As we left Maasailand, we had two days to drive back to Dorobo HQ, one of which gave me my favorite view thus far. At the end of a long, bumpy drive, we weaved around a cliff side to reach the view of Lake Natron, a vast salty, sulphury lake that seems to be only a couple feet deep at most. Massive flocks of flamingo speckle and paint the lake with pink from the micro-plankton and shrimp they slurp up , coloring their initially white exterior. Looking to the left, we spot (although it's not like it was difficult to find) a massive, classically shaped volcano, still active to this day. I swear to God we were gonna curve around the road to find a brontosaurus or pterodactyl. Land Before Time? I think yes.
That night we hiked, as we so often do, along a slippery, river -crossed path to another amazing natural sight. High ceilinged cliffs were home to countless waterfalls; the water, warmer than a public pool; the bottom, sandier than White Sands Beach Resort in Zanzibar. We were astonished. It didn't take us long to realize that we were the only people around for miles, at which point all 14 of us stripped of our already soaking clothes and had bit more natural of a dip in the water. I felt as if we were being baptized: After finishing the trials and tribulations of a month in and around the wild, we returned from whence we came. We walked through the rocky corridor, bare cheeked and bewildered at the paradise we had stumbled upon. Poetic? Probably less than I imagine. Fun? Oh, hell yes.
I'm now in Arusha, a city the size of Portland ,although the concept of census is about as useless here as trying to keep a pair of white corduroys white in Africa, (this I know from experience. I still don't know what I was thinking, packing the damn things). We have been working closely with the Peterson brothers and Thad P's wife Robin, a psychologist who is working with the village of Olasiti, slowly trying to improve living conditions. Our assignment was the same: to research a piece of culture that is can be qualified, then to present our findings to the village council. Again, the opportunity to actually propose some good to the council is something you couldn't find with any tour group.
I have decided to determine what public opinion of community based art programs is. I went into the project believing that I would find a community starving for more art because of it's creativity unleashing qualities and it's ability to allow you to "find yourself". Stupid. What I have found is that on a whole, art is extremely important to the community, especially the younger generation, but for its ability to "allow the youth to drive their careers," or to "bring income to the family" (both of which were my most popular answers).
This was quite confusing to me for some time. While I thought about the data I had gathered, Nate and I were staying in a home with a woman who we called "Mama Musa". Her name was Evelyn, but chose to go by the name of her eldest son Musa. We were told Mama was nine months pregnant, with three children, and a husband who had jumped ship months ago. The week just got more exciting, we told each other, justifiably nervous. When we arrived we were greeted by a beautiful young woman, Evelyn, stomach prevalent and obviously pregnant, but not to the extreme degree we were both imagining. She smiled from ear to ear and then some, amazingly glad and excited to have us in her home. Next we met Musa, a quiet young man who later took us to his friend's house to watch MTV (a research project in itself). Next was Orainy and Lighty (phonetically and probably incorrectly spelled on this blog) ages 10 and 9, shy but extremely mature and kind. Finally we met Miriam, a four year old spunk-nugget who was probably the cutest child I have met (although that is up for debate, lemme get back to you on that). Miriam had a habit of wearing three dresses at a time, making funny faces at us and flopping into your arms like frayed string cheese when you tried to pick her up. Nate and I fell in love.
We ate so much. So much. We were given gigantic barrels of food and self serve utensils, but from our past experiences in homestays, it's quite rude not to eat most, if not all the food. Thus, our addiction began, or in my case, I fell into relapse. Blueband. Nasty, horrific, delicious Blueband. Margarine spread that must have an alphabet of additives in it. We were given a tub of Blueband and an entire loaf of sliced white bread with every meal. As we looked at the ingredients, we could almost see the word "cocaine" in between the lines, as the addiction process seemed to be the same. I knew the effects well. Not of cocaine, per say,but in Riruta I constantly felt the shaky hands of desire when I wasn't given enough BB on my bread to be mistaken for creamcheese. And now I saw it in Nate. We sweat, our stomachs growled, we craved the vile stuff.
After a week of waking up, eating, researching, eating, researching, eating, and sleeping, we decided to get to know our mother more. We talked more and more, laughed more, and finally she came very close with us. We played guitar and sang at night, making her baby kick with joy. I lead a sing along of "You Can't Always Get What You Want", an unofficial themesong to the trip. The family really didn't know what to make of it, but obliged and sang along nonetheless.
Mama Musa came up to us one day. She had a picture in her hands of her wedding. I immediately noticed that the wedding decorations were the same that decorated the otherwise plain, cement block house. She had kept them up for 19 years. She began to spill her guts to us about how she still loved the prick, how he left right before the baby was announced, and that he now lives at the base of Kilimanjaro with a new wife and a young son. She began to cry softly. It's heartbreaking to watch your "mother" cry and try her best to explain herself, and not be able to fully express yourself back; our swahili was just as limited as her English.It was the most anyone had opened up to me on this trip. We did our best to comfort her, and in the end, we felt pretty terrible, but also we had come to a greater understanding of each other. Mama Musa was pushing through her days with a smile bolted to her face. What was the alternative? She had to raise 5 children, two of which were her young sister's, who had died a few years ago (a fact that seemed to escape our trip leaders at first). Everyone has the same goal in mind here: bring your kids up right, regardless of the conditions you see around you. What Mama had done was created a healthy future for her children in an otherwise terribly unhealthy environment .
We said our goodbyes to Mama Musa and the family, giving the wide eyed Miriam some squishy toys and a spiderman ball, which she immediately began to play with...we were the past, the toys were all she could see. Now I try to compile my data and kick my nasty Blueband habit. Back in tents for a week, then off to Lamu. Then Amsterdam. What a life, right?
More to come,
Tim
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