Hopes

In my first entry, I wondered about whether I would be able to find people with whom I could connect: true friends. My familia has taken me in as one of their own: walking around town with me, explaining many facets of Tanzanian culture, giving me a bed, my own room no less, suffering through my attempts at Kiswahili, preparing meals for me, teaching me to prepare meals for myself in the future, unexpectedly driving me to school in the morning, and I could go on… Soooooo, though Morogorro may be extremely different from where I am sent to teach for 2 years (still have not yet been told, will be told in 2 weeks), it has filled me with optimism. Isolated as this as yet unknown location may be, I know that I already have made such friends, even familia, here in Tanzania.

Howl at the Moon

All is silent. Suddenly, a single cry pierces the night, and a contagion of echoes begins, as the sound spreads, surrounding my family compounded on all sides. I had never questioned what might cause dogs to howl at the moon. But the sight of these mangy creatures during the day, each rib standing out on a barrel shaped chest, skin pulled tight in hunger, makes all the more plausible my dada’s claim that it is not loneliness that causes these sharp-than-deep cries, which always and only have come in large numbers, but hunger.

Gongo Party

Passing through a darkened, dirt floored, dirt walled hallway, a metal door is open and a hanging sheet are thrown aside. WE enter another dirt framed enclosure. Two old women are dancing while smoking cigarettes. Against 2 walls of the 15x15 foot room, which curves up at the sides, and even more in the corners, giving me the feeling of standing on the lip of a mud bowl, sit 10 men each on 2 benches. Clothing in different stages of tatter but similarly dusty, the men do not visually separate from their surroundings with any immediacy. On this low-lying bench they look dejected, faces watching or glazed over in states of stupefaction. The eyeballs of one are oddly rolled upward in his skull as his mouth hangs open. An acquaintance comes forward, speaking with us excitedly. I look down and see his 2 children whom I have seen about the neighborhood on several occasions sitting in this very room where these men sit and these women dance. I am told gongo costs 250 shillingi (<25cents)>