Monthly Mish Mash

"Work for the day of Universal Peace. Strive always that you may be united. Kindness and love in the path of service must be your means."

- `Abdu'l-Baha

I have absolutely no idea what to say but some impulse is driving me to make a post, so I guess things will come as a matter of course. And evidently I'm turning posting into a monthly affair!

The beginning of this week I actually made it to the movies with one of the Baha'i youth. We saw "Dreamgirls," which was quite good. I enjoyed the play a great deal when we saw it at The Rep, but I was afraid that Beyonce would really ruin the movie. She can't act her way out of a paper bag, and I can't stand the sound of her voice. Nevertheless, she did a good enough job that it didn't ruin the rest of the movie. She even sang passably well.

It was so nice to get out of the house without my parents or going to school or going to something that you might as well call work. My social network has collapsed in on itself like a neutron star with practically everyone I know graduated and moved away or something to that effect, even sometimes driven away or forgotten by my own lack of attention. Unfortunately, my university is so non-traditional that it's a bit difficult to forge any sort of friendship. Everyone (myself included) comes to class and then goes back to their other life. Campus life exists in an odd sort of form, but I did the extracurricular activities thing in high school and now I feel too old for them or maybe just uninterested altogether.

My damnable glasses have broken again. They broke in Africa, so I bought another pair and now these have broken. I guess the arms of glasses aren't made to be particularly durable or maybe I'm just especially rough on them. I'll go the weekend being essentially blind because our optometrist is closed until Monday. I'm supposed to be doing a theatrical sort of thing at the Baha'i Centre for our third Sunday devotionals, so now I'll be holding the script in my face and peering at the audience!

Mitra just sent an e-mail about making breakfast on Saturday morning, which conjured up nice memories. I was always hours behind everyone else for breakfast on every other day of the week but I tried to make it for Saturday and Sunday breakfasts, mostly because they were substantially later. I can recall rolling out of the mosquito net, tossing on some wrinkled pajamas and jostling down the stairs, hitting the third (?) from the top which was loose and always made a noise in the process. Put a tea bag in the cup, pour in the hot water, grunt a greeting to everyone, grab a chapati, snag a chunk of homemade cheese, spread it out, put on some eggs, put on some bacon or avocado if we had them, and slowly begin to wake up. So often life here seems to be ordered around things, appointments. It's sort of irritating sometimes.

This evening I went to dinner with my parents (Friday tradition), two aunts and an uncle. My mother had originally planned to go to Ireland with my two aunts and another friend. Then the plan changed to me and my father meeting her in Scotland after Ireland. And now things have changed altogether, and we're discussing the possibility of the whole family going to Ireland and Scotland. It will certainly be the most grandiose vacation we've ever taken and, as my aunt pointed out, probably one of the last we will take together as a family. I'm really looking forward to it myself, and I know my mother is definitely excited about it.

Today, I received a package in the mail from a friend of mine in New York. She mailed me a big batch of cookies as her contribution to my "war on homework." This was a greatly appreciated gesture, and it's these random acts of kindness that temporarily lift your spirits and keep you happy and hopeful.

At least until your glasses break. =P

Leia Mais…

Hail to the Chief

"Until all nations and peoples become united by the bonds of the Holy Spirit in this real fraternity, until national and international prejudices are effaced in the reality of this spiritual brotherhood, true progress, prosperity and lasting happiness will not be attained by man."

- `Abdu'l-Baha

I have been having some really weird dreams about Tanzania. Last night I had a dream about returning to Tanzania. I guess the premise was that I'd only returned to the U.S. for a short period of time like I did in August and now I was returning to my service post. For some reason I thought I was supposed to return on January 29th but then someone told me I was supposed to have gone on January 23rd. I completely tore up my room in a horrible panic looking for the ticket and then when I finally found it, the ticket - for AtlanticAir, does that even exist? - said January 23rd. ThenI woke up!

A few nights ago, I dreamed I was elected the President of Tanzania. Apparently there was a national sensation about a mzungu (white person) being elected to the presidency. I was busy going around Dar es Salaam visiting the homes of the Baha'is trying to figure out if I was allowed to be a Baha'i and president at the same time. I remember visiting so many of the friends. Some of them were happy about it, some of them were upset and others were just flat out yelling at me, as if it were my fault I was elected.

Anyway, while I was in Tanzania I tried to keep up with the countries and states of origin of the people who were visiting my blog. It was interesting and encouraging to me to see how many "international" visitors there were because I know first hand how much of a change in attitude toward the world you can have just by exposure to people of different cultures, even if it is through personal thoughts and other sorts of exposure that blogs can provide. You can also draw a lot of conclusions by looking to see which countries visitors came from - most were in the developed world or countries where there is an emphasis on information technology (India, China, etc.). There are huge gaps when it comes to Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, South America and Southeast Asia. An explanation could be that the blog is in English or something to that effect, but still I think it's interesting to see what might be construed as the lack of diversity in the diversity of people who visited!

I've made some little maps here of the countries and U.S. states of origin of a lot of the people who have visited the blog. For those of you who are uncomfortable with the idea of trackers and what not, don't worry! It's not like it tells me who you are. =P It just says what country of U.S. state/Canadian province you're from and the town you're in. That's it!

Leia Mais…

Adjust Your Vision

"O Man of Two Visions! Close one eye and open the other. Close one to the world and all that is therein, and open the other to the hallowed beauty of the Beloved."

