by Aaron Barlow
There was room inside my saar-bet house for all of us, teachers and students, Americans and Ethiopians, even a little kitten and puppy that surely would have been a hyena’s dinner. While those ugly animals laughed outside in the darkness, pretending their hunger was funny, we inside had light and laughter and love. The hyenas gave me that truth.
If we had had a paved road out of Emdeber, we surely would have used it most weekends to visit larger cities where other Peace Corps Volunteers lived. We wouldn’t have spent all our time in Emdeber and the nearby villages peopled with Guragis. We could only go as far as we could walk, but we found as much mystery and surprise just miles from our doorway as others did who traveled greater distances. We visited the wealthiest man in sabat bet Guragi who we had seen ride through town on his mule with his entourage of men and boys walking barefoot beside and behind him, carrying spears and swishing the flies from his face with their chiras. We were amazed at his huge saar-bet, the beautiful hand-carved furniture, and his handwritten books of genealogy tracing his ancestors back to Adam and Eve through generations of Old Testament kings and prophets.
We visited the sacred tree, the center of animist worship, an ancient, pre-Christian religion that no one admitted to but many still believed in at least a little bit. The tree was so old and so huge and so beautiful that it must have been home to spirits older than time and unrestricted by theology. We celebrated with a Muslim sheik, so wealthy he owned a generator and could produce electricity for his village whenever he wanted to. Thousands of Muslim families came from all over Ethiopia to honor him, bringing with them camels that looked as out of place there as they would have at home. We saw the camels slaughtered; their long, bloody necks and heads left lying on a grassy slope while men butchered and women cooked the meat. We ate the camel stew as the honored guests of the sheik, sitting under his pavilion with his wives and trusted friends. If we had had the wheel, I would have missed so much. A place like Emdeber puts everything in perspective. You come away knowing what matters and what doesn’t.
After serving in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia from 1965–67, Kathleen Moore worked for the Public Health Department in Detroit’s “ghetto” until the riots broke out in 1967; then went to Wisconsin to work in a Job Corps Center where the boys had been told by a judge to “go to jail or go to Job Corps.” Then to Minneapolis for the War on Poverty, the Model City program, and finally the county welfare department. She is retired and plans to return to Ethiopia to teach English again—bringing it full circle to end up where she started out.
Watoto of Tanzania
Linda Chen See
Out of the mouths of babes…or understanding the sources of joy in the realities of poverty.
Watoto means children in Kiswahili. They are pote pote (everywhere). Like the breeze and the sun and the sky, watoto were a part of our every waking hour. They are the heart of Africa.
Watoto taught us our first Kiswahili word. When our plane landed in Dar es Salaam, we were herded into open-backed Land Rovers. Jostled along in the sauna heat along the coast, we rode through streams of people. Women, covered in bright cloths of all colors and designs, humpbacked with babies tied onto their backs, clasped smaller hands beside them.
Children pointed, yelling, “Mzungu!” “Mzungu,” we learned, means European. We were rightfully “Merekani,” Americans, yet we would remain “mzungu.” I can still clearly hear a child’s voice yelling “mzungu” as if I were in Africa today.
We stayed at a Salvation Army lodging. In the tall palm trees around our cabins, large brown bats hung upside down in bunches, chattering and screeching when one or another accidentally bumped a neighbor. I had a small band of children who followed me. They knew no English, so I would point to an object and state its English name. They responded with the Kiswahili equivalent. Popo is bat, jua is sun, ua both fence and flower. Mtoto is one child, and watoto are children. I was taken heart and soul with their openly friendly ways, and their quick, eager smiles and laughter.
After a brief stay in Dar es Salaam, we were transported to a coastal mission village named Bagamoya. Its translation is “lay down my heart,” given because of its involvement with the slave trade. Countless Africans saw their homeland for the very last time there.
We stayed at a Teachers’ College for Kiswahili language training. Another group of Volunteers had already passed through.
