In about a week and a half, eight of friends my friends from the states (a collective mix of college and home friends) will arrive in Tanzania the trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. We're taking a seven day Machame route- theoretically giving ourselves enough time to acclimatize to altitude and really get to know one another.

Two friends have good blog posts on a) why we are might do this and b) how we might prepare.

So far, my training has included playing some pick up football with local kids, walking to my favorite expat cafe for indulgent lunches, floating in the Indian ocean, turning thirty, perfecting my dramatic bargaining skills and playing boules. So... this could be interesting.

Well, surprising to me. Not at all surprising to a Tanzanian.

1. Country music. I tried explaining to a friend of mine how the folks who like country music in the states tend to be some of the folks who don't like Obama, but he could not see any conflict of interest between sweet cowboy tunes and Obamacare. It's a fair criticism of our strange American bipolar political culture.
2. Red Bull. The new coca-cola?
3. Skinny jeans. Considering that some fashions seem a bit behind (e.g. blouses from the eighties and wide-leg men's slacks from the nineties), skinny jeans seem to not have missed a beat getting to Tanzania.
4. Heels. Seriously? You walk down THAT road in THOSE shoes? Wedges or flats would be much more appropriate.
5. Smart phones. I have approximately the same portion of friends with smart phones here in Tanzania as I do in the states.
6. Nairobi. With a quickly growing tech industry, a more bearable climate than Dar es Salaam and a short bus ride north, the Kenyan capital is a hot spot for Tanzanian business.

After many valid but ignored requests for a way to read this blog by email, I have finally added a FeedBurner email option on the sidebar. Enter your email address and follow. Happy half birthday, BLK.

1) If you had to quickly flee both your home and country, what one possession would you take with you?

2) Imagine development

3) We could use one of these our my Meatu project house

4) Fieldwork folly and finding the right questions

Hat tips: NAJ, TAS, BLK

LS: I was about 7 seconds away from having a meltdown about my internet not working all morning just now, but this conversation really reminded me to lighten up.
ASM: Seriously, get real. I lack internet, a fridge, stove and running water in my bathroom.
ASM: I drag buckets of water to shower. I hope you can picture this because you may know that I am not the strongest individual.
LS: But I have to check twitter on my phone like some kind of barbarian!
LS: Yes, mental image emphasis on the drag.
LS: Well, I’m walking to the gym and my fingers are so cold its barely registering on the keypad of my iphone. Northern continent problems.
ASM: The moon is so full tonight that I can’t see the southern cross. Southern continent problems.
LS: Ok, you win.
ASM: But I lose on the drag.
LS: Well, to keep things in perspective I’m going to a small room with heavy things to drag around purposelessly because my life is otherwise devoid of exercise.
LS: So, shower+gym all in one in Tanzania.
ASM: Hahaha. It’s basically all the same.

Courtesy of What's App, my new favorite method of communication. If you have a smart phone and want to be in touch with me, get this app (looking at you MBH and ECS).

[After asking all the normal safari questions...]

Me: Are all of the guides men?
Arnold the manager: Yes
Me: Why haven’t you hired any women as guides?
Arnold: [Laughing, looking at male guides] Ah, well, guiding a safari is hard work.
Me: Driving and talking about wildlife? Women can’t do that?
Arnold: Ah, but they have to change tires.
Me: I can change a tire [Slight exaggeration.]
Arnold: Ah well, some there are some guides who are women, but they are very few in all of Tanzania.
Me: But you haven’t hired those guides?
Arnold:[Laughing] Ah, no, not yet
Me: This is serious. I’m doing economic research here in Tanzania and if you leave women out of the formal labor market, and don’t let them have good jobs like guiding safari, this will be very bad for the Tanzanian economy. Very bad. [Slight exaggeration, mostly in regards to my qualification for that statement]
Arnold: [Contrived seriousness] I understand.
Me: Well, I have to do some research about other companies and compare prices.  But if you hire a woman guide, I will definitely hire your company for the safari [Slight exaggeration].

In the process of delivering the newly trained family planning distributors back to their villages, we had to travel to one extremely remote village. I consider the town where I live now to be remote, because there are no newspapers, other researchers or cheese. But the villages that are part of my study are villages where there are no refrigerators, cars, computers or kerosene stoves. This particular village, Witamhiya, is the most remote of those villages. Just to give an idea.

