Goodbye Bagamoyo

“It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed, is you.”

You can prepare yourself for the culture shock, for the days when you miss home, for the moments of frustration, and for the times when you feel like you have absolutely no clue what you’re doing.  But the part that you can’t (or at least that I didn’t) prepare for is how a place can turn into your home in such a short time, the people your family, and the way of life something you never want to give up.  Bagamoyo has become my home, a place where I have learned way more than I could have ever hoped to have taught, about myself, about others, about the world.  

I’ve learned that its okay to not be what everyone expects you to be, in general people are friendly but sometimes you have to be the one to say hello, embracing your flaws and shortcomings is much more becoming than pretending they don’t exist, forgiveness isn’t something that can be earned but must be granted and is one of the hardest things to give, sometimes it’s better to compromise than to rock the boat, there is something wonderful and good in everyone and its our job as individuals to find that, self-love is more important than all other kinds, children have so much power and potential to either completely make your day or destroy it, not everyone is going to like you all the time but as long as you stay true to yourself they will at least appreciate the fact that you are who you are, life isn’t worth living if you’re living based on other peoples expectations, choosing the scary path is always worth the ride, true friendship is timeless and limitless, its the little things in life that are worth appreciating because they occur so much more often then the perfect big things I daydream about in my head, I can fit my entire life into one carry on suitcase, and people will always disappoint/frustrate/irritate you but in the end its important to love them anyway.

The part that scares me the most about going home is how nothing will have changed there and I’m going to have to figure out a way to fit this new me into my old life...seems like a very round hole square peg combination but I’m sure that my important people will ease the transition....

Universal Truths

Kids are kids, boys are boys, pombe (beer) is pombe (beer)

Public transportation is the same: crowded, sometimes smelly, and usually involves an invasion of personal space.

Don’t take candy from strangers...even if it goes against the norm to refuse food in the local culture

The boys you want to pay attention to you won’t and the boys you don’t want to pay attention to you will refuse to stop.

House parties are the same on any continent: music, booze, and ridiculous conversations are the key ingredients 

If they think they can ripe you off, they will...every time one of us tries to buy something here we’re always told “For you mzungu price” which means way more than local prices, but the same thing happens at home... car dealerships for instance.

There is box wine everywhere.

Cheap liquor always gives you a hangover...even if it is the “spirit of the nation”

Women get territorial everywhere.

It doesn’t matter how slowly you speak, if the person you’re talking to doesn’t know you’re language they aren’t going to understand what you’re saying.

Don’t get in cars with strangers, you don’t know when or where or if they will drop you off.

If you wake up everyday thankful for the realization that you’re still breathing, the day will always turn out to be a good one.

                              Things I’ll miss...

•  Working on lesson plans until 3 a.m. (because if you want colored copies of something where there are no color copiers you have to do them all by hand...for all 60 kids)
• My monkey children (by the end of the school day I am no longer a teacher  but a jungle gym)
• Piki pikis (hailing them, riding them side saddle, bailing off them when the driver sucks)
• Forgetting how to speak because your brain doesn’t know if it wants to speak Swahili or English
• Random animals hanging out in the middle of the street (cows, goats...goat/cow hybrids)
• Monday Market
• Ice Cream Wednesdays

• My Bagamoyo family (Ana, Tuma, Saidi, Pili, Roger, Diedus, Saidi, Elias, and all the wtotos)
• Weekend trips
• Being called Maaayyygooooonnnnn
• Acceptable upper lip sweat
• Living next to the ocean
• The stars
• Being barefoot 90% of the day
• Bagamoyo time (being a half hour or even an hour late is not only acceptable but expected)
• Chipati, red sauce, vegetable tempura, crepes basically anything Robert and Chikoo cook
• Heather never remembering to refill the toilet paper... NOT
• Lauren’s sarcasm (because it only feeds mine)
• Tuma’s laugh
• Being called madam, and the happiness on the wtotos faces whenever I give them a high five
• Being an African dada
• Almost getting run over on a daily basis while walking to work
• Barraka’s jealously issues (my boss’s 3 year old who gets very upset when you don’t pay enough attention to him)
• When the wtotos steal my sunglasses and always put them on upside down
• Living in the moment (there is never a need to multitask...people even think it’s strange when you walk too fast here because no one is ever in a hurry they just live to enjoy the moment)
• Being a resident of Tanzania
• Jumping pictures
• The sunsets
• Everything...............

This is my excited for safari face :)

 Safari

By far one of the most incredible things I could have experienced in my entire life!  From the height of the giraffes, to the sheer size of the elephants, to getting close enough to pet a lion I have never had such an amazing experience.  While we were driving into the Ngorogoro Crater one of the girls says “We have entered the movie the Lion King” and that is exactly what it felt like.  The beauty of the terrain and the amazing sight of animals I’ve only ever seen in a zoo or on TV in their natural habitat is an experience I can never fully describe...it will never be perfect and there will always be something missing because the sight was so incredible!

Since words can’t do it justice...I’ll let some of the pictures do the talking...ENJ

Just hanging out in our safari jeep!!!

Thinking we weren't going to get on the stand-by flight...