The local village children were delighted with this second wave of mzungu. The former Volunteers had started a project to ship shoes to Bagamoya. We saw many watoto in shoes, some laughably oversized, but protecting small feet from the parasitic worms known as chiggers. Chiggers can only be removed by being cut out.
One of the first children they had helped was a boy of ten years named Joseph. He had an infectious smile as wide as his face. We saw Joseph every day. With us, he seemed to find his place in the world, being both liked and accepted.
A year later, when I visited Bagamoya on my own, I found a bit taller Joseph, still wandering the Teachers College. He yelled my name and ran to where I sat, placing his head on my lap and hugging my legs tightly, bringing tears to my eyes as I hugged him back. I couldn’t help thinking that we had abandoned him.
Joseph had a sister named Paulina. She was also part of our watoto followers. There was also petite, naturally beautiful Kaboko, and Faki, a boy the others had warned us was a thief. I have a picture of Faki taken on the steps outside our dorm. While most of the children smiled, Faki scowled, eyes narrowed, hands outstretched, palms up with an expression that said, “Give me the camera.” One day, Faki came running up to our group to return a teacher’s forgotten wrist watch, a very expensive black market item.
The unspoiled beach and crystal turquoise ocean of Bagamoya were irresistible. The first time we went into the water, the watoto walked out with us, holding our hands. Only when we ventured out to where they couldn’t stand did their wide-eyed terror as they clung to us tell us they didn’t know how to swim. Living this close to the ocean, yet they had never learned to swim. We never met any parents, never saw families enjoying the beach or the ocean. Adults were preoccupied with surviving.
We were assigned to our posts. Mine was Ngudu, a village about forty kilometers south of Mwanza, a city on Lake Victoria.
Another PCV, Debbie, had arrived one month before me, and was living in a guesthouse. Our German-built home was being painted and repaired. She had been checking on its progress, and was accustomed to hearing, “labda kesho” (maybe tomorrow). It was a phrase we would hear often.
One early morning I walked into town to buy some matches. I had checked one duka (shop), and was told, “hamna” (we have none). Standing outside, I heard shouting nearby and then saw a bare-chested man wearing a long off-white cloth wrapped around his waist down to his feet. He started yelling in some tribal language. His anger frightened me. I was new in town, still just “mzungu,” and saw no familiar faces, just averted eyes. I started walking quickly toward another duka, followed by his yelling. I ducked inside the doorway and hurried in among those gathered, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark interior. Suddenly, a child started screaming loudly. I turned around expecting to see my crazed follower. The screaming child had run behind the counter and was being held by an adult. Our eyes locked, hers in terror, mine in shock. I was the source of her fear.
A lot of children there had either never seen a mzungu, except for a missionary doctor giving painful injections.
We left our German home about six months later, at the government’s request, for a smaller one in a village called Ngudulugulu. We settled into our routines and, again, watoto became the central part of my life.
There was a footpath between our house and our outhouse, and many little bare feet passed by, to school or town. The watoto always greeted us, some mumbling shyly, others curtsying respectfully. Beyond was a pit where we threw our paper trash followed by watoto, happily search
ing for anything salvageable. Every evening, we watched small boys returning home with herds of cattle, sheep and goats in clouds of dust.
I worked in fisheries and Deb in forestry. The government breeding ponds for our tilapia were located in a southern village called Malya. I made many trips to and from Malya, mostly to collect fingerlings to stock other ponds. We each had a piki piki (motorcycle) for transportation, and I could carry about one hundred fingerlings in a can previously used for cooking oil. On my return, some of our watoto would greet me. They would appear just as I rounded the curve at the bottom of a hill outside the main path to our home. I would hear chanting of “Maisha” and see the watoto waving to the beat of the chant. Maisha was the name of the monkey I had adopted, and who was very popular. The watoto would run beside me, still chanting, close enough to touch me, until they finally wore out near the top of the hill.
