blender impression

This past week qualifies pretty solidly as the single most surreal four days of my life. The boat ride alone should've been an omen of what was to come.

At 7:30pm our bus disgorged us near the Zanzibar wharf. We were herded in the dark through a cyclone fence as thousands of people milled around. Like mosquitoes. But, you know, bigger and less obnoxious. On the other side of the fence, it was straight up like that scene out of Middlesex where all the islanders are panicking because the whole place has gone up in flames and everyone's shoving each other trying to board the boats (except the island was not on fire in our case) -- it was like mad immigration scramble crossed with rush hour in a Tokyo train station, but in the dark and with Tanzanians, who aren't real fussy about personal space. Once we actually all made it onto the ship (quite a feat itself), we passed the non-first-class section, which was basically just a huge empty room packed with families fleeing to Pemba scattered all over the floor. It looked like something out of wartime photographs of refugee camps.

We had been told we'd be cruising first class in a cabin containing approximately 60 bunks. We did not have bunks. We had chairs. Sort of like ghetto versions of highly abused airplane seats. The first-class cabin was sealed and the AC was on, which was nice, if a bit exclusionist. Passengers started claiming floorspace in the aisles -- I'm unclear as to whether the people lacked seats (like if more were allowed past the doorguard than there were seats) or if they just preferred horizontal floor to vertical chairs. I parked myself in my designated seat and resigned myself to an uncomfortable, brief night. When I woke up at insane o'clock am, it was hot and humid in our cabin and the lights were still on. D Camp was awake, as you'd expect an experienced naval officer on a dangerously overcrowded boat tanking through foreign waters to be. He was not pleased with the situation -- about half an hour before docking, our cabin's windows and doors were sealed, the only exit was padlocked from the outside, and the AC was shut off. Two hundred people don't really need air exchange or escape routes anyway.

Lewis & Clark will not be using this transport method in future. Just about the first thing D Camp did when the level of sketch exceeded his threshold was to book a flight for all of us for our return trip to Zanzibar. He was actually pretty livid that we'd been advised to travel on this ferry at all.

Before meeting our Swahili host families, we got a tour of a spice plantation (for lack of a better word) on Pemba. We were shown about 30 difference spices and agricultural goods as we maundered through the forest, from henna plants to clove trees. WE got to sample a lot of the edible bits. When we sat down at some benches for fresh coconut and ndizi sukari (sugar bananas), I thought we were done with the tour, but no, that was only the halfway point! We greeted another 20 or 30 useful growing things before boarding the bus again. It was tight.

When we got to Tumbe, the village we'd be doing our homestays at, we were paired up with our families. The headmaster of the secondary did the list, and he definitely referred to each of us as "stranger" and our designated host sibling as our "native," which was pretty funny. My name was called as being assigned to the chief's home. Whoa! Also, I was publicly informed that I was lucky because I'd been assigned to a boy (as opposed to a host sister). I do believe I made a face at the proclamation. My host brother was friendly, and he helped me carry the giant water bottles D Sperling had hooked us up with to his house.

My family was huge! Mama was a few years younger than my mom and dad, but the children ranged in age from around 25 to a one-and-a-half year old. I think mama averaged a kid ever 18 months or so. There were at least 10 kids who belonged to the household -- probably closer to 15. It was kinda hard to work out who lived where, since all the kids run wild inside and outside every house. Most of them had difficult-to-remember names, too. My main host brother (my "native") had a name that sounded like a cross between a cough and a sneeze. The closest I can come to spelling it is Hyahye. The easiest name was Amina, and the baby was Zainabu. She had the best ears in the world -- I will henceforth refer to her as Airplane Ears -- and the quickest pout lip I've ever seen. She cried when she was bored, which was often. (Incidentally, it's also the first place I've been in East Africa where people actually have trouble with my name -- I got called Aisha a lot, which makes sense seeing as how Aisha was one of Muhammed's wives and is a more familiar name to Muslims than Maisha is.) On the second day, my family spent an hour trying to teach me everyone's names, then quizzing me throughout the day. The hardest was later that evening when we were all sitting around outside in the moonlight. I tried to explain in Swahili that the name game was hard because I can't see in the dark, but they weren't buying it, so I could only go by sizes as a clue to which kid belonged to which name.

Even though it was the chief's house, it was a simple structure of concrete and mud with an open (unroofed) room in the centre. Unlike a lot of houses, ours had running water. Unlike a few houses, ours did not have electricity. The whole place was minimalist to the extreme: most rooms were almost completely empty. Maybe a small wooden table or a handmade floormat or some bowls in a corner. The bedroom I shared with one of my sisters (Selma maybe, or Iyuna, or Hosfa) had the two beds and one small wooden table and that's all. And when I say bed, I really mean a frame made of tree limbs lashed together with crisscrossed ropes tied taught over the frame and covered with a floormat. Surprisingly, it was more comfortable than you'd think, and it was hot enough (eve at night) so that I didn't need more covering than one kanga as a sheet and another folded up as a pillow. My family did not provide bedding, so I was glad I'd brought the extra kanga.

I awoke in the morning at around 6 to the jarring sounds of pigeons courting in the rafters above my head, roosters doing the alarm clock thing outside the window, and Airplane Ears pitching in for good measure. Oh, the pigeons! The pigeons were invited into the peripheries of the house (there was an open-air gap between the straw roof and the house walls), and I definitely watched one of my brothers calling to the pigeons in the morning and tossing them food -- uncooked rice, I think -- and shooing away the chickens that came over to jack some pigeon food. I asked about the pigeons in Swahili, and I think the answer is that they eat pigeons. Kind of a weird thought, keeping pigeons for eating.

