A (quite random) list of things you might find interesting about Tanzanian secondary schools (as opposed to American high schools):

• The entry grade level is called Form I, not freshman year. Likewise, sophomore, junior, and senior years are referred to as Form II, Form III, and Form IV, respectively. Form IV, the eleventh year of formal education, is not the end of secondary school. At the end of Form IV, students take a nationally standardized test called the NECTA, the results of which determine who is qualified to continue upper-level studies. If a student scores highly enough on his or her Form IV NECTA exam, opportunities to finish secondary school – to continue to Form V and Form VI – become available.
• The classrooms belong to the students. Here in Tanzania, it’s not the students who leave the room when the bell rings at the end of the period. It’s the teacher. I teach three streams of Form III students. I’ll enter the Form IIIB classroom, carrying my books and my chalk, and when the period ends, I collect my books and my chalk before heading to the Form IIIA classroom, where different students are waiting for me to enter and for their math period to begin.
• The bell rings at the will of a student called The Timekeeper. This title and its accompanying responsibilities are awarded to a trustworthy student who is capable of telling time, and, at my school, who is also exceptionally short (for reasons as yet undiscovered). The bell resembles a gong, which The Timekeeper bonks three times with a stick at intervals of one hour and twenty minutes. Sometimes, The Timekeeper will make a stick-on-gong racket for several ongoing minutes. This means that all current classes and activities must immediately cease because there is an urgent assembly to which the entire school community must report. (Most often, these assemblies are arranged on a whim and involve the second headmaster hitting students with sticks.)
• Corporal punishment: As far as Tanzanians are concerned, there is no alternative. Hitting students with sticks is the only effective method of disciplining them, and, yes, of course it leads to behavior change. When my coteachers heard that corporal punishment is illegal in America, they broke into riotous laughter. Recently, though, I gave my first punishment that was considered harsher than hitting the students. I teach my Form IIIB class on Monday mornings, first period, and they are always late. The period is supposed to start at 7:40am, but normally, they don’t enter the classroom until at least 8:00am. Until they rearrange the desks and settle in, it’s 8:20am, and more than half the period is over. So, last Friday, I warned them not to be late. I used a really threatening tone, I shook my index finger, and I even told them directly that if they were late, they would be punished. Well, don’t you know they were late again? So I assigned a writing punishment: 1) To write five hundred times, “I will be in the classroom and ready to study on Monday morning.”; and 2) To write a ten-sentence letter in English, explaining why they are always late and promising not to be late ever again. I told them that if the assignment was not in my hands by 3:00 that afternoon, I would take ten points off of their final exams. My coteachers were impressed that only three of twenty-eight failed to write the sentences. One even mused, “Maybe I should try a punishment like that.”
• What’s a dining hall? Students take their meals outside, rain or shine. Currently, my school is building a sort of lean-to shelter under which the students will be able to eat.
• All secondary school students, at public or private schools, wear uniforms. Skirts for girls, slacks for boys. Collared shirts and sweaters for all.
• Cleanliness! Inspections are not just for military schools. Every Wednesday morning, the students gather for a huge assembly on the “parade grounds” (a dusty square lined by the school’s academic buildings). They sing the Tanzanian National Anthem, the School Song, and a special song to warn listeners against AIDS (this song, for reasons which are still fuzzy, instructs students not to share toothbrushes). Then, the teachers walk among the students, checking for dirt under their fingernails, untucked shirttails, unshaven heads (All students, even girls, shave their heads!), and the like. This is followed by dormitory inspection, for which teachers enter the students’ bedrooms (they sleep about fifteen to a room) to check that they’ve mopped the floors and made their beds.

And, another list of perfectly normal things I do, which get me laughed at relentlessly here in the Tanz:

• I own bug spray and use it often.
• I claim that actually teaching is more mentally challenging than grading tests.
• It takes me more than “one minute flat” to bathe myself properly and thoroughly.
• I buy toilet paper.
• I read books.
• I sometimes lose my temper when my teaching schedule is changed for the eighth (no joke) time in ten days.
• I call students to my house to kill those mammoth web-dwelling spiders that Tanzanians just leave to hang in the doorway or over the bed.
• I think I’d like to know someone well, maybe even date him for awhile, before I marry him. (Or, more accurately translated, before I am married by him. In Swahili, only men marry in the active voice. Women are married by men, in the passive voice.)
• I feel awkward when I’m asked to punish other people’s children (small children, not students). This has a lot to do with the fact that punishing them involves hitting them with sticks.
• I get lazy and don’t mop my floor for days at a time.
• I always carry a flashlight when I go out in the pitch-black night.
• I exercise.
• I claim that exercise is good for your health.
• I don’t wear a heavy winter ski coat when it drops to sixty degrees Fahrenheit.
• I sometimes nap on my couch.
• I continue to be white.

Workers' Day!