World Traveller

While in Tanzania, I have experienced some of these most interesting travel blunders and have heard about some of the most interesting travel blunders.  Through these experiences I am now convinced that any traveling I do inside the U.S. will be a piece of cake from here forward because I actually speak the same language as the people I’m dealing with and I am much more prepared to travel abroad than the average individual...here is a short list and description of some of those crazy adventures...

My friend Heather when she arrived in Tanzania, was taken into the baggage hub of the plane she was on to retrieve her bags because every other person on her plane was going onto Zanzibar.

For my second trip to Zanzibar, we booked a hotel and then when we got to town the hotel manager told us that they gave our room away because it was a busy weekend.  Oh.  So we spent the next hour hour with the nicest cab driver on the planet looking for another hotel.  Finally at the 11th one we visited we finally found a room.

Riding a piki piki (Bagamoyo's taxis)

One Saturday my friend Lauren and I spent the night in Dar and at 3 in the morning our taxi driver didn’t know how to get to our hotel...so Lauren had to figure it out.

On our way to Arusha for our safari, I realized in the taxi that I completely forgot my passport and that the only form of ID I had on me was my atm card and my credit card...uh oh.  Luckily when in Tanzania you don’t need ID to get on a plane a.k.a if you’re a smooth talker you can convince the security people to let you through regardless of the lack of identification.

Our taxi driver didn’t know how to get us from our Safari camp to the airport.  So after we completely missed our flight and he asked several people how to get to the airport we arrive at a completely different airport than we’re suppose to be at.  Luckily (or stupidly perhaps) I was pretty sure we passed the road we needed to get to the airport and I new how to get us back.  Before we could get to far however, our taxi driver took us on a road that was currently under construction and got us stuck in a ditch...super...we eventually got out and were able to get on the next flight on standby.

While on the standby flight I sat next to a woman with a four month old baby.  At one point during the flight the mama goes “I’m tired would you mind?” hands me the baby and disappears to the bathroom for 15 minutes.  Craziness.

I’ve learned how to hail a motorcycle like a taxi at home and ride one sitting side saddle because I’m always in a skirt.

Traveling at home will be boring compared to this...

IMUMA

My friend Lauren has been spending her time in Tanzania at IMUMA, an orphanage that houses and supports orphaned children and supports at risk children in the community.  For the last five weeks I have been going there in the afternoon to help teach English to the high school aged students there.  At this stage of their education everything is taught in English and their ability to understand and comprehend quickly is key to their success.  What has impressed me most about these kids and lot’s of other Tanzanians is their thirst (every opportunity to learn is taken whether it be through learning a new word from a mzungu or from reading through their textbook not once, not twice, but three times to fully grasp a concept) their drive (some students walk 14 miles roundtrip to go to school for the day in a place where the temperature frequently hits 90 degrees by 8am) and their willingness (our kids at IMUMA after spending all day at school still find the time and energy to work on their English skills outside the classroom) toward their education.  Never in my educational career have I ever been that dedicated to a single subject let alone to all the subjects on my plate.  I profoundly admire all the students in this country, for their dedication, for their tenacity, and for their joy in learning.  These teenagers are always an inspiring sight, not something I could say about myself at 14 or 15.

 Sometimes you don’t know everything...

This experience has taught me so much...especially that I don’t know everything.  With the language barrier, the lack of comforts, the customs, so on and so on everyday there is something new that reminds me that I need people to lean on.  Every minute of every day isn’t always amazing but that’s why we are given wonderful people to help us through.  I have been blessed with a few of those here.  One in particular wrote a beautiful journal entry that really captured a lot of the same sentiments I’ve been feeling but hadn’t quite gotten into words yet...  Heather is such an interesting soul and she has graciously given me permission to post her journal entry below.  I hope you enjoy :)

“Being here has made me realize so much about my life; about the people I interact with daily, about Grande Prairie, Canada, Africa; about everything. About myself. I’ve learned that I’m stronger than I thought I was; that having walls isn’t a bad thing as long as you don’t hide behind them. I’ve learned that I have what it takes to do everything I want to do; to travel, to continue learning and teaching, to inspire people and be inspired, to become a well-established writer and pursue a career in foreign affair journalism. I can do anything, be anything, as long as I work hard enough. I’ve realized that I don’t need to be the one always putting in all the effort in my relationships with friends, men, family, whoever; that

everything should be 50/50 and that being selfish is okay sometimes. I’ve learned to appreciate the little things; a child’s laugh, seashells, doodling, having the ability to build a canopy bed in Canada and destroy one in Zanzibar :) I’ve learned that kids can be great one day and frustrating the next; that’s why they’re kids. I’ve learned that you can’t change the world just because you want to, but that despite how small it may be on the scale of everything screwed-up, making even the slightest difference is still simply that - a difference. I can’t help but look forward with excitement to see where my decisions will take me; which paths I’ll choose to take; which mistakes I’ll make, and which of those mistakes I’ll learn from. 

Ending on an enthusiastic and fulfilled note,”

Heather Ulrich - Grande Prairie, Canada (heatherulrich@live.ca)