goodbye Pemba

On the first leg of our journey home Juma and I came to Unguja by a 12-passenger plane. We both got a bit nauseated, but we arrived quickly and safely. Justin is coming by boat, since we have too many bags for the tiny plane. He'll arrive in another hour or so, and Juma and I are hanging out in Stone Town, our old 'hood.

Last night Juma was pretty was sad to leave Pemba. At bedtime, he started crying because he would miss Pemba and all his friends here. "I'll never see coconut trees again!" he bawled.

We spent out last days packing, visiting friends to say goodbye and receiving visitors who wanted to say goodbye. I also got henna applied to my hands and feet, which took the good part of two days. It looks a little crazy to my American eyes, but Zanzibaris see it as the height of feminine beauty. I'll see about posting a picture later.

It's hard to believe our trip is almost to an end. On Thursday, we fly out. Back to another crazy year of school.

scuba

Well, all those hours in the pool paid off, we've officially went scuba diving in a real ocean that wasn't so polluted by New York City that we could see 75 feet.

We saw thousands, absolutely thousands of fish and numerous types of coral. I dove around a coral mountain, down to about 60 feet, and Justin dove even deeper. It's so amazing to see all of that life under there.

We'll have to go again.

pictures!

I finally got a bunch of pictures up. As always, you can click on the pictures to see larger versions.

I've also posted text several times in the past few days, so if you haven't visited really recently, be sure to see previous posts under the Archives section (right sidebar). Enjoy.

pics, part 4: basketball tournament

In July, we played in the Pemba basketball tournament. We, as whities, were the secret weapons of our teams. Just seeing our pale-pink flesh caused the opposing team members to tremble and quake in fear.

We sat around in the shade trying to avoid the hot sun while we waited for the Zanzibar president's wife to show up to kick off the basketball season.

These are part of Justin's team, Miami, and my team Chake Star.

pics, part 3: Juma

Justin teaches Juma to read in one of their daily lessons. Juma is currently on lesson 96 (of 100) and has started to read just for fun. Justin is trying hard, but has only made it through lesson 26 so far. Just can't seem to get the word "the" figured out. Tay-hheeee. Tah-heee?

Juma delights in the rain falling into the courtyard. This is a big change for him; usually he is quite scared of the sound the rain makes on the tin roofs.

Juma feeds a chicken we received as a gift, and which we ate the next day.

pics, part 2: scenes from our house

This is the view from our backdoor. It was raining, as it does nearly every day in this, the dry season. We live on the side of a hill, so we have a view of the small valley below.


our baraza (cement bench for lounging)


and our courtyard (enclosed but open to the sky)

pics, part 1: the beach

Juma hangs out with a friend, Chiboga, and unself-consciously plays soccer with the big boys on the beach. We got to that beach after a 30 minute bike ride.

trying to post pictures

Okay, I've been trying for the past 55 mintues to post some pictures, but I haven't been succesful, as you can tell. I'll keep trying, and if it doesn't work, know that I tried.

I'll definitely post some after we get back home.

Bouncing baby boy

Congratulations to my youngest sister, Melissa, and to her husband, Cameron, on the arrival of their new baby boy, Max!

It’s tough be so very far away when a sibling has a baby—I have two nieces and one nephew I’ve never seen.

No one told me I had a new nephew! I’d been waiting anxiously since late July to hear the news, and I found out from Laura and Cody’s blog five days after the event. Can I get some details here? Pictures?

on dressing like a Pemban woman

By “dress like a Pemban” I mean I wear a long dress to the ankles or nearly so, with sleeves usually hitting my elbows. The dress is large. One dress I bought here I’m sure could fit three of me inside. My friend assured me it fit me perfectly. “And it’ll still fit you when you get fat; you’re way too skinny.” (For the record, I’m in a good place on height-for-weight scales.) These dresses are so large and so strangely patterned that Justin commented, “They are almost ugly enough to be cool. Almost.” When I told him I’ll be giving away my ugliest dresses, he looked at me blankly, trying to figure out exactly which ones are the ugliest. They certainly are not flattering by American standards. But in Pemba, they are all the rage in house-clothes fashion.