While you all were out twirling ribbons around poles this May Day, I was enjoying a different type of celebration: one to commemorate Tanzanian Workers’ Day, a national holiday akin to our own Labor Day. It was absolutely a blast from start to finish, complete with all the most potent Tanzanian foods (meaning, of course, that the seasonings were livelier than the salt and oil flavors pervading typical East African cuisine), as well as my own assigned chore of distributing sodas to students and collecting the bottles afterwards (the latter being much more complicated than the former, because apparently stolen glass soda bottles are in very high demand).

We began the day with a student talent show. For all performances such as this one, the students sit on chairs and desks arranged out in the sun, in an arc at one corner of the dusty academic square. We teachers sit on the concrete promenade that runs the length of each academic building, in the shade of the roof’s overhang. When I first arrived in Tanzania, I felt uncomfortable with this arrangement, since it essentially places the teachers in a row on a sort of stage, facing the arc of students. Performances occur at ground level, in the awkward space between the raised line of teachers and the arc of students piled in groups onto the tops of desks. By now, though, I’ve gotten used to being part of the scenery, a bright white distraction amid the backdrop for a skit or a song.
Two of my former students provided the first act: a cleverly-devised but badly-delivered rap welcoming the Form I (freshmen) students to the school. They may not have had beat or rhythm, but these kids sure had humor. Benedict and Ones, two very likeable teacher’s-pet-types who are also smart and decently popular among their peers, dispensed valuable advice to the first-years. On one topic, though, they had only to say, “Na swala la msosi, lazima uzoee,” which means, approximately, “And as for the food, you just gotta get used to it.” School food is quite the controversy here, where the daily fare consists of beans and ugali. (Want to try ugali? Ingredients: Dried horse corn, water. Directions: Grind the dried horse corn into flour. Boil water in a pot. Dump a bunch of dried horse corn flour into the boiling water. Stir. Continue to boil and stir until the mixture assumes the consistency of wet cement. Eat.) This is actually typical Tanzanian food, and it’s often all villagers can afford to eat day after day. But many of my students come from wealthier families in town who can afford to eat rice and vegetables quite often. As a result, the audience thought the reference to tasteless school food was a scream.
Another memorable act cautioned students about the dangers of falling into the patterns of corruption so common among successful Tanzanians. Through an interpretive recitation/skit, they depicted the Tanzania that would develop if they – the students of today – did not break the precedent set by the businessmen and politicians of their parents’ generation. Reminiscent of the regime ruled by Biff in Back to the Future II, the corrupt Tanzania of the future featured thieving politicians, careless doctors, and selfish teachers. But bahati nzuri, by good luck, a pure-hearted witch doctor was on hand to hypnotize those susceptible to corruption. The witch doctor, played by one of my current students, a popular girl named Eva, convinced the unscrupulous degenerates to rise above their venal ways. By the end of the skit, the characters were locked into a witch doctored trance, reciting quips such as, “I will not be corrupt,” and “I will never again accept a bribe.”
Among these clever performances were the usuals: several Christian chant-type songs, some hip-hop renditions, and at least two plays featuring a character who has sex, gets AIDS, and dies in quick succession. These standards have graced the “stage” at all four talent exhibitions I’ve witnessed here at the school Still, the messages are always good, and quite frequently the skits and songs are delivered with legitimate skill.

After the talent show, it was a regular party. We teachers had a momentary dispute about which classroom we would occupy, since it seemed that every location was somehow too near to where the students would be conducting their own festivities. Apparently, we wanted nothing to do with them. Finally, we chose a classroom and opened the buckets (literally) of food. There was pilau (spiced rice), cow meat (by no means steak), fried chicken, cooked vegetables, and even salad! The salad, called kachimbali, consists of tomatoes, green peppers, carrots, and other sundry vegetables drenched in their own juices and with some added flavors, such as lemon or salt. Asking for kachimbali is the only way to obtain raw vegetables here (unless you have a garden, which I…do not), so I go a little crazy when I have the opportunity to eat it. My plate was piled high, mainly with chicken and kachimbali.
We proceeded to have a mini-disco, during which I miraculously persuaded the teacher-DJ to play mostly American music. (I suspect that he just wanted to see me dance, and knows I have a hard time finding a hip-swayable beat in Tanzanian Gospel music.) Meanwhile, the students had their own parties: a hardcore, mostly-hiphop disco in one classroom, with a real DJ from Njombe town; Gospel music videos in another; and Gospel singing and dancing in the last. Supervision was light, to say the least, so who knows what other antics went down behind the dormitories and in the woods.

Eventually, I finished two beers without getting the slightest bit drunk (shocking the daylights out of the Tanzanians), worked with the school nurse to collect all 650 students’ soda bottles in their proper crates, and got my first legitimate Tanzanian marriage proposal (legitimate = not from a cab driver or other fleeting acquaintance). Just as the sun went down over the backs of the silhouetted mountaintops in the distance, the electricity died – in the middle of my favorite Tanzanian pop song, “Boy You’re Love is Wicked,” by Brick&Lace (Download it.).

