Project

 “Also, there are women all around.”    

I half-smile like I am hiding some secret. He wouldn’t guess that secret is my fear.

“Start with the cooks who work here.”

I turn and walk into the office and the thought hovers somewhere between a prayer and an omen, crap, he’s right. Now I have no excuse.

You see this project of mine, it sounds wonderful in theory and it will be wonderful in actuality, but it’s scary as hell. How does one walk up to a woman she doesn’t even know and expect to receive the truth? How does this conversation begin? How is a world of secrets shed to a stranger?

The only correct answer is to start. I think I am scared to start so close to home, though. If I am awkward about these interviews, then I will be seeing these women every day after. This is why I am tempted to start somewhere else. Is it okay to just sit down somewhere and ask someone, tell me about yourself?

I know it varies from person to person, but is that generally acceptable? To start a bit of a conversation and then shake it up with a, “do you, by chance, want to tell me your story?” It makes an impression, that’s for sure.

Will it make them nervous to see me writing? Will they like it? I can start at NakoMatt maybe, that really nice lady from customer service is starting to recognize me. Maybe I can ask her if she wants to sit down after work one day and talk. Just talk.

I must be prepared for rejection. I cannot take it personally.

Something I need to pay attention to, something I must learn to gauge, is whether or not the gratification of talking about themselves is enough for these women. Everyone loves talking about herself. We are narcissistic by nature. However we also are defensive creatures and creatures of bargain. We guard ourselves, unless we believe that sharing swings profit in our favor. For some people, the excuse to talk about themselves accomplishes this. Others drive harder bargains. Some need to build trust first (how do I promise my trustworthiness?) others need to benefit emotionally, receive some kind of healing, receive the promise of happiness. This second option is not me. How do I make them see the benefit of being written about? What is the benefit? It is the memory, it is the food for creation, it is the sharing of ideas that not only is fruitful for the receiver but also for the giver. So the answer is I don’t make people see this, I tell them that is what I perceive, and maybe they will perceive a benefit for themselves as well.

As I learn to gauge this, I will still face rejection, however I will not have to worry so much about being offensive. That is the center of my fear in starting this project. I fear that I will offend. I don’t want these people to think that I view them as specimens. They’re not that at all, and if they are then everyone who enters and exits my life is. Rather, they are people. People who live lives that are highly generalized where I come from, highly misunderstood. By understanding snippets of each of their stories, that is all I will do: understand snippets of stories. I don’t plan to engineer any sweeping philosophies, rather I am intrigued to understand individual stories saturated with drama that I expect to be both similar and different in nature from that which is most common at home.

This brainstorming session isn’t a prelude to this project, rather it is a prelude to this conscious attempt to be proactive with it. I will spend more time exploring independently, but only to a degree that suits both my personal safety and the needs of New Life and Uzima. I will also force myself to practice CONFIDENCE when I have the opportunity to do so. As long as I tread with relative caution and utter kindness, I hope that I will be able to achieve instigation of conversation without being offensive.

Free Day

Today I am not working at all. It is 7am. I am about to do a little morning workout in the yard, shower, then Princely and I are going to Machame for the day. We both miss the inspiration of being around young people with big ideas all the time, so we are going to compensate by having a super creative day today. We are going to Machame village to be inspired by the green ambiance and separately but together, we are going to write. Our ultimate goal is to produce a short screen play and regular play together. We'll see how these experiments turn out!

Eugene

“My name is Eugene, what is yours?”

I was sitting in the back corner of the dala dala squished between Eugene and a lady in a red kanga. In the dala dala, everything is squished – the crumpled bills that you fetch from your pocket when your stop is reached, the goats that bleat between bags that press against your calves, sweaty arms and legs and especially hips – they’re all squished.

I contemplated attempting to answer in Swahili, but I chose English.

“My name is Alyssa.”

I had been watching Eugene in my peripheral vision. He was a talkative guy. He entered the bus after me and immediately tapped on the shoulder of the woman in front of him to commence conversation. He then tapped the woman next to her, and the woman next to her. All of them responded to him with polite interest and the conversations did not last more than a minute a piece. His eyes flitted my way three or four times before he introduced himself.

“Shika moo, baba” I said in respect.