- Bahá'u'lláh

Well, I'm feeling considerably better about school now. I met with the new coordinator of my degree programme last week, and I feel confident that he's going to actually take the department places. Before, everything lacked the sort of energy, optimism and forward movement that he's been able to bring. His classes are engaging but more importantly I can tell already that he genuinely cares about the students in the programme. We've already basically remapped my degree to be more in line with what I want to do, and we're working on some programmes to where I'm not limited to the very limited language offerings at my university to satisfy the fairly hefty language requirements for my degree. The fact that he's helping the students focus themselves on creating a degree that will offer practical assistance when we get into the "real world" is one of the best things that can be done at our university with so many non-traditional students, and I'm really pleased that he's securing money for us to study abroad and attend various conferences around the country on relevant topics.

I'm going to be concentrating on education and development for my degree, and I'm seriously thinking about a minor in Middle Eastern studies. I imagine that will take me to the Middle East at some point for study abroad. The coordinator is in the process of studying Arabic, which I think would be a fantastic if complicated language to pick up. I'd much rather learn Persian, but I think the opportunities for that are fairly limited since it's probably not safe for me to go to Iran, not least of which because I'm an American and a Bahá'í.

Speaking of which, just as important to me was the professor's respect for me as a member of the Bahá'í Faith. He has included "activism" as part of the requirements for the class, which sent up a red flag for me because we're not supposed to get involved in these sorts of political charged debates and activities that seem to dominate "activism" on college campuses. After he listened to my reasoning, he explained that I didn't have to participate in anything that would put me a position I wasn't comfortable with and that the activism of the class wasn't politically oriented.

In addition, when I introduced myself to the class, he encouraged me to identify myself as a Bahá'í (I'm still a little shy to do so after returning from a country with such a large and sometimes hostile Muslim population that it wasn't always safe or appropriate to do so) and explain the Faith to the class when he discovered that so few of them had ever heard of it. He encouraged the same thing during our Model Arab League/Model United Nations team meeting this evening and asked me to specifically highlight my year of service in East Africa and my reasons for doing it. It's important to me that he's so enthusiastic about exposing the students here in the traditionally religiously conservative South to something that's different from what they've heard and seen not just because more people know about my religion now but also because it helps broaden the vision in a place where vision tends to be quite willfully narrow.

Leia Mais…

The Struggle

It's 2:45 AM, and I can't sleep. Unfortunately I'm very poor at regulating my sleeping pattern. There's always something that keeps me up late and then I end up sleeping in late, which throws the whole schedule off the next day. It's a vicious cycle.

Every Martin Luther King, Jr. Day there's some depressing story plastered across the washingtonpost.com website, which serves as my home page. This year it indicated that something like 15% of college students think that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech is about abolishing slavery. Maybe 15% isn't a very large number of students, but should we have anyone going into college without knowing what that speech is about? If they've managed to live 18+ years of their lives without that fairly simple piece of knowledge then it makes me wonder what else they don't know.

At any one given time at my university there are probably more remedial writing and mathematics classes than the entry-level writing and mathematics classes themselves. It's just mind-boggling to me how people have gone through at least 12 years of education without gaining fundamental writing and mathematics skills. And I do mean fundamental - it doesn't take a Faulkner to get into Composition I or an Archimedes to get into College Mathematics. What's more there are three levels of remedial classes and apparently people have had to take all three of them before being able to take the actual class itself. The obvious exception to these sorts of things is people with a learning disability, but there aren't enough people with a learning disability to account for all of these remedial classes.

Speaking of university, it's amazing how much we have to spend on textbooks. I've spent at least $250, which is cheap because some of the books I already had because my university's professors are too lazy to use updated material and stay on the cutting edge, preferring instead to use the same transparencies (not even PowerPoint) for at least a decade before realizing that information changes. I understand that some Virginia congressman is trying to create something like a digital database of textbooks, which I suppose is a good idea. What would be better would be policy makers finally recognizing the value of college education and putting enough money into helping students get there, giving them a proper foundation before they get there and insuring that there are high standards for the quality of education at the institutions themselves. I know a few tenured professors who need the boot!

I have honestly struggled to go back to school this week. I don't know if it's because sometimes it seems like an exercise in futility or I'm afraid to go back after taking the Africa break or just downright disillusionment or something else along those lines. Mitra's advice was to take the bit between my teeth and show them who I am, which really seems to be the best way of going about things if only I could find that necessary "oomph" to get going. I keep trying to remind myself of all the African friends I made who wanted so desperately to attend university, but there's just some sort of intense malaise that's settled over me that prevents me from getting fired up about anything.

Leia Mais…

Day 311: The Return

"Prejudice is an emotional commitment to an untruth."

- Dr. Magdalene Carney

I've been under increasing international pressure to update this blog. People have employed various methods of coercion ranging from a comment to a phone call to threatening physical violence if I don't do it right now. Hence, I'm updating. But if you're looking for an update about my trip to western Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya then you're going to have to wait. Not only would that take most of a day to compile, I'm saving a lot of stories for a series of devotionals I'll be holding to share experiences about my trip. So if you want to hear about it all, then the first one is on January 13.

The question on everyone's mind is: "Are you happy to be home?". Unfortunately, the answer is less straight forward than one might expect. Of course I'm happy to be home and see my friends and family but I also left behind friends and family. To be honest, I didn't think I would miss Africa very much at all. I knew I'd deeply miss the Sabets but the place itself left me so frustrated at times that I was looking for a way out. The corruption, scandal and attitude of people launched a three-prong attack on the hope I had for Africa and as the days dragged on my optimism dragged down. However, now that I'm not there, it's a bad case of not knowing what you have until it's gone.