"The generator is overworked,” the machine chief told me. “It won’t work again until tomorrow.” So the party ended abruptly, much like this blog post is ending right now.

Let There Be Light

…shouted the American Peace Corps Volunteer as the eight newly-installed tube lights in her bush house flickered on for the first time. Well, ok, only two of the eight newly-installed tube lights actually flickered on that first night. But thankfully, the fundi [fundi: (n.) a professional, or expert, who may or may not have any actual proficiency in his/her advertised skill, in this case electricity – an electrician, if you will…sorry for so carelessly neglecting this word in my Kiswanglish glossary of a few weeks ago] and his assistant hadn’t left the neighborhood yet, so I just called him back and had them fix the other six.

Just a few months after my school’s purchase of a powerful, diesel-eating, electricity-producing milling machine, the single row of ten teachers’ houses on campus, at the very bottom of which squats my own, was wired for electricity. The school, whose classrooms and dormitories are stationed across the main road from our homes, has always used a small generator to facilitate the students’ “evening prep” study hours. Until less than a week ago, though, come the 7pm sunset, my house was sunken beneath the heavy tide of darkness, preserved only by the flimsily buoyant wisps of candle flames.

And then the electricity arrived.

This wildly fortunate development was entirely unexpected. With decidedly un-Tanzanian speed, the authorities at my school notified us teachers about the incoming electricity and successfully carried out its installation in less than one week. Each house was fitted with as many tube lights as it has rooms and three outlets, all of which now function from 7pm to 10pm each evening.

When the fundi arrived at my house with his assistant, they tore a 3x3-foot hole out of my ceiling so that they could hoist themselves into the narrow space between the tin roof and the cork ceiling boards. When I asked them if they were going to repair it, they said, “Who, us?” Once the wires (which came, draped like clothesline through the air, from my neighbor’s house) were strung into my “attic,” they needed to somehow be fed down into my living space. As far as I could see, the greatest obstacle was the absence of a drill, which could have been used to bore small holes in the ceiling through which the wires could have been thread somewhat tastefully. The fundi and his assistant didn’t share my concern for ceiling aesthetics, though, which became obvious when they started smashing 3x3-inch hammer holes in my corkboard and sliding skinny little wires through them.

A small price to pay, I thought, and I was right. The large, tattered hole where the fundi and his assistant climbed through my ceiling seems an overly convenient entrance for creepy things like bugs, rats, and bats, but I’ve covered the smaller hammer holes up with duct tape. This looks a bit tacky, but then again so does the rest of my house’s pied, do-what-you-can-with-what-you-have decorative style. And the most important part is: it lights up. Since they bopped holes all over my ceiling, the lights have come on reliably, every night, and I’ve enjoyed three full hours of tube lighting and phone charging. Not to mention iPod and computer charging.

And my Tanzanian friends and colleagues? Well, they like it just fine. During one conversation, a teacher said, "These developments are coming so fast. Soon, it'll be just like Laura's home." Maybe not quite, but at least I'll be able to see the differences after the sun goes down.

Kiswanglish

It’s English! It’s Kiswahili! It’s…Kiswanglish!

Ok, don’t bother commenting on how lame I am, because I already know. But I also know a special American-in-Tanzania dialect of language about which I’ve been fielding scores of questions lately, mainly due to a full month of visitors and my increasing inability to recall details of American life. So I’m using this opportunity to clear some things up. The following is an abridged list of Kiswanglish terms, some of which have been mentioned in previous blogs, and their approximate definitions. Also included are some Anglophone-friendly explanations and real-life usage examples.

A small disclaimer: We all know those people who go off to foreign countries, learn new languages, and return with slightly annoying and somewhat sententious habits of “accidentally” slipping words from their new languages into their English conversations. True, this is often unavoidable. Our brains form linguistic habits which are sometimes hard to break, and our tongues have muscle memories. (When I got back from France, it was terribly difficult to remember to excuse myself with “sorry” instead of “pardon” – or, in NYC, not to excuse myself at all.) Other times these foreign language interjections are just methods of showing off a newfound brilliance in a non-native language. Kiswanglish is neither of these. Americans in Tanzania use Swahili terminology in everyday English because there simply is no alternative. Supposed English translations are inadequate or entirely inaccurate. That is why I’ve done my best to provide felicitous explanations for the most commonly used Kiswanglish words, so hopefully you’ll understand me next time you see me, in December, and I unwittingly drop a “duka” or a “pole” into our conversation.