One of my fish farmers was a man named Shripolonge of Ngudulugulu. He was tall, soft spoken, and always wore clean yet tattered long-sleeved shirts, shorts, and a tan sun hat. Like most of my fish farmers, he simply called me “Mama.” These farmers were highly motivated men and often approached me to dig or improve a fish pond. Shripolonge had built a pond years ago, fringed with banana trees and sugar cane. One day I stopped to talk to him, but couldn’t find him around his pond. So I walked across the path to his mud hut with thatched roof. Tanzanians didn’t knock, but yelled, “Hodi,” “Is anyone home?” Hearing no response, I hodied my way to the back. As I approached the other side of the hut, I spotted a baby sitting in the shade along the outside wall. When she saw me I noticed her surprise, and prepared myself to hear a terrified cry. I spoke softly, “Oh, please don’t cry. I’m leaving.” She studied me and then smiled so shy and sweet, I laughed. I sat down and talked in Kiswahili until I remembered she probably only knew Kisukuma, so I talked in English. She sat, calm and patient, smiling her understanding as I told her about my day.
We bonded. Finally, a sibling showed up, a small child herself, and adeptly lifted the baby to a protruding hip. I waved my goodbye and the baby smiled. I later learned that the baby, Lugwa, was the youngest of the family, less than one year old. I would see some of her first steps and hear some of her first words. I brought her homemade dresses at a village duka; cans of juice and beans for her family when I could find them; and tomatoes, potatoes and onions from our open-air market. I prayed that some of the food trickled down to Lugwa. In time, she raised up her arms when I approached, and I picked her up and sat her on my lap. I used to talk to her and sing her songs; when I hugged her close I smelled the earth and smoke.
I used to think about adopting Lugwa and taking her back with me to the States, especially after her mother died unexpectedly. From necessity, her father remarried quickly. But she was loved by her family and the villagers. She had an industrious father who provided fruits and vegetables grown without chemicals and home-raised fish and rabbits. She had days of sun, warmth, and too blue skies. She witnessed complete rainbows spanning an endless plain, and dancing to the beat of drums, and singing within the village. There were clear cool nights lit only by millions of stars and a large moon, and so still you could hear the silence.
I remember tops of heads outside high glassless windows, some comically bobbing up and down trying to get a look at the mzungu. They followed me and were awed by my piki piki. They watched as I turned the key and the monster roared to life. They screamed and backed away, but remained transfixed. I would look at their little shocked faces, and playfully pat the seat behind me, saying, “Twende!” (Let’s go.)
Screams, heads fervently shaking no, watoto backing away.
I often heard watoto singing as they walked together in small groups, or in huts or at schools. The sweetest song I ever heard, though, was at a village accessed only by footpaths. I was helping a woman make a clay stove inside her hut. As we were mixing the sand, clay, and water with our hands, we heard singing outside. I asked the woman “Vipi?” (What is that?) and she responded “Sijui” (I don’t know). I told her I’d be right back and walked behind the hut to where three small girls in ragged dresses stood lined up all alone beside a footpath. They had short reddish hair, and distended bellies, signs of malnutrition. Yet, they were singing in beautiful harmony: to no one. It was joy, pure and simple, and extraordinary for something so ordinary. I listened until the clay on my hands started to dry and itch. I walked back inside the hut as the girls sang on.
Of course, there was a dark side. There was disease, malnutrition, death, and tears. But I remember the light. I remember the countless watoto who had time to be kind to me—a stranger in their world and time, who always had willing hands to push my stalled piki piki, drag a net through a pond, or walk Maisha. I lived in a world stripped of greed, envy, jealousy or power. There’s a lot of happiness to be found in a world rich in spirit yet poor in material wealth.
The watoto especially taught me much—to live in the present, smile and laugh often, to be kind and learn from those different from yourself, and if ever the joy within you overflows, just sing.
Linda Chen See (Hain) was a PCV in Tanzania from 1981-83. Her experience brought her much joy and showed her the connection we have to each other. She is currently writing a realistic fictional book with many memories of that time.
