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on
her copper face. On her head a white turban soaks up some
of the sweat; around her waist, a bright yellow and purple
kanga serves as apron. With a long wooden spoon she churns
the bubbling ugali, a white corn mush. Dozens of busy women
bend over black pots next to the azure Indian Ocean, and
I am curious. This is my first time in Africa, and I feel
so - so foreign, so pale. But women cooking food (which
I'll learn translates in Kiswahili to wanawaki kopika chukala)
is universal, and within minutes, Amina's wrapped her kanga
wrapped around me and I'm stirring the ugali. The women
laugh and make room. Soon I'm peeling carrots, slicing tomatoes
and chopping chicha (spinach-like greens) with them. The
sun is scorching, the fires in the charcoal-burning jikus
raise the heat level to Dante's Inferno-farenheit. I feel
faint, but I won't stop working although Amina asks if I
want to rest. And have them think white women are lazy?
I smile to myself, suddenly understanding why my friend
Oznathylee back home refuses to eat watermelon in public.
Amina's
19-year-old daughter, Ulama, proffers a warm Coke, fried
bread and a liver soup - and will not let me pay. On my
next visits we swap family photos and I tote my own knife
from the small hotel where I stay with my then-fiance´,
Eric. He's a Swedish physician researching a vaccine for
HIV, making several trips yearly to Dar from Stockholm.
And he's as delighted as I am to be invited to Amina's home,
where we meet her husband (an auditor for the city) four
children, grandchildren and a succession of neighbors -
surprised to discover mzungos (whites) in their midst.
Amina
has a dream. She'd prefer to work at home where she can
watch her grandchildren during the day - if only she and
her husband could save up $200 to have water piped to their
home. Then she could charge about 50 cents a bucket to neighbors,
who wouldn't have to walk so far for water.
Her
younger sister has a dream, too. Fatuma Gwao Pyuza, who
we also meet at Amina's, is a 43-year-old divorced Muslim
mother of four, aged 14-22. She's a school teacher, currently
running a preschool of 13 children in her three-room home
in an outlying village. In the bare yard of red dust stands
the foundation of a two-classroom school she hopes one day
to complete. She invites me to visit.
We
meet at the kitchen several days later and board a packed
and rusted bus for the 10-mile ride out of Dar. We jolt
through potholes past green fields, warrens of tin-roofed
huts, neon-kanga'd women carrying babies on their backs
or breasts and plastic buckets on their heads. We alight
next to a grocery - a kiosk built of branches - and start
the dusty two-mile trek through Mbagala. Villagers stare
at this middle-aged white woman, small boys point and call
mzungo, mzungo! to one another, tots simply cry as their
eyes grow wide with terror. Never have I felt so visible,
so freakish. I should be dropping breadcrumbs: we weave
through dirt squares where chickens scratch and a water
spigot drips, past small white-washed mosques, over a partially-washed-out
bridge where women slap laundry in the shallow stream below.
'Welcome
to our school, Madame!' chorus some dozen tots in worn and
over-sized pink and white uniforms slipping off tiny shoulders.
The children's eyes are wide with wonder, yet the shyness
shows in the stiffness of their little bodies as they bow
and curtsey in the darkness of their bare classroom. The
one window high on the cinderblock wall admits light as
meager as this school: their only supplies are several scraps
of slate, some stubs of chalk, and four palm-size, cardboard
books - the kind American babies typically teeth on.
Pink-palmed
hands flail the humid air and one-by-one the children are
called upon to recite in English for their visitor: 'I stand
here before you in order to introduce myself. My name is
Gideon. I live in Mbagala. I am four years old. My father's
name is Abdul. My mother's name is Asha.'
His
classmates clap and chant: ' Well done, well done, nicey
boy, nicey boy!'
And
my heart cracks open in a new way as I ask these precious
children to forego 'Madame' in favor of 'bibi' (grandmother).
After
a cup of corn porridge drunk from plastic mugs for their
lunch, the children file quietly outdoors, slipping on plastic
thongs and shabby shoes at the door. They sit on woven mats
in the shade of a single tree and sing songs, Fatuma's assistant
beating time on a small goatskin drum. They all don skimpy
sisal skirts and dance, amazed and delighted when I join
in.
