So the last few weeks have been a little more low key than safari, but still pretty amazing in their own way. As we arrived back at the Dorobo campsite after a few relaxing day at the Ilboro Safari lodge, I gave a slight sigh of relief knowing that now, for at least the next short amount of time, I was going to be in one place for more than 3 days… We only spent two nights there right before safari, but for some reason this small campground and the line of six three-person tents felt more like home than I’ve felt since Riruta and possibly America. We picked tents, and before we knew it our first lecture was had on what the hell we were going to be doing for the next two and a half weeks.
That day, we learned the basic principles of “qualitative research design” (reallll fun stuff..) and got a brief overview of the plan for the next while. The following morning we met with around 15 kids (age 16ish-25ish) who had been hand picked out of a group of over 50 members of the community to be our translators for the next week. This day was mainly meant for us to finalize our independent research topics and me, not being on top of my shit, had no idea what I was going to do. I ended up talking with a few people and found that the area which most interested me had to do with population growth, the effects of it, and how Tanzania is working to help slow down the rapidly increasing population that has been the root cause for so many of their problems. Especially problems relating to the Hadza and the Maasai who we had just returned from living with.
Anyway, this meant that I joined forces with Mali, who was studying perceptions of family planning related to gender within the community. Me, being a perfect subject of her research, was unaware of what a personal matter “family planning” is and soon enough I was hurled into a world filled with birth control and awkwardness. Prior to the realization that I should have just stuck with perceptions of the west or peoples thoughts on the national parks, I came to a hypothesis in which I was to see if a relationship exists between the level of education one has had and their use of family planning in the community of Olasiti where we were to do our research. Next, Mali and I were paired with our translator, Mwaniddi (Mwah-nai-e-di), and begun to discuss our topic. I then spent the next few days “doing research” and mainly talking to most of you reading this on the internet instead of actually writing my literature review, but I got it done eventually. And, before we even knew it, I was once again without a home and pushed out into the open of yet another foreign world
Starting on Saturday and continuing for 6 nights, Mali and I moved to our new home. From what we learned after meeting back up was that: not all homestays are created equal. Some were placed in homes that were practically mansions complete with running water, electricity, cable, and even internet for some. Meanwhile, my home was filled with minimal furniture and the electricity seemed to only work for the stereo (not kidding, we would plug our phones into the wall where the stereo was only moments before plugged into and playing loudly out of, only to be met with the blank screen of a dead phone that was not going to resurrect itself any time soon). For some reason, this lack of electricity outside of the stereo even went as far as to have no lights in the house, but we would still listen to an audio tape of Maasai chanting during dinner some nights (ahhh..Africa. How I’ll miss you…). Anyway, aside from the lack of modern luxuries (which in all honesty, wasn’t a big deal at all. This was still a step up from our tents we’ve been sleeping in for well over a month) our family was wonderful! Young and small, it only consisted of our host father, mother, and three year old sister, Gloria (who, as much as I hate to say it, is still the only child I’ve ever actually kind of…gasp…liked…). Our mother was actually mother to another daughter, Eggla (people here have weird names…I’ll get to that in a second) who was seven but born with some sort of severe disease (downs? Cerebreal Palsey?) where she couldn’t walk and was very limited in her social interactions etc. Eggla lived with our mothers mother who lived only a few minutes walk away. Everyday our mother would go over and spend time with Eggla and most days eggla would come over to our house. This experience was unexpected, but also really cool to see how people with severe cognitive conditions like this are treated, and it was much better than expected. I’m sure a few generations ago things may have been different, but nowadays people with conditions like these are treated as well as they could and understood equally well.
Oh, quick note about names here. I guess a fair amount of illiterate people literally pick names out of the bible for their children. And, according to our teacher, there are quite a few interestingly named fellows around town. Two children we met personal were Innocence and Witness. Another favorite was the librarian whose name was told to me as “Forehead”. And my personal favorite “open the bible to a random page and put your finger down” name is… First Corinthians. What the fuck Africa?
