Zanzibar Pictures

Hah, and you thought I would never get around to posting pictures again. (Okay, I may be the only one who obsesses about my assorted pledges to update this website more frequently and my subsequent failures.) As I mentioned in an earlier update, I traveled to Zanzibar, Tanzania’s autonomous island region in the Indian Ocean, in early December to see the sites and visit my friend Colleen, a fellow Burke Scholar who will graduate from Marquette University in May. She spent last semester there through a U.S. government program (the Boren Fellowship) studying KiSwahili at the State University of Zanzibar and living with a host family. So it was great to stay with her host family and practice my own KiSwahili a lot.

Zanzibar has a long history of cross-cultural interaction, with many residents claiming Persian, Indian, and Arab ancestry. Beginning the 1840s, Omani sultans began to rule from Zanzibar Town, having shifted their capital there from Oman in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula. The sultanate survived from the late 19^th century until 1964 as a British protectorate, but Zanzibaris, predominantly of African ancestry, overthrew the last Arab sultan within weeks of independence. The new government and Tanganyika (the mainland territory between Mozambique and Kenya ruled first by the Germans and then British until its independence in 1961) formed a union in April, becoming the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, Tanzania for short. The Zanzibar government today retains considerable autonomy in conducting the territory’s affairs and has its own president, who doubles as a vice president in the Union government.

Stone Town, the coastal portion of Zanzibar Town, has narrow, winding alleys and many old buildings reflecting Arab, Persian, and Indian architectural styles, perhaps most famously expressed in its ubiquitous ornately carved wooden doors. There are also several good museums, lots of tourist-geared shops and restaurants, and a wonderful nighttime market for lots of traditional and modern fried foods. Did I actually eat a chocolate and banana Zanzibar pizza (chocolate and banana slices fried inside of a tortilla-like chapati) at the Forodhani night market? Why, yes, I did.

First, here are some Dar-es-Salaam pictures I took the day I traveled to Zanzibar.

Dar’s Catholic cathedral dating from the 1890s, heavily influenced by the German colonizers and missionaries who directed its construction.

My ferry both to and from Zanzibar, the Kilimanjaro III.

A section of Dar as seen from the ferry.

Zanzibar Town from the ferry

The business end of Zanzibar’s port

Part of Zanzibar’s old fort, now hosting the offices of the Zanzibar Film Festival, open air concerts, and some craft vendors

Zanzibar’s roofline and the concert seating of the fort as seen from above

One of the ornate, heavy doors of a former palace of the Sultan, now a museum

Part of Zanzibar Town’s Anglican cathedral, built on the site of central slave market after the British pressured the Sultan into officially ending the slave trade. All my interior pictures turned out blurry, but the high altar was actually constructed on the site of the main whipping post of the slave market. The cathedral now offers tours related to the slave trade and serves a small local congregation as well as tourists. (Zanzibar is 99%, or some other high percentage, Muslim.)

I take the blurry statement back. This one actually came out okay. Yes, Dad, they do have a pipe organ.

Outside of Stone Town are a number of apartment buildings built by the East Germans to show their solidarity with the Zanzibar Revolution and its government, whose official KiSwahili title even today is translated as the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar. Some of the apartments, such as that of Colleen’s host family, are very nice and well furnished.

An organic farm in rural Zanzibar where Colleen spent a lot of her free time with a leader in Zanzibar’s growing cooperative movement. I very much enjoyed my visit here.

A view of the upper stories of buildings along a narrow Stone Town alley

Your Honor, I submit the above picture as Exhibit A to prove that I have indeed been to a tropical island in the Indian Ocean.

Sorry this one’s so blurry. Colleen and I visited a cavern carved out for use by the Arab slave traders outside of Zanzibar Town to enable to continue the slave trade after the Sultan closed the central slave market and outlawed the slave trade. The British Royal Navy finally discovered and closed down these operations in 1890, if I remember correctly.

