Visiting Mary

Mary invited us to go to her home outside of Arusha for lunch.  She asked me to see how many girls wanted to come so she could prepare a lunch for all of us. There ended up being a lot of girls so I was worried that it might be overwhelming for her but she was just excited to see everyone.  Mary called a taxi for us all and when we arrived she promptly handed me her little girl, Nargis. Nargis is named after a flower and Mary calls her Nagy for short. She was all wrapped up in her winter clothes and Mary and her cook/nanny were already started preparing the lunch. Mary lived in a small apartment that was attached to a few other apartments in a fenced off garden area. She put a blanket outside the kitchen and we all sat on it and talked while she prepared the meal. She asked me to cut cucumber and carrots for her, which was mildly embarrassing. The cook was ten times faster with her vegetables but I told her I just needed more practice. Nargis played with all of us but she couldn’t go too long without seeing her mom or she would start slowly putting her lip out and silent tears would stream down her cheek. Nargis is only eight months old so she was pretty overwhelmed with all of our attention.

Mary showed us how to make chapatti too! Chapatti is like a softer tortilla but not as soft as the Ethiopian sponge like bread though they are used at dinner in the same way (almost as utensils.)  The food she cooked was amazing. The best Tanzanian food we have had. There was beef, rice, vegetables (chopped perfectly of course,) beans, and chapatti. We were all stuffed within minutes and laying on her couch motionless. Mary coaxed us to go on a walk after around the neighborhood. She let me carry Nagy too. When we got out of the gate she told me it would be easier if we wrapped Nagy in a conga on my back.  Mary helped me wrap her tightly to my back and laughed at me as she stood back and admired her work.

“Your are a real African woman now!”

I really did look the part. It was such a good feeling to make a friend here that trusted me so much. She was so sweet and truly wanted to share her life with me. I really hope one day I can return the favor or come back and see her. She told me if I brought my mother she would teach her how to like bananas. Mary is always teaching me new things about Tanzania and friendship in general.  I will really miss her.

The Interpreter

Friday was our last day of classes. I man who was an interpreter at the ICTR came a talked to us.  He ended up being my favorite of all of the speakers we had during the program.

“It was hard at first but we got use to it... hearings sixteen hours long…witnesses are faulty answering one question one way and another question another way.”

Here are some of his stories. They are very disturbing so not everyone might want to read them. The reality of the genocide was never clearer than when spoken in his broken English. It is still hard to believe it is all real.

I translated for a witness, a woman with seven children. A man comes to her home and kills six of her children. The seventh is a baby that is resting on her back.  She begs the man to spare the baby. He says no he cannot because the baby has Tutsi blood. He takes the baby and throws it against a wall.

They throw children down wells and the mothers tell me they hear the screams everyday for the rest of their lives.

There is a priest on trail who said God wanted those seeking refuge in his church to die. This priest told a driver to bulldoze the church, which he knew was hiding at least 2,000 people. The first driver he asked refused the second believed it was God’s will.  This priest received fifteen years in prison.

Im not sure how to finish writing this I feel like it needs a lot of time which I don’t have right now.

Aatsa Atogho ICTR, Interpreter

Roland our program director

The diagram of the interpreters booths in the ICTR courtroom

K is Kinyarwanda (Official language of Rwanda)

F is the French and E is English The circle is the witness, the square is the prosecutor or defendant and the dots are the judges 

Mary

Deo, Trevor, Robert, and Emily

Trevor, Robert, and Emily

Deo

Robert

Trevor

Arusha National Park

After the home-stay we went on  safari in Arusha National Park, my first game drive in Africa!
It was pretty exciting seeing all the animals. I felt like a little kid. Every time one of us would spot something we would all gasp and point. We learned quickly that this wasnt the best tactic after the first few animals ran away but after some practice we were almost down to one or two gasps per animal.

Colobus Monkey

Some kind of deer and Pumba 

Dik-Dik

Baby baboons on their parents backs 

First close giraffe encounter 

Warthog giraffe zebras and gazelles together 

baboon

Home-Stay Camping?