Anyway, my host family was wonderful, and, though we didn’t spend too much time with them, this was definitely the lowest key and relaxing homestay of the bunch. Our first few days were spent with the fam exploring the neighborhood and brushing up on our Swahili. And by Monday, it was time to crack down on research. We had a questionnaire written up and our translator ready to go and began our studies. Most people we would talk to would invite us into their homes and we would ask them questions pertaining to their age, sex, marital status, number of children, number of expected total children, number of siblings, education, spouses education, husbands occupation (most women stay at home), and then get into the meat of the survey. We’d begin by asking if they used family planning and then ask why they chose their response. I went into this project expecting this to be the real meat of the experience and to really get a handle on why people think the way they do. I’ve also been a strong advocate of small families, and (probably just the brain of an only child talking) have never to this day been able to understand how people rationalize having more children in this day and age. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
In traditional societies, such as the Maasai, having more children not only meant more help on the land and with the cattle, but also was a symbol of status. But nowadays, with those ideas going down the drain, it doesn’t make sense why people would continue spitting out kid after kid. Especially with school fees for anyone to be educated past primary education (over 80% of the people we talked to had at most a primary education), having more kids exponentially decreases the quality of life one, especially in these poorer areas, for the children they already have. They have no need for the work and minimal resources to care for the ones they do have, but then why do they still keep having 6, 7, or more? I don’t get it? And in America I still just don’t understand. I understand why people have kids in the first place, it’s a biological instinct and an enjoyable experience. But I don’t think anyone can argue that a parent with multiple kids enjoys their child raising experience more than a person with just one. And money, talking about secondary school fees in Africa is one thing, but the amount of money I cost my parents, and am still currently costing them, is absurd. My family is fairly well off compared to the rest of the world, but even with one siblings my options for doing the things that I wish to do would be drastically cut. If I had a sibling there would be no way in hell I could ever afford to be here, and likely even have afforded to go to Lewis and Clark. These experiences I wouldn’t give the world for and I can’t see why it would make sense to jeopardize something like this to have a big family? To continue this rant that has already gotten well out of hand, I also cannot understand how anyone with a “strong environmental conscious” who goes drastically out of their way to minimize their impact on the earth can have multiple children. Each child that anyone has single handily doubles (at least!) their own environmental impact. If those children have children, there you go, you’ve started an infinite chain of environmental destruction. But I digress, that was a fairly assholeish rant and you shouldn’t take too seriously. Actually, after writing that sentence, I just talked to Paka (Kat), about the subject and I really can only apply this rant to me actually being confused and slightly irritated to people, mainly in America, who still choose to have 3, 4, or more children.
Where was I…Oh yeah. This whole “big picture what are they thinking” thing that I was trying to unearth never really came to surface… Basically when asked why they use family planning, most replied with “To have less children”. Cool. Really? Never would have guessed. Uhg. That got frustrating. We then would attempt to prod deeper on why they would like certain amounts of children or why they want less children or why less children is a good thing blah blah blah. Never really did we get a good answer. We did some follow up questions such as if having more children was an economic disadvantage and if they think population growth is a problem. Almost every though that having more children was an economic disadvantage, but only said so after we gave the question. Also, due to translation, the answer was most likely “given” to them in the way it was reworded. A majority also thought population growth was a problem, but, after studying how our translator was saying the question, we realized she was more asking “do you think having a lot of kids (9, 10, 11) is a bad thing” which is a much smaller scale question than I was attempting to ask. I wanted to get an understanding on if people in this community, especially in the more rural areas where we ended up doing our study, had any idea of the population pressures around them on both a local and world scale. But, since the question was translated incorrectly, there was really no data gather on that.
Anyway, this last few bits have been my vents of frustration from the past week or so, and now that this process is over and my paper (ended up being around 20 pages with a 20 page appendix as well) is turned in I’ve come to terms that a big part of this class was both understanding the frustrations of a qualitative research project, especially one in another country, and how different languages and communication can be.