So far I've been deeply unhappy about having to leave, which brings along with it all sorts of attending depression and regrets. I'm slowly getting over that as I readjust to life in the United States, but I think I will be in a permanent state of limbo about our lifestyle now that I've seen and been in the "other" side where development is at a pace of two steps forward, one step back. And that's just not going to help things because God knows I was cynical enough in the first place! =P But somewhat uplifting was the Baha'i conference on social and economic development that I recently attended where I had the opportunity to meet some of the Baha'is who are actively working around the world to tackle the social and economic ills facing society. There is work being done but it's pace will condemn hundreds of millions to an unnecessary death.

Samir and I were discussing the other day that the supremacy of the United States is on the decline. He identified the loss of our competitive edge in sports as the most obvious harbinger of the loss of our competitiveness in other areas, but signs are already cropping up that point to the decline of economic might and the failure of our education system. The world without a dominant super power will be dangerous but far more dangerous is the fact that our social ills are eating at the vitals of every society on Earth. The decline is not just national but global.

The more contact I have with younger generations the more obvious that seems. Our youth seem destined to fail society in the long-run by neglecting to recognize the source of its illness. There seems to be a sharp disparity between the people concerned about and actively working toward social justice between just my own generation and the one reaching adolescence now, and I truly feel they will barter away the morality and vitality of humankind in exchange for the materialism and earthly comfort that dominates their everyday lives. Whether or not it's their fault or the fault of their parents for instilling those values in them is irrelevant. What's more important is the action that's taken now - which will be far more reactive than it should be - to address the situation and ensure that the world is still around in fifty years.

But, hey, it's got to get worse before it gets better, right?

I have returned to Little Rock to find out that my entire department at the university seems to have vanished. It seems that there's a single professor coordinating and teaching everything. How can one guy run a degree programme? As if scheduling classes wasn't difficult before, now it's next to impossible. God only knows when I'll be able to graduate now. I have some very specific classes that I have to take and with only one professor teaching who knows when they'll actually be offered, or if the degree programme itself will even be continued. In fact, one of the classes seems to have been reduced from an entire semester of lecture to ten days abroad during the summer. With the shift in my concentration to education & development I'll have to backtrack a few things, but it looks like it'll be independent study. And with just the one guy (I'm assuming), I'll basically be paying them to teach myself.

This is all speculation until the university reopens on Monday and I can determine the specifics; nevertheless, it's really stressing me out. How am I going to graduate now? Will I have to switch majors? Transfer schools? And why would you just up and reduce the size of a department like that, especially "international studies" in an age like this? I'm worried I may just have to settle on a political science degree. Or pay thousands of dollars to teach myself international studies. =/

Leia Mais…

Day 243: United Nations Day

"By linking material progress with fundamental spiritual aspirations, by appealing to those universal values which enable the individual to transcend narrow self-interest, the peoples of the world can be empowered to translate high-minded ideals and principles into constructive, sustained actions for their own well-being and the betterment of their communities."

- "Toward a Development Paradigm for the 21st Century," Baha'i International Community

Our United Nations Day event is finally over! What a relief! There are some pictures up on the Flickr site.

At first I was convinced that the event was going to turn into a huge disaster. We'd put such an extraordinary amount of resources and the public image of the Faith on the line that I was very nervous about how things would turn out here. After experiencing a vicious African form of Murphy's Law while organizing the National Baha'i Convention and the Inter-Institutional Conference I knew that anything could happen at anytime.

Thanks to traffic we arrived a mere half an hour before the event was scheduled to start to find a few of the panelists hanging around outside the hall. We discovered that the man responsible for the halls, who has been a constant thorn in our side, had locked the hall and left his mobile number attached to it. When we first called, he didn't pick up. And then after ten minutes of constantly calling, someone appears who can open the hall for us. We'd assumed that the inside had been set up for us and it was locked to prevent someone from disturbing things, but we soon found out that wasn't the case. Besides the desks and chairs naturally found in a lecture hall there were no chairs or tables for the panelists and materials.

Mitra dashed off to take care of some of the logistical matters while I worked to get the projector and technical things taken care of. Just as we got the projector adjusted and people were starting to trickle in, the power went out. Luckily the microphones and projector worked on a battery, but there was only enough to use one of them so we stuck with the microphones. At 2:00 PM when the event was scheduled to start we'd just gotten the room arranged and taken care of but we were missing several panelists, the chairperson and attendees! The room was literally empty except for maybe six people. At that point I started to panic. But half an hour later, the room was filling up, and we had all of our panelists but one. We left one of the Baha'i youth outside to direct people inside, and Mitra got the show on the road with opening remarks.

The event was to commemorate United Nations Day, which is actually on Tuesday but it's not practical to hold something like this during the week, especially since it will probably be Eid al Fitr (عيد الفطر). The theme for the panel discussion was "The Role of Family & Youth in Establishing Brighter Communities" with a sub-theme of achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Our panelists were Hon. Stella M. Manyanya, member of Parliament; Ms. Elieshi Lema, publisher and author of "Parched Earth"; Mr. Killian Nango, chairperson of the Youth of United Nations Association of Tanzania; Mrs. Sohaila Loftus of the Baha'is of Tanzania; Dr. J. Mwani, senior lecturer with the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at the University of Dar es Salaam; Dr. Adeline Kimambo, Director of the Christian Social Services Council and former member of the Board of the Tanzania Commission for AIDS (TACAIDS); and Ms. Shalli Tumaini, Minister for Gender and Women's Empowerment of the student government of the University of Dar es Salaam.