Begging Turned on Its Head
Karen Hlynsky
Begging, perception, giving, and reality: coming to terms with our own preconceptions.
“A beg, du ya, fi, fi sen!”
“I beg you, please, give me five cents.”
Wearing blue shorts and white shirt school uniforms, four boys followed me toward the market. Even without uniforms, the Bic pens the boys carried showed that they were pupils. Barefoot, they wore their feet like shoes, their hard, calloused soles spreading beyond the bottoms of their feet from years of walking without shoes.
“Fi, fi sen, du ya, fi, fi sen.”
Laughing at the chance for a few cents, they were innocent of the fact that their bellies would swell from malnutrition during the coming lean weeks. They thrust out their hands to me, giggling as they braved talking to a white woman teacher.
With no other excuse to talk to me, begging was a way to connect.
I turned to them as usual and laughed back, “You give me five cents!”
“What?” they said, “A beg du ya!”
Extending my right hand to them and pointing with my left, first to them and then to myself to make sure they got the pronouns right, I repeated, “YOU give ME five cents!” Enjoying the joke, the silliness of MY begging THEM for money, they ran off still giggling, kicking the dust up.
In a country that neither understood nor tolerated solitude, a person alone drew others like a vacuum. But what of the beggar who sat alone on in the shadows of Koidu’s post office steps? Why were there no children at his feet giving him silent company?
There was no obvious reason that he should be a beggar—no leprous hands or feet, no blindness, no withered appendage. Yet every Saturday, he was ready for those of us who’d just come from the bank with money for stamps or airmail letters.
Because he had no obvious reason to be begging, I saw him as an intrusion—someone to ignore, circumvent, shake off. But as I tried to scurry past him undetected, he’d cry out with his sandpaper voice, “Money, ma! Money, ma!”—the “ma” getting coarser and broader each time. “MAAAH, MONNEEEYYY!” Perhaps, if he caught hold of my unwilling eye, I’d give him a twenty-cent piece to quiet him until next week.
I would see the old beggar after traveling from my small town to the district capital—a hub of commercial activity. In the wet season, the clay roads were eroded and slippery; in the dry season, corrugated and dusty. Either way, the twelve-mile ride usually took an hour, usually with seven other people crammed into the backseat of a possibly brakeless Toyota. After one such trip to the city, my nerves already jogged raw and my
patience worn thin, the poor beggar appeared and began his mantra. In one of those precious moments of long overdue honesty, I looked him square in the face, gritted my teeth and shouted at him, “Not today, pa! NOTHING TODAY! Next week maybe! Maybe next week!”
Before I could rush by him, in his most polite voice he thanked me. I finally got it. For all those weeks he had not been begging for money at all, but for recognition—recognition of his presence there, his appeals, his mere humanity, and the fact perhaps that his greatest wrong was simply that he had become old and that his children, if he did have children, were not caring for him in his old age.
We began to be respectful of each other. When I saw him I greeted him kindly with the “Pa” that he deserved, giving him money when I had it and an apology when I didn’t. He, in turn, always thanked me.
Meanwhile, around the corner, the lepers enjoyed socializing together in front of the supermarket where expatriates and a few well-off Africans bought imported food to remind them of their ties to somewhere else: two-ounce cans of tuna from Portugal, lentils from Lebanon, butter and bottled herbs from England, processed cheeses from Switzerland that came in bite-size, individually wrapped wedges. There were special treats that could only be bought from the coolers in the larger stores of the cities—ice cream sandwiches and Cadbury chocolate bars that melted as soon as they left the air-conditioning of the store.
And there were shrimp chips imported from Japan. In the box, they were quarter-sized translucent pastel wafers, but drop them into hot oil and they crackled and swelled up into the airy crispness of cheese curls. We bought them, not out of fondness for cheese curls, but because, in the utter stillness of the evenings in our villages, watching shrimp chips cook was entertainment. We bought them because they were decadent. To buy them was to claim that we were not part of the poverty outside the store.