Lending Hands

There are a couple paved roads in Tanzania. Literally, just a couple. We don’t live on one. We live off of it. You take a dirt road (of which there are a WHOLE lot) down to a field, then take a left and go up a bit of a hill to get to our house. The hill is pretty steep and being at nearly 4000 ft elevation, it’s a hike to get to the top. And that’s when all that you’re doing is walking up it. There’s a whole lot of mom’s carrying kids, bikes with stuff, buckets, bags, and handcarts being carried, lugged, and pulled up that hill.

When I was coming down the hill the other day, three young men were struggling to pull a handcart up the hill. Handcarts here are either metal contraptions with old bicycle wheels or heavy wooden things with old flat car tires. They’re normally packed full of produce, carrying furniture, or piles of wood. This one was piled high with wood. I gave my backpack to one of the other volunteers and “put my shoulder to the wheel.” It was hard sweaty work, but well worth the shocked faces and laughs of our Tanzanian neighbors as they saw a Muzungu (Swahili for “gringo”) helping push a handcart up a hill.

When I arrived at the top I shook hands with the cartman, and feeling a little “job well done” pride wiped my hands and headed back down the hill. To my surprise both of the other youths joined me on my way down. I thought that I had been doing such a favor, lending a hand to help these three when in fact, I had actually joined a service project already in action. Just like me, they had seen a man in need and had taken time out of their day (and the effort to hike back up the hill) to help him out.

Since then I’ve seen Tanzanians who have never met help a handcart in need more than a couple times, and have taken the chance to join in again. It seems that there is a culture of shared labor which you don’t often see in the states. But even more important, that experience was a lesson to me about the service that I render here as well as elsewhere during my life. We tend to think that when we do something, it is our hand that is making the difference, getting a stalling cart moving up the hill. But in reality, it is the many hands involved that get the cart moving and keep it going. There are so many hands at work all over the world, it is about finding the right place to join them and help move that cart along. I didn’t get that cart to the top, we did.

Trashed

One of the biggest surprises so far is the amount of garbage that is everywhere. Traditionally, I’m sure that the good jungle giveth and the good jungle taketh away – people would pick a banana and throw the useless skin back into the bush where it would disappear and never be seen again. But now when you throw out a bottle or a wrapper, it sticks around. The ditches next to the road and even the road itself is often littered with non-biodegradable waste. I’ve watched as people drop candy wrappers out of bus windows and others just fling stuff to the side of the road.

When someone has a pile of trash they’ll normally burn it – plastics, and whatever else is in there. Sometimes when we leave early enough in the morning there will be burning piles of trash all along the dirt path we hike up to the road. In the evening, sometimes there are so many burning piles of trash in Arusha town that the entire city is covered in a smoky haze.

From a public health perspective this is both a respiratory and environmental hazard. So, we’ve got a couple of projects focused on waste management. One of them is in a community called Kikatiti where we’ll be participating in the movement of a village trash pile (I’ll put up some pics tomorrow) and participating in a weeklong education fair. One of the focuses will be waste management. Another is a project that Elliot and I are putting together to have volunteers picking up trash in our neighborhood if they get home early from projects. I’m interested in the effect on the “Broken Window Theory,” of both projects. In essence, it is a criminology theory that states that a broken and unkempt urban environment creates social norms that also suggests a lack of care and therefore encourages crime. The most common example of the evidence for the theory was the rapid drop in crime rate in NYC after a focus on “idirect” causes of crime like public urination or vandalism.

So my question is if cleaning up a neighborhood can (arguably) reduce crime, can cleaning up the country change the attitudes of people who live there? It’s something I hope to examine a bit as we work piece by piece on our street.

As for all you wonderful readers back home – in our Kikatiti education week, we’ll be having a week long competition for the best reuse of “trash.” Whether it is aluminum coke bottle caps into earings, or a water bottle into a childes windmill toy, we’re going to have people submit their creations and promote the reusing items like cans, bottles and bags instead of throwing them into the woods. Do you have any fun ideas? If someone comes up with an idea ingenious enough to create a market, who knows – we could create the dala dala garbage industry!

