Sights and Sounds

My Cross-Cultural Solutions Experience in Moshi, Tanzani

My Cross-Cultural Solutions Experience in Moshi, Tanzania

Before embarking on my globe spanning 4-month adventure I decided that I wanted to spend at least a few weeks of my trip doing some international service work. My original intention was to find opportunities involving clean drinking water; I’m convinced that providing adequate drinking water for the world’s rapidly expanding population is one of the greatest and most urgent challenges facing the global community today; unfortunately, my research turned up surprisingly few opportunities and none for someone with my level of technical knowledge (zero) and time frame.  So, I refocused on finding general international service opportunities in two of my destinations, Cambodia and Tanzania.  I found one organization whose reputation far exceeded that of all other international volunteer placement organizations: Cross-Cultural Solutions (CCS).

Moshi

CCS has three locations (home-bases) within Tanzania, one of which had a session beginning on May 1st when I intended to arrive in TZ.  My home-base is in Moshi, the administrative capital of the Kilimanjaro district, which I’ve come to believe, is an ideal location.  There’s another home-base, Karanga, in the Kilimanjaro district, which I have heard is located in a palatial old colonial mansion.  While it would be nice to have such beautiful accommodations, Karanga is way out in the sticks.  It would cost 10,000Tsh ($8—but a small fortune around here) round-trip for a taxi each time you wanted to go into Moshi to shop, get a beer, or do anything but hang out at Karanga home-base.  By contrast, from the Moshi home-base it takes about 5 minutes to walk to the nearest grocery store, net cafe or bakery and 15-20 minutes to the heart of town including several nice coffee shops, some decent restaurants and a few bars.  The closest bar, a little back-yard affair—appropriately, given the CCS-heavy clientele—called Mzungu Bar, is literally across the street from home-base.

The neighborhood in which the home-base is located is called “Shantytown” which seems rather ironic to this mzungu since it is obviously the nice part of town.  Its leafy lanes—mostly, but not entirely, unpaved—are lined with spacious compounds, walled off from the street by metal gates and large hedges or high walls.  Some of the homes appear positively opulent, even by mzungu standards, though most are simply spacious and comfortably well-built and -maintained by local standards.

They take urban (or suburban) farming much more seriously here than we do in the U.S.; nearly every bit of available space—yards, sides of the road, etc.—is used to cultivate beans, potatoes or corn; farm animals are a common sight too, on any given day we can hear the sounds of cows, roosters and goats drifting over the hedges from our neighbors’ yards.  The CCS property is one of the few totally free of beans and potatoes, but it is dotted with fruit trees: avocado, banana, mango, papaya and others I can’t even identify.  Needless to say, we eat a lot of fruit and nearly every lunch/dinner includes a salad with what would be a king’s ransom of avocado’s back in the States.  Would I trade all those avocados to do a single load of laundry in a washing machine? Absolutely.  But even a very modest existence here isn’t without its own little charms and luxuries.

Tanzanians

The climate and growing conditions in most of Tanzania mean that this is a land of plenty, which I think goes a long way towards explaining why the high levels of poverty (a result of corruption rather than lack of resources or opportunity, according to the locals) aren’t accompanied by the same sort of desperation that you find in places like Haiti or South Africa.  Even the women who’ve just walked  20+ kilometers into Moshi with a 10-kilo mkungu wa ndizi (bushel of bananas) balanced on their head, for which they will be lucky to get 3750Tsh ($3) at the market before walking another 20km home, are typically quick to return a smile and a wave or respond to my “habari?” (“how are things?”) with a “nzuri sana!” (“very good!”).  The average Tanzanian’s attitude and outlook puts most American’s to shame, especially when you consider the mind-boggling level of comfort and prosperity in which we exist, relative to all but the wealthiest handful of Tanzanians.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the attitude of locals toward us wazungu (plural form of mzungu).  Yes, the assumption is that all wazungu are fabulously wealthy and yes, that translates into a lot of aggressive sales pitches and outstretched hands in search of a handout; however, a simple “hapana asante” (“no thank you”) will dissuade all but the most aggressive salesmen and I never get a sense of animosity or resentment towards myself or the other wazungu.  On the contrary, people are—for the most part—genuinely happy and excited to have a mzungu in their home, school or business.

Volunteer Placement

My volunteer placement is at Watoto Rau, a small preschool with 15-25 three- and four-year old kids on any given day.  It is such a great feeling, spending my mornings with those kids.  Despite my remedial—at best—Swahili skills and the kids’ even more limited grasp of English, they have no problem communicating their excitement to have a mzungu at school with them.  The moment I turn the corner and begin walking down the lane towards the school, a group of them take off running to me, screaming “mzungu!” and “teacher” (which they pronounce “teach-ah”); when they get to me, they’ll latch on to me, 2 on each leg, one on each hand, stragglers grabbing my shirt from behind; parents and other adults taking in the scene just smile and laugh at the mzungu and all the energetic little kids.

