15

He was fifteen years old. He had a name, like someone you know. He was tested for HIV a week and a half ago, came back positive and they referred him to our clinic. He came Monday, extremely sick, weak and feverish. The nurses weighed him at 72.5 pounds. The doctors suspected meningitis and pneumonia, took a chest x-ray to see if he had tuberculosis. Gave him some drugs to treat the infections. He came back this Friday, looked a lot better. Cough was down, no more vomiting—we expected the tuberculosis results back soon. Sent him home to come back this Wendesday.

Chest x-ray results came back today, positive for tuberculosis. The neighbor called, too. He was admitted to the hospital late last night with wrenching abdominal pain. He died at 3 AM this morning.

I mean, Christ, fifteen years old. Right on the cusp of life, just to have it cut out from under you like so much spare change. Just when you started to understand what it was to be a man. Fifteen years old

Bubbles!

So the other day Ben looked up online how to make bubbles and bought some stuff so we could make them with the kids. I think the pictures tell a better story than I could write, so here you go:

Oh the Places You'll Go (and Almost Die Getting There, Every Time)

Here in Dar, the transportation system is pretty interesting. The first thing is the roads. The downtown road system is all paved, but thats about it, except for major highways. The rest of the road system is all dirt, and ranges from tolerable to oh-my-god-i-think-im-going-to-die. In terms of traffic laws, they're more of "unwritten rules" rather than actual laws. Private cars and public buses alike drive on whatever side of the road they want, even into oncoming traffic, if its to their advantage. I spend the majority of my time holding my breath with Sampson, our driver (by "our" driver, I mean that he works for the clinic, delivers samples to and from the hospital, and occasionally gives us a ride). He's an ex-taxi and ex-bus driver. The street we live on is big and has wide sidewalks. Wide enough for a car, even? Why yes, and thats why we scramble off the sidewalk to make way for a taxi thats trying to make better time by avoiding the lame "actually driving on the road" traffic.

Sampson and his sweet ride

In terms of variety, there are basically 4 different ways you can get around. The first is in your own private car. Sweet, especially when half of them around here are land cruisers and defenders, so you look like a total badass while you comfortably transport yourself. The second are taxis. This is an interesting choice, as its expensive for what you actually get. If you want to go to a landmark of some sort, cool. You're good to go, cause taxi drivers know landmarks. A street though? or an intersection? Not so fast. It seems that most people, not just taxi drivers, have little knowledge of actual road names. The other day, I was looking for a street named Uhuru and wasn't sure quite where it was. I asked a woman. "Uhuru? Hmmmm, haven't heard of it." She turned to her friend, who replied, "No, I don't think theres an Uhuru around here." So as a ditch effort, I asked one last guy around. "Uhuru? Yeah, you're on it right now." Here, its all about neighborhoods and bus stops.

A third way to get around is by walking. While this is great for seeing all kinds of awesome stuff and really experiencing the vibrancy of the city life, Dar also gets exponentially dangerous as the sun descends. By the time seven o'clock rolls around, having white skin is akin to wearing a huge billboard that says "ROB ME! I'M CONFUSED, UNARMED, AND PROBABLY CARRYING TOO MUCH CASH. "

So that leaves the public transportation system. This is how I get to work every day, and pretty much to anywhere when I'm not riding with someone who has a car. Buses here are called "Dala Dalas," and are a privately owned but government-regulated series of minibuses. Theres no specific dala dala map-system, so things seem completely hectic and unorganized at first, but after a while you start to get the hang of the names of places and where buses go, and things start to make sense.

The funny thing, though, is how they pack them. Theres absolutely no rules whatsoever as to how many people can be in a single vehicle, so dala dala drivers make it their business to try to fill every square inch of space with human. On a bus that properly seats about 12 people, anywhere from 25-30 people might be shoved in on a busy route. And the guy who collects the money from people is insanely talented at convincing you to get on the bus. Multiple times, we've looked at a bus, said "there is no way another human being could possibly fit into that thing," and Money Guy somehow goads us on in. Theres a joke that people are stacked vertically in dala dalas during rush hour, cause everyone climbs in through the windows.

A typical dala dala

Twice now, I've been on buses that have just straight broken down. Its almost more awkward than sad, because I guess theres and understanding that no one has to pay fare if it breaks down, so Driver and Money Guy are using every trick in the book to try to get 'Ole Bessie to come back to life. Money Guy is pushing the back and Driver is screaming audibles but nothing is happening. Everyone on the bus is just waiting for them to give up the ghost, and when they finally do, everyone kinda tip-toes off and pretends nothing happened.

The best part of the dala dalas is the decoration, though. The name of the bus is usually written on the back-- the old favorites are G UNIT and various European soccer teams (sometimes there will be competing teams on the front and back), and Wellcome. My favorite thus far has been "TRUST ME." Other noteable design flairs are the interior framed picture of the exterior of the bus (to avoid confusion, I guess) and the omnipresent sticker "This car is protected by the blood of Jesus" where "blood" is written in red drippy font.

