homesick?

This week marked my first month in Dar.  Fittingly, in many ways, it was the most 'normal' feeling week I've had since arriving.  I cooked dinners, washed my floors and even had my first house guests. I went to the movies and at long last, bought myself a fan that I haven't turned off since assembling.

But as weeks go, it was not an easy one.

In as much as my life is filled with fun and games, there are times when living on the other side of the world from everything that is familiar can be overwhelming.  Sometimes all I want is a glass of malbec, a familiar face and one of those silky soft polyester blankets from Costco.  Other times its to be able to ask for a latte that is made with 2% milk, extra-hot, in a re-useable cup without eliciting a vacant stare.

But most of all, in the moments when I succumb to the 'what am I doing here?' thoughts, I just want to understand.  Anything.  It is easy to take for granted the number of assumptions that you make just to get through an ordinary day. 

don't put it off

This past week I spent 20 hours in a mini-bus, and that's a conservative estimate.  I traveled from Dar to Arusha for the Tanganyika Law Society's AGM.  Our reward for the long and bumpy hours was sweet relief from the crushing humidity of Dar.  Arusha is located near the Kenyan border and not only is it dry, but at this time of year the evenings are cool enough to sleep without air-con and with a blanket! (Believe me, that is like winter in comparison to Dar)

On the ride home, I paused from the epic novel I'm currently reading and found myself entranced by the countryside.  Watching the deep-green hills of Northern Tanzania roll by, I knew that I wanted to write about it for this week's entry.  Although it was almost impossible to write owing in part to mysterious speed bumps that insisted on repeating themselves every kilometer or two along the road, I took out my trusty travel notebook to jot a few things down.  As Julia Robert's infamous line goes: "big mistake".  I'm sure you can anticipate that as I sat down to write this entry I realized that my notebook is nowhere to be found.

Here are some of the things that were in it:

• Directions to the Jodhpur Fort and Fabrindia (in Hindi)
• My electricity account number
• My phone number (I know, I shouldn't even admit that)
• Random thoughts to myself and scattered to-do lists
• The contact information of people I'd met since leaving for India last fall

If only because I've mentioned that our generator is always running, you'll have guessed that it's the last of these that is causing me the most anguish.  Fortunately, most of the people that I've met, I've been in contact with, thanks in part to Mark Zukerberg.  Unfortunately, that doesn't apply to everyone.  While writing down some goals for the coming year, I recently decided to actively try and re-connect with the people on my "I should really write and see how x is doing..." list.  While there are plenty of people who remain on this list, I am actively mourning the loss of the possibility of sending those emails to the people in my book. 

It might seem trivial, to want to write emails to people I may have only known for a couple of hours or a day, but like the book, my interactions with them comprise the record of this period of my life.  In the instance of Aju, my jewelery seller cum guru, I often hear his words of advice in the back of my head.  In my mind's eye, I can clearly remember the picture of an elephant with the words 'good luck' scrawled above its head that my waiter in Udaipur insisted on drawing.  (What I can no longer make out is the name of his restaurant -- Niwas something?)  In my heart, I still feel the message that a wise companion scribed as we parted: "I wish you the life that you want".  Come to think about it, she also said "Stay present and you will stop losing things" hmm...

And so I'm not going to regale you with tales of roadside vegetable buying or women wearing the colours of the rainbow as they carry water on their graceful necks.  My pictures will give you a glimpse of that.  What I will share is the lesson I've learned, to not put off the things that you want to do or the sentiments that you wish to express.  In so far as you can, make a point of actively doing those things, because you might not otherwise have the chance. 

As frustrating as moments like these can be, its amazing how travel always has another lesson up its sleeve.  That said, with any luck, I hope this lesson will be sufficient for the next couple of trips!

each one teach one

As the daughter of a teacher I’ve always had a respect for the amount of time and dedication it takes to do such an important job well.  In the past when I’ve reflected on the reasons why I might not be a good teacher, a lack of patience is usually the first thing that comes to mind.  Recently, working in capacity building, I catch myself asking what exactly I have to teach some one else.  As I realized last week, an equally important question is how to teach someone else.