Anyway, after four days and 50 people of data collection, we were done with this portion of the project and were soon to be sent home. Our last morning with our host mom was a sad one, especially when Gloria realized we were to be leaving that day and cried her eyes out (so cute, so sad, but SO annoying (I hate children (possibly a reason for that rant against overpopulation about (probably just my way of rationalizing hating children and wanting an excuse to have less of the little shits)))). But, we were soon back at camp and it was once again crunch time. That evening we took off and first joined our translators for a “Wazungu vs Olasiti FC” futbol match. Like…against a real team. Not cool. My calves are still sore and we still lost pretty bad. To this day none of us know exactly who organized that slaughter. Oh well though, it was all in good fun. Also went to a market and bought the most awesome Obama belt ever. People LOVE Obama stuff here. OH I forget to mention the market I went to at the beginning of the week where a bought an Obama-Kenya hat. He’s like a superstar here and it’s kind of hilarious.
Anyway, that night was a trip. When we got back, we were informed that one of the guys who went on safari with us (he was 23 and a son of one of the company owners) was going to take us out on the town. He had already arranged for one of the drivers from the company who was with us all safari to drive us in the stretch safari cars to the bar. So, after dinner we gathered ourselves and piled into the two cars and were off. It ended up being the first bar that we went to way back when in Arusha with these other Americans and had a ridiculous night of karaoke and other shenanigans. This time ended up with less karaoke and more booze, not always the best combo, but still fun. We met some random other Americans who are living in Arusha doing various things and before we knew it were back in the stretch safari car. Soon, we pulled up to a gate and entered the parking lot of a gated community to find ourselves at an American style house party…in Africa. White people immediately outnumbered Africans, but no one really seemed to care, and we especially didn’t mind the open bar (that is, until I tried to write my paper the next day with a few glasses of wine in my system).
After countless hours we returned and stumbled back into our tents moaning and groaning about the lecture to be had at 9 am the next morning. The lecture, in our teachers living room (a BEAUTIFUL Americanesq house, the most comfortable I’ve been the whole time here) was filled with blank stares, but for the most part we knew how to write a results section by the end of it. Hannah ended up throwing up outside the gate (embarrassing, yes, but we all were feeling like doing the same). And the rest of the day was spent lazily typing up our results. We had another lecture that afternoon on how to present and write a discussion section of a paper. This lecture was in our professors house so, naturally, we never left. I forgot how AWESOME it feels to be a house not made out of mud or with cement floors. That was nice…
That evening, was another strange one. After the lecture our professor left to go work at a, yes you guessed it, Christmas craft fair. Naturally there was a charity mustache competition going on at the same time so us guys, all with freshly shaven mustache, hopped in a car to go check it out. Note: I am not high. Anyway, this mustache competition has been known about for over a week at this point, but no one knew exactly when or where it was. Just that it existed. Anyway, to make a long story short Devin had an atrociously large cop mustache for about 10 days. It was awesome. Finally it was time to go to the competition, which we knew very little about, and end his girlfriends suffering. We weren’t in too much of a hurry because it’s Africa, and I’ve never met a single person on time to anything in Africa. But, what we didn’t realize, is that every white person south of the equator was going to be attending this Christmas craft fair, and, as Dorthy kinda said once, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Olasiti anymore”. Anyway, needless to say we were late, missed it, and Jane almost beat us to the ground because we guilt tripped her boyfriend into having a mustache for over a week. Regardless of that, seeing so many white people was actually a really bizarre experience that probably would have been a lot more shocking and tramatic if it wasn’t for the ice cream and pizza as well. God damn I miss American food. And Mexican food for that matter…mmm burritossss……
Anyway, after that, my life has been less than eventful. Once I finished and turned in my 20 page research paper, it was time to turn in my final paper for the class that we had way back in September about Swahili culture. This final paper was a culmination of all of our observations and thoughts from our variety of homestays we’ve had in east Africa. And, as I write this now, I’m currently surpassing the word count of the essay with this horrendously long blog post. Congratulations if you made it this far. I’m gonna end this here and have a final words post that I’ll write when I feel like it that will be a heads up for all the crazy adventures I’m soon to have. Yes, the program ends in 3 days, but I don’t leave for another 3 weeks…! Yesss.
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