Each of the panelists gave a presentation about 10 minutes in length (some more, some less) on the topic, and then the floor was opened to comments, discussion and questions and answers. One thing we learned was that seven panelists and 10 minutes each is way too much. Next time around we have to focus on less panelists and higher quality presentations because people were getting restless at some points through the event, although I suppose the lack of electricity and the fact that it was hot didn't help a whole lot. In fact at some point some people were asking if they were going to get paid for coming! Unfortunately, that is a culture that has developed around conferences and symposiums here - participants are paid, instead of the other way around. Everything is a handout in Tanzania.

Probably the most controversial presentation was Dr. Mwami, who argued that colonialism had broken the family system that was in place before and thereby led to many of the problems that Tanzanian society faces today. I can't speak about whether or not that's true, but Sohaila stood up and blasted that theory in the end, saying that the country has had independence for a long time now and that continuing to use the crutch of colonialism is never going to let the country advance. I tend to agree, but I also thought it was extremely important that Dr. Mwami was present and delivered a presentation that was a "dissent," at least for the sake of interesting discourse.

In the end we had about 100 people attend, which included (surprisingly) many students from the university. At the end, many of them pledged their support to a brainchild of Mitra's that we should form a team of interested parties to carry the dialogue forward and eventually refine the ideas into actionable items that can be presented to the government. I warned her that we would be taking on more than we could handle if we did that, but she plans to just get the ball rolling and try to get DARUSO (the student government) to take the reins. We'll see how that goes.

After the event there was a reception, which offered us an opportunity to touch base with a number of the organisations who attended and for the audience members to mingle with the panelists. Overall, I would call it an astounding success for us. We put a lot of hard work into it, and it seems to be paying off. We're working now with members of the press to publicize the event, and more than likely the Baha'i World News Service will also cover it.

When we finished with everything at the university, we headed to an Ethiopian restaurant to meet Susan Lamb, an Australian Baha'i who is serving as Chief of Staff of the Prosector's Office at the Rwanda Tribunal in Arusha. She was visiting her brother in Dar es Salaam and graciously invited us to dinner. The food was fantastic, especially the coffee! Those Ethiopians know their coffee. It was nice to finally meet Susan after knowing for so long that she was in Arusha but never having an opportunity to see her.

Today, I was supposed to go to Kilwa Kisiwani, but I decided against it at the last minute. I was so absolutely exhausted from the United Nations Day celebration that whatever adventurous spirit had motivated me to go was gone. There's no way I would have been able to survive in a bus of questionable quality on roads of even more questionable quality. Mitra headed to Zanzibar to spend some time with the rest of the family, who went there on Saturday morning, and I slept in.

When I woke up I decided to walk to a shopping centre a little over a kilometre away to get some cash from the ATM and that turned out to be a big mistake. It was in the mid-90's today and the humidity and sun were brutal. It was so hot and nasty that the horizon was obscured. The roads I was walking on were so dry and glaringly hot that I felt like I was trekking across the Sahara. By the time I got back home my shirt was literally completely drenched in sweat. A cold shower has never felt better! Really I don't know how people here manage to survive the summertime with all of the physical labour and walking they have to do. I guess I'm just not cut out for it!

The rest of the day I spent following up various things from the event yesterday, so it turned out to be a good thing that I'd stayed home. This evening, as I was bringing dinner to the table for Sohaila and myself, the dish simply fell apart in my hands and sent ghormeh sabzi splattering all over the Persian carpet. We opted to go out to eat after that and ended up at a place with American-inspired cuisine. It was nice to spend some more time with Sohaila, who is always full of amusing stories and wonderful insight.

The rest of the week I anticipate spending getting ready for my trip to western Tanzania and Uganda. And resting. Definitely plenty of resting.

Leia Mais…

Day 240: May Saba & Home Visits

"We have a fixed time for you, O peoples. If ye fail, at the appointed hour, to turn towards God, He, verily, will lay violent hold on you, and will cause grievous afflictions to assail you from every direction. How severe, indeed, is the chastisement with which your Lord will then chastise you!"

- Baha'u'llah

The past few weeks I've really been trying to concentrate more time on May Saba. I've been putting her to bed and helping her read The Hidden Words and do her homework. What prompted the reconcentration was an explosive argument I had with her about her attitude in dealing with me and her mother, especially when we're trying to help her with something. I don't think the particulars need to be mentioned, but it still seemed unfair for me to expect her to revolutionize her attitude without playing a more active role in the development of her character myself. Not to mention I'll be leaving soon, and I'm going to miss her a lot, so it seems like a good idea to spend as much time with her as I can.

One night while I was trying to help her understand one of the Hidden Words, she started poking me in the face and goofing off, so I tried to steer her back to the task at hand. Finally she asked, "Why are you so patient with me?"

After pointing out that just a few days ago I was yelling at her, I went on to reply, "You're patient with the ones you love, right?"

After a moment of silence she finally looked away and admitted that she wasn't always, but after a little encouragement decided that maybe she could make a better effort. Then she asked me if I was bothered by people who teased me about my weight, and I told her I was sometimes but usually not. In a huff, she declared that she didn't know why I had to be so "virtuous" all the time!