I wish I had more pictures to show you, but safety is an issue on dala dalas as well. One of my friends here has already had his phone stolen out of his bag when boarding, and another barely held onto hers when someone reached in a window for it from outside. I've yet to experience it, but people say that thieves will prick your hand with a pin to elicit you to draw your hand out (with cellphone) in pain, and then snatch it from you. So no cameras is my general protocol.

And now, a few pictures of random things that don't get an entire passage:

Efficiency is key


All scaffolding here looks like this


The label makes me so happy

Guitar Hero

So yeah, funny thing. I brought my guitar here (Wes Clark: if you’re reading this, stop laughing at me)—thought it would be a good idea to pass time and such. When I got here, Ben (who had gotten there 3 weeks earlier) said "Hey, you should really bring the guitar to Mbagala. The kids’ll love it."

Acting like I do this often

My first day in Mbagala went a little like this:

I get out of the truck. Walk to gate of school.
Dickson/Ben meet me. Say welcome.

Dickson: So the kids are getting up from a nap right now. You should play them a song.

Me: Hmm, ok. I don’t know a single children’s song now, but I’ll see if I can learn one in the next couple days to play when they wake up.

Dickson: No, now.

Me: Like today? Damn… ok it’ll take me a few minutes to try to think something up.

Dickson: No, now.

Me: What?

Dickson pulls me by the arm into the room.

Dickson (in Swahili): Wake up kids! This is Brian. He’s new. He’s going to play a song for you now.

The kids wake up, stare at me open-mouthed. I want to die.

Me: Ben! Make up some words. Help me. Please.

Ben: Uhhhh…. (in Swahili, singing) There are white people, white people at the school today… (repeats)

I play and try to sing along. Dickson is laughing his ass off. The kids just look confused.

We play until Dickson finally has the decency to kick us off.

Playing with the guitar after class

So that was my introduction to the kids, or rather, the kids’ introduction to me. However it went, the kids are obsessed with singing songs, so we decided to try to write some songs to help to teach them English. The hit so far has been “So Many Monkeys” that helps them practice counting to 50. We’re working on the hokey-pokey right now to teach them body parts. Who knows, we might even record an album.

Practicing the hokey-pokey

Things Behind the Sun

Looking for plastic bags to make purses, a project Margi brought to the Bibis-- most of Mbagala is built on a trash dump, this was taken just outside the house.

So Mbagala seems pretty sweet, right? And if its all great and good, you might kind of wonder what the problem is. What is there to fix, really? What are we trying to do to help? Theres a lot going on. Firstly, the water situation sucks. You can't drink the tap water anywhere here, or you can get all kinds of nasty shit. So at Bibi Jann's, they use a chlorine-based cleaning solution and bottled water. Problem is, the solution tastes like hell and the bottles are expensive. So we're trying to work something out there, whether its a prototype carbon nanotube filter (yeah i know, sounds awesome) that might get donated, or a deep-well merry-go-round pump (what? Yeah me neither-- check it out).

Sarafina: she stays at the school because she has nowhere else to go.

Next on the list is the health situation. Some of the kids are HIV-positive, and they're all in less-than-ideal health situations. Ben had a hell of a wake-up call to the reality of the situation when he checked on one of the kids, Isa. He hadn't been to school in a week and a half, at home extremely sick. His bibi finally decided he was dying and took him to an extremely small clinic, but his bibi was extremely sick herself, so much so that she had to go home. Ben and crew arrived at hour 6 of Isa sitting alone and unseen in the waiting room. After rushing him to a Harvard clinic and using connections to be seen quickly, he was double diagnosed positive for HIV and malaria. His malaria was so bad they had to treat him intravenously and give him injections every 8 hours for 2 days. He got so scared of the needles he ran away and nobody saw him for 36 hrs. Sum of the story: theres a lot of aspects about the health situation that need attention. One important one is a viable transportation option, which is where the bus we’re trying to buy comes in.

Isa

Isa's bibi

And we can't forget money. Money, money, money. The bibis are pretty much completely dependent, as the crafts don't yield nearly enough to support to themselves. Two of the bibis didn't eat for 2 days without telling anyone because they couldn't afford food. It had to be paid for out of the school money, which means less food for the kids. Only one bibi (of 30) owns a bed net, their only protection against malaria. Speaking of malaria, medicine (preventative or treatment) isn't covered by the gov't here, so Ben had to buy Isa's injections, because Isa's bibi obviously couldn't afford it. While Jann can cover some costs, there are obvious gaps that need to be filled. $50 a month for 30 bibis is $1500/month, which is no easy sum.

Juma, an "honorary" male bibi

So thats kind of what we're doing. These aren't easy problems to solve and we don't really know how to solve them. The worst part of the entire situation is that we're only talking about 100 people here. Bibi Jann's is constantly turning people away. They only accept either the most promising students or those in the worst situations. But that means that there are thousands of people, in Mbagala alone, stuck in situations like these with no one to turn to. No Swedish fundraisers, no over-eager Americans, no one. And forget the rest of Tanzania, or East Africa, or the continent, or the developing world. Shit.

Alone, looking out at a big world

IN NEED