By the time I manage to drag myself and the six-or-so kids attached to me to the schoolhouse, it takes a lot of patience and effort to get everyone seated and ready for some singing and ABCs or counting.  Fortunately I’m not just fending for myself; I also have Living, a local volunteer, who’s fluent in Swahili and English.  Living, along with two other locals, founded Watoto Rau and is the teacher.  Without him, I would be hopelessly lost 90% of the time and have little hope of keeping the kids under control.  Working alongside him though, I have the opportunity to conduct some simple exercises to help the kids with their English skills (absolutely essential if any of them are to progress beyond primary school—the TZ education system is very funny, in primary school all classes are taught in Swahili except for one English class, but then in secondary all are in English and you need to pass an English proficiency exam just to make it past primary school!).  Perhaps more importantly than that, the presence of mzungu makes school more exciting gotten and gives them another reason to come at all.

CCS

If I’m happy I came to Tanzania (and I am!), then I’m particularly ecstatic that I organized my volunteer experience through Cross-Cultural Solutions.  I wouldn’t say that they’re perfect: the programs are expensive (especially shorter ones since most of the costs are front-loaded into the first 3 weeks) and neither I nor any of my fellow volunteers at Moshi were very impressed with the program manager (who shall remain nameless) in New York, with whom we dealt before getting here.  But the value of the whole CCS experience has become crystal clear during my time here, more or less justifying the expense and rendering any frustrations with the administrative staff in the States a distant memory.

Beyond the basics like clean/safe food and water, transportation and a secure living space, a lot of the expense—and value—of the CCS Tanzania experience is in the wealth of extra programs and experiences they provide.  For the first two weeks we spent an hour each day with a language teacher working on the basics of Swahili.  For those same two weeks we also had a variety of other guest speakers come and teach us about the history and culture of Tanzania.  Those series of language and cultural lessons really helped me get a better understanding of my surroundings and form closer relationships with the locals.  CCS also organized a variety of helpful and/or interesting excursions: a walking tour of Moshi to get us familiar with our surroundings, a trip to the “endless waterfall”, an afternoon of batik-making and a day trip to Arusha where the primary activity was a visit to the United Nations Tribunal for the Rwanda Genocide (a powerful experience which deserves its own post).

Fantastic CCS Staff

My absolute #1 favorite part of CCS Moshi was the home-base staff, most of whom deserve at least a full paragraph each.

I’d have to say that Ibra (short for Ibrahim) is the consensus favorite among me and my fellow volunteers.  He’s our driver so he’s the first person we all met at the airport and he’s the one responsible for shuttling us safely to/from placement and our various excursions.  He also has a hilarious accent and a tremendous sense of humor.  One night my first week here, we decided during dinner to give him a sort of overview of The Jersey Shore, which then evolved into a week-long lesson on some of the funnier (and dirtier) parts of the American vernacular and culminated in his introduction to urbandictionary.com.  Ibra took to it like a duck to water.  It will never get old, hearing him talk (in his incredibly funny to begin with accent) about “junk in the trunk”, girls who are “grenade launchers”, etc.

Sarah is the home-base manager; she’s smart and very funny.  If ever there were a woman who absolutely must be called “sassy”, it’s her.  She also likes to talk a big game when it comes to Scrabble, so I didn’t feel too bad while wiping the floor with her, even if she’s not a native English speaker.  Crucially, she’s also apparently much less strict about certain house regulations than her predecessor, Mama Grace.  She won’t let you flaunt the house rules, but if you, e.g. come back from Mzungu Bar or Cool Bar after 11:00pm on Friday night, it’s not going to be a problem.

Primo is the chef, which obviously makes him one of my personal favorite Tanzanians.  He’s formally trained, the product of a cooking school in Dar Es Salaam.  It’s clear that he knows what he’s doing, because almost everything that comes out of his kitchen is delicious.  Fortunately, CCS has arrangements with several excellent suppliers, so we’re never short of safe, fresh fruits, veggies and meat.  I’d say rice and curries are his most frequent go-to meals, and they’re excellent, but his ribs, quiche and pizza were all standouts.  If you come, plan on eating well at CCS Moshi.

Moses is the Program Director, the head honcho at the Moshi home-base.  We didn’t have as much day-to-day contact with him as the other staff members, but he is a very nice man and was generally available when we needed him.  When I needed to skip my first Friday of placement in order to go on safari, he totally understood (as long as I talked to the people running my placement before going) and that safari was definitely one of the highlights of my entire trip.

There are also several security guards who take shifts on the property.  They are clearly just here as a precaution—I feel very safe in our neighborhood.  It’s really a testament to them and the neighborhood that their presence is so unobtrusive that I could barely tell you what most of them look like or their names.  The main daytime guard (when he’s not on vacation) is Charles, who also does some of the yard work.  Charles is a cool guy and has a huge scar across his face from the time he went toe-to-toe with some machete-wielding jerks who hopped the fence at the old CCS location before they moved to the current home-base in Shantytown. He held them off until the security company showed up in response to the radio alarm.  Again, I feel 100% safe here all the time, so I was surprised to hear that story, but I’m definitely glad to have Charles around!