The glossary (arranged in alphabetical order):

Bafu
Supposed English Translation: (n.) bathroom / shower room
Actual Definition: A space devoted to bathing, sometimes including a tin ceiling and a cement floor with a drain (as at my house), but typically consisting of a dirt floor, 2-4 stick and/or mud walls with (occasionally) a thatched roof. Never includes a shower or a shower head; rarely includes a faucet of any kind.
Additional notes: If a person says “I’m going to the bathroom,” (s)he means (s)he’s going to the bathroom. Maybe the speaker is at a fancy hotel, or maybe visiting a friend in town or in Europe. If the speaker is lucky, (s)he is home for the holidays. But in the village, we Americans in Tanzania say we’re going to the bafu, because really, we’re going to the bafu. We’ll probably carry with us a bucket full of water and a pitcher, because those are the tools of bathing.
Real-Life Example: Since I live by myself, I usually don’t close my bafu door when I oga.
Cross-references: choo, kuoga

Choo
Supposed English Translation: (n.) toilet
Actual Definition: A hole in the ground serving as a depository for human waste, sometimes including a porcelain bowl set in the ground and/or a slide pipe to carry waste into a “septic system” (as at my house), but more frequently consisting of a deep dirt hole in the ground, usually with two cement blocks on either side (that’s where you put your feet!).
Additional notes: Some of the nicest choos flush. Mine doesn’t, so I just pour some water down after each go. Again, at a safi hotel, I’ll say I’m going to the bathroom. In the village, I go only to the choo.
Real-Life Example: While the men were trying to push the bus out of the mud pit in the road, I had to pee so badly that I went to the farmer’s house and asked to use his choo.
Cross-references: bafu

Coasta
Supposed English Translation: (n.) coaster
Actual Definition: A large, rectangular vehicle somewhat resembling an oversized VW van, usually with about thirty seats and a maximum capacity of infinity.
Additional notes: A coasta is essentially an oversized daladala, except it’s usually reserved for longer trips.
Real-Life Example: To get from Njombe to Iringa, you can stand in the aisle of the big bus for about three hours, or you can sit on a coasta for at least five hours.
Cross-references: daladala, konda

Daladala
Supposed English Translation: (n.) N/A…no one’s even tried.
Actual Definition: A minivan, sometimes oversized, and sometimes with a raised roof to make standing more, um, comfortable. Serves as public transportation in and around big towns. Usually contains about seventeen seats and has a maximum capacity of…did you think hippies stuffed themselves into VW Beetles effectively? Think again.
Additional notes: In Kiswanglish, the redundance of this word is overwhelming. We shorten it to “dala.” There is no filling up a dala. Just when you think there is absolutely no more space, and you can’t possibly be wedged any further into the hairy, sweaty armpit of the smelly old man with no teeth who’s standing on your ankles, the driver hits the breaks, everyone sways forward with the same breath of inertia, and the konda welcomes three more passengers. The good news is, there are usually a few broken windows through which to stretch cramped limbs. And don’t worry for you’re your life on Tanzania’s undersized, unpatrolled roads, because most likely, the vehicle’s doors and cracked windows are painted with the name and face of a prayerful patron of safety, like Jesus, the Pope, or 50 Cent.
Real-Life Example: His butt was hanging over the window’s edge, and her boobs were draped over a nun’s face, but the dala still stopped to pick up eight new passengers!
Cross-references: coasta, konda

Duka
Supposed English Translation: (n.) shop
Actual Definition: Indoor, usually dirty, kiosk-type selling station with a counter behind which a customer stands to request items, which the seller will then retieve from behind the counter.
Additional notes: With the exceptions of specialized dukas and safi dukas, nearly all dukas sell the same items at the same prices, even if they are next door to or across the narrow alleyway from each other. In the words of one of my December visitors, “In Tanzania, I have not seen a single duka that, were I to see it in America, I would even consider buying anything from.”
Real-Life Example: (One Peace Corps Volunteer consulting another) You know that one duka sort of across the street from the curtain duka, the one with the really nice Mama who always takes 100 shillings off the price of toilet paper?
Cross-references: safi

Jiko
Supposed English Translation: (n.) 1) stove; 2) kitchen
Actual Definition: 1) Squat (about ten inches high), round stove powered by charcoal or kerosene; 2) Cooking area without running water, where food is stored, cooked, and eaten on the floor.
Additional notes: Yeah…we don’t have jikos in America. And we don’t have lighter fluid in Tanzania.
Real-Life Example: 1) I spent an hour trying to light my charcoal jiko yesterday, and I was fanning it with a bucket lid when my neighbor came over and laughed at me before she got it going full-blast in under three minutes. 2) We cut the vegetables on the floor of her jiko and then fried them in oil until they were soggy.

