Insectapalooza a la Africa

The last two weeks were rough.  See the post below for details, but the short of the story is that our shamba flooded.  Coping with our loss, I was in need of some self-centering time away from Magoma so I took a hike.  

The village of Magoma sits in the bottom of a valley surrounded by the Usambara Mountains and, let me tell you: They. Are. Beautiful.   

I set out in the late one morning with my sights set on the summit behind our house.  I climbed, reflected, climbed some more, rested on rocks, reflected, and climbed some more.  The recent rains had carved some nice paths in the slope, exposing rocks for solid footholds, paving the way to the summit.  

I was so absorbed in my thoughts that when I finally reached the top I was taken aback.  It was as if it it happened all of a sudden; I no longer heard the loud calls of free-ranging donkeys, cows, goats, roosters, or children.  I no longer heard the beeping of buses and the revving of their engines as they zoom through town.  It was...

...quiet...

Looking northeast up the valley from the summit 

Sound is the only sense that you don’t have to experience in broken fragments and I relished it.  I stopped at an open clearing and closed my eyes to listen to the birds calling in the trees.  I listened the insects hum.  I listened to the wind brush past my face and stir the leaves in the trees.  

I was free to release my frustrations, bottled up energy, and love of climbing all at once.  It felt extraordinary, wild, and isolating to be up on that summit alone.  I perched on rocks, pranced along the ridge, and photographed, of course, all the cool flora, insects, and vistas I was finding.   

And then it started to hit me; "I’m in Africa," I thought.  "And there are scary things in Africa."  Like this centipede:

And spiders.  And centipedes.  And snakes.  And more centipedes.  And this thing:

I found myself paying more attention to what I was hearing.  Every rustle in the bushes attracted my attention and I located the origin of every humming or hissing sound that was in eyeshot.  I took my eyes off the horizon and placed them in front of me, dodging thorn bushes and spiderwebs.  And every time I put a foot down or stopped to take a photograph, I examined the ground in front, behind, and beside me, to make sure I wasn’t stepping on somebody’s home by accident.

It was exhilarating.  But after my twentieth centipede spotting on the rock that I had previously been perching on, I decided to head back home.  Keeping an eye on the rain creeping up the valley I safely made my way back down the mountain with a clear mind, tired legs, and dusty “little feet.”  

In Times of Flood: A New Beginning

Rain clouds creeping up on our beautiful Magoma.

I used to love the rain.  I loved the fresh, cool smell of it.  I loved the look of it, droplets balancing on green leaves, illuminated by a grey, misty sky.  I loved the chilling, cleansing feel of it dripping down my skin.  I loved coming inside from the rain, putting on dry clothes and watching it fall from under shelter while sipping hot tea.  I loved the sound of it pattering on rooftops, speckling puddles, or being sifted through tree canopies.  

I used to love rain.  And I still do in a lot of ways, but the more I time I spend in settled environments and infrastructures that aren’t equipped (enough) to handle it’s powerful potential, the more I've come to fear it.  

For farmland, rain can make or break a season.  Too little and a field dies of thirst; too much and it drowns.  Magoma is no different.  

The short rainy season has arrive in Magoma and in the past week it brought several days of persistant rain.  It flooded our neighbor’s shamba (farm or field), washing his freshly planted seeds downstream.  It flooded our friend’s shamba, destroying their new crop of peppers.  It flooded the neighboring villages’ shambas, destroying all of the vegetable farmers’ plots.  

Our neighbor's flooded maize crop.

And it flooded our beloved school shamba.  The river adjacent to our land overflowed with the rain and took our seedlings and a lot of topsoil with it.   

Panoramic view of the flooded school shamba.

Our old pepper plot.

A row of peppers in our new plot.

A view of our school shamba and neighbor's shamba.

A before and after look at our new pepper plot.  The angles are slightly different, but the trees at the right are the same.

Standing up to my knees in water on what were once cultivated beds of growing, flowering, and fruiting pepper plants, I felt like all our effort had just been washed away.  Not just our work on the shamba, but at the school too.  The fruits of the kids', the teachers', and the community's labor were washed away.  To stand there are realize that the school meals program would have to be put on hold was indescribably heartbreaking.

It was a sad day for us when we discovered the flood, but the fact of the matter is that it just happens.  When we shared the news with our neighbors and friends who had the same thing happen to their fields they'd say, “tutaanza tena” (we will start again).  

People are resilient.  Especially here.  It just happens.

So we put it behind us and continue to move forward.  We'll buy new seeds, cultivate new beds, and try again.  It's a disappointment and a loss, but the silver lining is that it's an opportunity to start over and make some changes.  A clean slate (or field), as they say.

Tutaanza tena kwa sababu tuko pamoja. 

(We will start again because we are here together).

It started off as the best pikipiki ride I had ever taken...

     It was Cintia’s and Shoshana’s birthday awhile back and we wanted to make a real celebration of it.  So we decided to trek it out to Bombo-Majimoto (Shoshana’s and the rest of Team Bombo’s home) for dinner and sangria.  Cintia wanted to make a day of it, so she left Magoma around noon, while I stayed back to help the kids irrigate the shamba (farm) in the afternoon.    