Unlike the simple combination vans used in South Africa and Tanzania mainland, including Moshi, many of the daladalas in Zanzibar are modified picnics with bench seats in the specially rearranged bed. We used vehicles like this to reach both the farm and slave cavern.

And you thought I wouldn’t post a picture of myself. Now that you’ve seen this disturbing image, you may wish I hadn’t. Anyway, we took a short trip through part of a natural cave near the slave cavern. Fear not, Liz has since cut my hair.

Wait, there’s a Holiday Inn in Zanzibar. No, it’s in Dar actually, but still surprising. There a few Subways around, but no Mickey D’s yet.

And these beauties are not Tanzanian traditional specialties, but homemade pineapple upside cakes I made using fresh pineapple in our modified Dutch oven of pots on our gas cooker for Beth’s farewell party in mid-December. For all the doubters out there, the cakes were pretty awesome. Even the Tanzanians said so.

Well, that’s all for now. It appears my ability to control the destinies of Wisconsin’s sports teams from abroad is waning, as both the Badgers and Packers went to down to defeat this month despite their great seasons. I’m sorry. I’ll work on my game for the Brewers in baseball.

God bless,

Andy

P.S. Here’s just one of the thousands of carved doors awaiting you on Zanzibar.

 

 

Heri ya Mwaka Mpya! (Happy New Year!)

Yes, we have reached 2012, friends. I started my second year of teaching at Majengo Secondary School this past Monday. I have a lot of the same students as last year since I am now teaching Form II English and most of my Form I students passed into Form II. I feel excited about this year, and I believe it will be even better than last year as I try to go deeper into this experience.

 

In addition to my early December trip to Zanzibar, I also traveled to Tanga with my fellow Jesuit Volunteers for our retreat on the Indian Ocean at the same beautiful retreat center as last year. Then, we went to Dar-es-Salaam to celebrate Christmas before returning to Moshi for New Year’s and the jubilee celebration of Brother Lyimo, Majengo’s headmaster, and two other brothers who had all been brothers for 25 years. All the Jesuit Volunteers, posted to Dodoma and Dar but not here in Moshi, are great, and the larger JVC Tanzania community will be wonderful this year, just as it was last year.

 

I’m sorry I keep failing to write longer and more detailed posts (or to post pictures), but I will get my game on again this semester . . . probably.

 

God bless,

Andy

Merry Christmas!

I will actually write a real update someday, but I chose to go to Zanzibar for a week instead. It was amazing, and I will tell you all about it later. Today, Beth left for America after finishing her two years of teaching in Moshi, so we are down to just three.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Lo, the end of the first school year is upon us

Despite our school calendar having been pushed back yet again, it appears that the Ordinary Level students (Forms I through IV) will finish the school year on Thursday, December 1. I will be done teaching on November 23, but then I will be helping to supervise the annual examinations and, of course, then I will mark the Form I English exams of my students. Not much else to report. I went to the graduation of my Swahili teacher’s nursery school—it was great! Maybe I will actually put up some pictures and substantive blog posts once the school year ends. Then again maybe not. Stay tuned . . .

An update at last

[Note: I wrote this update a month ago (October 1 or so), but the Internet was down in town when I went to sent it. To preserve it in all its original glory (that is, because I am lazy), I have not edited this post at all. I would also like to congratulate the Phillips girls cross country team, including a certain sister of mine, for qualifying for and competing well in the Wisconsin Division 3 state championship race yesterday!]

Well, I’m now failing again at updating the blog. Contrary to popular belief, I have in fact been doing things here, just not updating online, and a lot has been happening.