Konda
Supposed English Translation: (n.) conductor
Actual Definition: While a Tanzanian bus konda does collect money and hand out tickets much like an NJTransit train conductor, he has many other responsibilities unique to his nationality and his phonetically-spelled and abbreviated job title. A konda’s additional duties include but are not limited to: organizing fifty-pound bags of flour, sugar, etc. underneath the seats of the bus to maximize leg room and minimize spillage; refereeing spats (or fist fights) over stolen assigned seats; safely delivering bush mail (envelopes making their ways from senders to recipients by way of one or several bus dashboards – these envelopes often contain the life savings of senders); waking up dozing passengers who have reached their destinations; coaching the bus driver and directing bus pushers out of mud pits; playing mechanic to broken down buses.
Additional notes: For us Peace Corps Volunteers, it’s essential to make best friends of the kondas who run the buses from the villages to town, because kondas are important people who can help you out a lot or screw you over big time.
Real-Life Example: My konda gives me a 500-shilling discount every time I go to town because he’s trying to get me to marry him.
Cross-references: daladala, coasta

Kuchota
Supposed English Translation: (v.) to fetch
Actual Definition: Well, ok. I guess this one actually does sort of mean “to fetch.” But we use the phrase “kuchota maji” – “to fetch water.” And when’s the last time you used the phrase “to fetch water” in America? It just doesn’t feel right in twenty-first century English.
Additional notes: In Kiswanglish, the final “a” often gets dropped, making the more typically used form “chote.”
Real-Life Example: We went to chote maji, but the well was broken. (Or, more accurately: We went to chote maji and we broke the well.)

Kuoga
Supposed English Translation: (v.) to bathe
Actual Definition: To use a pitcher repeatedly to scoop water out of a bucket and pour it over the body in an effort to cleanse oneself/remove the ubiquitous dirt and dust of Tanzania. Additional notes: This word does not mean “to shower.” More often, the tone with which it’s said intimates, “Damn, I miss hot showers.”
Real-Life Example: I’ve been too lazy to oga this week, so maybe I smell a little.
Cross-references: bafu

Safi
Supposed English Translation: (adj.) clean
Actual Definition(s): Clean, cool, ok, excellent, American, new, great job, sparkling, washed, shiny, I get it, stellar, we’re done here, I agree, etc. etc. etc.
Additional notes: Probably the most frequently-used Kiswanglish term, with the possible exception of pole. It’s most often used to describe nice hotels with hot showers, safe buses with big seats, and other comparatively luxurious experiences. But it’s assigned permanently to certain dukas which sell safi items such as oats, ketchup, and wine.
Real-Life Example: Let’s stay at that safi hotel tonight so I can take a hot shower and finally wash my hair.
Cross-references: duka

Pole (pronounced “pole – ay”)
Supposed English Translation: (?.) sorry
Actual Definition: I’m so sorry. It must suck to be you right now. Please accept my condolences and let’s move on from this awkward moment.
Additional notes: Definitely the most important and most frequently-used Kiswanglish term. It’s good for any situation (i.e. someone falls in the dirt, someone fails a test, someone gets robbed, someone’s family member dies, someone’s bus falls over in a mud pit, someone sneezes, someone stubs a toe, someone breaks a sternum), and can be used genuinely or insincerely.
Real-Life Example: Pole that your cat got eaten by your villagers.


The Inconclusive End. Enjoy your day.