     A slight drizzle of rain fell on us as we pulled weeds and carried buckets of water to the plot of peppers.  When we finished around 5:30, I called Kasimu, a good friend and trusted pikipiki (motorcycle) driver, and we were on our way.  ETA 6:15pm.

     It started off as the best pikipiki ride I had ever taken.  Dusk was filling in the sky between the clouds with a deepening shade of blue, silhouetting the palm and baobab trees against the horizon.  The rain smelled fresh and cool.  As we passed by the lake, clusters of fireflies lit up the shoreline grasses.  And from the headlight illuminating the road ahead of us I could see bats flutter in and out of our path.

     As the rain poured on, we turned off the main road onto a narrower, muddy road.   Every once in awhile our pikipiki would fishtail in the mud and I would hear Kasimu say “slip!”  I asked him if we were able to continue on with the rain and he said “hamna shida” (“no problem.”).  

     And the rain poured on.

     We kept driving, winding up the hill when all of a sudden the headlight goes out and I heard a high pitched “eh?!” from Kasimu.  He turned on his turn signal and continued driving down a road lit off and on by his orange flashers, all the while hitting the headlight and flipping the switch to try to get it to come back on.  No luck.

     “Tocha ya simu?” he asked (“cell phone light?).  I pulled out my ten dollar Nokia phone, switch on the small lightbulb on the end of it, and hand it to him.  It hardly helped illuminate his speedometer let alone the road, but he bit the phone between his teeth and continued on.  “Pole sana,” I said (So sorry).  

     Never having been to Bombo-Majimoto, I’m not sure how much longer we have to go.  Dips in the road proved especially tough as the rain had turned it into a sticky, muddy mess.  Kasimu started to drive with his feet down on either side of the bike, pushing it along in the right direction.  “Pole sana,” I repeat.

     And the rain poured on.

     I looked out at the land beside the road and could only faintly see the remnants of harvested maize fields and the outlines of rolling mountains.  It started to rain harder and I could feel my muscles start to burn from riding fishtails back and forth.  I could only imagine what Kasimu was feeling and started to think that it probably wasn’t the best idea to come to Bombo-Majimoto this night.  Maybe I should have just stayed home...

     “Tumefika,” I hear Kasimu say (“We have arrived”).  I started to see the outlines of mud houses, a few glowing red from the kerosene lanterns burning inside.  

     “Nzuri sana!” (“very good”) I replied and start to envision myself curling up on the floor of Team Bombo’s home, wrapped up in my sweatshirt, and sipping sangria.  I knew their village was stretched out along the road, divided into several sub-villages, but again, not ever having been there I wasn’t sure where the team’s house was.  

     Kasimu handed me back my phone and we continued.  He navigated the muddy road into town with the flashing light of his turn signal, following what looked to be the tightest packed soil.  We fishtailed at the foot of the each slope, but continued on.

     And the rain poured on.  

     The road in front of us started to lighten up and I turned my head to see a bus slowly creeping up on us, its headlights shining bright ahead.  As it approached us, the driver beeps and a man sticks his head out of the window.  Kasimu tells the man that our headlight is out and asks them to follow us so we can see.  They agree and we accelerate in front of the bus.  

     “Pole sana,” I repeat to Kasimu.  

     “Asante.  Tumefika,” he reassured me.

     Climbing a slope in town the pikipiki struggled to crest the ridge.  Kasimu asked me to step off and I jump into the mud.  He turned off his engine and asks a man on the side of the road for a dry cloth to tie on his gear shift pedal.  Quickly learning that the mud, like glue, is caking to the bottom of my sandals, I sliped them off, and squished my bare toes into the warm, sandy mud.

     The bus got stuck on the on the slope, shining its headlights into the sky.  The heavy rain caught its beams of light and carries them gracefully over thatched roofs and palm trees, creating shadows of their figures in the sky.

     “Linds, tembea,” Kasimu said (“Walk.”).  I started to follow three men with a flashlight along the side of the road, sliding down the slight slopes like a novice snowboarder getting her feet beneath her.  As Kasimu pumped the engine, the front wheel with its axel caked in mud, was pushed along in the mud, the rear wheel doing all the work.  

     “Pole sana,” I repeat.

     Kasimu stopped the bike in a ditch that has been carved alongside the road and killed the engine.  He greeted a man walking past and asked for his help.  The man stopped, set his sandals in the mud next to me and grabbed one side of the bike to push it out of the ditch.  Kasimu asked for my my phone light, bit it between his teeth and examined the bike’s insides, covered in mud and blades of grass.  Kasimu suddenly took off into a field along the road to find a stick to push the mud out from the axels, mud guards, and engine.  Kasimu started the engine again and tried to push the bike a little further along the road, only for it to slide back into the ditch.  

     And the rain poured on.

