The Real Dirt on Africa Time

Well it’s been a busy week. I have learned what it means to run on “Africa Time” On Monday I spent the whole day searching out materials for a square-foot garden I am building for a small school on the outskirts of Arusha. This is the same school I mentioned in my last post where I met my friend Jacaca.

My friend Tanya and I spent the whole morning out searching for the various materials we needed for these gardens. Fortunately, there are many people in Arusha that build things so there are many hardware shops and they even gave us, for the most part, African prices. Often we get what are called Mzungu prices, that means “white person” prices. Basically they think, because we are white, that we are rich and will pay much higher than reasonable prices. Anyway, we still got Mzungu prices but some were pretty reasonable. Throughout our search for materials there was only one thing we couldn’t find, which happens to be the most common thing in Arusha and that is…drum roll please…dirt. There is no where to buy good dirt in Arusha.

Every hardware store we went to had all of the tools and materials we needed for gardening but none of them knew where to buy dirt and even looked at us funny for suggesting we would buy such a thing. Apparently, they’ve never tried to grow their own garden. Well after bouncing from store to store for about 2 hours we came across Trio Hardware and Irene. She knew where to get good dirt and even called the guy to supply it to us. As it turns out, she later explained, people in Arusha don’t know the English word ‘dirt’ or ‘soil’, which explains the quizzical looks. Thanks to Irene we’ve got our dirt and the gardening project is still on (pending project approval). This will be a great blessing to the kids of Morning Star Primary School.

After this week of shopping it’s become clear to me how little we appreciate time saving conveniences like cars, the internet, reliable electricity, and one-stop shopping. It’s taken me days to put together the plan and price out materials for this school. In America it would take maybe a morning to do all of this work, most of which would be done on the internet followed by a quick trip to Home Depot. It’s no wonder progress in Africa works on “African Time” the whole infrastructure we’ve come to expect and rely upon is completely non-existent out here. There’s a lot of work left to do.

Patience is a virtue; it’ll also get you fed

I made two new friends the other day. Geofrey and Jacaca. Geofrey is a school teacher working in Arusha. He is also a head master of a school on the outskirts of Arusha. The school he is headmaster of is entirely funded by his salary from his first teaching job. I met him as Tyler and I went out to look at his school to see what we can do.

L to R Geofrey, Annette, Gideon (a friend of Geofrey's)

While walking with Geofrey we picked up a street kid named Jacaca. He was wearing a yellow jacket so dirty you could barely tell it used to be yellow, he was covered with dirt and dust from head to toe and he had the same white spots on his head we see on most of the street kids, probably a fungus. If you ever meet Jacaca the first thing you will notice is his shining personality and infectious smile.

I’m sure Jacaca and his toy rubber tire had many plans for that afternoon but he was kind enough to put all those on hold to accompany us to inspect Geofrey’s school. What a contrast it was to see Geofrey’s bright, well dressed students greeting us in perfect English. Nevertheless Jacaca stuck around. He even joined Tyler and I as we discussed the school in Geofrey’s living room, where he sat quietly throughout our meeting. Jacaca’s patience paid off. At the end of our meeting a school worker brought him a bowl of the same lunch they served to the students. Wide eyed, he devoured the bowl.

While Jacaca was the only street kid we met that day his story brings into stark contrast the lives of the poor out here. None of Geofrey’s students pay tuition but they can afford to buy a uniform. Jacaca will probably never go to school, learn to read or write, and will eek out his life as a bus hustler, if he’s lucky.

This is what I’m doing out here. We will probably build gardens at Geofrey’s school and some day we may build pig pens. If he can turn a profit or at least feed his children then kids like Jacaca may get a chance at school and a future as bright as his smile.

Why wrestle with a pig when you can feed him bananas?

It’s been almost a week since I got here. Arusha is great! The weather is perfect and the jungle is beautiful. Contrary to what I’d expected I have very few mosquito bites.

On Monday we celebrated the completion of our first major construction project, a pig pen. This was a momentous occasion because we were moving the pigs and new piglets into the pen.

Moving the piglets was easy, they were cute and squealed while we carried them. The momma and poppa pigs were not so easy. The poppa pig tried to make a run for it which sent all of us dashing into the jungle. I was able to grab the pig on several occasions but 200lbs of scared angry pork is not easy to control. Well eventually we got him over to the pen and I grabbed hold of his ears and wrestled him to a stop. One of the locals and I got him into his stall where he remains. The momma pig didn’t try to run but instead just sat there. All of the guys with all of there might could not get this pig to move. So what did we do? We bribed her with bananas and she complied. Lesson for the future, if you need to move a pig bananas are far more enticing than a rope around the leg.

Departure

Today I'll be flying out to Tanzania. At 9:40 I'll board a plane in Chicago headed for London, a 9 hour flight. After a short layover in London I will board another plane bound for Kenya. Once in Kenya I will collect my bags and hop onto a small single engine plane going to my ultimate destination: Mt. Kilimajaro Airport. So as of Friday, Milwaukee time, I will be in Tanzania.

8341miles

I'll be living with about 15-20 other volunteers, all anxious and ambitious students looking to make a difference in the world. We are all HELP-International volunteers (click to find out more). Our focus will be to create sustainable projects and programs that will help the communities we are in (mainly Arusha, Tanzania) get out of poverty. I am creating a program to help kids learn proper hygiene, I also want to build some square-foot gardens. It's a daunting task but it's one worth doing.

So the big question is, Why Tanzania? In 2006 life expectancy in Tanzania was estimated at 50yrs, that puts them in the bottom 10% of the world. Furthermore, only 57% of children 5-14 are attending school and 45% of the population is without clean water. The perplexing thing is that Tanzania (unlike most other developing countries) has been a peaceful nation with little in the way of civil or international wars. Thus Tanzania can very much benefit from the types of education and development we are bringing.

I truly believe that the work that we are engaged in will be great, tremendous, and will make a lasting difference in the lives of the Tanzanian people. I am immensely grateful to those who's donations have made this possible. I know many of you would like to join in the work but obligations and commitments limit your involvement. I am so grateful to have this rare opportunity.

Check back often for pictures, updates, and video.

If you'd like to know more about HELP-International watch this short video: