The Korogwe Project

I don’t remember exactly what day this was, but one morning, we were off to do an interview with one of the Kikundi (group) members. A group of women were gathered in front of our house, and one of them pointed out that our feet were dirty! To our great embarrassment, Mama Mussa spent the next 15 minutes scrubbing our feet with soap and a sponge. We took off a second time with toes sparkling, still amused and mystified. I should explain that when you’re in Kwakiliga, you walk around in flip-flops. And with the amount of red dirt everywhere, everyone’s feet are dirty. The fact that they would call us out on our filth was surprising; it is almost impossible to keep one’s feet clean for more than five minutes.

Recently, we found out the real reason for foot hygiene just a few days later: sand fleas! This morning, we intended to do a follow-up interview with Mama Halima, and found her sitting on a straw mat under the shade together with her friends. Soon after opening our notebooks to ask questions, one of the younger girls next to us began inspecting our feet. She pointed at our toes, frowning, and notified everyone else, “funza.” Before we knew it, women were sharpening twigs with razor blades and digging the twigs into our toes to remove what we thought had been just dirt or dead skin. In fact, there were eight fleas in Jenny’s feet, and six in mine (plus one teeny one we found the next morning.) Yuck yuck yuck! The fleas live in the sand, it turns out, courtesy of Wikipedia, that the Chigoe Flea is the smallest in the world. They do not like moisture, so keeping the ground wet and washing our feet are two effective precautions. Oblivious to the beasts, we did not know they had already been living in our feet for about a week, so they were bigger than usual. It is humbling to be so helpless on the day-to-day tasks of life, especially when all we want to do is find out enough about their lives to help them. Certainly, the attention and care bestowed on us here has been beyond measure, and it will be difficult to repay them for moments like these. (Would YOU be willing to dig into a guest’s toe with a twig?) But we definitely learned our lesson: these days, we are committed to a strict regime of foot washing every day and night!

Julia and Jenny

On Friday evening, we were surprised to find that there was more to Kwakiliga nightlife than meets the eye…It has a legit discotheque, whoo! Where Kwakiliga residents of all ages can party til 12 in thaaaa morning! Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! Keep in mind that Kwakiliga has no running electricity. Nevertheless, this place is awesome: generator attached to two big speakers and a CD player in a cleared out mgahawa! It’s really interesting to see how kids and teenagers dance there. There’s quite a lot of mimicking moves that have got to be from a select few music videos!

The best part of all this is our friend, Raymond, operates the mziki (club/disco), so we don’t have to pay the cover!!! No, actually it’s just ironic (that everyone except us pay). As ironic as the Top Loaf bread guy who gave us free bread because we were wazungus. The way foreigners are treated here in Tanzania is something I am still grappling with.

Jenny

Sometimes, a frame-by-frame is the only way to convey the sense of a place, even if the story thread has no real beginning, middle or end. This morning was simply full of surprises. First, we were alarmed to find that our hosts were slaughtering a goat for us. (“Two animals in one week?”) It was a sobering but efficient affair, but even more alarming was the goat’s head that kept popping up in different places during the day (and for a few days afterwards). After the goat carcass had been dragged away for butchering, we sat on a sunny bench in front of the house, dandling the baby boy and playing with the twins. Around noon, Sam arrived by pikipiki (motorcycle) to help us prepare for the first big farmers meeting which would happen this afternoon. Jenny, the twins, the baby, and I were all still sitting on the bench. He sat down to bounce/jiggle the baby a bit, too, and told us the story of his phone call with a witch doctor that morning: the witch doctor is demanding Tsh 400,000  as a reward for recovering the Lutindi team’s stolen computer, and Sam was asked to negotiate. They still aren’t sure what they are going to do about that situation! Around that moment, one of the kids thrust the goat head right in Sam’s face and cackled. Overwhelmed, we retreated indoors to one of the bedrooms to discuss the meeting agenda further without being interrupted, but a mouse chose at that moment to run right by my feet. We all leapt onto the bed, especially Jenny and I, who were still feeling tremors from the night before. Maybe outside was a better place to talk after all…Never a dull moment in Kwakiliga!

Just as a brief introduction to our host family: the twin girls are about five years old, both active and playful, but Sharifa is the noticeable wild child of the two — a visible inch or so taller, and with a rambunctious, tomboyish personality that frequently gets her in trouble. Naa is more of a girly-girl — doe-eyed and quiet — and likes to pretend doing home-maker-type activities, sometimes taking liberties with your cooking ingredients. The baby is six months old, with a chubby, cherubic face, and quite frankly is one of the fattest babies we’ve ever seen. Their mother is Dada Aziza [“Dada” means “Sister”], the second of our landlord’s three wives, a beautiful 24-year old whom I’ll have to introduce better later.

Julia

Today was a big day. As it turns out, twelve farmers in Kwakiliga from the last season of 2Seeds trainings continue to meet regularly, and were interested in having a meeting with us. This is wonderful news because it points to active membership, and suggests a good potential entry point into the community. We have already met or have some relationship with five of the members , but the rest will be new faces for us. After a busy morning of preparation (see previous blog entry), we were ready to meet them. The meeting was scheduled for 4pm, but 4pm rolled around, and only two of the twelve farmers had showed up at our house – a shaky start. But around 5:30, nine of the farmers had showed up, and things started moving. We passed out crackers, water, and sent a young child to buy a crate of Coca Cola and Fanta for the group. For the next 2-3 hours, we sat on the floor, hot until the sun went down, making introductions, taking names and numbers down in the guest book, exchanging ideas, and discussing concerns for the upcoming short-rain season. We found out some of the farmers were more proficient at certain skills than others, that they had different visions about how the group was to relate to the rest of the community, and that the prospect of no rain this season was one of their biggest worries. Jenny and I felt relieved to meet them but overwhelmed by the challenge of what to do next; “who is the teacher and who is the student?” one of the farmers raised the question. They figure we can tell them what to do if there is no rain. What?! We ourselves are envisioning a joint effort in tackling this issue. In our follow-ups with the farmers, we look forward to knowing what other ideas each individual has for the group in the following months and years, and also their individual needs, strengths, and weaknesses. All of the ideas that we’ve been talking about theoretically will hopefully soon become reality.

Julia and Jenny

10/4/2010
Second Night in the Kilangu House

Since the bed had not yet arrived for Jenny’s room, we were still sharing a bed, and that meant riding off one another’s nerves as we listened to mice scampering and squeaking above our heads. At one point in the middle of the night, I awoke to Jenny thrashing and twitching, evidently in her sleep, but I thought it was because there was a mouse in the bed. I thought I felt it running on top of me and started screaming. Naturally Jenny started shrieking too, for a solid 5-10 seconds, until we understood there was no mouse. This was good news, except we’d awoken our hosts, who came to the room in their nighties to check on us. I was closest to the door so I was the one who stammered an apology in Swahili, but maybe we should have just said there really WAS a mouse in the bed just to save face. Not surprisingly, we got made fun of the next day. We are definitely getting a cat.

Julia

Raymond Kupaza has lived in Kwakiliga for the past five years with his wife and two children. Another extraordinary farmer, he keeps a garden plot in the more fertile land in the valley and intercrops his maize with other crops, such as cowpeas. He also carries on business ventures on the side, such as brick-making and running the club of course! He is younger, perhaps 26, and is extremely passionate about improving his skills as a farmer and improving the community. We recently found out that on top of being a member of the TKP Kikundi, he is also a member in a brick-making group and a bell pepper group. It was interesting to us that such self-initiated grassroots partnerships exist, and we look forward to learning more about them.

Like Mzee Mcharo, Raymond is more on the progressive side: he believes in family-planning, is intent about helping the poor beyond his own family, and is avid about learning new things. Not everyone here is so proactive, and maybe it is his recent immigration here that sets him apart and gives him fresh eyes. He is also different from most Kwakiliga residents in that he is a Christian; most people here are Muslim. We had the opportunity of attending service with him in a small mud building about 800meters down a path through a field outside the town, where his family and maybe three other members formed the whole congregation.

His house will soon be destroyed because of the new highway; he will need to stay in his corn granary until he has the money for a new house, or has made 3000 bricks, whichever comes first. Many other families face the same predicament right now: houses are marked with X’s along the side of the road, and the government is assisting certain households with the costs of new housing, but not all.

We are confident that Raymond, like Mzee Mcharo, will be a strong leader for the group, and are lucky to work with him.

Julia and Jenny

*A note on the division of labor: as much as possible, we try to have both Jenny and Julia’s voices shine through the stories, but if there is an imbalance in the number of stories authored by each, it is because we are taking on different job tasks at different times! Thank you for reading, and if you’re ever shocked or offended by anything in the blog…it wasn’t me!

~ One of the J’s

Sorry to jump around in time, but I forgot to talk about one of our very first important visits! Eid is the celebration of the end of Ramadan, which is a month of fasting which takes place every year to purify the body, mind, and spirit, bringing the worshipper closer to God. We thought it would be a good idea to visit Kwakiliga on this holiday: we wouldn’t be interrupting the farmer’s work as much, and we might get to take part in their festivities. (On this holiday, the standard greeting is “Eid Mubarak”, and the other person says, “Minal Fa Izin” in return.)
First, we went to Raymond’s house, where we took a look at his small vegetable plot: tomatoes, onions, and cabbage. Only a handful of farmers have such plots here, we found out, and we were curious as to the reasons why some farmers keep vegetable plots and others don’t. Lack of water and lack of suitable land seem to be two main reasons. After our short tour, we returned to the house, where two short stools appeared and we were served two big, steaming bowls of wali (rice) and beans by his lovely wife. People here are notoriously hospitable, and we are never disappointed whenever we come to visit – whatever is cooking will be brought out, and if nothing is already cooking, then something will be made. Raymond’s wife is a good cook, and in fact, this serving of wali was so generous that Jenny and I truly struggled to finish every last mouthful – but finish we did!
Already feeling full beyond belief, we went to Mama Halima’s house, where we were served…a second bowl of wali, both plain and pilau. This serving was mercifully smaller, but still came with bowls of goat and beef meat plus spinach on the side. As mentioned previously, meat is a rarity for many families here, and it is expected that you eat what you are served (to refuse is an insult), so we did our best to make conversation in our broken, middling, Swahili, while eating as slowly and deliberately as possible so as to deter additional helpings being heaped on our plates. Elders moved in and out of the house to make introductions. Somehow we finished our plates, and we exited Mama Halima’s house to a colorful scene: children and adults dancing and singing to a drumbeat!
We felt refreshed after joining in the songs and uplifted by how welcomed we were. But as you might guess from the title of this blog post, we weren’t quite done eating yet. Proud of just barely having found our second wind at Mama Halima’s, feeling like you do after a Thanksgiving meal, and solemnly vowing never to eat again, we were eagerly led to Mariamu’s house, for — yup, you guessed it — a third bowl of wali. This one also came with a small dish meat, and just the sight of it made us feel weak. Mariamu smiled at us as we sat down…and then sat with us the entire time that we were eating, so we mustered up our best “appreciative” faces while adding to our bloated stomachs! The details are hazy, but somehow we were able to finish, maybe because our brains had given up trying to tell us that we were full, and the sheer physical sides of our stomachs were now the only limit to our consumption. The human body is capable of amazing things. I don’t think we’d ever been so stuffed in our lives!
It does make you wonder…who would have thought that here in this village, in an attempt to address food security, that we’d be so worried about eating too much? It is a telling aspect of this culture that despite the risk of going hungry at certain times of the year, there will always be enough for visitors. The fact that we are foreigners makes no difference, as food is always set aside for ones’ guests. We sure love to eat, but we hope that we are not the only ones this well-fed around here by the time the collective work of the community, ourselves, and future project coordinators is done.

Julia and Jenny

Mzee Mcharo, chairman of the original twelve TKP farmers, keeps poking fun at Jenny, saying that she will slaughter a chicken at some point. At the same time, he totally thinks slaughtering a chicken is a normal activity for all humans. Last night, we saw the poor bird get tossed into Jenny’s future room, legs already tied. Now and then we heard it let out a squawk throughout the night. Then this morning, we watched as it was butchered on our behalf. Many families keep chickens “randomly” around the house (meaning that they are not kept in pens), sometimes along with ducks, but all meat is considered a luxury and not eaten daily.

You may skip the following paragraph if you wish, but for the brave of heart: After the chicken croaked, we helped to pluck and wash its insides, and we could see how lean it was, the sign of a good life of running around a yard free-range. An awesome anatomy lesson followed: partly-formed eggs/ovaries, intestines, you know, no big deal. Next, Mama Halima squatted and expertly butchered it, putting the pieces into a bucket, and showing us how to rinse them in water — water which got dumped straight onto the floor of the living room after we were done. Nice.

Lunch was delicious. Not only was there chicken, boiled to tender goodness, but also rice, ugali, and mchuzi (sauce= some veggies and LOTS of oil) which we helped to prepare. Other cooking lessons this week included how to peel and boil cassava, how to make mchuzi from fresh tomatoes, how to sift rice to remove bugs, and how to make ugali. Cooking together makes us feel much more as though we are building a relationship with our hosts, so we hope to introduce them to some of our favorite American foods, too, to make the exchange reciprocal – pasta and sandwiches, maybe. The peanut butter we brought in from town has already been a big hit.

(By the way, why did the chicken cross the road? To stare at the wazungu on the other side. Haha, maybe not so funny…except it actually happened! We were sitting around on a porch in Kwamatuku waiting for our phones to be charged when a rooster literally strutted across the road, fixed us with one beady eye, and let out a throaty cry like it was his job. Even the animals seem to know we’re different…)

Every week, we thought it would be good to introduce different farmers in the community, to give you a sense of the lifestyle here, and to make their stories more prominent in our reports.

Mzee Mcharo is the chairman of the TKP farmer group in Kwakiliga, and lives in the village with his wife and two of his five children (others are old and have moved away). His expertise in agricultural subjects has made him a valuable contact and a good person to have a conversation with, and is evident in his own livelihood: apart from the 5-acre plot he keeps in the valley where he grows corn, sunflower, and cowpeas, he also grows mango trees; cashew nut trees; a garden plot with eggplant, tomatoes, and other vegetables; and raises livestock, including chickens, ducks, pheasants, pigeons (yes, pigeons!), and goats. Dogs and cats also roam freely through his yard, as is typical for residents here — they are not pets, but security guards and rat-killers, respectively.

His wife and children help him with the farm and go to school, respectively. We’ve come to really look forward to their friendly, quiet presence in the background while we make visits and do interviews. Despite marked generational status differences in this culture (even Jenny and I are greeted with the respectful “Shikamoo” instead of “Hujambo”), parent-child relationships are rather relaxed and playful here in general, and the Mcharos seem even less sharply disciplinarian. One day, they found a bug on the ground that looked like a leaf, and spent several minutes playing with it. The bug was large and upright, like a praying mantis, and would strike out with its upper arms when poked. Mama Mcharo tried to get a closer look, but one of the younger daughters yelped and tugged at her skirt, half-laughing, half-fearful of her mother getting hurt!

He and his family have lived in Kwakiliga since 1990, and he has many ideas for the future of the hamlet, including the introduction of new water wells, expanding and diversifying cultivation of cash crops, and finding new markets for business, such as in Dar Es Salaam. On a personal level, his guidance has truly been invaluable, from the visit to the agricultural showcase at NaneNane to the way he tolerates our Swahili with such patience. He speaks rapidly and smiles often, always with an air of mischief, we believe. As an elder member of the community and the chairman of the original TKP group, we hope he will continue to be an astute leader for Kwakiliga in the coming years.

Interesting Facts:
- he hails originally from Lushoto, but moved to Kwakiliga for the plentiful land
- he bought his first 10 acres of land in Kwakiliga in 1990…for 2000 shillings!
- he is an avid supporter of family planning! A surprise in a place where a man’s manhood can be judged by the number of children he has (according to this metric, our land lord is very manly!)

We are finally here! Moving in felt a bit like a novice surfer being hit by a tidal wave: exhilarating, anticipated, but you’re still sort of scared out of your pants. There were people everywhere, both children and adults. Children moved about excitedly like worker ants or elves, carrying our belongings from the car into our room literally without our asking for help, competing for a chance to hold a bag or bundle! We were definitely surprised initially when we were shown the house that our host community wanted us to live in: it is made out of bricks, has a big living room and six bedrooms, and includes a full courtyard for cooking – a mansion compared to the typical red mud house most Kwakiliga residents own. However, it carries certain trademarks of a standard house in the area, like a dirt floor, and incorrectly spelled English phrases written in on the doors in white chalk. Our particular bedroom door had “Peas and Love” written on it, a bedroom that we’d share until a second bed was built for the other room. “You are writing your biography!” Mzee Mntambo told us as he exited the door, part exclamation, part reassurance. Guests were as plentiful as sprinkles on an ice cream cone (we miss ice cream!). Even at 10PM, we were literally surrounded by company until we fell asleep. Keep in mind that Kwakiliga has no electricity, so there is no point in staying up too late! For the next few days, we felt as though we met half the community, simply by sitting on our woven mat in the common room!