The beginning of my fourth week in Tanzania also marks Neil's departure for six weeks. After some meetings in Rwanda he'll be returning to work in the UK til September. His leaving has emphasised my need to develop my Swahili further and become more independent. I've had a busy week of meetings with various committees and with numerous members of staff to acquire the relevant data, so I can make a start on my key objective of helping improve reporting at NIT. Each morning this week the NIT Transaid coordinator has enthusiastically invited me to join the other NIT staff members for ‘Chai’. Chai is a mid-morning tea break that is accompanied with differing Tanzanian delicacies; every morning three different small snacks are provided with traditional Tanzanian tea (chai) and coffee. Most people drink their tea black with a segment of lime and a significant amount of brown sugar. The water that is provided for the tea is usually flavoured with something additional; ginger is a common additive. Having chai with the other faculty is something that I plan to continue as it offers a perfect opportunity to pick up some Swahili – unless they are speaking directly to me the language used in the chai room is Swahili. During my time in Tanzania so far, I have experienced a few power cuts that have temporarily affected us in the office before the generator has kicked in; the power has however always come back on before we have left the office to return home. On Tuesday the power went off at 10am until just before 7pm.Amref donantion box While in the office I had the luxury of the generator powering the air-con, yet on return to the house I found that the fridge freezer was slowly defrosting. I soon had the stark realisation how much of a reliance I hold on electricity to cook a normal meal. Eating fruit in a warm house waiting for the electricity to return amounted to an interesting couple of hours…. On Wednesday I finally felt like I could manage walking to the supermarket on my injured leg – once again I was captivated by the local surroundings and the local people. At the supermarket they had a collection at the checkout for a charity called Amref that have a campaign to improve maternal care in Tanzania. Through a member of the underwater hockey team, who works for a charity in Dar es Salaam which aims to improve sexual health, I had been informed about the high maternal mortality rates in Tanzania. The issue of maternal care is something that Transaid is also heavily involved in within other countries and something that I am personally interested in (My mother is a midwife who has been to Ghana to work on similar causes there). Needless to say I made a donation to the cause and gained a red wristband as a result, which has a slogan in Swahili that says: ‘Afya ya Uzazi ni Haki ya Kijana’ which translates to ‘reproductive health is the right of the young’. Throughout the week I have been focused on improving my Swahili, an important aspect of which is the way to tell the time. Instead of using the 12 hour English version of the clock they use a different variation where hour one is considered to be one hour after sunrise (7am). This discovery has started to make me think of the possible mistakes I could make while making arrangements in Swahili – I will have to take particular care to mention both English and Swahili times when arranging meetings. I feel like I am finally starting to get the hang of numbers. Another aspect of Swahili that I am starting to feel more confident in is greetings, there are multiple ways of greeting someone in Swahili and each one has a different response, which do not seem to be interchangeable. Local people have been taking a lot of pleasure in testing one greeting after another on me and they look far too satisfied when I am unable to respond to one of the greetings. A very informal greeting, used for friends and younger people is ‘mambo’ to which the response is usually ‘poa’ – this translates to ‘hi’ – ‘I’m cool’. From walking around campus this week I picked up on some of the students returning my greeting of ‘mambo’ with something ending in ‘ndizi’ – which means bananas. I did some research and found that a very informal response to ‘mambo’ further to ‘poa’ is ‘poa kichizi kama ndizi’ which translates to something along the lines of ‘I’m crazy cool like a banana’. I like this phrase but I don’t think I will be using it around NIT. The NIT campus has been busier than usual this week, which I initially associated with the beginning of a new semester. However, during chai I asked the NIT Transaid coordinator why people were queuing up outside, and I was informed that everyone had to attend to register to be entitled to vote in this year election. There will be a general election in Tanzania at the end of October; the government has a five year term, so this will be the first election since 2010. For this election the government have introduced biometric voting. As a result everyone needs to register before the election providing their fingerprints to be eligible to vote. NIT is one of the locations in Dar es Salaam that people can come to, to register and they have a 12 day window to do this. I had a great opportunity this week to visit a local restaurant and eat some authentic Tanzanian food. One of my colleagues at NIT took me to a place which is famous for sato fish (which is a type of tilapia) – it was prepared with tomatoes, spinach, onions and herbs and slowly grilled – it was fantastic. I chose not to attend underwater hockey this weekend, although, my leg is significantly better and I feel like I will be able to make a return next weekend! One of the highlights of my weekend was watching some of Obama’s speech in Kenya, on TV at the local shopping centre. The speech was broadcast in a shop and employees and customers were very engaged in the proceedings. Obama’s visit to Africa has had a lot of discussion and most people seem genuinely excited about his interest in Africa. |