That was when our exchange entered the realm of Eng-Swahili.

“Marahaba, Unajua Kiswahili?” He asked if I knew his language.

“Kidogo, kidogo,” I said. He seemed to assume I was being modest until he asked another question and I had no idea how to respond.

“What are you doing here?” He translated.

We spoke about my work and his work tentatively, both aware that a good half of our words were being lost in translation. I interrupted him to shout “Kaka, Mashine. Mil tatu?” to the front of the bus. The boy with his torso out the window of the sliding door, the one who collected the bus fares, turned to me and nodded saying, “aya.” Some heads turned at my American accent and a few passengers chuckled in approval as they realized the white girl knew some Swahili.

As we neared my stop, Eugene began firing a few questions with urgency. He had forgotten to raise some key small-talk points of conversation: my age, the duration of my stay, which state is my home state. Eugene entered rapid-fire mode as we pulled over to drop me.

“New York, Kuminanane, one year!” I riled off. “Kuaheri, baba!”

“Aya, asante Dada” Eugene responded.

That conversation was the most consecutive Swahili I had spoken in a week. It also was lengthier than any of the exchanges Eugene shared with people who spoke his language fluently. We all love to be teachers and learners. It’s beautiful to experience the fruits borne from the desire to learn and teach as we try to bridge gaps of all forms.

Joy, Joy, Joy

I think it is time to update you on my work with Joy. Two Mondays ago, I went to teach the girls with Princely as my translator. For a while I taught while Princely worked on some design templates on his computer, contributing translations every now and again. He was not highly active in our class that Monday, but he was a nice comfort to have.

When his computer began to run low on battery and he asked me if he could leave to go complete his work at Zoe Babies where there was power, there was uproar from the girls. They begged him to stay but I told him it was fine, he should go. Now I always brag about my girls on the blog, so I may not have mentioned that often times it is difficult to convince them to ask me questions in English. They tend to lean on the translator (which is the natural thing to do) and ask him the question in Swahili to be translated to English. But this does not push them to practice their English.

I was nervous for Princely to leave because I was afraid that they would walk away not understanding what I had taught, but instead the girls blossomed. One particularly bright student, Happy, took leadership immediately. She assumed the role of translator when the other girls were having trouble understanding, but they all began speaking much more in English, asking questions and using words and sentence structures that I did not even know they were familiar with. It was such a breakthrough. It has made me confident that the lesson will be fruitful even when I have to go on my own. I am not saying that nothing was lost in translation, but to make up for these few misunderstandings that I am sure occurred, the girls had to really work to communicate. For that reason, the lesson was highly valuable.

This picture is a repost but that is Happy on the left and Lucy on the right

This past Monday was wonderful in a different way. I taught the girls and Princely stayed there the whole time, but with encouragement, they began to ask questions in English. But what really made this Monday unique was that I began to feel so much closer to the girls. I gave them dictionaries I bought a couple weeks ago for them (English to Swahili and Swahili to English) and they were absolutely squealing. This reaction seemed involuntary and they physically could not stop. Princely and I showed them how to use the dictionaries by having them race to translate words. It was something truly magical, I wish I could have recorded it because the moment was so pure and inexplicable, but truly beautiful. I also gave them each one undergarment and one sweater, dress, shirt, or skirt apiece. They all ran to put the clothes in their dormitories after class and were so appreciative.

Sometimes I don’t like charitable giving. It can be an indirect boast. We give to hear how great we are. This very qualm was the reason I felt so full of happiness after giving the girls their gifts. I am not giving and walking away. The gift they were most excited about (the dictionaries) is something that will feed the lessons I teach them. I love them with all my heart and am not giving to them because I want praise or even thanks in return, rather it is because I receive genuine joy from their happiness. Somehow, I felt that they understood this completely.

After class, Princely and I stayed at Zoe Babies until 6 PM and the girls were there too. Usually, Princely and I work in one room while they work and hang outside. This past Monday, whenever I took work breaks, I visited them outside. We sat on the back porch and exchanged songs. When I ran out of English worship songs to sing them, I resorted to Hootie and the Blowfish, a close second to the God-fearing type. Despite the language barrier, they’re growing so comfortable around me and I love them so much that this is the best feeling in the world. 