     Another men stopped to greet us.  “Poleni sana,” he said.  We start talking and I find out he’s a friend of Shoshana, Erin (or “Elena” as they pronounce it), and Jake (Team Bombo-Majimoto)!  He said he could take me to their house as it was just around the bend.  I asked Kasimu if that was okay and he said no problem.  The man who’d been helping us told me a family up on the hill next to where we stopped would be able to put him up for the night.  

     I pulled 20,000TSH out of my bag to pay Kasimu.  “Changi?” he asked (Change?).

     “Uh-uh, yako.  Pole sana, sana,” I replied (No, no, keep the change.  So, so sorry for the trouble.).  

     The two men and I continued along the road, my feet caked and stumbling through the mud.  We talked about Magoma, the nature of my work, and how long I’d been studying Swahili.  

     “Just around the bend” was an underestimation of the distance remaining, but their company was appreciated.  Three kilometers and a good 30 minutes of conversation later, we turned off the main road, walked past a few stores, and stopped under the eve of a small, concrete house.  I could hear music inside and Team Bombo-Majimoto and Cintia laughing.  At around 9pm, more than 3 hours later, I finally knock on the door.  The chatter inside ceased.  I yelled out “hodi” (“can I come in?”) and hear back, “she’s here!!”

     I thanked my guides for their help directing me to the house and stepped inside.  Team Bombo offered me a basin of water and a bar of soap to clean my muddy feet and some clean, dry clothes to change into.  

     I had arrived just in time for dinner.  I settled onto the floor as they handed me a cup of much-anticipated sangria.

     “So how was your trip?” they asked.  And the rain poured on.

Take your marks.

We’re one week in.  Time has apparently been crawling; it feels like several weeks have passed since we arrived.  What happened, you ask?

Dar es Salaam:

We arrived 7am sharp Friday morning.  Sam and Ana, 2Seeds’ Directors of Project Development, met us at the door.  We were taken to our hotel for the following two days and were given the (much needed) time to rest.  Two red-eyes takes a toll.  Saturday we visited Kariakoo market, the largest agricultural market in Tanzania and one of six new 2Seeds projects this year.  We got a tour of the three floor, open air market from its director.  Kumbe (wow).

We loaded into our bus and drove off to the beach.  It was one of our last days to chill out.  Naturally, we dipped our toes in the Indian Ocean, sipped on Kilimanjaro lager, and played a novice game of beach volleyball.  Though the sunset was behind the trees, the sky over the shore was colored with some of the most beautiful shades of pink and blue I’ve ever seen.

Korogwe:

We woke early the next day to load onto a bus headed to Korogwe, the site of our orientation.  The hot, cramped, six hour drive was alleviated with complimentary sodas (in glass bottles) and went faster than expected.

Korogwe has been great so far.  We’ve covered about three years of formal Swahili study over the course of three days, we’ve visited Magoma (!) and met some of its key project partners, and we’ve been eating ugali and curry like it’s our job.  Unfortunately, the change in diet has finally caught up to me.  Heavy oils and loads of starch are the new usual.  My stomach went on protest today.  I’ve observed a day of fasting (hopefully just the one).  

Magoma team bonding has also been in full swing, with the latest exercise involving a pair of scissors and yielding lots of trust and a rubbish bin full of my hair (it’s gone!).  What do you think??

My head feels lighter, my jetlag has come and gone, and every conversation about Magoma gets me more excited to start working.  This energy has to last; it’s a large part of my role in Magoma.  And we start on Monday!

So with that I say, here’s to new hair, a new home, a new job, and a new chapter.

Karibuni sana to my life.  Now, let’s live a little.

Send-Off Success!

Thanks everyone who came to my celebratory send-off for the Magoma Project!  It was so good to see folks and we raised over $700 through a silent auction!

My flight takes off from Spokane, WA at 5am tomorrow morning.  I'm already packed and ready to go!  Taking care of some last minute errands and farewells today.  Looking forward to my 'last' Palouse sunset atop Steptoe Butte (not my photo, but you get the idea).

It'll be a long few days of flying, but I'll meet up with 2Seeds friends in NYC and London (so excited to see you, Cintia!!).

Take care, Palouse!  I'll be back next summer.  :)

"Little Feet, Big World"

Mongol Mingle is officially on hold.  As its last post testifies, I've loved and lost in Mongolia.  And yet my good ol' home-boys (sain uu?), marvelous Kiwi, the steppes, and, of course, the food have made for some incredible adventures there.  I'm not ready to say that I'll never go back, but it might be a few years.

Meanwhile, I'm off to Tanzania!  I'll working for the 2Seeds Network as a Project Coordinator.  I'll be working with the lovely Cintia Kawasaki in Magoma, Tanzania developing a school farm / food security project.  

I'll be the marketing chair for Magoma, which means I'm in charge of our blog (follow this one too), our Facebook ('Like' us!), our Twitter, our Picasa, and our Flickr.  All business aside, I'll still have my own stories to share.

So follow along as I test the Big World's ("Kubwa Duniani") waters with my "Little Feet."