My First Village Wedding

I woke up early, at the same time I always wake up in Africa. 6:15am, without an alarm. It's about the time the light in my East window intensifies as the sun rises up and out of the early morning fog. Because it was Saturday, though, I decided to lie in bed for an extra few minutes. At 6:30 on the dot, I heard footsteps coming from up the road.
Many Peace Corps Volunteers in Tanzania suffer from what we have unofficially termed "Hodi Anxiety." As I've described in past blogs, "hodi" is a called word used in lieu of the Western knock on the door. In our inevitable and often unintentionally-used Kiswanglish, "hodi" may be used as a verb (e.g. I heard him outside, and I was afraid he would hodi, so I crouched down on the floor so he wouldn't see me through the window and I could pretend I wasn't home.), a noun (e.g. I think 6:30am is a little early for hodies.), an adjective (e.g. And then I did a hodi dance because she didn't want to stay and talk; she just wanted to give me a cob of corn!), or pretty much any other part of speech you creatively want or circumstantially need. Anyway, Hodi Anxiety, as I'm sure you've begun to deduce, is a fretful apprehension induced by a suggestion (such as footsteps) that a person is on the point of hodiing at your house. Hodi Anxiety is, I'm sure, spawned from some deep insecurity we all developed growing up in modern America and learning the culture of never, ever knocking on someone's door unexpectedly, since that necessarily means you are a solicitor or a psycho.
So naturally, when I heard the approaching footsteps at 6:30am, I was seized by an attack of Hodi Anxiety. I lay very still in my bed, careful not to make a sound. I breathed shallowly, since the concrete walls conduct sound inordinately well through their gaps and apertures. At 6:30 on a Saturday morning, I wanted the hodier to think I was still sleeping and go away without too much effort (the longer they try, the guiltier you feel). And then it came.
"Hodi!"
I shut my eyes and waited.
"Hodi!" It was familiar voices. I groaned. It was the oldest two of the four little girls who live next door, Neema and Martha. They're absolutely adorable, not to mention two of my best Tanzanian friends. As if that wasn't guilt enough, Neema has recently been diagnosed with some unmentionable disease, about which I can get no information other than that it is "incurable."
"Hodi!"
"I'm coming!" I finally called as I threw back the covers and climbed out of the opening in my mosquito net. On my way to the front door, I stepped into some sweat pants, since I had been sleeping in shorts, which are entirely unacceptable attire, even when alone. I opened the door.
"Laula," they said in unison, with two L's and no R's. They like to say my name. I don't know why. Every time they see me, they say my name and wait, as if I'm suppsoed to respond in a certain way.
"Mambo?" I said.
"Safi. Shikamoo."
"Marahaba." It was a quick greeting; after these simple exchanges, they jumped right in.
"Why aren't you dressed?" Neema asked.
"For what?" I said, as I suddenly noticed that they were wearing their best dresses and matching shoes.
"The wedding."
"What wedding?"
"Teacher Mdeka's wedding."
"That's not til tomorrow."
"No, it's today."
"At school they told us Sunday." (People get married on all days of the week here, even Tuesdays.)
"They made a mistake. It's today."
"How do you know?"
"Baba and Mama are the wedding sponsors. They left yesterday. The wedding is today."
"Does everyone else know it's today?" I asked, suspicious that I hadn't been informed.
"They'll figure it out," said Martha.
At the girls' urging, I got ready. I tried to wear my best Tanzanian "suti" (suit), a matching "sketi na sheti" (skirt and shirt), which I wore for my Peace Corps Swearing-In Ceremony last year, but as I was opening the shirt to put it on, the zipper broke. I had to settle for my other "sketi na sheti," which is, from a Tanzanian perspective, not as pretty because it's white and "white people don't look good in white clothes."
By 7 o'clock, I was ready. "So, where do we get the bus?" I asked the girls. Mdeka's wedding was in a village about fifteen kilometers away.
"At school," they told me. "But it's not coming for us until 9 o'clock."
"9 o'clock? Why'd you wake me up so early?"
"We wanted to make sure you were ready. We're going to go make sure Teacher Kapinga is ready now!" And they ran out the door, leaving me with two Saturday morning hours to kill alone in my second-best Tanzanian clothes.

Anyway, that was a very long preface to what this blog is actually about, which is the village wedding of one of my fellow math teachers. When I at last arrived at school, at 9:20 (I try to keep a somewhat Tanzanian schedule of lateness or else I'd spend half of these two years just waiting for other people to show up or for meetings to start), I was the first one there. Since I had still been suspicious that a 7- and a 9-year-old were better informed than me (although, I am a foreigner, which, in terms of information and understanding of my surroundings, ranks me somewhere between newborns and my water pipe), I had called a few friends to verify the "leaving at 9 o'clock" rumor. They had confirmed it, so I knew that I was not early and that the wedding was in fact not on the day they had originally said it was on. The Tanzanians were just all later than me.
It ended up that I rode with Neema, Martha, two other female teachers, and the school nurse not in our rented bus, but in the LandCruiser of our school's patron, who is a bigshot but was a biggershot in the leading party of Tanzania's national government. During the course of the half-hour ride, our patron told me three times that I had broken a rule by wearing Tanzanian clothes to a Tanzanian wedding. Apparently, I should have worn American clothes to demonstrate my unique style and draw even more attention to myself than I do normally simply by being white. After driving, lost, down a few random bush roads, we arrived at the church.
Outside, a large group of people were - in my best Kiswanglish - chezaing ngoma, or dancing to traditional African drumbeats. Except the traditional African drums had been preempted by large, generator-powered speakers thumping the "ntz ntz" bass sound we Americans associate with dance clubs.
Around the church were parked several flat-bed lorries, which had brought several large groups to the wedding. We were the first to arrive in a private car, with the exception of the bride and groom, who were driven to the church by my headmaster, a rarity with his own car.
The bride and groom began processing into the church together, arm in arm, while the crowd of dancers continued to stomp and shake, periodically approaching the couple to wave hands and ululate in their faces. If it had been my wedding, I certainly would have burst into delirious laughter at such a happy sight (I did this anyway), but Tanzanian cultural precepts demand that the bride and groom abstain from laughter and merriness on their wedding day. Friends, relatives, and crashers are welcome and in fact expected to dance in a frenzy, laugh uproariously, and cheer hysterically, all to the point of mayhem and pandemonium, but through all this, the newlyweds must crack nary a smirk nor a simper. Moreover, they are not permitted to speak to or look at one another. And since the Christian ceremony in Tanzania does not call for a kiss, this is but a matter of iron will power and self-control.
As the ceremony progressed, a number of things occurred that visitors might find strange. First, there was the steady whurr of the generator, powering the "ntz ntz" of the oversized speakers, which played during every musical interlude, even the relgious ones. It also powered the microphone, which was necessary so the priest could be heard by the guests who arrived too late to find a pew to sit on in the small, rectangular church. (Although we arrived later than most, we were called by the priest to sit up front because we're teachers.) Next, there was the recognition of our school's patron as the guest of honor, and the relocation of his chair to a spot on the altar beside the priest. This was promptly followed by a district head's public plea into the microphone for money to buy textbooks; he even cited two other occasions on which our patron had donated to different schools. Finally, our attention was directed to the bride and groom, who were patiently and solemnly sitting in their chairs facing the altar. Periodically, the sweat on their faces was dabbed away by the handkerchiefs of my neighbors, the wedding sponsors, who sat behind them.
The content on the wedding ceremony was quite like those in America, with one notable exception. Immediately before the vows, the priest gave his speech about the expectations and roles of each - the husband and the wife - starting after the wedding. The roles of the husband were brief: to love his wife, to understand her, to care for her and provide for her financially. The roles of the wife, however, required a history. The priest recounted in detail how woman was made from a piece of man and therefore is not as whole as him. But that is ok, he said, because she was created only as a helper. Man is the head of the household, and a wife's duty is singular - to obey her husband. Like the husband must try to understand her, she must try to understand her husband - although, as the priest understood, it would be harder for her, given her naturally inferior intellect.
Then the couple vowed to meet these expectations, fulfill these roles, and be faithful to each other until death. The guests shouted and sang and danced, crowding the newlyweds. They blew whistles (yes, whistles, like referees' whistles) and ululated and generally brought the house down. After a time, order was restored so that a few short speeches could be made and a few irrelevant autobiographies recounted. And then we were whisked away to the reception on our own sets of two feet each.

