thoughts in Pemba

We are back and home safe. The day after arriving in the US, we boarded our 6th plane in 4 days and flew to Seattle for a family reunion. Yesterday we got back from that and have been catching up on errands, laundry, and sleep since then.

Over the next couple weeks, I'll post more about our Pemba trip, along with pictures. For now, here is a bit I wrote while in Pemba when my muse hit me. (I had just read two Cormac McCarthy books, so his style influenced me a little. Bear with me.)

Legs stretched out in front of me, laptop on my thighs, I sit on the king size bed with the light green fitted sheet we brought from America, ‘cause there are no fitted sheets here, and this is the first trip we’ve been smart enough to just bring one with us, but the damn sheet is only queen size so it always popping off at the corners. Which makes it not much better than a flat sheet folded under the mattress, like how they do it here, but at least the one we brought for Juma’s bed fits his mattress. There are three pillows on our bed, but only two of us, but that’s okay. And one floral-print flat sheet, which I use as a blanket, because it never gets cold enough here to need more than a sheet. And sometimes, when the electricity is out and so there’s no ceiling fan, it’s too hot for even that, and I sleep like Justin does, as naked as possible, trying to have no part of my body touch any other part lest my body be covered in a sticky, sickly sweat all night. But that happens anyway, even with the fan on, and I am always ready for a shower first thing in the morning, even if I took one just before bed. And the showers are always cold, and the chill feels good in this heat. It feels good to be cold for at least a few minutes twice a day.

The laptop plays random songs from our giant collection of modern music. Scar Tissue is on now. I never brought music with me before. It was somehow not rugged enough, to go to Africa and bring all my American music and discman and mp3 players and gig after gig of music on our hard drive. Like listening to something familiar, instead of the local music, would take away from my experience, make it less African. I’d never make it to the status of “gone native” if I brought U2 and The Killers and Red Hot Chili Peppers with me. I was like that, before. Tried as hard as possible to get into the culture, and leave our Americanness behind. Then about the time when people started to joke with me that we were really Pemban now--I dressed right, I talked right, I acted right--I started to relax on my impossible previous standard. I am American and always will be, no matter how I dress and talk and act. That buibui covers my body, but it never covers the fact that I am white. And my accent will give me away, every time. Every damn time. Even on the phone.

It’s not that I’ve given up trying. I still pay attention to cultural cues and greet right and dress right and know when to give which gift of which size and when to take off my shoes and when to extend my hand and when to keep it by my side and when to eat the food offered and how much of it and what the best time of day is to go visiting. I just gave up trying to force myself into the impossible--to become Zanzibari. I will always be foreigner to them; I have accepted that. And with that acceptance that came finally after three painful-but-enjoyable trips, I loved it all the more here.


More later...