Last month, my Grandma Dresser passed away peacefully from the late stage lung cancer she had been diagnosed with this summer. She was an amazing woman, and I can’t believe she and Grandpa are both gone now. The obituary she wrote is available at: http://www.westgorfuneralhomes.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=1262565&fh_id=13304

At Majengo Secondary School, our students took their mid-term exams in mid-September, and then I marked my English exams like it was my job (which, yet again, it was). As always, I don’t know how much English my students are learning, but the more I try to teach English, the better my still limited KiSwahili becomes. I have become particularly proficient in talking bilingually about such exciting topics as the parts of speech and book reports. I have also read far too many book reports about Kalulu the Hare. I wonder what author Frank Worthington would think if he knew that the 1937 abridgment of his collection of traditional stories about the trickster rabbit Kalulu would become a staple of the Tanzanian educational system’s Form I curriculum, at least for those schools which have resources. (I believe our copies were donated by the British government.)

During mid-term break, I took a day off from marking and ventured west to Arusha, the major city in northern Tanzania, for the first time since in-country orientation in December. I visited two modest museums, one of which was in the former German colonial boma (fort/administration building) and the other was in the hall where the ruling party issued the Arusha Declaration. The Declaration set forth the terms of Tanzanian socialism, laying down strict limits for leaders and also announcing the imminent nationalization of several major industries. Needless to say, the Arusha Declaration is no longer in effect today, but it remains an important historical document. I also visited the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and was able to watch through glass windows and listen using headphones to the ongoing prosecution and appeals proceedings of accused perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide. I hope to go back when I have time to watch the proceedings for a longer period of time.

As for other excitement, I continue to run in the morning all five weekdays, which is crazy. What would be even crazier is if I could fire myself up to get in that crucial weekly long run I need each Saturday so that maybe, just maybe I won’t get crushed in next year’s Kilimanjaro Marathon, which is less than five months away at this point. My KiSwahili is chugging along, and I finally finished Teach Yourself Swahili by Joan Russell. I would definitely recommend it as a decent way to build up to a basic understanding of the KiSwahili language, but I’ve also heard from other people, including several fellow Jesuit Volunteers, that they didn’t find the program helpful. What can I say? Maybe Joan just likes me better . . . although I really wish she would have prepared me better to read newspapers and listen to radio news. Let the studies continue!

I’ve started meeting regularly with a nun and an aspiring nun near our house at the compound of the Sisters of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the same order which runs Saint Mary Goretti Secondary School where Liz and Beth work. Mostly, we just practice speaking in a mix of Swahili and English, and I continue to be amazed by the vibrancy of religious life here in Tanzania. In Moshi, becoming a sister is absolutely a relatively common and certainly respectable life decision for Catholic girls and young women to make, and many more men here consider becoming priests or brothers. In fact, quite a few teachers at Majengo are men who were on the priesthood track but for various reasons were not ordained.

Oh, and I’ve found what may be my favorite Thing with a capital “T” to do here (as in, a formal activity you could direct someone to emulate by including a paragraph in a Moshi guidebook). A newly built 11-story retail and office complex, only has tenants on the first several floors, but I recently discovered that the steps are open all the way until the 10^th floor (officially the 9^th here, where they don’t count the ground floor), where there is a nice open space with guardrails to look out over the city. I suspect they will put a restaurant or some other business that can utilize the space by charging money, but for now, it’s still bure (free). I took a few pictures last weekend. Although they don’t really do Moshi justice, I’m putting a few up here in an accompanying post because, well generally because I don’t normally put pictures of Moshi on the blog.

This coming weekend, our director and our program director from the JVC International Program Office in Washington, DC, will be here in Moshi hanging out with us. Among many other things, they will be coming to school with us. Is Majengo ready for four Americans associated with JVC to show up at one time? We’ll find out on October 10.

May the truth continue to set us free,

Andy

 

 

GO PTOWN CC!!!

I actually had a large blog update ready to go nearly three weeks ago, but the Internet was down. It shall be forthcoming, probably the weekend after this coming one. I hope you are all well.