Chef Alice-ah

Everybody here pronounces my name Alice-ah. I think this is because the name "Alyssa" is so unfamiliar that people use "Alice" a familiar name, as a reference.

Life in Tanzania has done wonders for my cooking skills. Princely and I cook dinner three to four times a week, and we are both perfectionists and dabblers, so we get creative and we get good. Here's a shot of a dish we made the other night.

Not bad, huh?

The only meat in the house was chicken burger, so we crumbled it and made a mushroom sauce with tomato and green pepper and onion and curry in it. Then we sweated some green pepper in tomato sauce and made pishori, which is a really tasty kind of rice. 
To be honest, Princely does most of the cooking. I chop and wash and give advice for what I think should go in to the food and he stirs and sniffs and says, "can you grab me the..."
We make a pretty good team. Su Chef Pri and Chef Alice-ah  

Package!!!

Sorry I've been away for a few days, work has been crazy here this week. Mama and Baba are going to introduce New Life Foundation AND Uzima Africa to the UK today so Princely and I have been spending the past few days preparing and finalizing all their PR materials such as brochures and newsletters and PowerPoints.
I want to take a moment to emphasize how huge this is. NLF has four international partners (America, Norway, South Korea, and New Zealand) and Uzima has one in America. Both organizations are really struggling right now. With the economy being so low globally, and especially in America, there has been a huge decrease in donations in the past few years. At NLF, almost 100 children were dropped by sponsors just this year. In one week alone, one man who was sponsoring 18 children and another family who sponsored 4 dropped them all. NLF continues to chug along, but it is hurting with the pain of America's economical wound. The opportunity for this new partnership is not only a chance for blessing, it is a necessity. Please pray for their safety on this journey and their success in press conferences and forging of new bonds.

On another note, I have a lot of news to catch you up on. Two highly impactful Joy lessons, a more detailed post about the nutrition talk, and I also want to tell you a little about Bibi, Baba's mother who is in the hospital right now. Now that I have posted these plans publicly, I will have incentive to execute them. But for the time being, I am writing to tell you about the delivery of my first care package!!
Mama Domino (America mama, birth mama) sent me this sweet sweet package with materials for Uzima, gifts for Mama, some things I had been missing from home, some kind kind notes, and gifts for me!!

Check out my new earrings. Thanks, Ma!!

I got a jar of nutella, all natural peanut butter (my two guilty pleasures), this adorable green denim jacket, earrings, a change purse and a little fashion booklet of Anthropologie outfits. Spoil me rotten!!! I was so excited to get the package, there is nothing like tearing open a box, you know? Okay I have to get back to work...I still have to finish Mama's speaking notes for her PPT before she leaves tonight. Stay tuned! Hopefully my belated posts will be coming soon

Milk

Yesterday we hosted a conference for pastors’ wives at the house. There were about 30 women here to receive the seminar on inner and outer beauty that mama and I taught. I taught outer beauty through lessons on nutrition, hygiene and exercise, encompassing them all into the overarching theme that feeling like we are beautiful on the outside feeds our confidence to share our inner beauty with the world. Mama followed this lesson with a talk on inner beauty and how we as leaders can expound it. I will write more specifically about the lesson later today because I really enjoyed it (enjoyed yesterday as a whole, in fact) but for now I am going to talk about milk.

The women from yesterday were so appreciative. They offered monetary donations (its always such a blessing to receive domestic funding for Uzima work) and gifts from home such as chickens and milk and sugar. We received over two gallons of fresh milk and I am boiling some this morning.

The milk comes straight from the cow and it is dirty because the cows are milked with human hands. The women clean the milk themselves, but we still have to boil it before use. We boil it over a gas cooker, as that is where we cook all our food. I am boiling the milk this morning to put in Charity’s cereal. What a funny contrast, huh? Fresh boiled cows milk and Kellogg’s cornflakes.

We had some of the milk last night before bed. Typically, you drink it warm with sugar in it, but really you don’t even need the sugar it’s so sweet. It’s not overwhelmingly thick as whole milk often can be – instead it just tastes sweet and fresh. It was raining again last night as we sat and drank it and the power was out. In that dark room with my warm milk listening to the rhythmic rain, I could have been a baby again.