The seeds of contempt

Since moving here, I’ve been cognizant of a strain in my relationships with many Tanzanians.  Nothing overt, just a subtle undercurrent of something that I haven’t yet found a way to describe.  It’s something that I didn’t experience in either Laos or Singapore and because I don’t understand it, it’s something I think about a lot.

Here on the peninsula (the expatriate enclave), I regularly see people have grocery attendants carry their bags to their car.  That I am able to carry my bags myself has elicited more than one look of confusion.  I see house attendants walking family pets and a steady stream of domestic help making their way to our various households in the early morning light.   I’m not going to address the economics of this system, but the power differential is painfully obvious.

A word that has come to mind on more than one occasion is contempt.

This week was one of those occasions.

When I woke up Wednesday morning there was no power.  A transformer servicing Dar had exploded earlier in the week and our generator had been running non-stop, so my first thought was that it had broken down under the strain.  Given that most of my colleagues don’t have generators, I figured it was just my turn to experience some inconvenience.  Because there was an outside chance I’d used up my pre-paid credit I strained at my window to hear whether other tenants were also afflicted.

I didn’t have to wait long before I heard a raised voice directed at our night guard.  Since it was a building-wide problem and we don’t have running water when there is no power, I gave up on my morning run, dawned a headband and went to work.

That’s when the venom started.  The first email I read from a fellow tenant was the written equivalent of frothing at the mouth.  Capital letters, thirty-six point font, the works.  How dare we be inconvenienced?  Slowly an explanation emerged.  For reasons that remain unknown, the night guard had pressed the emergency stop, shutting off our generator.  Immediately the rallying cries began for his dismissal.

Now it’s true, this guard was not necessarily the sharpest or most dedicated to his job.  But let’s consider what his job is: he sits for twelve hours at our gate, opens it when we come in to park, theoretically protects us from some unknown danger.  Don’t get me wrong, there is value to this.  But when I come home and he is sleeping, my first thought is not ‘why is he sleeping?’ it’s ‘how does one endure such boredom?’  To me, sitting and waiting for twelve hours at a time to open a gate would be a form of cruel and unusual torture. 

A (not so) quiet evening in Dar

Yesterday evening I was feeling pretty good about myself.  I had just finished making mapu tofu, inspired by a link a friend shared with me after enduring my complaints about the Korean food here.  Sitting on my couch, I heard a rustling near the door of my bedroom.  This is not uncommon – I keep my windows open and so the occasional plastic bag gets blown around my apartment.  That said, this noise sounded a little more substantial. I was right -- I found myself looking directly into the eyes of a BAT!?!  

 

Reflexively I got up, in time to see the bat turn and scurry into my room and under my bed.  Scurry.  Did you know that bats scurry? That is when the screaming and jumping began.  If it took me a glass of wine to summon the courage to kill my last cockroach, what was it going to take to capture a bat?!?

Seconds into this meltdown I heard a knock at my door.  It was our apartment handyman, Juma.  (I’ve been having problems yet again with my shower door – this time it didn’t explode but suffice it to say I’ve been without one for the last 5 days.  He had come to move the now familiar bricks that mysteriously contribute to the (temporary) fixing of my shower.)  Unable to conceal my hysteria (I was still jumping around), I explained what had happened.  

Amused, Juma went to my room and began moving things around in search of the bat.  As he was riffling through my clothes, I began to think about how the bat could have gotten in.  How long had it been in my apartment?  would it really be hiding in my shirts? I asked him, trying to sound casual about the implications for my future dressing routine.  Ignoring the inner monologue scolding me for being blaze about rabies vaccinations on account of cost, I got down on my hands and knees and tried to use my broom handle to coax the bat from its possible hiding spot under my bed.  Seeing my futile attempts, Juma came over and moved the bed.  Success.

At this point I screamed and ran out of the room.  No need to lay eyes on the creature again.  Laughing, he picked up a small plastic bag, my broom and told me that he had to close the door.  Happily, I let him, listening to the commotion in my room with a mix of terror and giddiness.

Soon after he came out, the bag now dark with its contents.  Smiling he asked, “do you want to see?”  I’ll let you guess my answer.  Then Juma, the bricks, the bat and a tip left my apartment.   

Afraid of my room, I devoted the rest of the evening to making peanut butter cookies dipped in chocolate, which were excellent and time consuming. (I know, interesting choice, but my fight or flight response triggers the need to either exercise or bake... at least it’s both!) Resisting the urge to consume enough cookies to slip into a sugar coma, at the advice of a friend I slipped under my mosquito net and tried to ignore the fact that it wouldn’t prevent a bat from flying into my head. Lucky for me, none did.  Nor did I contract rabies (that I know of).  Just another quiet evening in Dar. 

43 Hours in Nairobi

I spent last week in Kampala on the shores of Lake Victoria, first for a workshop and then for a conference.  Because my flight routed through Nairobi, I decided to take the opportunity to reconnect with urban life on my way home.

Turning my phone on amid the chorus of Nokia start-up sounds, the first message on the screen was “traffic is terrible, if there is a bar at the airport, I suggest you go there and have a drink”.  It was past 10 pm.  If you haven’t spent time at the Nairobi airport, take my word for it, you’ve missed nothing.  After a day of travel I quickly decided that braving the traffic had to be the better option.

Arriving at the customs desk, I was granted a $20 transit visa (pretty awesome in contrast to the $50 regular one).  I handed my hundred dollar bill to the officer and after a brief examination she told me that it was too old and she could not accept it.  I responded with the obvious – I do not live in America and do not have a ready source of US currency to draw from.  She responded with her equivalent: I should go to the Forex back in the terminal and switch my bill.  Why? Because bills from the nineties are worth less than those printed after 2000.  I asked what would happen if I could not find a newer bill, would I have to wait stranded in the airport like in that movie?  She replied: “don’t be ridiculous”.  My inner monologue queried: “seriously, as though that is the only ridiculous part of the exchange we are having?”  

Alas, despite my reservations that this was a reality in the world markets, I dragged myself back to the terminal.  Unable to find the Forex, I decided to withdraw money and pay them in Kenyan Shillings (yep, recipe for an argument).  That was until I noticed that the amounts on the machine were in Pounds!?! Resigned, I looked up, right at my boss who was doing some shopping while waiting for her connection to Europe.  Amazing! 

One bill exchange and twenty minutes later we were snaking our way out of the airport, which had areas blocked off owing to the threat of retaliation from Al-Shabab.  The roads were empty and I thought the traffic had finally dissipated, until we reached the city.  There a scene of chaos waited at every turn.  Heavy rains had made driving an exercise in skill and patience.  Not to mention foresight: dozens of cars were parked on the sides of the road, presumably because they had ran out of gas.  Luckily, my driver wasn’t having any of it and somehow he managed to get me to my destination – off a dirt road that had collapsed into a series of craters – in record time!  Insert some wine, yahtzee and the lights of a big city to make the journey worthwhile.

The next day we headed to the National Museum.  Perched on a hill over botanical gardens, it is a spot that I’ve wanted to visit on numerous occasions but never found the time for.  Kenya being home to the Rift Valley, i.e. the cradle of civilization, natural history is the obvious highlight.  From the remnants of Lucy to those of the Turkana Boy, we were treated to glimpses of our ancestors from 1.7 million years ago.  Illustrations on the walls of early hominids eating, hunting and relaxing on the savannah, much like the animals I saw on safari weeks ago, was fodder for the imagination.  It seems incredible, but it brought home to me the fact that without forced removals from national governments, there are groups of people who would still be living that life on the savannah.  Not too much about that in the museum, though.