One Night in Karatu

The next morning, we left Arusha for Karatu. What was amazing to me was that the road between Arusha and Karatu has been fixed!  It was either pavement or blacktop all the way between the two towns.  (When we were here in 2013, there was road construction much of the way, and we traveled on either dirt or gravel roads almost the whole way.)

We passed Lake Manyara National Park on the way, where we had a great view of the lake.  Baboons played along the side of the road, and we were able to take pictures and watch them for awhile.  It took about three hours to reach Karatu, where Brian and I were excited to see familiar places. 

We drove straight to the volunteer house, where we spent the night.  (The Tumaini Educational Corporation, which supports the Tumaini Junior and Secondary Schools, rents a rather large house in a development of houses, many of which are rented by ex-pats who live in Karatu. That is the volunteer house.) The house has a living-dining room, two large bedrooms, each with two bunk beds, and two single rooms – one with a twin and one with a double bed. A kitchen and two bathrooms complete the house.  We settled into our rooms, and spent some time with Adrienne Luczkow, the program coordinator for the Tumaini Schools, talking both about the video we will do during the third week of the trip and about Adrienne’s experiences in Tanzania.

Then we went off to the Kitela Lodge, a VERY fancy safari lodge, where Gloria Upchurch, from the Olmoti Clinic, had invited us to dinner.  The other volunteers from Gloria’s group were there for dinner, along with Rachael Fitzpatrick of Angels Outreach, her husband, Greg Taylor, and Rachael’s two college-aged daughters.  Rachael, Greg, Abene and I had a meeting about the Lake Eyasi production, and we were later joined by Modest and Lightness Bayo, before we had dinner. The Bayos are the founders, respectively, of the Tumaini Schools (Modest) and the Lake Eyasi center (Lightness).

Back to Civilization . . . and the Internet!

On Monday, we traveled from Sinya to Arusha, the first stop on our trip to Karatu and Lake Eyasi. Leaving the gravel and dirt roads for pavement was the first sign we had left Sinya behind, although the fields of sunflowers and vegetables – corn, potatoes, and beans, in particular – followed us all the way to Arusha.

Now out of money again, we stopped at the same ATM we had traveled to before, but the Internet was down, so we had to wait. After lunch, we stopped at Shanga, a project where people with disabilities make artisanry to sell to tourists.  We watched two men make earrings out of beads and metal. We saw a woman adjusting the threads on her loom. A hearing-impaired man made glass beads out of recycled glass; he was working with a very hot fire and long wires with which he put glass into the fire and turned it. Ivan volunteered to try the glass work, and he was able to make one bead! We also watched women make the distinctive necklaces that combine beautiful, African cloth and beads.  It was these necklaces that put Shanga on the map and led to the growth of the organization. 

When we were in Tanzania in 2013, Shanga was located in a huge facility right in the city of Arusha. There were a lot more crafts being done, and we were able to watch that process.  Since then, a decision was made to move the sale of crafts to a safari lodge just outside the city to make it more convenient to the tourists who come through.  That meant that only a few artisans work at the new location to demonstrate what is being done. The rest are at the original location, and they are the ones who add to the inventory of products to be sold.  There is a gift shop at the lodge where we stopped, and we were able to begin to pick up gifts to take home with us.

We went on to a hostel called, Experience Tanzania, run by a woman called Mama Simba.  It was a very comfortable hostel, with Internet and hot showers. After the ice cold showers in Sinya, this was pure luxury. Within minutes after arrival, we were all glued to our phones as if we had never left home. Mama Simba teaches both Kiswahili (the Swahili language) and English, and her daughter will go to Iowa in August to teach Kiswahili at Iowa State University. It turns out that Mama Simba was Modest Bayo’s 4^th grade teacher.  That was the connection that led us to this hostel. Mama Simba hosts people from all over the world who are coming to Tanzania for volunteer or educational experiences.

