Termite Day

So this yesterday morning I woke up and found my living room floor crawling with insects. A particularly unpleasant experience since there are no lights in my house and I found this out by stumbling onto a couple of them on my way to open a window. But things like that have long ceased to bother me and I had already cavalierly swept them outside and started cooking breakfast when my phone rang.

“Geneva come to the water spout. I want to show you something?”

“Okay, coming.”

What Mama Benny wants me to see is the two enormous buckets of the same insects I just got rid of that she and the librarian have gathered up in the girl's dormitory and are washing the wings off of. Ah yes... I had forgotten that the mating/flying stage of the termite life cycle (arguably the grossest stage) is a delicacy in Tanzanian cuisine. The occasional days when they all spring forth from the damp earth like a zombie hoard are almost holidays. Neither Mama Benny or the librarian do much work and even my grading is periodically interrupted when I am called to the school kitchen (a shack where the school lunches are prepared in pots the size of small hot tubs) to look at something particularly interesting. Maybe its just that Christmas is looming.

The strangest thing about the day, except for the half pound of bugs in a frying pan, is how I behaved like a tourist in my own village. I squirmed, giggled and finally went to get my camera to document the cooking. I made five or six tentative gestures to my mouth with the first one before finally popping it in (Simon, watching me do this, remarks “Madam you are funny!” and Elisius shouts out “Don't eat them Madam! They are bugs!” before breaking into laughter).

The second strangest thing is how delicious termites actually are. They are nice and fatty (you don't even need to add any oil to the pot to cook them), the perfect size for snacking and they have a nice crunch but it's the flavor that really make them. Not exactly spicy but there is a definite zest to them: the closest thing I can think of is puffed pork cracklin's. I think they could catch on.

Anyway...pictures:

 

Mabadiliko Yanaweza/ Change is Possible Boys Conference

The first official Boys Empowerment Conference in Iringa Region Tanzania happened this year the week after Thanksgiving. If you notice a peculiar upswing in your mood (or possibly your libido) that week its likely it was due to the psychic energy of the forty teenage boys we crowded into a small conference room in a Catholic Mission just outside of Mafinga to talk about HIV/AIDS, alcohol and drugs, fatherhood , gender versus sex, gender roles, condoms, masturbation and of course girls, girls, girls, girls! 

It was our second gender empowerment conference in the region (Girl's Empowerment happened in June) and so of course it was a study in contrasts. The essentials were still there: a talent show (including a skit that could have been a three act opera and half a dozen rap songs), opening and closing speeches, certificates of completion, sports and games, and a question and answer session that covered a shocking amount of ground. But in a lot of ways it was really different.

The Girls Conference was an amazing, transformative, near-spiritual experience that culminated in a dance party the likes of which will never be seen again. It was also the logistical equivalent of a week-long game of a whack-a-mole. I am happy to say that Peace Corps volunteers are pretty quick studies though. Boy's conference was exhausting, but it wasn't quite the mad dash we all knew it could have easily been. We also moved away from having a lot of guest speakers and let our Tanzanian “Counter Parts,” the friends and colleagues we brought with us from our village do most of the heavy lifting. 

But of course the biggest difference, no matter how much we talk about gender equality, was that we were dealing with boys and not girls. Tanzanian boys have a wonderful assertiveness and confidence. Not to say that the girls don't have it at all but they don't have it in the metric tons, cartloads, bushels and barrels like the boys do. The boys have machismo, panache and the ability to ask the question “how much masturbation is too much masturbation?” with a completely straight face. It's impossible not to love them for it.

Enjoy some pics below: 

Maxing and relaxing outside after a hard day's condom demonstration.

Can you name all the parts of the penis? In Swahili? These boys can.

The whole gang!

What's in a name?

My next door neighbor Upendo has three boys: Derrick, Dennis and Davis. My academic mistress has a girl and a boy: Ester and Elia. The swahili/english teacher has a boy and a girl: Frankie and Faradja. The school secretary has only a girl but her name is Brightness Bahati Bange. I have two students who sit right next to each other whose names are Katemi Katemi and Juma Juma. In the classroom next door there is Abhassan Hassan, Nock Nock and Raymond Romance. There is Mr. Tayari, whose name means Mr. Ready and of course I round out the the hilarity by having the funniest possible name for the only white teacher in sixteen hundred square kilometers. 

Of Upendo's boys Derrick is the oldest: seven and very solemn. I like to ask him how his problems are (a common greeting here) because he always looks so world weary when he says that they are fine. He is the most respectful, well-behaved seven-year-old I have ever met too. He is enormously kind to his younger brother, very respectful with my things when he comes over to play and how excited he gets when he sees his mom and dad when they come back from work is frankly touching. 

Davis is not quite a month old and obviously excruciatingly adorable. He and Upendo are spending her maternity leave lying together in bed almost all day, nursing, sleeping and snuggling. I've seen them apart exactly once so far. But they welcome visitors at any time of day and he is developing quite a bag of ticks to entertain. So far he can open his eyes all the way, yawn, grab your fingers, mew softly, smile and sigh.

But however much I love Derrick and Davis, Dennis is my favorite child in the world. He and I both arrived in Sadani on the 24^th of November but his birthday is exactly one year before the day I moved in. Dennis isn't an angel like Derrick. He's a little brother and a little spoiled by Derrick, who almost always lets him have his way. He's only just learning to talk and sometimes he comes over while I'm working to play various games with me. In one game we call each others names for an extended periods of time in various emphatic ways: “Neva.” “Dennie.” “NEVA!” “DENNIE!” “Neva!” “Dennie!” “Neva.” “Dennie.” “Nevaaaaaaa.” “Dennnnnnnnnnie.” and so on. In another he touches his nose and I make a beeping noise until he stops or until I run out of breath. In another he points at various things and asks “what?” and I tell him the word for it. In another he sits on my chest and we roar at each other with lions. In another he simply tries to knock the breath out of me while I lie on the floor by sitting on my stomach as hard as he can. For some reason I am actually a huge fan of that last one.