I can vividly remember my first-year undergraduate inquiry paper that was returned to me swimming in a sea of bright red ink.  Scrawled almost illegibly on the inside cover was the following advice: “your writing would benefit greatly from the complete works of George Orwell, available at Mills library”.  As a functionally literate person, my ego took so much of a hit looking at that bleeding paper that I promptly cursed my professor and though I returned to Mills library countless times before graduating, I never once sought out that collection.

In our office we have an intern who is a young lawyer hoping to soon secure his first ‘real’ law job.  (yes, my air quote definition equating ‘real’ with ‘paid’ is impoverished and technically disqualifies my current work, but I’m trying to write more succinct posts!) Last week we were working on a policy comment and for once it was clear to me that I had some relevant skills to share.  Reflecting on it during one of the many periods when I wait for my impossibly slow computer to load something on the impossibly slow (or dysfunctional) internet, it occurred to me what a disservice it is to question whether I have something to teach someone.  We all know something that someone else could benefit from, hence the adage that I’ve used for the title of this post.  It’s only that sometimes it takes some work to determine what that is.

Cognizant that feedback I received ten years ago continues to haunt my writing, I asked myself: how do you give criticism and make revisions in a way that encourages someone to ask questions, try again and do better?

In this case, I decided to focus on the most important skill I thought I had to impart: the ability to develop an argument.  I asked him to consider the reasons we were writing and to focus on how to achieve that objective.  Then I framed my comments around how to build upon what he got right.  Did I do a good job?  I can’t say and although I’ve asked for feedback, he’s been silent.   Unfortunately, ‘wiki-good-teacher’ yields possibly the worst search results of all time.  Perhaps I should find it reassuring that the formula for a good teacher can’t be so easily reduced.  But I'm still interested.   And so my interest in teaching becomes an interest in learning.  If you have some thoughts on what makes a good teacher, I'd love to hear them.

This is how I’m living….

This week I moved out of the Onnela guest apartment into an apartment that if I’m honest, is much nicer than the one I had in Toronto (for a visual, as usual, click the link).  The fact that it is in Dar es Salaam and that I am working without pay makes it all the more surreal, but I've decided to go with it.  I’ve posted a couple of pictures, but since I’m adhering to a policy of not taking around unnecessary valuables and I've mainly only been to work and at restaurants, I haven’t actually taken many photos.

It might be a little premature for the run down of ‘what life is like’, especially since I’ve still got a lot of things to figure out, but here’s a snapshot of what I’ve been up to.

Getting around (or trying to)

My apartment is within walking distance to not one but two grocery stores and curiously enough a Subway restaurant.  Since I just moved in, I’ve had to slowly fill up my apartment by schlepping a couple of bags every day. Absolutely no one walks and yesterday when I went out, it was just me and a dude walking his broken bicycle. If you can believe it, he looked at me suspiciously and crossed the road!!!

Granted its only been two-weeks, but I have done an abysmal job of learning any Swahili.  This doesn’t matter at all for work, but complicates things when I’m not walking (i.e. 90% of the time).  Take for example this exchange Saturday night after I had been waiting for about 10 minutes for a taxi/bajaj (tuk tuk)

me: can take me to “rohobot restaurant”?

bajaji: blank stare

me: how about “Ballers night club”? (yes, that’s the real name)

bajaji: blank stare 

heartened by the fact that he hasn’t driven away, I call back-up

me: where on earth am I going? The driver doesn’t know where this place is!?!

new friend: go down the road you are on, past x,y and z and when you see a sign on a car door, turn down that road and go to the very end
me: ok, lets see how this goes….

(I understand this is the point where a responsible person would have gone home)

me: do you know where the sign on the car door is?

bajaji: blank stare

me: shall we just go down the road and see what happens?

bajaji: ok

If you can believe it, we ended up seeing the car door and went down this dark and absolutely terrible road that ended at the Ballers nightclub! However, had it not turned out so well, it would have been good to know the words ‘help’ in Swahili….