Whenever I leave the immediate neighborhood, I also don a buibui and mtandio. The buibui is an ankle-length, long-sleeved, loose-fitting, black gown that every adult Muslim Pemban women wears. (Anyone not Muslim is from the mainland, and therefore not considered Pemban.) The styles have changed over the years I’ve been coming to Zanzibar. From snaps down the front, to a more risqué, sheer type with only one snap, exposing the dress underneath, to a pull-over-the-head type. In 2004 the pull-over and the open one combined into one style, with a decently modest layer underneath, but a free-flowing sheer layer on the front. This is the kind I wear. But, alas, that style is old, and now the style is a one-layered pull-over, but with decorations—colorful embroidery, beads, reflective plastic “jewels”—near the bottom and the wrists. I just can’t keep up.

The mtandio is a large bolt of cloth that is wrapped around the head a couple times and secured with a needle (if you’re from the city and can afford it) or by tucking one end in around the cheek or chin. They generally cover the whole head, as well as the neck and shoulders, leaving the face exposed. But the styles change for these too. They’ve gone from all black, to sleek and colorful, to flowing and multi-colored. The ones in style now cover not just down to the shoulders, but the whole upper body. I have a couple of these, ones that are cut from the same fabric as the dresses I bought here. I have other head coverings from the Middle East which, when I wear those rather than mtandio people comment that I dress like an Arab.

Why I wear these clothes, given that I'm not a Muslim and I could easily dress like the other wazungu do in Western clothes, is a little harder to explain. I'm still trying to figure it out myself, and weigh the pros and cons. One thing is for sure: most of the people here love that I dress like they do. And another thing: in the hot months of January and February, these layers are going to be hot.

that's a wrap

Hallelujah, or alhamdullilah, as they say in Arabic and Swahili, the research of my summer intership is done. Sera, my research colleague/mentor/boss left Pemba yesterday, so she can't force me to do any work anymore. At least not until she gets home and she can email me again.

I celebrated last night by having a "date" with Justin: we stayed home and hung out with each other after Juma went to bed, and I didn't do any work. Yeah, that's about as good as it gets for us here in Pemba. Almost every Friday night since we've been here I've spent doing school or research work.

There's not much else to do. Can't go visiting because the mosquitoes are out. There' s no TV at our place. There is a movie theater in town, but it shows nothing but Hindi musicals and American B-movies. We don't have a babysitter anyway. I wasn't even smart enough to bring any books along that are just for fun, diversionary purposes. (When I explained the dire siutation to Sera she lent me A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, which is hilarious and appropriately diversionary.)

My weeks of research seems at this point to have been pretty successful. I formally interviewed 36 women, and informally interviewed many others. I organized focus group discussions with an additional 15 people, and did lots of traveling around the island, observations in hospitals and pharmacies, and even was interviewed on a talkshow for Zanzibar TV.

That was totally random. Here's the story: I went to a wedding a couple of weeks ago, and at one of the women's parties I was noticed by a woman who produces for TV Zanzibar (Tee Vee Zed). She apparently asked around about me, and being the only mzungu in town who dresses like a local (I'll explain later), and the only one who has a white kid named Juma, she found out about me pretty easily.

So a couple days after the wedding I'm walking home from the hospital through the market, and a woman stops me. "Are you the one who does research about pregnant women? About pica?" (Actually, the information got confused with Sera's work, which is on pica in pregnancy [cravings for non-food items like uncooked rice, soil, starch, chalk, etc]). "I want to interview you on TV." And she gave me she spiel about how it will help educate women and make the research easier, etc. I told her it was Sera she wanted, not Sarah, so they set up a date for an TV interview, and I was invited along. The interview happened yesterday, as a little finishing touch to our research.

We spoke entirely in Swahili, which was a little dauting, and also a little confidence-building, since I managed well enough. I'm going to try to get a video of the broadcast, but they have to send the unedited tape to Unguja to edit, etc. Hopefully the broadcast will help a few people become a little more educated on anemia and pica, and how they can treat anemia. (It is as of yet unsettled whether or not pica is helpful or harmful during pregnancy. It might actually protect the fetus.)