Dala Dalas – Life, Death and a triumph of the free market economy

After three layovers, five airports and over 35 hours of travel, we (me, a first year med student named Elliot, a soon to be first year MPH Nisha, and undecided U of U sophomore Michelle) emerged from Kilimanjaro airport and into the arms of our loving country directors Tyler and America (yep, that’s her name!). They grabbed our bags and threw them into what at that time I assumed was the team van. It had four rows of seats, was very rickety, had no interior lining, and the door was so rusted through in parts that you could see outside.
Two police stops, as many bribes, and one clever maneuver later, we were home and I had survived my first dala dala ride. Dala dala’s serve as Tanzania’s privately owned and operated mass transit system (and for enough money, as our private transport to the airport) They are only licensed to travel between certain towns and have a stripe indicating their route along the side (which explains the two police stops for our out-of-line dala dala on the way home from the airport). They normally have a driver, a hustler (more on him later), and as many rows of seats as fit in the van. Each is painted and stickered up according the tastes of the driver (I can’t tell yet if any have ads on them – a lucrative market perhaps?) Fares are set at certain prices for specific distances but other than their areas of operation and the fare they charge, they operate completely unregulated (and it is questionable how often the other two are regulated anyway)
Dala Dal’s wait at the starting point of their route with the driver in the car while the hustler walks around banging the side of the van and yelling out the final destination. Since there are normally a couple Dala Dalas sitting around, they are competing against the other hustlers for your business and pursue you somewhat aggressively, to the point of grabbing your arm and pulling you toward their van if you aren’t assertive. You want to pick your van wisely, because if it’s empty, it won’t leave until they’ve gathered enough people to more than fill it. So you’re best off in a van that’s almost full because that means it’s almost ready to go. And when I say full, I mean full. You’re usually packed four people to a row, and if they can get enough to have people standing in the van, they’ll pack them in. The most I’ve had in a van with me so far was twenty five. On the way home from church last week we even had a sheep under a seat.
Once filled, the Dala dala literally takes off. The driver’s profits depend on how many paying customers he gets from point A-B so he’ll try and pick up as many as possible and get them in and out as fast as possible. If someone in front is moving too slow, they pass them – no matter how fast the car in the other lane is coming. If the van isn’t full enough the hustler will have the van pull over and open and hop out the door while still on the move to try and round up some more customers. When you’re ready to get off you just bang on the roof and they pull over. After disentangling yourself and squeezing out you can hit dry ground happy in the knowledge that you survived another brush with death.
This system isn’t very comfortable. I’m positive that it’s dangerous (and exhilarating. PS mom – no calling the office about this one). And yet it works – almost perfectly actually. In an area in which the government can hardly pay for hospitals, schools, or other basic necessities, their exists a system of mass transit that rivals in efficiency any system in western world. There is hardly any wait time – a dala dala passes nearly every thirty seconds – and for a pittance (the price of a ride to town is 300 Tanzanian Shillings, or about 20 cents) you can get anywhere you need to go. It’s a miracle of supply, demand and the invisible hand. After solving (somewhat) the issue of mass transport, it begs the question, if properly incentivized, what other ills can the market cure? How could the market fix the roads, sewage, or....

A brief note-

This blog is not going to be a journal. I’m keeping my own journal, on my laptop, password protected. This blog is going to be a blog. On occasion I may post about the specific things I’ve experienced that day/week, and every post will be influenced by the happenings here in TZ, but most of what I’ll be putting up here will be ideas, thoughts, and musing inspired what I’m seeing and doing. So, think with me. I’ll be asking for your feedback. And if you want to know about my day to day stuff, I’ll talk to you when I get back.

The Great Adventure

It has been one heck of a Tuesday. Trying to finish a pair of classes early, move out of two apartments and training a replacement doesn't leave much time for goodbyes or pondering. I don't tell her enough, but I'm glad God saved my Mom for me. Don't know what would have happened if she hadn't been out here to help. And thank goodness there is an 11 hour layover in London tomorrow to collect my thoughts!

On this the eve of perhaps the great adventure of my life, I am, understandably, a little nervous. This trip has been something I have dreamed of doing for a long, long time, and even though I know it will be nothing like I expect, I wonder exactly what is going to surprise me. What am I going to see? What am I going to learn? and how will this all change me?

Adventure. I would assume that it comes from the same root as the word "Advent" - the arrival of something notable. I feel that this will be one of the most notable events in my life, a defining 12 weeks. I'm glad that you'll get to share them with me. (am I allowed to wish this on myself?) Bon Voyage!