The walk was about two miles in the beating equator sun, but when we arrived, we reclined restfully on hard, backless benches made out of bisected logs. The benches sat underneath makeshift canopies of straw and old burlap maize bags, which were balanced atop bamboo crossbeams held aloft by heavy branches, carefully chosen for the v-shaped forks at the tops and hammered into the ground.
The bride, groom, wedding sponsors, their families, and our patron the guest of honor sat up front on wooden couches that had been borrowed from living rooms. The wedding chairman, who was also the MC, made it his first order of business to announce that he was ready to return the flashlight he had borrowed the previous night, and he asked its owner to come forward to retrieve it. His second order of business was to say, in Swahili, "I might have to speak some broken language or some French today. We have a white person here." Everyone looked at me, laughing, and I waved both my hands with disguised consternation. We continued to celebrate, eating with out fingers for lack of utensils and listening to various choirs perform. Then we offered our gifts.
Giving gifts at a Tanzanian wedding is one of the most unambiguously, outrageously fun experiences available in our perplexing little world. A line of people forms at the entrance to the bamboo/straw/burlap canopy and dances toward the still unsmiling newlyweds. They approach the couple as a collective, stomping, screaming, and dancing the color out of the flattened grass under their feet. The gifts are passed above heads, backwards and forwards among the processing dancers until the celebrated couple is reached, at which point everyone continues to dance while everyone else is shaking hands with the wedding party. Eventually, one group clears out and allows another to offer their own gifts. When our group of teachers frolicked up with our offerings, we made such a hullabaloo of screaming and banging sticks against our gifts of kitchen pots and hoe blades that the MC was moved to accusations. "These teachers act like students," he said into the microphone. "We should hit them with sticks."
Everyone laughed, and we left. We wanted to get home to bathe before Zee Comedy Show, Tanzania's primetime version of SNL. On the way out, I was stopped three times by people wanting to tell me how funny they found my (apparently unsuccessful) efforts to "cheza ngoma." Tanzanians, by the way, are not shy about laughing at a person. They'll do it right to his or her face, and even unabashedly ask you to repeat your feat of humor. One woman even yelled, laughing, to her friends as I passed them, "Tell the white person to do her dance steps again so we can watch!" I went home with my colleagues and friends to watch Zee Comedy Show and laugh at someone else.

Below is the promised video of my students singing to welcome their president. Short, but sweet.

Mheshimiwa Kikwete, Rais wa Tanzania

Welcome to my school.

The classrooms and the quad are empty.

The teachers' room is empty, except for the lone globe with pencil holes punched in it and the old clock on the wall that perpetually believes the time is 9:07.

Whatever could cause such a stir/lack of work ethic in a Tanzanian school (besides a regular workday morning)? The president of Tanzania! Jakaya Kikwete, Tanzania's democratic leader since 2005, was scheduled to visit our school at 11:00am. The "Rais," or president, is a member of Tanzania's most powerful party (by far), which is called CCM.

