A day I almost died

February 6th 2009

I finally bought much needed supplies in Tukuyu before heading back to school. At the stand in Tukuyu, I learned the reason why I still hadn’t seen my friend David (the guy who saved my drum). He died. Sometime that day, one of my best Tanzanian friends said goodbye to his mortal coil. I hadn’t seen him at the hospital since he told me that he’d come to visit me “siku yoyote” which means “any day.” Fuck!

I shed a few tears before boarding a daladala headed in the direction of school. About a minute away from Kayuki, the rear left wheel came off and we began to slide. I was sitting in the front, next to the driver and I felt the car sliding toward the other lane that was home to a large oncoming truck. Instinctively, I reached out and grabbed the wheel. I did not have the urge to swerve; in fact, I forced the driver to not swerve. I held the wheel steady, easing it away from the right lane only ever so slightly. As our dala started moving away from the on coming truck, the driver pushed my hand off the wheel. Who knows if what I had done really helped? I do know that if we had hit that truck, my brains would have been sifted through the windshields of both vehicles. Whatever.

That was the span of about forty-five minutes. I heard that someone close to me, someone young, a friend had died, and then I almost ate it myself in a car accident.

What a day huh?

The following day, I went to David’s funeral. I wanted to eulogize him, I wanted to tell the story about how he taught me how to say, “I’m going to hang out with my friend” in local Nyakusa language. Or, about the time he rescued the djembe I bought in Zanzibar. Unfortunately the funeral seemed very rushed, and there is a certain way of doing things here. All I know is that the time was never right for me to stand up in front of everyone and deliver a eulogy of sorts. And that bothered me. As we ate the traditional funeral food, kande (corn cooked with beans), I told these stories to all who were nearby, and I felt a little better.

I got too much sun. I didn’t get burned, but I feel depressed and angry and I bet part of it has to do with that I spent nearly the entire day out in the sun. Yeah, and maybe it’s because I’m seriously questioning what I’m doing here right now. Nearly dying puts things in perspective.

We made mushrooms! With help from the spawn produced by Gerald Mgaya in Mbeya, Osen, Michael and I all worked together to start producing oyster mushrooms.

Inputs: a steel oil drum, 2 meters of plastic sheeting, fire wood, 7 plastic shopping bags, a bushel of dry banana leaves, some twine, rubber cord, three jars of mycelium spawn incubated on wheat (from Gerald’s TANMUSH lab).

Total cost: about TZsh. 10000 (materials purchased)

(Osen supplied the steel drum, which can be TZsh. 30000-50000)

We used the steel drum to pasteurize the banana leaves after packing them into the plastic bags.

1. Heat about 10 liters of water in the drum
2. Lower the stuffed bags into the drum (note: the more chopped the leaves are, the more mass you can fit into each bag)
3. Cover the top of the drum with the plastic sheeting securing it with the rubber cord. Make sure to leave a small outlet for steam. This can be done by inserting a stick under the plastic and tying the rubber cord so that it holds the stick in place.
4. Boil for about one hour
5. Allow the water to cool and then remove the bags.
6. Inoculate with spawn
7. Place bags in a dark room or box for 1-2 weeks (dark period)
8. After the dark period, move the bags to a dimly lit room
9. We had our first fruiting bodies come out after only a month in one of the bags (Gerald says the mean time he experiences is 3 months)

Hello everyone. Here’s what’s going on in my life.

The second school year began on January 12th, I’ve actually been teaching since the 19th. Since I’m the only physics teacher, I’m teaching forms 1-4. In order to make this manageable, we pared down the form three and four classes to about 35 students apiece. That gives me enough time to teach all of the form one and two students without going absolutely batty. I’m teaching twenty-seven forty-minute periods a week. On Mondays, I also do physics club. I’ve opened the computer room only a couple of times since the start of school. It’s clear that students want to use it, but there is no one on staff who is stepping forward to help out. The headmistress is not responding to my requests to buy five new optical mice, which I can get in Mbeya for 13,000 shillings (about $10). Supposedly some of the money that students pay for school fees is supposed to go to the computer room, but I have yet to be successful in getting those funds into action. The roof over the computer room sprung a serious leak, and some mornings, I find puddles of large sizes in areas with electronic equipment. So I reported that the computer room is not safe to use until we get the roof fixed. We’ll see how long that takes. If you worry too much about sustainability, you’ll find yourself doing nothing. That’s what has become clearer to me over the time I’ve spent here in Tanzania. No, I think that no matter where you are in the world, if you want something done and done well (up to your standards) you either need to delegate to people who are duty bound to carry out your directions or you see the project through to the end yourself. Here, I’m just another teacher, and the goal of the Peace Corps is not to delegate work to foreign nationals or demand that a host country change in any way. So, if we are doing anything, there should be a Tanzanian working side-by-side with us all the way. Hmmm, some of you may remember that I had a great counterpart named Gloria. She was the one who helped make the girls empowerment conference a success last year. She left Kayuki and is now studying at university. Now, I’m sure Peace Corps training has taught me to find another counterpart and to continue on doing community assessments and writing action plans etc. At the moment, everyone is up to their eyeballs in teaching or trying to assume the various administrative positions that are not filled by special personnel, as they would be in the US. I doubt very much that I will develop another fruitful counterpart relationship with any of the other teachers. Maybe I’d be more interested if I weren’t so exhausted from trying to do a great job teaching my students. Ok, now I’m getting depressive.

The point is if you want to see sustainability, you need to look at the big picture. Perhaps, when some of my form four students become secondary school teachers, they will teach with enthusiasm as I have. Maybe, they will bring string and tubs of water and lasers into class with them. Maybe they will turn one of the rooms into a camera obscura. That might be the sustainability in my work right there, right? I truly hope some of the interactions I have had with the people on this Earth has enriched their lives somehow, given them profound thoughts, at least.