Sunday Walk

After shooting was over, we had a lazy morning on Sunday. Brian went along with the sisters to the Sunday church service, which lasted 2 ½ hours. He said the music – many of the Maasai are in the choir – was fabulous, but he couldn’t understand most of the rest.  The sisters asked him to stand up and tell the congregation what we were doing here, and those who understood his English were supportive.  The rest of us kicked back and had a well-deserved rest. 

After lunch, Engelbert and the sisters advised us on how to walk toward the Kenyan border, 7 km. away, by just following the path and climbing a small mountain from which we could see Kenya.  We started out, and enjoyed the walk, seeing goats and cattle, watched over by Maasai boys, along the way.  We saw a number of bomas, built in the traditional style with cow dung, but we also saw quite a few other kinds of structures that were clearly houses. It was alternately sunny and overcast; we were armed with sunscreen and hats.  I kept taking off and putting on a long-sleeved shirt to protect my neck and arms from the sun. We walked quite a ways, but finally decided to turn back when the direction of the trail became less clear. Several of us were concerned about not being able to find our way back in the dark, and Ivan, who had been a Boy Scout in Hong Kong, was worried that we were out there without a compass. In the afternoon, the sun was clearly our compass, but after dark, we would have lost that tool.

So . . . our walk was aborted, but we safely made it back to the hostel – and jumped into the ice-cold showers.

Circumcision

The nuns at the convent nearby invited us to a Maasai circumcision celebration on Saturday afternoon. Their parish encompasses a large part of the Sinya area. This was a celebration of the circumcision of three teenage boys.  (It appears that Tanzania has outlawed female circumcision, although we understand that, occasionally, it still occurs.) We understand that the night before the circumcision, the boys dance until all hours so that the blood moves away from the genital area.  Then, the next morning, the boys are circumcised.  Then they are taken to a hut to rest and recover while the community around them celebrates.

The celebration took place at the home of one of the boys.  The father is a community leader.  He lives in a house – as distinct from a boma – with a fair amount of land around it.  Some men were dressed in traditional Maasai attire while others wore Western clothing. The women were dressed in their best. The women from the families of the circumcised boys were dressed in traditional attire with sequins and bangles. One young woman wore a beaded headpiece that almost completely covered her face, traditionally intended to attract a young man. The women went into the cow pen to do traditional dances that involve jumping and singing. All three of the nuns joined them, and the women put the traditional beaded necklaces on two of the sisters while they danced. The students also joined in the dancing.

Then the women moved en mass to the hut where the circumcised boys rested.  There were three long tree branches outside of the hut to signify each of the boys who were circumcised. The women danced around and with those branches.  We were able to enter the hut, where a fire burned to keep the boys warm, to visit the boys as they rested.  They looked like they were in pain.

In addition to soda, the drinks served were bottled beer and a home brew made of honey and water and fermented for a month. There also was food, although we arrived too late to have any. We saw several drunk men, and one or two of them came on to the students. Fortunately, the BECA women know how to handle that situation.

We felt fortunate to attend the circumcision celebration, another amazing experience!

A Global Connection

Gloria Upchurch, one of the co-founders of the clinic, has an organization entitled, “A Global Connection,” which supports her work with the clinic. A number of people – nurses, social workers, and others - arrived in Tanzania on Friday to work with the clinic on Saturday and Sunday, the 11^th and 12^th.  Gloria invited us to join them for dinner at the safari lodge on Friday night. What a treat!

On Saturday, the group arrived at the clinic early to put on a day of a variety of services: an eye clinic, a teeth-brushing clinic, and a training session for nurse-midwives across the region. Gloria had sent supplies for the clinic with us and with the entire group working with her – toothpaste and toothbrushes, reading glasses of various strengths, sunglasses (which went fast!) and Anti-Shock Garments (ASGs). The latter are rubber-and-velcro devices that are strapped onto a woman who has lost too much blood in childbirth. The ASGs apply pressure to contain the hemorrhaging until the woman can get to a hospital; they are designed to save lives. These devices are not simple to use, however, and they require training both in how they are to be used and how they must be cleaned after use so they are available to help another woman.  Nine midwives from across the region came to the clinic to receive the training. First they watched a video that carefully described when and how to use the ASGs, and how to care for them. Next, they practiced putting them on and taking them off.  A colleague of Gloria’s strapped a pillow to her stomach (As she pointed out, she had her last child 30 years ago!) and played the part of a pregnant woman while the nurse midwives practiced putting the device onto, and taking it off of, her. This is an amazing device, and Gloria was able to obtain nine of them for the Sinya area.