This is actually the second time I'll have appeared on TVZ, the first time when I played in the opening game of the Pemba basketball tournament and met the president's wife. Yes, Zanzibar is that small that such things make it on TV.
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Juma and Justin are also fine. Juma's Swahili is picking up, and he's even putting phrases together is new ways. Not necessarily correctly, but it means he's "getting it." He has maybe the Swahili vocab of a two-year old kid. Stop that! Hey you! Come here. Milk. Water. I want two cookies. Take this. Stuff like that. He's also acting like a Swahili kid, and is willingly taking on more responsibilities, as he sees befitting a four-year old. For example, today I told him he needed water, so he volunteered to get it at the shop. I gave him 1000 shillings (less than a dollar), and went to the closest shop (attached to the house, but around the corner nonetheless) to buy it. He returned triumphantly with the water and some change, though the shop guy had taken an extra 100 shillings for the water. Oh well. Juma was happy.

somo yake Juma

Our good friend from Zanzibar, Juma, whom we've known since 1999, and who our son Juma is partly named after, came to Pemba to visit us. (And his parents, who also live here.) He's been here for the weekend, and we've gone with him on some adventures in villages to visit family.

Today we took a local bus to Vitongoji, in the east of the island, then got on bikes to go the last 2-3 miles. Juma's parents live on the very edge of the village, there's nothing but farmland and bush beyond their house. We had a nice peaceful walk around the farm, finding cassava, mango trees, millet, corn, coconut trees, along with cows, ducks, goats, and chickens, and avoiding their droppings along with way. It was also a very rainy day, so we were variously stuck inside waiting to leave or getting our feet really muddy.

As it turned out, Juma's youngest sister who came to their parents' house to give birth (as is the custom here) had her baby last night, in the house, with no help. The proud grandma is a midwife herself, so she could have helped if she needed it. The little boy is her second child.

On that note, I'm waiting to here news of my youngest sister's first baby. Is it here yet?!?

how hot is it? and emails

Thanks for all the emails we've received for Juma's birthday and just in general. It's nice to hear from people. Sorry we haven't been able to individually answer everyone, though. When we get back the US where we have a high-speed connection in our house, I'll be much better at emailing. But then, I won't be in Africa and things will seem a little more boring...

We hear there are heat waves in the eastern US, and hope that all our possessions haven't melted inside our apartment. It's actually hotter in Connecticut right now that it is in Pemba. It's the season they call the cool, dry season. But it's cool and dry only when compared to the hot, wet season. The cool, dry season sees temperatures in the 80's and 90's, with rain certainly above 30 inches a month. In the evenings, it gets cool enough that I stop sweating--and all the Pembans say, "Oh, it is bitterly cold now! I'm not going to shower tonight, I'll never get warm again." (Pembans generally shower twice a day in the cool season, morning and around 4, which is when work hours end and visiting/relaxing hours begin. In the hot seasons, they shower more often.)

all in a week's work

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve made it back to the blog. We are still here, alive, and healthy. Research and activities here have kept me busy, which is a good thing. I tend to go a little crazy when I don’t have much to do. During the week, I’ve been going variously to the hospital and to villages to find research participants. One morning of work can get me as many as nine interviews, or as few as one, depending on circumstances.

For example, last week went like this:

On Monday, while trying unsuccessfully to find severely anemic patients at the hospital, I looked up people who had been in-patients for anemia in the past two years. I found five, all of them living in remote villages not on bus routes. While talking to one of the nurses trying to get permission to look up names, I discovered she herself was pregnant and severely anemic, so we interviewed her.

So on Tuesday, my research assistant (who was two hours late because of public transport problems) and I, along with Juma, hopped in our friend’s taxi. We had nothing more than names, ages, dates in the hospital, and village names to find the women. Sometimes, this is quite enough. In the first village, we stopped randomly and asked the person closest to the car if he knows the woman on my list, and he pointed two houses down. Her husband was there, but reported that she was in the farm field. He asked his son to take us there, only to find that she had left and we had missed her on the path. We found her back at the house., but as soon as I started the interview, Juma broke down crying. I had to leave my assistant to finish the interview while I calmed Juma down.