Without classes since Wednesday it has been a pretty slow week. Charles, our professor, left Wednesday afternoon and gave us our essays back as he was walking out the door. (I got an 19.5 out of 20 thanks to my sister helping me understand the ups and downs of writing a proposal.) Charles wants me to pursue my project idea and try to implement it. He thinks it might make a decent start to a Fulbright proposal. I don't think I'm ready to be thinking about that for a long time.
Thursday we had our exams. It was five essay questions and you picked three to actually do. We were all going to kill each other by the time the day was done. I was five coffees deep and getting tired of using the phrase "cultural realization." I ended up working from twelve to six and then six to nine and had seven pages full of rambling international law theory from a nineteen year-old perspective. (The start to the most useless novel ever written, not including Madame Bovary.)
When Friday finally came we were all ready to run out of the house to go on our camping trip and safari. We went in two green land rovers that were waiting outside of the gate. After the camel safari I was very excited not to be in a van off roading again. We went to the grocery store and got al the food we were going to need. My debit card wouldn't work at the ATM for some reason so I had to borrow money from Emily. I haven't been able to use my card at any ATM except this one particular bank. It makes me a little nervous every time this happens but I am just going to stick with the same ATM and keep being cheap.  After we got the food for the camping trip we got back in the cars and prepared ourselves for a long drive....
Twenty minutes later the cars pulled up to a house. We were in the next neighborhood over from our house basically. There had been some kind of misunderstanding and instead of staying closer to the park we were just in a home-stay in a small village outside of where our regular house was.
Well we just kind of laughed it off and decided to make the best of it and explore the new neighborhood.
There was a camp fire which was a bonus and the family was really friendly. It ended up being a good night and adventure. They family had set up the home-stay to make extra money. They cooked us an amazing dinner. The soup tasted amazing and they showed us the squash they scooped out to make it.  That night we gave the children their first smores and they showed us how to grill fresh corn in an open fire. The whole family was really sweet. The power was out the whole time so it was alot like camping after all. I really enjoy home-stays, meeting the family was such a different experience than I had had before. A few pictures from the morning before we left.

Black and White photos from the camel safari

Camels and Caves

Sunday seven of us drove to a camel ranch outside of Arusha to go on a camel safari. It was an interesting experience to say the least. But dont worry. Im planning on saying alot more.

We took a van at 8 o'clock from the house. The road was bumpy and dusty. The six km we took on a dirt path I thought might kill me. The dust was blowing through the vents and the hot sun was hitting my arms through the window. I stayed quiet trying to concentrate on not tossing my toast and coffee on the seat in front of me.

Finally after fifteen minutes off roading in a van from the early 90s... we reached the camel ranch. I clamored out quickly to breath some less dusty air. We waited as they set up our camels and prepared our box lunches.

Soon they brought out the camels with saddles and colorful fabrics thrown on their backs. The camels were a lot larger than I had anticipated. They were at least seven feet tall, so sitting on top of them was disorienting at first. I rode the first camel with Kasmira, a Canadian in our group. We thought everyone was doubling up at first until we looked back and realized we were the only unfortunate ones. Riding a camel double is not a fun experience. I thought I was going to slip off at any moment. I was sitting on the front half and I could feel every bump hitting me. On the way back we convinced others to rotate so we could try sitting alone. The first stop we came to was a baboon cave. The baboons weren't around but the caves and the view were really amazing. The whole time we all kept mentioning how this or that looked like a scene from The Lion King.

The caves were beautiful and they overlooked a large valley. Far in the horizon we could see blue and green mountains. The men who were guiding us were Masai. (Masai are the more traditional village people who live outside of the city I live in and are a huge part of the tourist culture.The Masai have a cheap tourist market and sell beaded bracelets EVERYWHERE.)

These Masai men lived in a village far away from Arusha. The village we passed by, which I am assuming was theirs, was small huts surrounded by a tightly woven stick fence.  They didn't speak much English. When we got off and were walking they thought it was pretty funny how slowly I was going down the hill to the cave. I had to laugh and tell them pole pole. I was determined not to fall again. I was just wearing sandals because we weren't aware of how much we would be walking. When we got to the cave mouth one of the Masai  started smoking a cigarette. This might be one of my favorite pictures yet. I get a childish satisfaction when i get a truly ironic shot.

We got back on the camels and this time I got my own camel! He was the sweetest camel who was all the way in the back of the caravan. Being in the back was nice because I wasnt crammed in the middle and it was alot quieter (Alex's camel was growling the whole time.)

The guides stopped at a large lion king looking tree and we got off the camels. We sat under the tree and had really good box lunch. There was what seemed to be goat meat, chapati, a banana, an egg, and a mango juice box. When getting back on the camels we were all pretty reluctant. Camel riding is a little exhausting and pretty uncomfortable. We were all laughing because there was a seven day camel safari option on the brochure.  Everyone agreed you would have to be insane to pay to sit on a camel for longer than two hours.