However, the main point for the blog post is just to cheer for the Phillips cross country teams as they lay the smackdown at their sectional meet tomorrow (Friday, October 21). I hear they’re pretty good this year, especially a certain sibling of mine. GO PUMPKIN PATCH/LOGGERS/The team formerly known as the Black Pack! Kimbia kwa haraka (“Run quickly” in KiSwahili)! Make it rain!

State of the Andy, August 2011

Yes, I am still alive. Yes, I am still in Moshi, loving teaching a month into second semester. No, I cannot speak fluent KiSwahili, but I am trying. Longer update to come later. God bless!

Dodoma Pictures

Here are my pictures from my trip to Dodoma, described in much too lengthy paragraph in the preceding post. Sadly missing is a picture of the Ubunge, the Parliament building, which is the only significant piece of the Tanzanian government which has shifted there from Dar-es-Salaam in the nearly four decades since Dodoma was selected as the country’s new capital. This is because Parliament was actually in session, which meant greater security and also higher expectations for attire and generally just too many difficulties. Perhaps we will make it happen when I return there next.

Let’s start with the above trilingual poster from the Dodoma Jesuit Volunteer house, which has hosted European volunteers (mainly German and British, I think) since the late 1980s and now also houses the newest Tanzanian JVC community. This one’s for Mom.

This is the Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, or something like that, which despite its intriguing architecture is in this post primarily because of the next picture.

Obviously, I could not independently verify the authenticity of this plaque, but it looked old. Sorry for the blurriness. Old school.

As (possibly) mentioned in my earlier posts, Tanzania has a sizeable population of Indian descent, mainly concentrated in the country’s cities and associated with commercial activity. This is Dodoma’s Hindu temple. Moshi has a large Hindu complex including a more ornate temple, which I will show when I eventually make a post (or posts) like this about my own city.While we’re exploring Dodoma’s religious diversity, I can’t forget the city’s most conspicuous religious sanctuary. Believe it or not, the above mosque was a gift from Muammar Gaddafi, the embattled Libyan leader. Perhaps he can live here in exile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is just a strange-looking roundabout. There is no legitimate reason for posting this picture except that I find mildly interesting, which is really the only criterion used on my blog. The Anglican church with the Livingtonian wood is the background on the right.

Now this fine statue is the centerpiece of Nyerere Square. As you might have guessed, it is in fact a statue of Julius K. Nyerere, more commonly known as “Baba wa Taifa” (“Father of the Nation”) or simply “Mwalimu” (“Teacher”). He was the nation’s first and longtime leader and still greatly admired by many Tanzanians.

This is Simba Mlima, a “mountain” or rock formation which overlooks Dodoma. Sean and I climbed it together with David, a fellow teacher and friend of Sean’s from Uganda, and Jude, a Ugandan friend of David studying to become a Carmelite priest.

A view from the summit of much of Dodoma, which has a population somewhere around 400,000. The white clusters of buildings on the hills in the background are units of the University of Dodoma (UDOM), which supposedly will soon be the largest university in sub-Saharan Africa.

Yes, a rare sight on these pages, an actual picture of me with Sean (in the middle) and David. Jude took the picture. I don’t think I recruited anyone to Marquette despite proudly wearing my shirt.

The new official residence for the prime minister being built on a lower portion of the rock.

And the sun sets over Dodoma, my mid-year break, and the first half of 2011.

Mid-year Retreat, Dentists, Dodoma, Lutheran Charismatics, and the End of Vacation

As I publish this post, I am in the final hours of my mid-year break between academic semesters at Majengo Secondary School (MJSS). The school will reopen with a vengeance tomorrow (July 11), and from then on it will be back to the teaching life again until the end of the school year in late November, with a week or so of mid-term break in September. Although I am excited to return to teaching and see all my students regularly again, I have enjoyed my last few weeks.