As happens with any national figurehead, his posse preceded him. Below, you can see Njombe district chiefs, Iringa regional representatives, and, of course, the headmaster of my school, mingling in and tingling with anticipation of the president.

Rais Kikwete's arrival brought sundry sorts of people from the school, the village, and the surrounding bush. They woke up early and walked, barefoot, for hours just to secure a good viewpoint from which to see their "Mheshimiwa" (respected) leader. They waved party flags and prepared native African chants or songs to welcome him.

The teachers at my school, including me, arrived from across the street hours after the villagers had already recovered from their miles-long pilgrimages on foot, but because of our status in the immediate area, we just took the front row standing room only stretch of school grounds that had been reserved for us.

The primary school students sat in front of us, at the edge of the school entrance.

Everyone worked hard to prepare for the mheshimiwa mgeni's (respected guest's) arrival, but, in a contest mediated by a totally unbiased judge, my students would take the cake for putting the most effort and time into creating a presidential atmosphere. They constructed two full-sized, Land Cruiser-accomodating arches from tree bark, banana leaves, and - well, tree bark and banana leaves, they lined the road with yellow flowers, and they painted a huge welcome sign that hung over the road, suspended from tree leaves. How do you suspend a heavy cloth sign from nothing but the leaves of trees? I don't know. Tanzanians have a mysterious, idiosyncratic brilliance for doing seemingly impossible things like hanging heavy cloth signs from tenuous twigs and leaves.

I haven't even mentioned the time my students spent digging out the old Tanzanian flag, washing it, and raising it on the usually-empty pole in front of our school.

They also whitewashed the brick-curbs of every path on the school grounds, trimmed all of the nearby hedges, and watered the road so that the dust wouldn't dirty their Rais' no-doubt immaculate suit. When I joked to my students that maybe Rais Kikwete has one relatively inexpensive suit to wear on his village visits so that his really dapper outfit doesn't get ruined, my students simply laughed. "Don't be silly, Miss Laura," one reprimanded, "the president can only wear his best clothes to our school." And another added, "He'll wear the same suit he wears to America." This started a discussion about how frequently Rais Kikwete visits the preeminent U.S. of A., and it was generally agreed that Kikwete must take at least a full-day trip to America once every week or so.

In anticipation of the president, there was a sort of party. I suppose it was a little like the cheering before a rock star takes the stage, but more organized, more practiced, and yet somehow also much more irregular. Students and villagers sang the songs they had prepared for his welcome, often with competing volumes, and an MC blasted bongo flava (that's the Tanzanian version of hip-hop) from a black Ford Explorer with speakers mounted on top. Below is a video of my students singing the songs that they composed and practiced (endlessly...several days until after midnight) to flatter the mheshimiwa upon his arrival.

Ok, in the interest of finally getting this post up, I'll add the video later, since this computer doesn't like moving images.

The Njombe district head, in the green skirt, encouraged the primary school students to "cheza ngoma," or dance to drumbeats. She wasn't bad, but the kids' rhythms left something to be desired. Their off-beat steps, uncomprehending frowns, and and hands-in-their-pants moves in no way, however, detracted from their irresistable cuteness.

Finally, after hours of waiting and hours of singing/dancing, the president's security guards finally walked through the arch that my students built. Anticipation skyrocketed, as the arrival of the president's secret security force should mean that the president is not so far away. Right? Right?

Not right. The arrival of the armed security guards preceded the arrival of the president by nearly an hour. So we continued to wait, watching empty space under the arch.

Finally, after keeping us waiting, Rais Kikwete rolled onto school grounds exactly on Tanzanian time: 90 minutes late.

Instead of getting out of his car and off his wheels, however, Kikwete preferred to avoid touching our bush-turf by climbing out of his sunroof and sitting on top of his car.

After embarrassing village leaders and telling the villagers that he was powerless to help them with their most pressing problems (i.e. water, electricity, roads), the president waved and smiled. To my surprise and disdain (as well as that of some of the more worldly teachers), the villagers actually cheered.

He did, however, do me the gallant favor of realizing that I had a camera and posing for a picture.

My Tanzanian "besti" (who, by the way, deserves a huge congratulations because she just got married - she hasn't had a wedding yet, but her fiance just bought her from her father for 1,300,000 Tanzanian shillings, or about $1,000) smiled in amused disbelief at his irreverence.

Even his body language was uninviting. Crossed arms, disapproving downward gaze.

But still, I couldn't resist the urge to take a self-portrait with the "elected" leader of any country, regardless of his attitude toward those who were forced to elect him or brainwashed into electing him.

That's how close I was to the president of Tanzania Ndugu Rais Jakaya Kikwete.



Before he ducked back down into his Land Cruiser and was driven away, leaving only the chaos of unrealized expectation and some lingering body gaurds in his wake.