The night before last I stayed up until 11:00 PM helping her with a report she had to write on Australia. Because she didn't do enough research in a previous assignment, we had to redo that assignment and then begin writing the report. Based on her knowledge and my knowledge in fifth grade I really wonder what on Earth they're teaching these children! There seems to be waaay too much emphasis on playing games and sports and having fun rather than academics. She's learning things now that I'd already covered in 2nd grade. I had to explain the three branches of government in most modern democracies and then assist her with research about Australia's particular form of government (federal parliamentary democracy, in case you were wondering), which I knew next to nothing about. It took a long time, but after laying down the ground rules about listening to me when I was trying to explain something she was exceptionally attentive and (I think) learned a lot.

I also went with Mitra to the parent-teacher conference with May's teacher, and I think I was mistaken for Dr. Sabet, which happens every once in awhile. We also went to one of her soccer matches. It was pretty amusing to watch the children who attended affluent schools running around in their well-tailored uniforms getting the mess beat out of them by the students from local schools who had uniforms and shoes that were literally falling apart. It seems that appearance isn't everything in soccer (and a lot of other things)!

In terms of Baha'i work, we've mostly been busy organizing the United Nations Day panel discussion at the University of Dar es Salaam. We've been working closely with Shalli, a member of the student government, because the event is being co-hosted with them. The other day we were going around camps glueing up posters. We scaled a hill and had a fantastic view of the city and the ocean (hills are rare in Dar es Salaam) and placed a poster on one of the main lecture halls. A few moments later we hear a bunch of scuffling behind us and yelling, including the obligatory "Hey, mzungu!".

I kept walking, mostly because I don't like being called mzungu, but Mitra turned back. It turned out that the man supposedly responsible for these particular lecture halls had taken it upon himself to march over and rip our poster off the wall! He was giving this big long ranting speech about how foreigners come and think they can do anything until Shalli appeared and really ripped him a new one. Tanzanians aren't really the type to get mad about things, but wow, she really laid into him. After she finished with him, she stomped off and we followed while she explained that he was just "a foolish old man" that saw foreigners and thought he could get some money. It really gives me hope to see brief moments when Tanzanians themselves can identify inequity and foolish behavior and boldly stand up to denounce it.

Later on, we ran into more trouble when the man whose entire job it is to put up posters and banners around the university refused to do so unless we paid him. This mentality of expecting to be paid extra when a white foreigner shows up really gets to me sometimes. Aside from being unfair, it does nothing to empower local people or uplift their dignity that each time me or someone like me comes sauntering by their immediate response is to ask for some kind of handout. Just because I may or may not have more money than you doesn't mean you're entitled to do everything in your power to extort some of it from me, especially to do your own job!

Unfortunately, we had to pay him, otherwise it wouldn't get done. The amount of money we've had to spend on stupid things like this just to put on one event is mind-boggling. We've spent more than half our entire annual budget trying to hold one relatively small event due singularly and solely to the inefficiency and corruption of the African continent. On some days when I'm feeling like a defeatist I wonder if it wouldn't be better if every single foreign person in Africa got up and went home. I know that's not the solution, but God knows people make you feel like it is sometimes.

Dar es Salaam just recently launched the fifth cycle of growth of its intensive programme of growth, so tonight we started doing our part of the plan. The cluster has been split into teaching teams based on social relationships. For example, I'm with the Sabets and another family that lives nearby and we associate with on a regular basis. We're engaging in a campaign of home visits during the expansion phase to invite people to devotional meetings and increase the community of interest, and then the consolidation phase will focus on more home visits and bringing people into the other core activities.

Tonight, we had our first two home visits. We visited two people that lived near each other, Rashidi and Janet. We're very good friends with Janet, and we drop by her house often so it wasn't so much of an unusual thing for us. The Sabets had met Rashidi before, but this was my first time seeing him. He's somehow related to one of our teaching teammates, and he owns one of the local business-oriented newspapers/publishing companies. He described himself as a person that didn't believe in prayer, but nevertheless believed God was "in everything." The way he spoke was very eloquent and touched upon many principles that he shares in common with the Baha'i Faith. As Dr. Sabet said, he was "very enlightened." We invited him and his sons to our devotional meeting at the end of the month, and also extended an invitation to our event on Saturday.

At Janet's house, we had a good time (as always). She owns a travel agency, a restaurant and cultural centre, and a few other things. She's a very good friend of the Baha'is, and she's been working with Dr. Sabet to try to find a plot for the local Baha'i Centre. She gave us the obligatory cake and tea, and we shared stories and enjoyed one another's company. We invited her to our devotional and she happily accepted (she loves coming to the house for devotionals), promising to bring her sister and also stop by the house for dinner next week to meet Hossein's sister. Before we left, she insisted that we pray together to bless her home. I chanted a prayer, and Janet prayed fervently for a few relatives, for us, and for a new plot for the local Baha'i Centre.

Two successful home visits in one night makes you feel really good about the Five Year Plan and the direction of your community, especially when they're spent with such wonderful and spiritual people.

Tomorrow the house will be stuffed with guests. Hossein's sister and brother-in-law are coming from Zambia. They're going with Hossein to Zanzibar on Saturday morning and Mitra will follow on Sunday after the U.N. Day event. We're also hosting Sohaila from Iringa, who is serving as the Baha'i panelist at the event on Saturday. Since the Sabets will be out of town for this weekend and half of next week (Monday and Tuesday are public holidays - Eid el Fitr), I decided that I would take a short trip to Kilwa Kisiwani, a World Heritage Site down the coast from Dar es Salaam. Since I'm going by myself, God only knows what sort of "adventures" I'll run into but I'm really looking forward to the trip. I return that following Saturday and then head for western Tanzania and Kampala on Monday.