Last month, JVC Tanzania had a wonderful mid-year retreat at the Mbagalla Spirituality Centre (alas, Tanzanian English generally follows the spellings and conventions of British English [BrE, according to the dictionary abbreviations I taught my students] rather than our fair American tongue [AmE]) in a suburb of Dar-es-Salaam, where we were able to reconnect and prayerfully reflect on our experiences. And, of course, as usual, the food was wonderful and, even better, made by centre’s wonderful staff rather than us. We even had hamburgers for lunch one day! After leaving the retreat centre, most of us visited Dar’s Indian Ocean beaches before returning to the Mabibo neighborhood and a meal with the Jesuits there. The retreat was well worth the two 8-hour bus rides. (Of course, I also enjoy riding Greyhound in the States, so I am perhaps not the best judge. For the record, I think most JVs would disagree with my views on this issue, among others.)

The Sunday after retreat, I worshipped for the first time with Moshi’s Lutherans. Not because I have left the lower-case “c” catholic fold, but because there was no English language mass at the cathedral due to the lengthy KiSwahili first communion service that was finishing as we arrived. So, that afternoon, I rolled into Moshi’s main Lutheran church for what turned out to be the monthly charismatic service. It was wonderful, and all in KiSwahili. In addition to being a worship style I became comfortable with in South Africa and a different method to draw near to God than the traditional Catholic mass with which I usually worship here, the charismatic form of worship was also comprehensible to me since the Lutheran worship leaders tended to repeat the same simple KiSwahili phrases over and over again. During the sermon, I thankfully figured out which Bible stories the pastor was using while they were being read and was then able to cheat a bit and use context clues to decipher most of the message. It was a great charismatic time, and I suspect I shall visit my new Lutheran friends again from time to time. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT) is quite strong in the Kilimanjaro and Arusha regions of northern Tanzania and now refuses aid from most (or maybe all?) Western Lutheran churches due to the increasingly liberal theological positions of the latter.

I also made two trips to visit a Tanzanian dentist recently. And survived to write this blog post. Due to my own poor track record of dental maintenance and my increased soda consumption here (not my fault, I swear, because I feel culturally rude turning sodas down . . . although I do like them), I figured I ought to continue my usual teeth cleanings every six months. The staff of the Kilimanjaro Dental Clinic was very friendly and enjoyed my poor KiSwahili quite well, although they spoke fine English. The very experienced dentist had actually finished his dental studies in the Soviet Union in the late 1960s. I had a full cleaning and polishing/sealing. Unfortunately, he found a small cavity (I blame the sodas), which meant I had to return a few days ago for a composite filling. Their office was very clean and well-stocked, and although the equipment was a bit older than what I am used to (with a bit more grinding than brushing-style implements) and triggered a partial return of my longstanding gag reflex, I am glad my teeth are generally back in a healthy state. I plan on returning for two more cleanings while I’m here. Perhaps the dental experience means that I am now actually settled in here since I don’t recall having ever gone to a dentist outside of Phillips (or in KiSwahili, “kijiji cha Phillips,” literally, the village of Phillips).

