Dr Kap's Tanzanian Summer: A really good day

Quite a good day, quite a few photos, I'll try not to post too many. It takes hours to load them up. People here are accustomed to working a 6 day week so the group I'm working with directly-reps from schools of social work across the country. The new chair, Naftali, finished his PhD at Champaigne/Urbana (and was friends with GaYoung there) and I talked a bit about "African time". I've heard this as "gay time", "southern (or Kentucky) time", etc. The meeting starts when everyone shows up. This means I am usually very glad to have my Kindle and/or Ipod with me because meetings are sometimes hours late. Yup, hours. Today was set for 11 am. The volunteer who was to bring documents about budgets and copies of meeting minutes did not get these done. So the meeting started at 1:15 pm.

Naftali is feeling frustrated with this, he says he wants to change this laid back attitude, that it is time for folks to be more professional. I understand this, he is struggling a bit demanding more from group members, yet he is very uncomfortable "I feel like I want the floor to swallow me up". A bit of a look at this US educated man and the struggle between older cultural ways and trying to progress into the global stage.

The folks in this group are delightful, it's the Tanzania Emerging Social Work Education Programmes (TESWEP), faculty representing schools. After today's meeting they took me out to see Dar es Salaam, sections I would not have seen.

People set up ramshackle "store fronts", these are more like shacks made from scrap wood, metals, sometimes concrete blocks. These are the Dar es salaam versions of local merchants selling everything from brooms to water to clothes to food items. The neighborhood we drove through, dirt/clay/mud bumpy road. These shops lined up on either side. In front of the shops ran an open ditch-sewer? Small concrete "bridges" enabled people to walk from the street into the shops. People here were living more on the streets than in the small dark houses/huts/shacks that were homes. Clothes washing in buckets outdoors, just hanging around the shops, several places I've seen have nothing but a lot, a corrugated plastic roof under which sat a pool table. And there's that traffic again. I've seen one traffic light. Police "direct" traffic Monday thru Thursday. The police have Fridays off. hmm. I tried to get some pics through the car windows, may not be so good but will post to try to give an idea.

I've noticed people wear labels on clothes and bags and wallets, etc. The Ralph Lauren polo player is everywhere on tee shirts, D and G (Dolce & Gabanna or a rip off like the others may be). Part of this for some, I imagine are donations. How do I know? The things I can't get pictures of unless I wander with my DSLR camera and bigger lens to shoot at a distance, but since I'm about the only white woman walking downtown, even as it's safe during the day, I don't want to tempt some kids to try running off with it. Anyway, the other day I saw a guy wearing a tee shirt with "Heidi Chronicles" on the front. I smiled. Today, we drove past a guy wearing...I could hardly believe it....a Carlos O'Kelly tee shirt. Laughter ensued within my brain. So there is this incongruity of wanting/wearing designer stuff and wearing these shirts that clearly must have been donated by whom? Heidi Chronicles was from a Madison WI showing of it.

A lot of chicken and beef are eaten here, fish as well-tilapia from here. I am discovering that depending on where I am eating, I can always select rice and veggies. Rice grown from the northern part of Tanzania is excellent. Too bad I didn't know when I bought the bag of rice from India. Also too bad I did not notice before the note on the rice bag that it was rinsed in nitrogen--what? to have it keep fresher longer. Veggies are nice--beans in a sauce tastier than Heinz baked beans, greens that have been quite good, today a mixture with eggplant, maybe some mushrooms, tomatoes. And juices-very common in restaurants to have "cocktails" of freshly smashed fruits-guava, pineapple, mango, papaya, avocado, etc in different combinations. I had one today, not a great thirst quencher but very yummy. Ok, time for pictures, the food dishes include my veggies, a tilapia (whole grilled, must say it looked easier to eat by just pulling off the meat, I can't believe I say this, but it looked tasty) in a rather fuzzy photo, and an indigenous dough thing. It looks like a lump of dough that is still rising, like sourdough, it sticks to itself. It is eaten by hand, pulling off dough and rolling it up, eating it like bread with a meal. There are also scrawny chicken parts in the photos, look mostly like they are covered in hot sauce.