Leia Mais…

Day 231: Post Office Mayhem Revisited

"...ordinary people all over the world, recognizing that no-one would escape the effects of a nuclear war, have rightly asserted that peace is everyone's concern."

- Baha'i International Community, "Creating a Universal Culture of Human Rights"

Mitra and I had to go to the post office today. We ran into two good friends of ours, Mr. Crippling Inefficiency and Ms. Mass Chaos.

Mitra had to send a package to her son who is doing his year of service in the Kigoma area, and we also had to mail 119 invitations for United Nations Day. The woman at the information desk told us to go to either window 11 or 12. When we showed the letters to the woman at window 11, she told us to go outside and around the corner, which I knew from my previous trip to the post office meant she was sending us to the parcel area. Nevertheless, I have learned not to complicate things by asking questions.

At the parcel area, there were two lines. One was much longer than the other, and we were told to get into the long line by one of the postal employees loitering around doing nothing whatsoever. When we were finally called, we were told that they didn't handle parcels going to destinations inside the country and the parcel area didn't handle letters. Basically, we were in the wrong line and we needed to get in the other line. When we got to the end of that line, the woman refused to speak English. Thankfully, Mitra knows enough Swahili to converse in it on a basic level. This woman told us that she wasn't going to send the package because it wasn't wrapped in brown paper despite the fact that the half dozen other packages she had just taken weren't wrapped in brown paper.

Back at the information desk, the woman manning it directed Mitra to where she could find some brown paper and told me to go back to window 11 or 12 to mail the letters. Back at window 11, the woman decided that this time she would take the letters instead of sending me around the corner for no reason. After counting the letters (I guess to make sure I wasn't lying about how many stamps I wanted?), I paid her and she gave me 119 stamps and a dish of water. Mitra returned with her package wrapped in brown paper and offered to help, but I thought it would be better that I start stamping alone while she went and stood in line in the parcel area.

Halfway through the stamping, Mitra returned and helped me finish the rest. After being told "subili" (wait) a few times, the woman had taken her package. Back at window 11 with our stamped letters, the woman handed us our receipt and told us we should drop the letters "outside." Outside, we found a big box marked "DSM Mail Only," and after a few questions we determined that was where they were supposed to go. We hoped. After saying goodbye to Mr. Inefficiency and Ms. Chaos, we got back in our car (which thankfully hadn't been stripped and/or stolen) and headed off to finish our errands.

Speaking of Mr. Inefficiency and Ms. Chaos, it was reported in the paper today that the power situation would be getting worse, even though they've been saying for weeks it was going to improve in mid-October. The two major hydroelectric dams, Mtera and Kidatu, are scheduled to stop working in 15 days because the water in them is so low. They have a combined capacity of producing 280 megawatts of electricity but right now they're only producing 33 megawatts during the day and 48 megawatts at night. In 15 days, they'll be producing 0 megawatts and five regions in the northwest of Tanzania will be completely without power.

Although the majority of my service here has been wonderful and the friends have been especially cooperative, I have run into one consistent problem and that is that many people don't accord me very much respect, if any at all. I can't get around the fact that I'm "just" a year of service volunteer, but I'm also the Secretary of a committee of the National Spiritual Assembly. My work is constantly frustrated by people dismissing my requests and being all around uncooperative because, after all, I'm "just" a year of service volunteer. I know that I'm only here temporarily and that most volunteers don't end up on national committees or function as the secretary of anything, but that's not much of an excuse for the way I'm occassionally treated. The secretaries of the National Institute Board or the National Literature & Publishing Committee aren't made to jump through the same kinds of hoops that I have to, and I know my counterparts in Kenya, India, Ameria or wherever else aren't made to do the same thing, either.

But, as Mitra sometimes reminds me, that's a nag.

News is often a little slow here, but we found out about North Korea's nuclear weapon test shortly after it happened. I was furious, as if I had some personal stake in the whole ordeal. I can't believe that they have gotten away with it so easily when we invaded Iraq (supposedly) on the mere suspicion that they had weapons of mass destruction. Now we're just standing around puffing a lot of hot air when a nation far more dangerous than Iraq actually tests the most destructive of them all! Of course we all know now that we didn't invade Iraq for weapons of mass destruction (although everyone seems to be in denial or too afraid to say anything without being beaten over the head about terrorists, 9/11 and national security) but it's the principle of the thing.

So now the world is going to get together and slap some more sanctions on North Korea. The whole regime of sanctions laid on them before this didn't seem to bother them too much, and they still managed to develop nuclear weapons so I don't know what makes people think these new sanctions are going to affect them anymore. I guess as a Baha'i I shouldn't be advocating the use of force but the blatant hypocrisy of my own government's foreign policy really sets me off sometimes. And what makes countries think it's a good idea to do this anyway? What are you going to do with a nuclear weapon anyway? Use it and thereby guarantee your own complete and absolute destruction? Nevertheless, I'm sure South Korean and Japanese politicians are now behind closed doors discussing the very real possibility of developing their own nuclear "deterrents."

Leia Mais…

Day 230: A Day at the Beach

"Pointing her finger unto My head, she addressed all who are in heaven and all who are on earth, saying: 'By God! This is the Best-Beloved of the worlds, and yet ye comprehend not. This is the Beauty of God amongst you, and the power of His sovereignty within you, could ye but understand. This is the Mystery of God and His Treasure, the Cause of God and His glory unto all who are in the kingdoms of Revelation and of creation, if ye be of them that perceive.'"