As for my final adventure of vacation, I just returned on Thursday from my whirlwind trip to Dodoma, Tanzania’s official capital since 1973 which I first visited with the other JVs over New Year’s at the end of our in-country orientation. I visited my friend Sean, one of my best friends in JVC and one of the first two JVs to serve in Dodoma. On the way there, my bus stopped for four hours along the highway while our driver and the other employees tried to fix what was either an oil leak or a problem with the engine’s mixing of oil and water, or at least that was what I gathered from the other passengers. I suspected when one of the attendants told us we had “matatizo kidogo” (a few problems) that we would be there for a while, but it was okay. The man sitting next to me for the journey, a kind civil servant working for the National Social Security Fund and heading to Dodoma for a training seminar, kept asking me during our lengthy stop if I was worried, but really it was fine. Anyway, I finally rolled into Dodoma at 11:30 p.m. at night, 16 hours after I left Moshi, which meant it was a perfect time to eat chips (thick French fries) and meat with Sean at late night restaurant. I spent the next three days with Sean, living the Dodoma life. In the mornings, we helped out with his boarding school’s mid-year break tutoring program for the school’s few Form I students from KiSwahili language primary schools, who are struggling. Of course, two thirds of my students come from KiSwahili primary schools, so it was a great training experience. Father Marty, the school’s American Jesuit headmaster and a former freshman English grammar teacher, taught the students grammar far better than I have done at Majengo so far, and it was great to get some new ideas and watch an experienced American teacher effectively teach English cross-culturally. We visited a friend of Sean’s in the village nearby the school, climbed Simba Mlima (the small rock formation rising above Dodoma), and spent two great evenings with the Jesuits, including spending our 4^th of July at a mass followed by a meal and party with the Jesuits and the nuns who operate Dodoma’s Jesuit primary school. It was also great to catch up with Sean, even though I had just seen him at retreat, especially because he had been too sick to attend our Easter retreat. On Thursday, I bused it home again without another large stop, but we did have two hour-ish delays related, I think, to the bus’s electrical system. For one thing, bus trips are great for reading. I finished The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything by Father James Martin, SJ. If you wish to learn more about who the Jesuits are and what they are about, I would highly recommend this book, which is quite readable despite its 400+ pages.

Well, that’s it for now. I will also put up a post of pictures from Dodoma to make up for the boredom any of you who finished this post may be feeling at this point. Term #2, here we go!

God bless,

Andy

Likizo ni nzuri! (Vacation is great!)

I am now almost halfway finished with our mid-year break between semesters at Majengo. I spent about a week marking my 210 exams and then manually entering the mid-term, final, and semester grades on my students’ report cards. I even got to put carbon paper between the two copies of the report (one for the student, one for school records) to fill in the duplicate—the learning never stops. However, being finished with marking has not stopped me from hanging out at school because they still have tea time and lunch provided because the Advanced Level (equivalent to 12^th and 13^th grades) students were still in session until Friday. Also, I have been tutoring a small group of students between tea and lunch, which mostly means we just talk in English and sometimes write funny stories.

In other exciting news, I have taken advantage of the break to step up my KiSwahili game. I attend KiSwahili lessons three evenings a week with a teacher who runs a nursery school and also tutors primary school students in the Majengo neighborhood. My teacher, Aldrini, is great, and I even went to his wedding last weekend after he invited me. I am also within 50 pages or so of finishing the Teach Yourself Swahili book/CD course that I brought to the country. I am becoming much more confident in my use of the language but still really struggle to understand KiSwahili spoken at regular speed and not directed specifically at me, such as that used for the church announcements after the English-language Catholic mass we attend or the rapid-fire weekday morning radio news. The experience of learning KiSwahili here continues to be a blessing, as I am increasingly able to communicate with more students and community members who have minimal English knowledge. I’m hoping to branch into reading newspapers, the Bible, and Tanzanian constitution in KiSwahili soon.

We are now officially entering “winter” here. Don’t worry, Phillips—it’s not a real winter. The weather is generally becoming cool and more often overcast, although generally without the rain of the preceding rainy season. In my mind, this is absolutely beautiful weather. Yesterday, I had a peaceful run into the countryside through a light mist, and it was wonderful.

Over the remaining break, I will try to plan out the next semester’s lessons, continue to study KiSwahili, and do some traveling by bus to visit other Jesuit Volunteers.

As for the blog, I have had numerous ideas for more interesting posts, such as “Who are the Jesuits?,” “What does Andy actually eat?,” “Power Outages for all,” and “Oh, yes, my students really asked me that.” We shall see if any of these actually come to fruition, but I hope to really do more reflective and/or themed writing in the near future because I suspect posts about my daily routine, which is relatively stable now, would become very repetitious.

Best wishes to you all, as well as happy birthdays to both my siblings this month, and a very happy Father’s Day to my dad as well (who better not be checking the Internet from the Boundary Waters)!