The next village was quite large, so we had to stop at the local hospital and ask the nurses to look the second woman up in their register books. We asked more people as we got closer, and finally found her after half an hour of looking. That took all morning.

Wednesday, while waiting for my research assistant to make her trek down from another town an hour away, I got a text message from her, asking to be excused from work because her co-wife’s child had died. I, of course, told her to forget work and attend the funeral. It turned out there was a triple drowning of 18-22 year old boys (two of them first cousins) when a small boat overturned on its way back from an outlying island where the boys had played a soccer game. None of the three knew how to swim.

I expected her to ask to skip work on Thursday, too, but she showed up at the hospital in the morning. After making sure she was okay and hearing the story, we pursued another couple women, only to find one had been divorced and moved to another village. The other, we discovered when we arrived at her house, was at the very hospital we had just left an hour before. So we interviewed someone else while we waited, and the woman returned. Three interviews took all morning.

Friday, we pursued a woman in a nearby village, but never found her because the village was just too big to find someone based on name alone. We hopped on a daladala (local transport) and went to find the woman who had been divorced. Turns out she was visiting relatives on the mainland. Zero-for-two. And that ended my research week. By that point, I knew we were only a kilometer away from where my assistant’s relatives were mourning the loss of their two boys (cousins), so I went to pay my respects and say pole. I didn’t get away without being greeted by every extended family member, and being stuffed with sugar dates and pilau (a local rice dish cooked on every significant occasion). The support of family members and friends for the mourners was heartwarming. They will have people around them for four or five days to cook for them, cry with them, sit with them in solidarity, remember stories of their boys’ childhoods, and get them, little by little, to laugh again.

Heppy Bah-thday, Juma!

I wrote a birthday blog entry at home to post later, but Justin beat me to posting. So you've already heard about Juma's party and seen some pictures, but here's my version anyway:

Today we celebrated Juma’s 4th birthday. We decided to go ahead and invite some friends to a party, even though neither of us are big party people. Immediately, friends started advising us on how to go about a proper, modern Swahili birthday party—much of it adopted from Western style birthdays, and then adapted to a Swahili style. Loud music is essential, along with a three-tiered bakery-made cake, a “stage” (see the picture), the birthday boy in a proper suit, lots of food packed up in individual little containers, sodas, candies given out at the door, and dancing.

We opted out on the three-tiered cake and went instead with the basketball cake Juma has been asking for ever since his third birthday. We initially decided against the stage, thinking it too lavish, and realizing Juma would refuse to sit like a king during the whole party. But one of our friends apparently considered it so essential that he went ahead and arranged one through his friend without consulting with us first. We’re glad we had one, since now we have something to laugh about. (Juma did refuse to sit there except to cut the cake, and spend the first half of the party trying to hide from everyone.)

The whole ceremony of singing Happy Birthday and blowing out the candle is pretty much the same as in the US, except that Happy Birthday sounds more like “heppy bah-thday,” and there’s no making a wish. And strangely enough, the cutting of the cake is supposed to be accompanied by Juma feeding pieces to Justin and me, and we feeding some to him and any other honored guests. To this, Juma flatly refused, and we didn’t push it (remembering what happened the last time Justin tried to “feed” me cake).

After the cake was cut up and passed out, we passed out finger foods that our friends had spent all day cooking. Donuts, katlesi, sambusa, keki, and toffess. Then our friend played DJ and blasted the music (a mix of American and Zanzibari taarab) for an hour and a half so everyone could dance. Men and women separately, of course. While a lot of fun, this noise attracted a dozen more kids and half a dozen more adults (none of whom we knew) to show up and ask to be fed. It was a faux pas on our side for not having enough food, rather than a faux pas for showing up uninvited. Indeed, we invited about 35 people, and had enough food for about 57, but couldn’t feed everyone who showed up.

All in all, the party was a huge success, we realized how many friends we’ve made in the past six weeks, and most importantly, Juma had a blast.