- Baha'u'llah

Yesterday we took an afternoon trip to the beach after everyone had finished their morning business at the Baha'i Centre. I neglected to bring the appropriate change of clothes, so I decided to just walk in the water a bit along the shore. Hossein and May were trying to convince me to get in but I held fast and decided to just play in the sand with Mitra. She was making a mountain and decorating it with shells (while I was making a dam and attempting, unsuccessfully, to keep the waves back), so I decided to go down closer to the water to find some for her.

When I got close to the water, Hossein starts walking up beside me with a look in his eye. I knew immediately he was going to try to push me in, so I better positioned myself so he knew I knew what he was up to and he abandoned his attempt. After a few minutes, he motioned me over toward a spot a little deeper, where there was a bit of a drop-off in the water, saying there were a lot of shells there. I thought surely he wouldn't try the same thing again, but I was wrong. He shoved me this time and down I went! When I'd regained my footing, I rushed and tackled him. In the process, my glasses came off and went drifting off into the ocean!! I was blind! Luckily, Mitra came splashing down into the water (an amazing feat since she doesn't like the water) and found them while Hossein and I were blindly splashing around trying to get them before they were dragged away. With the strength of the waves that day, it was practically a miracle that Mitra found them. After a few groping attempts in the water, she just reached down and non-chalantly picked them up as if they had been in front of her the whole time.

After a bit of swimming around with Hossein, I drifted closer to the shore with May Saba. Mitra had decided to walk around a little in the waves since she was already soaking wet from rescuing my glasses. Even though I was in her debt, she made the mistake of splashing at me. I leapt and grabbed her leg "like a crocodile" (according to her) and dragged her into the water. Suffice it to say, we all had a nice day of playing around at the beach.

When we came back home, we'd invited our Auxiliary Board member and husband over for dinner, and they ended up bringing along another Auxiliary Board member and his wife as guests. Mitra cooked some wonderful kabob on the grill, and we had some leftovers from the big devotional meeting we'd had the night before. It was really nice to have some of the friends over, although we found out that one of the brothers of one of the ABMs was kidnapped in Pakistan! What a terrible ordeal! I can't imagine going through a family member being kidnapped, especially so far away in a place like Pakistan. They're completely uncertain what's happened to him, but they're hoping that the security police have just mistakenly taken him for questioning or something.

Today, Mitra and I went to a follow-up and evaluation meeting for International Day of Peace at the Ministry of Information, Culture and Sport. After the obligatory finger-pointing about things that went wrong, we were able to have an honest assessment of the event and begin planning for the future. Unfortunately, the President of Tanzania decided to set aside International Day of Peace as Tanzania Sports Day, so this year we were stuck with a chaotic last minute attempt of trying to merge the two events. This year, it's hoped that the head start will help. So far we've formed two working groups within the larger committee to handle the issues of sports-related activities and peace-related activities separately and set meetings for November for the working groups and December for the whole Committee. My only regret is that I won't be here to see it beyond its initial planning stages.

Leia Mais…

Day 229: On the Road Again

"I am, I am, I am the Promised One! I am the One whose name you have for a thousand years invoked, at whose mention you have risen, whose advent you have longed to witness, and the hour of whose Revelation you have prayed God to hasten. Verily I say, it is incumbent upon the peoples of both the East and the West to obey My word and to pledge allegiance to My person."

- The Bab

There should be (God willing) some new pictures on the Flickr site.

This past weekend, against May's vocal protests, Mitra and I went to Iringa in the mountains of the southern highlands area of Tanzania. We were there to conduct external affairs training, and I also delivered a presentation on intensive programmes of growth and consulted with the cluster coordinating committee of Iringa.

Unfortunately the most reputable bus company in the country has been declining in quality quite severely lately. Some of the stories the friends have been bringing back about their trips have caused me to concern, and, of course, I wasn't disappointed on our trip...

In the beginning, the bus was late even leaving Dar es Salaam because we got caught in traffic related to there being no functioning traffic lights during the day and not enough traffic police to direct the flow of traffic. Then barely outside of Dar, the bus broke down. Something was wrong with the gear box so we could only go in third gear. There was some discussion about turning back to Dar es Salaam, but the driver decided to go to Morogoro (2 1/2 hours away) and "see what happens." I guess he thought if he kept driving the bus would magically fix itself. When we got to Morogoro, after driving in third gear the whole way, they did some tinkering around and seemed to fix it a little bit, but it still wasn't functioning properly, which meant a 7-8 hour trip took us 10 hours.

Along the way, Mitra and I discussed dreams, the Baha'i community, Africa, homosexuality and the Faith and women on the Universal House of Justice among other things. For the most part we dozed, read and did a little preparation for the training.

When we arrived in Iringa, we were retrieved by Sohaila, a member of the Iringa Town community, and taken to her house where we were to stay and conduct the training. Lucky for us, the jacaranda trees were in bloom in Iringa, which meant there were purple blossoms all over the place. With the beautiful weather and surroundings it's not hard to understand why Iringa held such importance to the colonialists and still holds importance to modern-day missionaries. Sohaila's house is at the foot of a rising ridge with large rock formations, which helps to block a bit of the raging wind and give you something nice to look at.

The external affairs training started on Friday evening, shortly after we arrived. In fact, the friends were basically there waiting for us when we showed up at Sohaila's house. We were able to refresh ourselves with a quick wash and some chai and fruits before getting into the material. We're trying to develop a network of public relations officers around the country that we can call on and mobilize especially for the defense of the Faith within the country and in regard to the Baha'is in Iran but also for media efforts with newspapers and radio. The training manual was based on one developed in the U.S. for the Public Information Representatives there, but it took a great deal of modification to make it fit in with local media and what we were trying to create. Iringa proved to be the training ground for the training itself since it was the first time we conducted it. There are even more modifications that need to be made before we give the training again, which will probably be in Dar es Salaam and probaby after I've already returned to the US.