It was difficult to communicate, but not as bad as I'd expected because some of the older kids spoke rudimentary English. Still, I was definitely in the communication Stretch Zone. My brother Hyahye spoke English fluidly enough that he'd lull you into the false notion that he's proficient -- until you'd try to turn it into a conversation by asking questions, and then he'd respond totally nonsensically, which I'm sure I do in Swahili far worse. Like answering Yes to a non Yes/No question or just repeating the last part of the question in a decisive tone. He also kept asking me obscure things about Germany, such as the government system and how much a pair of trousers would cost in German money. I eventually worked out that he'd once met a couple of tourists from Germany who'd bequeathed their Zanzibar/Tanzania guidebook to him. Books being rare finds in Tumbe, it was a well-worn, banged up old thing, and even though he couldn't read it, he'd probably perused its pages hundreds of times. He didn't understand English as well as he spoke it, so what I found to work best was an ungainly mixture, wherein he used English and I used Swahili with a few odd English words I didn't know in Swahili. With the rest of the family, I relied heavily on pantomiming. Mama did the single best blender impression I have ever witnessed. She was trying to warn me that the pillau had chicken flavouring in it. I had managed to communicate that I didn't eat meat, and she was concerned about chicken powder.

My brother and a couple other teenage boys took me and their other wazungu charges round the island on the second day. It was mad chill. They took us down to the beach, quizzing us on Swahili words and then exchanging names for things unknown in both languages. Some of the village people were working out on the beach at what I'll tentatively call seaweed farms. Bundles of rubbery seaweed, which doesn't look like it would be appetising to any creature, although the boys claimed it was food for Chinese, were being collected and tied onto rows of strings staked into the sand. All the tying is done by hand, and Molly, Charles, and I got lessons in how to do it properly. It seems like such a pointless thing to do, like just something to do to have something to do. That's not actually such an outrageous concept. Tumbe is a more or less self-sustaining community, not a consumerist society, so there is much less to accomplish any given day than there is in a fast-paced society structured around the capitalistic need to produce surplus. Everything is pole pole to the extreme in Tumbe.

Tumbe is barely touched by Westernisation at all, but the ways it is are totally incongruous. In a village that doesn't bother with spoons or mattresses diapers or clocks, half the adults own a cell phone. Most of the houses use candlelight and kerosene lamps, but the few that do have electricity have a tv and dvd player. My first night, I visited a neighbour's house with one of my brother's friends. The kid stuck and Arnold Schwarzenegger DVD into the player and we watched a mute action flick with English subtitles while he taught me Swahili words and read to me from his Tanzania history textbook.

The boys leading us on a tour of the island were way into having us identify plants and eat anything potentially edible. Besides weird roots, tubers, and leaves, we got unripe mango and a whole coconut each. The guys talked a little kid (probably 7 or 8) into scaling a palm tree for us -- he tied his feet together with rope to serve as a stairstep grip -- and knock down a whole bunch of coconuts. It was awesome.

I definitely got the sense that my family was showing me off. Hyahye took me around to meet tons of people. We generally stuck around of an awkward half hour or so at whatever house -- just long enough for three quarters of the residents of all the nearby houses to show up and sit around staring at me -- then it would be time to go to the next house. I was introduced to about 50 "this is my grandmother"s -- some of them were even old men, but I forgive Hyahye his English mixups -- and all of them felt the need to test my knowledge of Swahili greetings. There are about 15 different ones, from the obligatory and respectful "Shikamoo" "Marahaba" to the informal "Mambo!" "Poa!"

Tumbe would be the absolute coolest place to be an old woman. Elders are given so much respect and care. All the grandmothers were just plain cool, too. It was amazing to see how much an important component of a society older people can be.

Back at home, I was assigned the task of sweeping and dishwashing. Okay, so doing the dishes was a little different from the Load, Unload of home, but a bar of soap, a few loops of abrasive twine as a scrub brush, and a couple pans of questionable water is still fairly effective at getting food slime off of bowls.

I got some genius henna done. It only cost the equivalent of about $3 USD and it's mad intricate all up and down both my arms. Every girl on our trip ended up getting henna in the two and a half days we were on Pemba. Mine is "pico" and henna, actually. Pico, which is black, was explained to me as "ink, like pen, you know pen?" but upon examining the packaging, we found out that it's really just hair dye. Japanese hair dye, judging by the ethnicity of all of the hair models in the pamphlet. I was informed after being hennaed that this design is special for weddings. I was already getting marriage propositions and questions, and the Wedding Special henna only intensified it. I'm at the marriageable age, so naturally everyone wanted to know if I'm married and how many kids I have, if Hyahye is my husband, or if I will marry them or one of their relations. The answer is No all around. Just to make that clear.

I got some steller photos of all the kids surrounding our bus on the last morning, and some of my family and other people's families too. I always feel like such a tool whipping out my camera, but my family had asked me within an hour of bringing me home if I'd brought a camera and would I please take pictures before leaving, so I figured it was legit.

The plane ride back to Zanzibar was almost as exciting as the initial boatride. We had to take three separate planes to get all 26 of us off the island, which should give you some idea of the size of the planes. One of them was a five-seater. In mine, Adams got shotgun. He sat in the copilot's seat next to the pilot. The "Welcome Aboard" announcement was delivered sans mic -- the pilot just looked over his shoulder at us, introduced himself, and reminded us about seatbelts and smoking. We hit a little turbulence and lights and alarms went off, but we didn't crash, so I guess it was okay. The whole flight was less than half an hour long.

We got our ballots yesterday, and voting is ensuing! I'm in charge of mailing off the DHL FedEx package tomorrow so that our ballots will get submitted in time. Exciting stuff!

Longest post probably of ever. Took three hours to write and an hour and a half to type!