Brief Update From Ethiopia

Our apologies if you've been checking our blog for updates but found none in the past 3 weeks+. Yes we're both still safe! It's the dire lack of electricity and our engagement with Kitega Community Centre that didn't allow us to post anything. For our friends not on Facebook, do check out our volunteering experience at this <a href="http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=126300&id=746514497">link</a>.

 

We now find ourselves in Ethiopia, our last country before heading back to Singapore in a few weeks' time. This is a vastly different country from Tanzania and Uganda which we traversed through. An ancient Christian nation poorly understood by outsiders (including us), burdened with the dubious honor of 3rd last in UN's HDI index, and suffering from an external image crisis that usually invokes the infamous photograph of a vulture waiting to pounce on a starving girl.

 

But our travel guide rightly stated that Ethiopia's yet safe from violent crime despite the outright-visible crippling poverty we see on the streets, full of treasures (including the biblical Ark of the Covenant), and a fascinatingly foreign country to visit. Whenever electricity permits, will post more updates soon!

Begging Makes You Richer

Met John yesterday on the streets of Nansio when I was out alone buying breakfast. An stout man of imposing stature, he chatted me up amidst my brisk pace, even as I was wary of his intentions. But compassion gave way. John was simply looking for a job and badgered me as he felt I could help. But I felt helpless. Lamentable how decent men like John were looking to work for decent wages, but shortchanged due to lack of employment opportunities. My job in NCSS identifies this as a “service gap” and here in Tanzania, it’ll take years of social enterprise and state intervention in job-creation before such needs can be met.

This contrasts with a story we heard from Ron Rieckenberg whom we met in Moshi town 2 weeks back. An American sinking his roots in Tanzania after marrying a local and immersing himself in NGO-work here, he told us how some beggars were raking in much more money daily as compared to the sweating street vendors peddling their wares, or women who had to endure long dusty walks from their villages everyday to sell fruits or firewood in town. Thus the moral dilemma of whether to buy something you don’t need from a street vendor harassing you for a sale, or contributing to the possible pile of a blind man or hapless-looking mother. But since it’s not a zero sum, probably a bit of and to both.

Also better managing my struggle with our roles here in Africa. On one hand, you feel real guilty spending big tourist bucks when you know your nearby neighbour is living on less than a dollar a day. On the other, throwing yourself fully to live/eat like the locals or taking the full plunge to work in full-time development work in Africa is a drastic decision that requires a clear calling. It’s telling how most of the foreigners we met so far are involved somehow in NGO work. Maybe our next stop in Uganda tomorrow in a formal volunteering role will help us better understand what we can or cannot do, here in Africa.

Longcut

So we arrived in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, with no agenda except to get to Kampala in Uganda for a short volunteering stint. I notice that a lot of the decisions we make don’t have a lot of logical backing, but anyway in this case we thought it would be ‘fun’ to overland up to Uganda instead of taking the two hour flight. So its taken 17 days and we are not actually there yet….

Total bus rides: 3, 27 hours
Total boat rides: 3, 16 hours
Total recovery days (from the various forms of transport):5
Tours/excursions: 3 days

One good thing about doing it this way is (no, don’t believe that hype about ‘getting to meet and know the locals’ – that only happens if you really live and work with them), that each consecutive place we’ve visited seems to be getting better and better. Maybe we are finally getting ourselves off the track beaten by hoardes of safari going muzungu (tourists) and its getting quieter.

We have just washed up on the shore of Lake Victoria at a place called Bukoba this morning after an overnight boat crossing from another port city called Mwanza. It was looking to be a sad ride because we did not manage to get any sleeping berths and were expecting to sit exhaustedly amongst piles of cargo for the night. But a crew officer came up to us and offered us his cabin (for a price) which we joyously accepted. We felt a bit guilty for the other people who had to sit all night but it didn’t last that long – cos we went to sleep. Willy says that this boat experience was very colonial (catch phrase for Africa) in that the rich foreigners were in first class and the poor locals were in third class and there was a divider between them. I thought it was a lot like Titanic. Were pretty impressed by the navigational system though, and we didn’t hit any rocks so that was good. Prayed pretty hard though. A ferry in 1996 that sank with 1000 people had stopped passenger ferry traffic between Tanzania and Uganda.

Paranoia

For Willy, this last travel phase of Africa had unfortunately imposed a recent cloud of paranoia raining down on his mind wherever we walk. It seemed most of the people we meet were either trying to hard-sell us something, or making innocuous remarks that could be construed as incendiary to elicit some response. Advice from the hotel staff at Dar Es Salaam to never trust anyone on the street who claims to know you entrenched firmly.

Our typical response was simply to ignore and continue with a brisk walk. But the paranoia compounds. Simply put, I don’t trust anyone on the street anymore, verging on anticipating a robbery anytime a stranger approaches us. Hardly a healthy perspective to travel with. Like the young chap yesterday who had strike up a conversation with us on the street and seemed genuinely curious and friendly, until he started asking for our mobile numbers. A warning on phone charge fraud buzzed loudly in my mind immediately.

Frankly, I detest this inherent built-up of paranoia. Whatever happened to the meeting of minds between strangers? Or getting to know the locals’ stories and perspectives? Yet all that filled my mind was the image of these two Asians sticking out like sore thumbs among the Africans, holding a neon “Rob Me!” advertisement sign. It’s a disgusting perspective since I’m demonizing people who are just out to sell something and make a decent living. Yet it’s this inevitable hazard of being tourists in this part of the world, vastly different if we happen to be working as locals. A certain degree of common-sense caution still needs to be maintained at all times, but wisdom and discernment is currently elusive, preventing me from fully embracing Africa.