In the middle of all of this, the BECA group was able to pull Gloria away and do an interview with her. It was outside, with a view of the clinic and the valley in the background.

At the end of the day, as the group was putting away all of the supplies, a group of about 50 women gathered outside of the clinic and began singing and dancing as a thank you to Gloria’s group.  They drew the volunteers into the dancing.  Later, the Americans (from the U.S. and Canada) sang a number of songs (like “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “You Are My Sunshine” – chosen because everyone in the group knew them) back to the women.

Second Day of Shooting

Today, Jumana split the team in half and sent one group to get B-roll while the other group focused on the pregnant mother we had chosen as the woman to follow in the story the video will tell about the clinic. (For those who may not know, B-roll is footage that supports the narrative. For example, if the lab technician talks about HIV tests while being interviewed, we would shoot B-roll of the lab itself and, ideally, show the HIV test being performed.)

The first group followed the woman for the first part of the day, being checked by the midwife, receiving medication, and walking on the road towards the clinic. The second group pursued the B-roll shots. When not needed for other things, two students went out to record natural sound to be used as “background noise” in the video.

In the afternoon, the first group took the pregnant woman home to her “boma” so they could get shots of her in and around her home. (A boma, as described in a previous post, is a house made of cow dung and ash, and is topped with straw or thatch.) It turned out that another wife of the same husband was pregnant as well, and the babies were due only a few months apart.

Back at the clinic, yet another woman had given birth the night before.  She had understood that we were to give her and the baby a ride to her boma in the land rover. The B-roll group decided to give her the ride, even though that hadn’t been part of the plan. I tagged along with that group. The new mother, the baby, and two other women piled into the land rover, along with us, and we drove the short distance to the boma. We were able to follow her into the boma, which was exceedingly dark, except for a warm fire burning in the center that kept the house quite warm. Kamran got a wonderful shot of her inside her home, nursing the new baby.

Our driver took us a few hundred feet away to where the men – the new father and other men from the community – had slaughtered a goat and were cooking it over a fire. This is the customary celebration for the arrival of a new baby. The men eat goat meat. They also boil part of the meat, keep the fat, and stir it into the porridge that is fed to the new mother. Despite the mix of genders among us, we were offered some goat meat to taste.  It was wonderful!

First Shoot

Today was our first shooting day. We had three interviews: one with the Charles, the clinic’s lab technician; one with Ya-Ya, the Maasai woman who asked Gloria Upchurch and Diane Raleigh to found the clinic; and one with Zena, the midwife. What was so interesting about these interviews was that they had to be double-translated: from Ma (the language of the Maasai) to Swahili, and from Swahili to English.  Hassan, one of our drivers, did the translation from Swahili to English, and although he is pretty fluent in Ma as well, we asked a Maasai man to translate from Ma to Swahili.

L to R: Hassan (driver), Brian Favorite (hat), Ivan Ho, Jumana Zahid, Rachael Fitzpatrick and in front, Nick Chiang & Ashley Habr

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The students each have specific roles to perform within each video. Our writers, Nick Chiang and Abene Clayton, conducted the interviews.  Nick worked with Charles, and Abene worked with the two women. The translators were amazing!

It is always fun to watch the interviewing process. Today, however, it was more fun to watch the audience for the interviews – a group of Maasai men and women, sitting on benches dragged outside from the clinic, so they could have a full view. We all clapped at the end of each interview.

The audience.

On the ride back to our hostel, we spent part of the time brainstorming about how we could make sure that we get correct, word-for-word translations into English for the eventual subtitles. It’s best to do that here, before we leave Tanzania.