And
then it's field trip time. Gleefully, little hands grip
'Bibi Janne's' (Tanzanians often add an E to many words,
especially names) and lead me past match-book homes to a
rain-eroded sand bank resembling sprawled elephants. We
clamber down to a narrow stream where mothers scrub and
children splash. The stream ends in a rice paddy, where
the children pose for a beaming group photo and giggle each
time my camera clicks and whirrrs.
In
answer to my questions, Fatuma walks through the would-be
rooms of the hands-high foundation of her school. When parents
actually pay their $8 monthly fees and she gets a little
money ahead, she adds another layer of bricks. Weeds sprout
where the floors will be in an office, a small classroom
and a large one, a kitchen, a storeroom. How much will it
cost to complete? I ask. We calculate that the daunting
1.5 million Tanzanian schillings is only $2,000 American
dollars. 'I want to help,' I tell her.
The
next day, I scout the crowded shops owned Dar's leading
business people, Indian immigrants. I stand at the counter
and point at pads of papers, pencils, puzzles, crayons,
wall charts in Kiswahili, some counting and spelling toys.
I send the aids out with Amina, and when I return, charts
brighten the cement walls and the children proudly point,
clamoring 'Bibi, Bibi' for my approval as they point and
recite numbers and letters.
I
am hooked. Once home, I assemble a notebook of photos: Amina
and Fatuma, the children (watoto), the bleak classroom,
the skeleton of the would-be school. Everywhere I go, I
show the book: at lunch with friends, an appointment at
my dentist's, a date with my hairdresser. The money accrues,
and on the next visit to Tanzania is promptly translated
to sand and cement in Fatuma's yard. Virtually before my
eyes, her dream takes shape. By the end of the second visit,
the school is walled and roofed, but only the smaller of
two classrooms is finished and in use by a student body
now grown to 30. The plastered walls are painted a bright
white. Construction paper figure brightens the small room
and spell out the new name, which prompts my tears: Bibi
Jann Day Care Centre and Pre-school.
With each visit, we exchange gifts. I bring school supplies
and toys; Fatuma and family awe us with handmade and natural
treasures. My suitcase one visit squeezed shut on two beaded
drinking glasses, two straw hats, six woven bags, a basket,
a string of shells, a large ruffled clam shell, a lovely
clump of coral, several shiny cowries, a starfish and two
dried seahorses!
If
Amina is the beaming beauty with a casual approach to life,
Fatuma is the intellect, yet more traditional (she always
covers her head in public). With Amina I sit and hold hands;
the conversation is limited but relaxed. Sometimes we sprawl
on the cement floor atop the floral linoleum of which she's
so proud and play board games I bring. Fatuma's demeanor
is more serious that her sisters. She is more comfortable
writing in English than speaking it, and welcomes English
books so she can practice. She bends over receipts and lists
of school priorities, and sometimes gives me cooking lessons
as we squat over a jiku. Fatuma is not only a trained teacher,
but a adept businesswoman.
In
this land where 10 million are orphaned by AIDS, where one
in seven (many women of child-bearing age) are HIV-positive,
where old women are murdered for suspected witchcraft and
girls from five to puberty are genitally mutilated, I have
found not only a purpose, but sisters-under-the-skin.
My Muslim friends were the first to comfort me - so far
from home - on that terrible Sept. 11 (just three years
after the American embassy in Dar was bombed). They send
handwritten notes to my children and grandchildren, assuring
them they are 'welcome every year in Tanzania.' Between
yearly visits, we keep up via emails, which Fatuma's oldest
child, Dixon, sends from cybercafes.
Fatuma's
dream is now a reality, complete with piped-in water and
a parental governing board. Her oldest daughter, Rehama,
has also graduated from teachers' college. And this woman
who has never received financial support from her former
husband has gained not only relative prosperity, but status
within her village.
Through
our weddings in both Portland and Stockholm, where we live,
Eric and I have gathered further contributions for the pre-school,
so that now we offer scholarships to needy village children,
including AIDS orphans. On both sides of the Atlantic, American
and Swedish friends regularly inquire, 'How's our school?'
Take
two industrious African sisters and add a curious American.
Factor in dozens of generous donors. The result? Fifty-plus
tiny Tanzanians introduced to the wonders of education.
And to the satisfaction of enduring friendship.
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