goats were “bought” or sponsored by locals and companies and we can only imagine that much of the intellectual firepower of Tanzania has been tied up for weeks in thinking of clever names (Fartaway Faraday, Kid Rock, Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying, Ghoti, Furcoatnoknickers, and Deep Goat, among them.)

The races raised $50,000 for a eight charities working to help those with disabilities in Tanzania. It was a great way for these charities, which work quietly in the shadows with a poor country’s most disadvantaged, to have some visibility and support.