3rd blog post from Tanzania
February 23, 2011
I feel that there is no apt comment on all the preconceived notions I had before I got her and analogies I might have made at this stage of this journey except to say-it is what it is, and I am not going to change it.
hakuna matata
in my work here i place a mini size bandaid on a Katrina sized daily disaster.
i think someone said that once your eyes are opened you can’t close them again, and that is as true here as anywhere.
i met an important health minister doctor here today who runs a travel agency on the side! Where but in a 3rd world country is every single person who can, working ALL the angles?
So be it and sawa sawa.
I trained hard for 2 weeks to work hard after that and come to find out that there is no more work this week after Wednesday noon! So what’s a Mzungu to do except if you can afford it, go on safari! So that is where I am headed tomorrow as again, a last minute add on to a group from hopefully, but don’t count on it, a better tour operator with more to the employees than the employer! This is really not possible here, and if a Mzungu has been here a while s/he comes I see to play the same money game of who can take who the most, since everyone is on the take. Sorry to say this, and it is disillusioning to say, but true. And from any Western standard who really cares if you are getting ripped off several hundred or thousand shillings, when 1,510 shillings = $1.00 US?
So I went to a hotel in the 90 degree heat this afternoon, had a “cold” swim and a imported stout beer for $2200 shillings ($1.50 US), and called it a good day, after a morning of patients in the Kaolini clinic.
The “Clinic” I work in is one small crammed room inside a small one story African style apartment complex, which is to say, a metal gate with a small inside
‘courtyard’, in which a chicken coop resides, a cart for hauling water buckets, or produce, etc. and it doubles as the cook space for the 4 families crammed into 1 room abodes off the common space. A common latrine is off one end, and chickens, babies, mom’s cooking, and folks hanging out at any/all hours is the norm.
It is fairly typical of the homeopathic clinics, or they may be at someone’s home, or in one room or a building that doubles or likely triples as something else.
The patients are a mix of folks that have HIV, or may not be tested for fear or family stigma, and have many complaints they must out of necessity put up with for years- leg ulcers, chronic pain, debilitating coughs, malaria, and many serious illnesses. They can go to a clinic, and they may get tested in brief, but thorough testing is quite unheard of in my time here, and expensive as well, so most do not bother. I hope to see in a week or two how the folks I have prescribed remedies for are progressing.
Last week I took some time off to be in the more scenic parts of northern Tanzania for a time, by joining a group that went up Kilimanjaro via the far western route called Londerosi. As it turned out, the plan to go a long ways along the Shira Plateau was great, but once we got up to about 16,000 ft on the 4th day the weather turned and an early season blizzard, coupled with 1/3 of the porters going snow-blind due to bad gear, tents collapsing, and more. The group did an about face at that point and headed to below the snow line, where we did some lower altitude gorgeous hiking for the rest of our mountain time, and enjoyed it a lot b/c it was quiet, and away from the up, up, up, bag the summit on the porter’s trail of tears. One of our group decided to try a different route and he did bag the peak, and though I wish I could have walked inside the crater rim and been there while there were still glaciers atop the Kibo, I feel I got a got feel for the vastness and scale of the place and my impression of the cultural gap between Mzungu’s and native Tanzanians widened considerably on that trip.
Kilimanjaro Porter's Association is working to change things for porters here, and I hope to contact them to see what I might do as well besides write an article to raise awareness...
One last small world note is that I met yesterday in Moshi a man named Seth, who is a last semester student at USM, and who has started his own orphanage here in Tanzania, actually in Moshi. He lives within a stone's throw of me on the east end of Portland! (Maine)!
