My friend calls me on my cell phone this afternoon: “Hey I forgot to warn you, there is a Cholera outbreak in Tanga. At least two people have died from it in the hospital already. Just be very careful – don’t eat any street food, wash you hands all the time and wash all your fruit before you eat it, okay? And really, I mean it, do not eat any street food or fruit sold on the street.”
Another day, “Sorry I can’t meet right now, I think my dog has rabies and we have to go home right away and... do something about it. I’ll call you tonight!”
“You have a clothes washing machine?! Oh, this is very nice. I heard there are new machines what you put cups and plates into and it washes them. Do they have this in Canada too?”
Another story from a friend, “When I got home last night, my friend called me in a panic yesterday evening. She had just got home from my place. Her neighbor had returned from work to find that her seven year old daughter had just been raped - raped so badly that the girl couldn’t walk. They knew exactly the man who did it too – the security man for a neighbor’s home. She called me for advice so I said of course she must go to the hospital for an examination and contact the police. They did prove the rape and got the cops involved, but usually people just keep quiet about these things and no one ever finds out about them.”
“You want document of entrance requirements for our school... this paper here? 10,000 Shillings.”
“No, I don’t want to take one and keep it, I just want to read it right now so I know more about your school. Then I will return it to you now. I’ll give it right back.”
“10,000 shillings.”
“Oh, I feel sick. My head is pain. It is malaria.”
“Do you have a fever?”
“No. But it’s malaria.”
(A Tylenol equivalent and a couple glasses of cool water cured this bout of malaria within an hour)
I try to teach the girls how to make friendship bracelets in broken Kiswahili, but they are distracted by the vervet monkeys chasing each other up and down the mango tree in front of the 110 year old Tanga museum we play in.
One of the girls holds up a stick she plucked from the ground, “Sister Kait, in English?”
“Stick”
“Ahh... in school, teacher do this... beat, beat, beat,” and she mimes how school teachers beat students across their hands and bottom.
My great friend makes us a fantastic meal of vegetarian spaghetti on my first night back in Tanzania. We sit down at a nice table, decorated with a table cloth and runner, beautiful handmade placemats, freshly made mango juice and heaps of food. I pick up the fork from my placemat and dig in. I am then reminded of the custom I had forgotten about in my two year abcense from this country, as my friend skilfully eats spaghetti with her hands across from me.
“My mother disappeared when I was a baby and I don’t remember her face. My father is supposed to look after my sister and I, but he drinks too much and when he stops by our house for a few minutes to check on us, he only says hello and sometimes give us a bit of money. He lives somewhere else. Sometimes he gives us 30 shillings, sometimes 50 shillings, and sometimes he has nothing at all. My Auntie feeds my sister and I at dinner time, but she doesn’t want us to live with her. So, I sleep alone in a one-room house, in a bed with my sister.”
... And some things are just too hard to put into words, too raw and personal to publish for the world to see.
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