Friday night, I was nearly assassinated by my bunk bed. I put on my pajamas and got ready to get into my nice comfortable bed. When I put my hand on the mattress to ease down the whole thing collapsed down on top of me! After retrieving Mitra and Sohaila we managed to fix it and I got a nice, motionless night of sleep. The next day, Sohaila said when she was inspecting it it fell apart on her again! With a bit of investigation, she determined that her house staff had broken it when they were moving it around, and they were hesitant to tell her. "What should we say?!" they exclaimed. "That we broke the bed?" I suppose so, yes, that would have been the thing to say.

On Saturday, we went to Ruaha Secondary School for its graduation ceremony and 20th anniversary celebration. Like any graduation, there were plenty of speeches but there were also a few dances. One in particular by "The Shake Brothers" was interesting. I tried to take some pictures but with the lighting it seems they were moving a little too fast for my camera. =P We got to speak with the year of service volunteers - Annais, Rahan and Ella - for a bit, as well as a woman visiting the school on behalf of the Office of Social and Economic Development in Haifa. She was working on some moral education curriculum and doing a bit of field testing at Ruaha and Banani in Zambia.

Mitra and I got a little bored with the graduation so we wandered around the school a bit. As a member of the Policy Committee, she's planning to do an environmental audit for the school so we were snooping around to see what areas she'd have to focus on when she returned for that purpose. In the kitchens, we were warmly welcomed by the women tending about 30 huge aluminum pots on makeshift fires stuffed full of food for the graduation. We asked for a taste, a little - "kidogo" - and of course we were presented with two heaping plates of pilau and meat, white rice and fried chicken. Although it wasn't quite what we wanted, it did help us avoid the enormous line for lunch later. There must have been 1,000 people there! Freed from having to eat, I was able to catch up with a homefront pioneer and consult a bit with another member of the NTC during lunch, as well as talk to the lady working with OSED about her projects and organize the cluster coordinating committee for a meeting that evening. It seems that work follows you everywhere!

At two points during the graduation, Mitra and I were completely caught off guard by being introduced during the formal programme. While Mitra technically has some connection to the school as a member of its Policy Committee, I have absolutely no connection. But still, it seems that when a mzungu shows up at some function then they must be paraded up front for everyone to see. I imagine it reflected well on the school to have visiting "dignitaries" and "experts" from Dar es Salaam, even if we aren't really anyone in the grand scheme of things. Since we didn't really announce that we were coming, I have no idea how they managed to spot us and work that into the programme. I must have been as red as a beet when they made me stand up!

On Saturday evening, I managed to accomplish my NTC project - a PowerPoint presentation on intensive programmes of growth and collection of information about the activities ongoing in the Iringa cluster. It was a bit of a task trying to assemble the cluster coordinating committee right after the graduation, but I managed to get most of them, the cluster institute coordinator and one of the other members of the NTC. The presentation itself is a bit long (described as "epic" by one of the participants) but walks the friends through the entire intensive programme of growth, from its launch to the four phases in each cycle of growth (planning, expansion, consolidation and reflection) to the end of the cycle and the beginning of the next. Especially important, I think, are the questions it provides participants to assist them in their planning phase. The friends seemed to find it helpful and it assisted in fruitful consultation afterwards when I began collecting information and "capturing the learning" from their efforts so far. Hopefully their challenges and successes can be put together with the information I'll collect when I go to the western part of the country to assist the remaining priority clusters with their own efforts.

We travelled back up the mountain (Ruaha school is at the base of the plateau thing that Iringa town sits on) to Sohaila's house, ate dinner and got a good night's sleep before the external affairs training resumed on Sunday. Thanks to the participants good grasp of English and understanding of the material we were covering, we managed to finish by the early afternoon on Sunday. Mitra and I accompanied the friends into town to the bus stand, laughing and joking all the way. Three Africans, an American and a Persian laughing and talking together managed to turn a few heads, including those of the missionaries who seemed to be wondering who we were and what we were doing on their turf. Mitra and I did a little shopping in the market, got cursed at by a tiny little street boy of no more than five years who we refused to give money to ("Fuck you!" he yelled) and then headed back home. Because there was so much food for dinner, we invited four of the friends from Ruaha school up the mountain to have dinner with us, including two of the year of service volunteers. They stayed fairly late into the night as we swapped stories about Africa, Tanzania and pioneering in general.

The whole time we spent with Sohaila at her house was truly wonderful. She's a delightful woman, and she proved to be an exceptional host. The food was absolutely fantastic but always too much to eat (Persians, go figure)!

On Monday morning, we loaded up and headed back to Dar es Salaam. After stopping at a rest stop built by Muslims to drive business away from the Christians who had built the old rest stop down the road, we heard this God awful crowing from the back of the bus. I turned around and noticed this woman had two chickens with her. On the bus. "Good Lord," I thought. This particular bus company, which I mentioned has been going downhill, seems to have taken a nose dive. Before, they tried to maintain a certain professionalism and insure that no barnyard animals and arm loads of vegetables and fruit and household items were hauled onto the bus, but it seems that policy has gone out the window. Now they're just like every other bus company in Tanzania.

Next time I take a trip, I feel certain I'll find myself sharing a seat with a goat.

Leia Mais…