A Taste Of Tanzania

Apologies for the radio silence since our last post of almost 2 weeks back – it had been quite a flurry hauling ourselves into Africa. We learnt recently about a bureaucratic requirement to possess an onward/return ticket before flying into Africa and due to our usual lack of planning (suffering from some travel fatigue), it’s all up to prayer as usual. So indeed it was a huge sigh of relief when the immigration officials at Tanzania’s Dar Es Salaam airport waved us through!


For Willy, Tanzania floods back his memories of India – the chaos and clamour of Bangalore, the absence of sane urban planning, the instinct that very same social problems plaguing a developing country stem from the greed and fall of man. But Tanzania has its own unique charms and pitfalls. Such as witnessing two overturned vehicles languishing at the side of the road as our trusty bus driver maneuvers past, and having an ATM officially launched by the Minister of Finance. Don’t take it that we’re poking fun at Tanzania, just that such occurrences are simply foreign to us.

For the past 5 days, we have parked ourselves in the town of Moshi, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. And no we’re not climbing the mountain, out of sheer distrust of our fitness level and sympathy for our limp wallet. Though some people we’ve met lamented about the loss in tourist dollars that’s affecting the entire town. Everyone from the mountaineering porter to the provision shopkeeper is taking a hit from the global economic downturn. From the excellent array of local English newspapers we’ve read, the apparent unfavorable weather affecting crop yields and lack of machinery for farmlands can only exacerbate the pain.

It’s also somewhat true when our guidebook stated that people go to Africa to confirm what they already have in their heads, and fail to see what’s in front of them. No, Africa’s not a mere country, and Africa’s not all about poverty, AIDs and safaris. It’s a diverse continent brimming with promise and hope, of hardworking people trying to make a decent living. Just like you and me. For our days ahead, we’re praying hard for wisdom to understand and appreciate the capacity of this continent, and refrain from stereotyping.

Three Sandwiches and a Pack of Chips

A recent encounter with a mother & child in Bulgaria reinforced our view of how little we knew of each country and its people, being transient travelers on a schedule. Indeed the sights and sounds on touristy circuits were a woeful way of peering into each country’s soul and problems. No tourist bureau would advertise their country’s social problems, or like Bosnia, their scarred war history. And it was typical how it was transportation trouble we got into that day that this chance encounter occurred.

In our sub-consciousness, weekdays had blended into weekends. And so we can only blame ourselves when the agent’s office in Veliko Tarnovo (Bulgaria) was closed when we tried buying sleeper train tickets on a Saturday afternoon. Scrambles abound, we opted for the only viable alternative of neck-breaking overnight bus ride.

She couldn’t speak our language, and we couldn’t speak Bulgarian too. But her hand-signs were universally unmistakable. Gesturing to her mouth in a feeding motion and pointing to the boy beside her, the mother asked for money/something to eat. Now we’ve heard stories of syndicated begging and even of women “renting” babies out to use them as “begging collateral”. So we offered her our packed dinner instead – pizza (quite tasty) leftover from lunch. The mother inspected the food, thanked us, and walked away.

But kudos to her persistence. She came repeatedly even after that (we confess that it does get annoying) so Willy took her to the nearby food kiosk and paid for her selection of three sandwiches and a pack of chips. Interestingly, she re-appeared beside us shortly and starting deliberately eating the sandwiches together with the boy, right in front of us. We wondered if that was to show us that they were bona fide hungry and appreciated the food we got them. But language did pose a big barrier as she just kept nodding and smiling when we asked and gestured numbers about the boy’s age.

Then they did something pretty heartwarming. When we boarded our bus and it stalled for 15 minutes before leaving (driver’s smoke break), they appeared beside our bus and starting waving goodbye, with the boy making a whole range of funny faces, laughing away, being swung around by his mother. For a full 15 minutes. We could only keep waving back, but not knowing where they live, where they get their next meal, or basically their life stories. Neither do we understand if there’s adequate or any social support in Bulgaria for the poor, or if these are the disadvantaged Roma people who drift around.

Spying On Your Neighbour

We hear that some of you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. – 2 Thessalonians 3:11

Quite interesting how the devotional yesterday reminded me of a conversation with Simona, our apartment-mate here in Bucharest. We had been living in the ministry apartment and just 2 weeks’ back, there was a mission team of 12 pax from Idaho (USA) staying over for a week. A bunch of people in a confined space naturally entailed a higher noise level, and Simona shared with us regarding the “spying neighbour”.

This was a retiree who had lived through the communist regime where a full third of citizens were spying on the other two-thirds. Apparently you can’t even trust your own siblings and relatives. One wrong comment could get you placed on the dissident list, and God knows what would happen to you thereafter.

So our neighbour got real curious about the Idaho team and kept making a few excuses trying to enter the apartment to poke around. She then started chatting up the apartment block’s committee chairman (her good friend) and he started to take some action against these “noisy foreigners who might be a threat/nuisance to the residents” by pasting some notice on our door, and publishing a list of number of occupants per apartment at the lift landing. (Our apartment was listed as having 25 pax, as compared to the usual 2-4 pax per apartment)

Final straw came when they called the police in to gain official access into our apartment, wanting to see what’s going on. Our apartment’s owner (the missionaries whom we were volunteering for) finally got to know about the nonsense and stepped in to clarify. Pretty surreal tale of the communist hangover that still pervades parts of the society in the ex-communist bloc countries. Makes you wonder sometimes what information your neighbour (or country’s authorities) keep on you.