Given the current obsession with being famous (as opposed to being well-known for being talented), might I suggest that any “wannabe famous” people give east Africa a try for a while. You will soon tire of having to say “hello” to everyone, constantly having to be happy and smiley and constantly being shouted out. Okay, I admit if you’re famous they probably shout your name rather than “mzungu” so it may be a little better, but probably not much!
The general consensus amongst my fellow volunteers (bearing in mind most of them are cool young things) is that if that’s what it’s like to be famous you can stick it!
I’ve moved to the volunteer house for a week because my nice friends invited me – aaah! Our numbers have dwindled to the point that there’s three of them rattling round a house which can accommodate over 20 people so they invited me to come round.
The good points of this are:
I get a pretty nice dinner every night
I don’t have to spend a fortune on taxis after dark
I have nice company for chats and general hanging out-ness
The bad points are:
The shower is a cold dribble
The mattress is made of very old unsupportive foam
The curtains don’t fit the windows
However it is really nice to have some company and we’ve all said “good bye” to so many people we can be sad and lonely together – it’ll be dreadful when they go on Saturday because although the new people are perfectly nice we just don’t have the same connection.
Rather excitingly the four of us are going to be painting a school later this week. The school has been built using money that one of the girls fundraised and has gone up in less than four weeks which is pretty impressive – it’ll be so cool to get it finished.
Okay so Tanzania is a male-dominated society and women barely register in terms of social status but I am not in the mood to allow male ignorance continue!
Oh dear, I’ve got a bee in my bonnet! The reason is on Saturday I had to queue for half an hour to use the cashpoint (only one in the entire town was working). It was boiling hot and I was not in the mood. Anyway two guys tried to push in the queue in front of me. I understood enough Swahili to know that they were saying something along the lines of “let’s go in here, the mzungu won’t say anything” – how wrong they were! So in broken Swahili and English (I knew at least one of them spoke English because he’d been talking in English on his mobile a bit earlier) I pointed out the niceties of queuing and that it was totally unacceptable to push in.
Their response was that – as men – they were far more important than me and their time was much more precious! BIG MISTAKE! I pointed out that there was very rude and disrespectful and I would like them to explain to me exactly how come hey were more important than me. By this time there was a fairly interested crowd gathering. Anyway they eventually gave up trying to push in front of me and tried to push in behind me, the lady behind me told them where to get off, as did the woman behind her, the man behind her etc. A victory for manners I think!
