I have been thinking about this blog for a long time, trying to craft it in my mind, wondering which words to pick. In the end I decided to just copy here parts of what I wrote in my journal and in a letter to my grandmother a while back.
"Africa is a whole different world to what I am used to. Friends from home reply to my emails, saying, 'Yes we don’t know
how lucky we are.' But seriously, they don’t know. I didn't know before I left home and came here. I don't think you can know until you have seen and experienced. Here, I am beginning to understand.
The city I live in, Arusha, is very Western. Yes, the roads are still dusty and full of potholes, the drivers still maniacs, people still beg on the streets, but when it comes down to it, it's still a city where you can buy just about anything you could at home. We are especially sheltered in our subdivision which is filled with huge houses, many of them built for United Nations workers who were in Arusha for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Now the houses are filled with white people, volunteers, wealthy Tanzanians and many Indians who are the more well-off people group here. Apart from the different trees, the African sky, the dust everywhere, parts of our neighbourhood look like they could be anywhere in the world. This is not Africa. Not by any means. You really only need to go outside the wall at the back of the neighbourhood, to the 'African side' to see this.
On our way to and from our safari in Ngorogoro Crater back in July, I saw the real Africa for the first time – the mud huts and barefoot children and people
walking, walking everywhere with bundles on their heads and sticks on their
backs, weighted down by the knowledge of how very vulnerable they are – how
sickness or drought or childbirth could snuff them out at any moment. We drove
by in our big safari car, on our way to warm beds and hot showers and a big
meal – and all I could think was how luxurious my life is and how I could hear
the very cry of the heart of God for these people, pulsing under the blood red
road beneath us. It made me cry.
And yet for all the
sadness here, there is hope – the people are strong and tenacious and won’t go
down without a fight. They are generous – I’ve seen ladies give a quarter of
their monthly salary to the church offering and I’ve eaten at people’s house
where they have cooked a feast of rice and beans, bananas and chicken – all
that they had to feed a person they barely knew.
A set of tiny triplets
was born in a village near here and some our volunteers went to visit them – to take them
formula and clothes and food for the parents. Their whole house was half the
size of my bedroom at home, with only a single mattress and a chair inside. An
ancient woman sat outside the house, her face lined with years of work and
worry and hardship. An American man glanced at her and said, 'Look at
that woman, sitting there without a care in the world.' He went on to talk
about how she didn’t have to worry if the Internet didn't work or her DHL parcel didn't arrive and so on. It made me
angry when I heard about it. Here was a woman who had almost certainly experienced hunger and sickness, the
death of children and yet she had found the strength to carry on regardless. These people, this place, this country, it's beautiful and yet savage - enough to break your heart and give you hope at the same time."
August 30, 2013
"Tonight I have so many thoughts and feelings and words and I don't know what to do with them all. We went today to Kismiri Juu, a Maasai village up in the middle of nowhere. It was hard to get to - roads so dusty it was like trying to drive through a sandpit, rocks clunking under the car, no real road. And then walking, on and on through long grass and dusty plains, up and down gorges and ravines. I was out of breath, my body soft from a lifetime of no real physical labour, the Maasai striding on ahead. Bibi [grandmother] came out from the village to greet us ululating, overjoyed to see little Makaa. He was 6 weeks old and close to dying when he left the village. Now he is three and a half. This was the first time she had seen him since he left for a chance at a better life in an orphanage. The joy on her face as she held him was beyond anything I'd seen before.
Their lives there are unbelievably harsh - mud huts and no clean water (no water at all for miles) and walking hours every day with their animals so that they will be fed and watered. Makaa's uncle has twins - about a year or so old. How does a woman safely deliver twins out there in that barren place, far far from any medical help should there be trouble?
Such hardship and yet such generosity - they killed a goat for us to eat and gave us chai and soda. Makaa's father bought water for us on the way home. They are so poor and yet so willing to share what little they have.
Babu [grandfather] held my hand as we walked from hut to hut. He held my arm up in the air in the traditional respectful greeting and said 'God bless you' in Kiswahili and in Maa. Bibi kissed my cheeks. Makaa's uncle introduced me to the young warriors. The young children laughed when I tried to chase down a baby goat. The mamas giggled when they looked at their photographs on my camera. Beautiful, beautiful people.
Such a harsh place and yet I'd never felt so peaceful, so content. It seems cliche to say that something changed your life, but I know for certain that I want to help these people. I don't know what to do. This is Africa though. Real Africa and I want to live it and experience it and do what little I might be able to for these people. My eyes have been opened and somehow I don't think things will ever be the same for me again."
After reading through my journal again and reliving the things that have happened since I've been here, I was reminded of the lyrics of a song, Albertine, that Brooke Fraser wrote after she spent time in Rwanda. She tells the story of a girl, a family, who was torn apart by the genocide in 1994 and this is what she says:
"Now that I have seen, I am responsible,
Faith without deeds is dead.
Now that I have held you in my own arms,
I cannot let go 'til you are.
I am on a plane, across a distant sea,
But I carry you in me,
And the dust on, the dust on, the dust on my feet,
Rwanda.
I will tell the world, I will tell them where I've been,
I will keep my word,
I will tell them Albertine."
This is how I feel. This is Africa and this is the life that millions of people lead. Now that I have seen, I am responsible. Faith without deeds is dead.
xoxo,
-Hannah
