Day Twenty Seven

Saturday night we went to Janet’s place on the beach for dinner. Her sister from Mali is still in town, so we had food from Mali. It was delicious! A lot of tomatoes were used, so I was happy. I’m sure my parents would die of shock to see the things I’ve eaten since I arrived. I’ve probably eaten more vegetables in the past three weeks than I have in the past three years. Janet had other members of her family over, as well as some of the other Bahá’ís that she knows. Once we’d eaten and socialized a bit, we had a devotional. Imagine a non-Bahá’í organizing a devotional meeting! I sang the version of the short healing prayer that Ameria and Aisha do, which was the first time any of the Tanzanian Bahá’ís have heard me sing. They said I shouldn’t have been hiding the fact that I could sing and liked to sing for so long. One of the other non-Bahá’ís at the dinner said he and his wife would like to have dinner and a devotional, too, so we’re going there on Friday.

What’s been amazing to me is how much the friends do here, and how unafraid they are to have people in their homes. At least twice a week we have someone here at the house, or we go to their home for dinner and prayers or a simple home visit. I’ll be really happy when the Little Rock community gets to the point where we can go to someone’s house on a Thursday and have dinner and say prayers together as a spontaneous expression of our spirituality rather than a defined or laborious exercise.

Yesterday, I went to the American embassy for the first time. When Dermot came into town, he brought the tax forms of some American Bahá’ís living in Iringa and asked me to drop them at the embassy. I should have gone Monday but there was an awful storm. I also took some allergy medicine that made me so sleepy I could barely move.

I’d say the embassy is probably a little more than a mile from the house, so I set originally set out with the intent of walking all the way there. About halfway I decided that it was a terribly ill-conceived plan. It wasn't that humid, but the sun was merciless. I felt like I was being cooked, so I decided to take a taxi. Every day I must have a hundred of them honking at me, but of course they were nowhere in sight. So I had to continue walking until I found one parked under a shade tree.

At the entrance to the Consular Affairs section there’s a little banda with some Tanzanian security guards well-versed in English inside it. One of them stopped me to examine my passport, and then struck up a conversation about how I liked Tanzania, what all I had done so far, if I planned to go on safari, so on and so forth. I’m sure in the process of asking all of these questions with a big smile on his face he was sizing me up or something, but it was at least nice to encounter a friendly security guard. I had to pass through some initial security where my cell phone was taken and my passport examined, and then on to another security checkpoint. The doors are so thick that it takes some serious effort to open and close them! Considering the embassy here was blown up in the 90's, I was a little surprised that security wasn't more prominent. I expected Diplomatic Security personnel with big guns and whatnot, but no such thing. From the road, the embassy looks like a fort, though inside it's very lush and well groomed.

I was ushered into the American Citizens Services booth, which, seemingly like all public areas, is blocked off from the area containing embassy personnel by a thick pane of (I suppose) bullet-proof glass. I slipped the documents to the lady on the other side and after we worked everything out, she asked me how long I’d been here and whether or not I’d registered. I told her I hadn’t, but I’d do it online when I got home. So I have to remember to do that.

I picked up my things on the way out, and the guard at the banda stopped me when I got near the road. “Please, my friend, have a seat while I get you a taxi.” So I sat under the shade of the banda while he flagged down a taxi. On some days it’s kind of fun to haggle with people over prices, but on some days it just gets to be a bother. Just tell me how much something really is and it’ll save us both a lot of trouble. So when the taxi driver dropped me off where I asked him to, he told me, “TSh 6,000.” I said, “I’m not paying you TSh 6,000 to take me a few kilometers. I’m giving you TSh 2,000 and that’s it.” He kind of puffed up like how dare I have the nerve to pay him less than the outrageous and ridiculous price he demanded, but he held his hand out anyway. The joys of Africa. =)

I got into another little spat with May at lunch. There have been plenty of things since the last incident for me to tell her off about; for instance, we were playing checkers and she was upset about losing, so she just wipes her hand over the board and slings the pieces across the room, laughs about it, and tells me to pick them up. But I didn’t say anything. I just got up and left.

At lunch, we’d all finished eating so she was showing us her school pictures that came today. Dr. Sabet put one into a frame but was having trouble with it, so he handed it to me and asked me if I could put it back together. “You have more patience than me,” he said. I started work on it for a second or so before May comes over and tries to rip it out of my hands, saying, “Give me that, you don’t know what you’re doing.” This was one in a long serious of incidents of being treated sub-human by a nine year old girl. She can treat her parents and her servants the way she wants, but she could at least have a fraction of the decency, respect, and courtesy that a Bahá’í child should have when speaking to a guest.

“Who do you think you are talking to me like that?” I asked. “I’m not your servant, and I’m not on your payroll. Don’t speak to me like that.” She started laughing, I guess because she thought it was a joke even though the look on my face should have plainly told her I wasn’t. “Do you see me laughing? It’s not funny; I’m serious. You don’t talk to people like that.” Her parents were paying attention now. Mrs. Sabet looked at her expectantly, waiting for a response, and Dr. Sabet was demanding for her to tell him what she’d said. She didn't say anything, just huffed and puffed and stomped out of the room.

I’ll carry her around the ocean on my shoulders so she can go deeper than she’d be able to go by herself, I’ll chase her around the house, I’ll sing with her, I’ll play checkers with her, and I’ll even watch those insufferable Olsen Twins movies with her, but a person has got to draw a line somewhere. I’ve been trying through less subtle means to instill some manners and respect into her (for instance, I won’t pass her anything down the dinner table unless she says “please” and asks nicely rather than demands) but sometimes it gets to the point where you have to get upset before she realizes what she’s doing. Not only is it just downright disrespectful to treat people the way she does sometimes, but I’m also worried about her own social development. As her own brother asked her mother at the dinner table after one of her fits, “Don’t you worry about what kind of person she’s going to be if she keeps acting that way?”

P.S. - The Internet has been down for three days, and it's still acting a little funny, so please be patient if it takes me a bit to respond to pending e-mails. =) Asante sana.