First two weeks in Mtwara
After our first two weeks of induction, we headed south- final destination: Mtwara. Marije decided to leave her chicken pox in Dar and after a one hour flight we ended up at this tiny airportje. A driver from the hospital brought us to our beach house; opposite the Indian Ocean- our start could have been worse. Our beach house is part of some sort of beach house park and it has a living room and a bedroom and no glass windows but gauze, cute geckos (we love them because they eat mosquitos!), a bed with a thin mattress, no fridge, no stove or whatsoever and sometimes running water. Due to daily gorgeous sunsets this is like paradise! We will stay here until we've found permanent accommodation.
Mtwara is the largest town of the region with 90,000 citizens, but it looks like a stretched village. There's only one (sort of) tarmac road, no high buildings and the biggest supermarket is a like a cupboard/ inloopkast. For us, Mtwara looks beautiful, very charming and cute, but the reality is that there's almost nothing. While in Dar and in Morogoro fruit stalls could be seen on every street corner, in Mtwara there are barely any fruits to be found. The restaurant opposite the hospital serves rice with beans or chipsi-mayai (eggs and chips) and the beach houses' restaurant gives us choice between chipsi-prawn and chipsi-kuku (chicken); any vitamins are hard to find. The former president tried to connect Mtwara to Dar by starting the construction of a road between the two; however since the end of his term in 2005 this road remains unfinished.
During our first week at the hospital, a surgeon from Dar visited the hospital for two days which gave Marije this kick-start in assisting him in bloody operations (my first hydrocelectomy: bilateral and skippyball size). After this surgeon left, everything is back to its usual polepole (slowly) pace, and Marije is accompanying a collaegue doctor in doing ward rounds.
After the first week, Tim has got an office (with a/c!) and is trying to get some understanding about how the hospital is managed. Reading some documents, Tim was confronted with some of the hospital's challenges. The analysis seems there; actions and implementation seem absent. This first month, we're just getting ourselves introduced to everything before assessing and planning how we could contribute to the patients' health. So, to be continued...
As said, life in Mtwara is peaceful and the region is astonishing. In our first week we met Martin. He took us on a one hour drive to white sandy bounty palmy paradise beach for our first dive in the clear blue Indian Ocean! The day before, we went to Makonde Beach Club together with two doctors from the hospital to watch English football (which Tanzanians love) and to listen to Bongo Flava (Swahili music). Karibu sana (warm welcome) to visit us here!
See our new photo's on the ‘Foto'-page!
Second week in Tanzania: Morogoro
8 October we took the bus (‘Happy Nation Express') to Morogoro. This is a town 200 km west of Dar, beautifully located and surrounded by green mountains. We stayed in a colourful convent with laughing sisters, and guess what they serve for both lunch and dinner? Rice and spinach. Did I tell you yet that the sisters laughed? All the time!
We came to Morogoro to learn Swahili. Our three language teachers did their best to learn us as much as possible in one week (which was way too short to even grasp a little of it). Sitting there with a notebook, pen, small classes (5 persons) and play games, it was like going back to school.
Swahili is a language derived from Bantu (a native East African language), Arabic and English. Swahili is spoken widely in East Africa: they say it was born in Tanzania, corrupted in Kenya, died in Uganda and buried in Rwanda (which means that we're learning the 'true' Swahili...). Unlike English, Swahili is a very phonetic language: bia is beer, picha is picture, benki is bank, roundabout is keepi lefti. Some Swahili words have more than one meaning and all words do look like another, so it's very easy to make mistakes. It's very awkward when, instead of saying ‘pole, ninachelewa' (sorry, I'm late), you say ‘pole, ninalewa' (sorry, I'm drunk). Many short verbs do lookalike - kula, kuja, kupa, kuna, kuwa, kufa - but have meanings that differ from eat to die. There is no simple word for denial, like no or not, just remove a couple of letters at the front, a couple at the back, add ‘si' and an ‘i', and sometimes put a subject in the middle of the verb: ninakula (I'm eating) becomes sili (I'm not eating). A word like wameishamsikiliza is common. To make it more complicated, there seems to be a lack of preposition words. Often used is ‘kwa', which is either to, by, with, for, towards, by means of or in. Often you don't use a word like this at all. For example, ruka is jump, mferenji is stream. ‘Ruka mferenji' is translated as ‘jump stream', where you can decide for yourself whether you want to jump into the river or over the river.