                                                               This one explains everything

ICTR ruling

Early friday morning our class met at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. This court is a temporary court set up by the UN in order to prosecute those involved in the 1994 genocide. From what I have understood from East Africans in my class and members of a particular defense team I have discovered a new side to the events in Rwanda. It seems clear to them that the events of 1994 were a double genocide. The international community however seems only to deem one party as responsible. In the court set up only Hutus have been tried and convicted. The understanding I have from my limited knowledge is that for political reasons most western countries support the current government in Rwanda and do not like those that question the role in which they played in the events that transpired after the 1994 genocide.
When we got to the ICTR the courtroom itself was entirely full.We were taken to a back conference room that soon filled up with around a hundred people. We watched the proceedings live in the conference room with UN interns, lawyers, and aids for other cases.
We read up for class on the particular case in which a women and her son were being tried in the court. Pauline Nyiramasuhko was minister of family and women's empowerment in the 1994 government. She was accused of incitement to rape and genocide. The indictment said she lead women knowingly to places that were dangerous and they would be raped or killed, or both. Her son was a member of the interahamwe  a youth military group accused of many killings. Both Pauline and her son were convicted of genocide and sentenced to life imprisonment. Pauline barely reacted her face stayed relatively the same the entire morning, making me wonder if she even realized what was transpiring. There were three other convictions made cases I had not read. The other three got 25, 30, and 35 years including time served. THis was interesting because they were all convicted of things to the extent of abetting genocide. I  was confused on how you could be convicted of anything related to genocide involvement and get 25 and time served, which in this case meant 15. However I cannot fully understand the rulings on those cases since I did not read the indictment or hear the evidence for or against.
The whole processes took around and hour and a half. It was hard for me to grasp what I had witnessed. I was a part of history which has always been a distance concept in my mind. Watching someone get convicted of such horrible things was unsettling to say the least. Pauline was the first women in history to be convicted of genocide. The magnitude of this case in the international law spectrum I have not begun to fathom.

If you want more information some of the new reports will give you more background
Article on the court case results

The Black Panther

Thursday a few of us went to visit an exiled black panther living in the area. At first I was hesitant to go, mostly because of my ignorance and preconceived notions about the Black Panther Party.
We drove for about an hour outside of Arusha. We turned off the main road and drove five km into a rural neighborhood. We passed farms where people were harvesting corn. Deo, a local of Arusha, told me the farms around the area could be a witness to global warming. He has talked to them and they say they know something is different but they wouldnt understand the whole idea of global warming. They would be able to tell you however that they know something is very wrong.
I never thought about that aspect of it all.
Finally the corn fields were replaced by stone walls. The stone walls were covered in graffiti, brightly saying things like "long live the panther."
When we pasted through the gates I was pleasantly surprised. There were colorful murals everywhere, a stage, an outside eating area with some american college students sitting and talking and a horse wandering around quietly.
The panther's wife Charlotte introduced herself with a smile. She was a beautiful older women with her hair pulled back in two buns on either side of her head. She ushered us in and soon introduced us to her husband. He was an older man with dreads. My favorite part was he was wearing the same dorky brown leather crocs as my father wears (everyday..with socks). He told us he knew we were hungry and not just regular hungry, American hungry. So they brought the food, which was really delicious and we all couldn't help but get seconds. We really were American hungry.
After we ate we all sat in chairs around him and listened to him talk. He said he wasn't good at giving speeches but he would answer any questions we had.
He was a very interesting man. His southern accent quickly put me at easy and finding out I was from Georgia he quickly settled in to saying y'all and laughing like we were all good friends.
Ill post the interview for you to hear all the questions.
He is doing alot of good for his community. What I liked the most is that he was humble and not just talking about the rosy aspects of everything. He was realistic and understanding of the other views we might have. I didnt agree with everything he said but I sure did respect it.
After he talked they gave us a tour of the grounds. He had lots of art classrooms his wife was an artist and loved to teach the local children. There was a computer classroom where Mary told us she took classes for free as a teenager. He had a few guest houses where students often came to stay. There was also a school for children most of which were orphans. He said they were his favorite thing. He at first was hesitant and refused to play grandfather. However it seems they won him over quickly and now they watch cartoons together every night, all 23 of them crammed in his bedroom.
I think there was alot to learn in this. It is hard for one not to question his past. However, to see what he has done for the community and his hospitality to our group I was seized by the realization that there is always room for good in the world. It is hard sometimes here in Arusha to fully grasp the poverty and lack of education that clearly affects the citizens. Discussing Human Rights and international law all day in class can be depressing. There are so many problems and the solutions are not always clear. Pete O'Neal's work reminded me that individuals can do something to address the issues and actually make a difference in sometimes desperate situations.

