Greetings from the Lake Victoria Region of Tanzania. Through a pre-arranged agreement, I find my self living in a small village volunteering my time, back, and mind. The village I live is called Kinesi; it sits snugly in a small bay on the east side of Lake Victoria. Thatched and tin roofed houses dot the green agrarian landscape. The nearest big town is called Musoma, where my plane first landed on a dirt runway after hovering low over a boulder-strewn landscape.
Musoma and Kinesi are separated by 3 kilometers of water that is the murky, algal, and is the endless Lake Victoria. I lugged my red backpack up a rickety ladder and onto a 15 foot wooden boat filled with local people and run by a grumbly old outboard motor wrapped in a t-shirt. Being the only person not of African descent, I hear the word ‘mzungu’ come up in people’s conversation. I smile, knowing that I am being talked about, for mzungu is a Swahili word which means ‘wanderer’ that over time has been attached to the people who have passed through East Africa over the years.
Reaching Kinesi for the first time, I climbed down the boat ladder and looked at the many faces looking back at me. I scanned the crown of shore dwellers to look for another mzungu who was supposed to meet me and show me to the guesthouse. I had been in this position before and tried to breathe and realize that in Africa, time is not as vital as it is in the US, which is one reason I love it. Soon my new friend greeted me and showed me the way.
The guesthouse that I am staying is called Subu and I push away cloth-shredded curtains to open to a small courtyard. There are women in traditional African dressed with colorful headwraps squatting over pots being cooked by coals. I enter my room, a small one-person bed with white sheets and a blue mosquito net. On the table sit 4 condom packages which the guesthouse owner discreetly removes. I learn later that the only villagers planning to pay 5000 Tanzanian Shillings or 4 dollars are those planning to have sex out of wedlock. I brace myself for the month ahead.
Soon I started my volunteer work. I was happy to start after 3 months of travelling, seeing and exploring, I find it beneficial to stay in one place to really absorb a culture. I hope to help the local people, learn new skills, and learn what its like to live in Africa. I soon was shoveling heaps of soil, pulling weeds, and stacking bricks. The project is sponsored by Global Resource Alliance and is set up to teach the locals how to farm the land in a sustainable way through the technique of permaculture. In addition, we are teaching them to build houses out of bricks that don’t require burning trees, rather a system which compresses the earth into a brick.
There is laughter and singing as women walk, eyes forward carrying gallons of water on their head and men shovel and mix cement to make the foundation of the house. Though there is a language barrier between me and my fellow workers, they all want to shake my hand and greet me with a smile and a mambo!