To get out there, we have to cross this river, which is about fifty yards across but fairly shallow, maybe only two feet deep at most. But, it is obviously sandy and muddy. You can see where this is going. On the way to Witamhiya, we get across just fine. We do some practice family planning consultations with the three wives of one man who had about twelve seemingly malnourished children and then begin to make our way back. We start across the river and get one third of the way across before the truck gets stuck.

So, we get out of the truck and start to push. This includes me, Loi (field assistant, driver, friend), two distributors with babies on back, and the family planning training facilitator, who is a nut. A handful of Witamhiya residents are standing around at the riverbank watching us, washing, watching us, watching their cattle. So we ask someone to go get village leader. They send the traditional healer. He is pretty useless. His friend, however, gets two oxen to pull the truck and one more strong man. We try to push while the oxen pull (literally attached to the tow of the front of the truck). Oxen=Tanzanian AAA? Not exactly. It still doesn't budge and the front tire is getting deeper into the sand.

Also, there is a lot of cow poop. We are basically standing around in a warm poop-green river.  They send for two more oxen. We sit around the river talking about Obama. Four oxen pulling and eight people pushing does nothing for the truck. No cell service in Witamhiya. More sitting around and looking at the oxen. By now, it is 6pm and as if on cue, a dark cloud appears upstream. Huge and growing. The sun is setting and the awesome yet ominous wind that smell of rain starts to blow in our direction.

So Loi calls it and says he is going to run towards bigger village until he gets cell service, call the distributors friend with a pikipiki (mo-ped), then pikipiki around until he can find
someone with a land rover. I lie down on the riverbed and take a nap because this could be a while. When I wake up, it’s getting cold and dark, so the other distributor (with baby) and I walk back to the car in the middle of the river and get inside. The truck is warmer, so we sit there with the nut training facilitator who is soaking wet and in his underwear from failed attempts at digging under the car.

Eventually, the other distributor returns and says Loi found a pikipiki and that we should come to her house to rest because the storm coming. I know that leaving the car means that we might be spending the night in Witamhiya, but staying in the car in the middle of a very wide river during a brewing storm seems like not the best idea.

So the babies, mamas and I walk about a mile to her home on the other side of the river.  There is a small room with the traditional stick/straw roof, chairs, charcoal and wood. I'm dehydrated by this point, so I ask for tea, thinking at least that's boiled water.

However, there isn't any tea, and she I think she doesn’t want to admit it to me, so she goes to milk a cow and tells me to sit down while we wait for Loi to return. But I can’t sit down inside, because outside is the most unbelievable lightning storm I have ever seen in my entire life. Out in the middle of nowhere, there is a lot of sky to see. My hosts kept encouraging to get me to stay inside where it was warmer, but all I wanted to do was watch this lightning. Plus, if it starts to rain, and the truck is washed downstream, I want to know immediately.

Then, we see lights in the distance and Loi comes towards the river past the house on a tractor with a few men from the next town. We're so far away from city lights that tractors are identifiable from miles away. They head towards the river to try to tow with the tractor, which is basically the last hope or we give up until tomorrow. And pray it doesn’t rain.

I am worried about losing the car in the river or staying the night in this very small home without much food, but mostly I was just stunned by the beautiful lightening. I finally get myself some boiled water, which I drink from a metal bowl outside in the lightening. Dangerous? Upon reflection, perhaps. But despite the vivid light and sound in the sky, there is still no rain.

As the thunder begins to move to the northern sky, the tractor returns to the house. There is only one set of lights, one vehicle, so I'm ready to give up. But then, Loi is not with them!
They say that Loi is 'mazunguku' which is like 'mazungu' which means white person, but it only means white person because it means ' to go around.' Loi is going around! In the truck! The truck is saved!

He picks us up from the Witamhiya hosts and we journey back to town in the truck. Every single village that we drive through on the way back has had rain. Trees were down
from the storms and crops had been damaged from heavy rainfall. We are so incredibly lucky it didn’t rain in the river.

I take off on Sunday for five months of fieldwork in Tanzania. This is what I'm bringing (and evidence of my chaotic packing process).

Also, a little Ryan Gossling and his thoughts on development. (Hat tip: KW)

The photo is provocative and does not look good in the meager weebly format. Full article and photo here. Accommodating subjective views of what counts as cheeky or proper seems to bring us back to the pants suit complication.