One day we practised at the market, walking around screaming names of fruits and vegetables without buying any. Hii ni nini? = What is this?, so please picture us running around yelling hii ni nini! and shaking different items in people's faces... The market people liked it though, because we studied greetings extensively. How are you, how is your day, how is your family, how is your shop? Reply with one of the many many Swahili words for ‘good'. Negative answers are not appreciated. If you want to say ‘bad', just say ‘a little bit good', when you want to say ‘no', use ‘maybe' or ‘later'.
Enough about Swahili.
Remember the bedbugs described earlier? After one week in this beautiful country, I developed red bumps on my arms and legs, very very itchy, growing when I rubbed. No worms coming out so far. I cursed the bedbugs, didn't sleep at all, and got all the psychological effects that are described on the internet. As it was spreading, I assumed mosquitos were co-visitors. No idea why Tim didn't suffer any bites. Bedbugs followed me, I saw traces them in my new bed in the clean convent, in my luggage, even in my coffee. Combined with lariam, paranoia guaranteed. Then, the general practitioner in our group noticed my condition, he diagnosed: chickenpox. OMG. I came to Africa to see and treat interesting diseases, not to get them myself, and I should have grown over childhood diseases. In any case, it's an atypical presentation, all of the diagnoses can't be 100% confirmed and all will itch for a week. I tried to avoid more mosquitos, I used some Chinese menthol powder and tried not to be contagious. Since we work for VSO, no pregnant woman around.
No complaints, our week in Morogoro was absolutely grand! Thursday we went on a safari (which means journey in Swahili) in Mikumi National Park, which was amazing! (with Tim heading back as a red lobster) See our photo's on the ‘Foto'-page and http://white-blank-page.org/. Today we headed back to Dar, tomorrow (Monday 17th) we'll fly to Mtwara!
First week in Tanzania: Dar es Salaam
After a very pleasant flight with Swiss Air we arrived in Dar es Salaam (we got extra pizza that was actually supposed to be the cabin crew's meal, but they all smiled it away!). At the airport we were warmly welcomed by Claire, the British half of the ‘introductiecommissie' of VSO, which consisted of two VSO volunteers who had already been here for three months. Claire and Robert (who for sure comes from the same country as Jim Carrey) are the nicest and most hilarious people we've ever met (they read this blog too..
Every day we went to the VSO office, for the so-called In Country Training (ICT) about VSO policies and strategies, Tanzanian culture, money matters, health and ... gender. I was very happy I recently followed the Netherlands Course of Tropical Medicine, where similar topics were discussed, like inequality, corruption, access to health care, human rights, own health and of course gender. Interestingly though, one of the first things we learned about the Swahili language was that there is no difference between male or female words (like our hij/zij or he/she), hence gender equality!
Our lunch was rice, beans, and spinach, served with fish(head), meat or extra spinach. Delicious. In the evening we went out for dinner, had pizza, Indian or local food, enjoyed with Tanzanian beer (Tanzanian beer brands are named after the country's tourist attractions; Serengeti is our favourite). Twice we went to the so-called Badminton Club, an Indian place which made us think that VSO had sent us to another continent and where Indian songs were performed by.. a Tanzanian (in Hindi!). Another cultural experience which was offered during ICT, was this 30 minute daladala ride in a minibus so fully packed that it might be that the only space to sit/hang/breath is on an unknown man's lap (here's a link to a post by a fellow volunteer about daladala's: http://debra-peter-martyn.blogspot.com/2011/10/theres-no-dilly-dally-when-you-ride.html ). Overnight we had our first safari experience since we stayed at Econo Lodge, which was very ‘econo', with cats, rats, roosters and other exotic animals. We stayed on the fifth floor, and the rats fortunately didn't make it that high. Neither the cleaners, so we suffered from... bedbugs! Aaaah.
All together, the first week we had a jolly good time with great people. ‘Hakuna matata' would be suitable, but obviously that is Kenyan Swahili so we're not supposed to say it. Any other LionKing vocabulary however is allowed. Photo's to be found under 'Foto's': 'First week in Tanzania: Dar es Salaam'.
Second fantastic week: Swahili lessons in Morogoro, including a safari to Mikumi national park, story & pictures will follow soon!
P.S. Our Tanzanian cellphone numbers are: +255-684057748 (Marije) and +255-684057743 (Tim). But, thanks to our brand new dualsim phones, you can stillreach us on our good old Dutch numbers too!