A part of the PBS movie made about him

Zanzibar Weekend

I don't even know where to begin with Zanzibar.
We left Thursday afternoon and came back late Sunday night.  Looking out the window is always one of my favorite things about traveling. When looking out the dirty plane window this past Thursday I watched as we flew over the northern mountains of Tanzania and towards the coast out across the Indian ocean. I have never really been in water so turquoise and I was childishly giddy as the pale water came into view. When we arrived at the airport we waited as Emily arranged her flight home. The driver showed up to take us on the hour drive to our hotel. The drive across the island was a little terrifying. The island is scattered with poor areas and crowded intersections. It scares me a little how much i enjoy the thrill of the crazy driving. Taxi drivers seem to be playing a game. In this game it doesn't matter what other vehicles or even people are in the road. The driver will honk a few times and keep their foot on the gas. They just want to get to where they are going as fast as possible.
Interestingly enough this is the only rushing that goes on in the culture at all. You will race your car to a restaurant to wait 15 minutes before you even get a menu or race to the hospital and upon arriving wait an hour until a doctor actually will see you. No one is ever worried about waiting.
PolePole.
Slowly, Slowly.
Finally after flying through many villages and a national park(where the signs warned of monkey crossing) we arrived at the hotel. I could let out my breath as I realized with comfort it was just like the pictures on the website.
I had never been to such a beach. Pure white sand, clear water reflecting the blue sky, bright green plants  all around the paths. Zanzibar is nothing like Tybee.
The manager poured the group fresh passion juice. Looking down I realized he wasn't wearing shoes as he showed us the rooms.  I followed his example and slipped off my sandals after I had claimed a bed in the bungalow loft. I was sharing the perfect spot with Geroline, a girl in my group from outside New York City.
Soon after arriving we went to eat dinner, which was pasta and crepes with chocolate sauce for dessert.
Every day after I woke up jsut as the sun hit my eyes and rose through the clouds. When looking out the loft porch I could not imagine lying in bed when there was something so beautiful outside. When everyone else slept I walked along the beach and drank tea while the tide went out  and the heat of the sun grew on my shoulders.
The first day we discovered a small cafe a few minutes along the beach. This place was my dream home. A tree house on the beach.. what more could someone want?
The cafe and tiny hotel was owned by a recently retired German woman and her much younger Tanzanian boyfriend of fifteen years.( I mean they have been together 15 years... and not that he is 15 years-old)
Only the pictures can describe the amazing house.

I spent most of the weekend walking along the beach looking at all the pretty shells and weird things that had washed up when the tide came in.
On Saturday we went to Stone town.Stone town is the main city and downtown tourist area in Zanzibar. The building structures are mostly of Arab influence and were built under colonial rule. Zanzibar is a huge trading post and because of the Arab influence throughout history most residents of Zanzibar are muslim.  The buildings and carvings in the door frames where amazing. Although the colonialism does not exist anymore the town is clearly shaped by western influence and the tourism it attracts. The streets were full of shops and restaurants and being a mzungu can be a bit overwhelming at times.
 One of my favorite parts was the local seafood in the park at night. Vendors set up their tables with piles and piles of seafood. It was extremely cheap and they put it back on the grill after you ordered so it it was hot and fresh to eat. It was amazing. I had lobster with grilled bread and for dessert a banana nutela and chocolate sauce all wrapped in a soft dough cooked to order. As the sun went down we watched as young local boys jumped into the water near the park. They shouted and cheered as one after the other they would do one dangerous trick after the other. Sliding into the water close to the concrete wall was always the one that got the tourists gasping and the locals giggling. The feeling all around was such a happy one. People eating good food speaking in many languages laughing and smiling. I would hate to think this is the only time I will be able to go to Zanzibar. Everything about it seemed to spark my interest. The history and the beauty of the setting, the clashing of african tribal with arab and muslim culture which somehow seemed to flow harmoniously was something I would love to further explore.
That night we drove back to the resort and I woke up one last morning with the Zanzibar sunrise.
I had so much left to discover of Zanzibar but I was still satisfied with the small adventure I had managed to squeeze into the weekend. It is days like these that make you realize the blessings you are granted in life. I have damn good parents.