Living and working on Zanzibar

Living and Working on Zanzibar

If you are like me before I came here, you might be wondering what it is that volunteer in international development do exactly?  The one message I was given over and over was that what I expected to do (or was written on the job description) would not be what I would end up doing.  My mind reels and then returns to thinking about the job description...imagined safety lying in the written word (read as “carved in stone”).  Turns out they were right that my contribution would not be what I thought and my placement changed completely.

The good news for me is that I have found some meaningful and exciting work to do...”building capacity” as the CUSO/VSO catch phrase goes.  For the next couple of months I am working on Zanzibar, co-creating a Teen Girl’s Leadership Program.  Stay tuned as I will no doubt write all about it once it moves out of the planning stage and into action. Next, the plan is that I will move back to Morogoro (of all places). I am very excited to have been asked to work at a school for vulnerable girls (Sega), to assist the school counsellors (2) and help to hire a nurse, helping to establish her role, the infirmary and formulary.  More to come on this as well.  Side note: CUSO/VSO-TZ had nothing to do with my finding new work...I am tenacious if nothing else!  The term I’d use for CUSO/VSO-TZ organizations in my situation,  is ‘totally unsupportive’.

For now, I thought I’d feature a bit more about the lives and work of the other volunteers.  Housing is something I couldn’t imagine before I left...would I be in a mud hut, or brick abode with earthen floor?  Would I have a squat toilet, a stove, a fridge, a security wall, an askari (guard)? Would I have to walk a long way from the main road, ride a bike or drive a motorbike?  Well, the answer is a possible yes to all of these things.  The variety of living conditions for volunteers pretty much runs the gamut. 

My house in Morogoro was very large and newly built (5 bedrooms, one regular toilet in the ensuite, one squat toilet for the rest of us plebes, a regular fridge and stove, tiled floors and some nice furniture).  The windows were barred but no ceiling fans, the water and hydro were very intermittent (often being off for 12 hours at a time leading to bucket showers and cold meals).  Actually we were lucky and had a gas stove...many volunteers just have hotplates.  Once we ran out of electricity for a long period of time (longer than the neighbours we noticed).  That was when we realized we hadn’t put money on the account.  We laughed at ourselves for that one, but then it happened again!! What can I say?

In spite of it being part of a two house compound and having Maasai askari’s, that house was broken into 5x (just enough time between break-ins to replace valuable items like computers and phones).  Two days after I’d moved in my room-mate left for 2 weeks.  That was when I learned about the break-ins.  I also learned that there were guns involved in one episode , and a female volunteer was beaten up another time.  The way I learned about it was when one dept of VSO talked to another dept (all sit in the same room of course), and I received a t/c saying “you must leave immediately, go to a hotel, and here is why”.  Rightly so, VSO did not want to be seen poorly if something were to happen to me (honestly this is how it was put to me).  Apparently we are not to share this kind of info (makes a place look bad) but really, I wish someone had told me earlier.  I’m not sure it’s a deliberate keeping of information, but more a denial so that one can keep living there. In the end, I chose to stay, as 3 askaris seemed safer than a strange 2 Star hotel.  Even I learned to sleep and feel safe-enough at night.

 Pretty much, the nicer the house, the higher the risk in any country, but especially a country where there are such contrasts between the haves and the have-nots.  That house was a 15-minute-long-dusty walk across empty fields (in the dry season and even longer in the rainy season if you preferred not to wade in knee high water) to the busy highway where there was local transport.  Due to the lack of opportunities for exercise, I often walked the hour into work (before the heat of the day) and rode the always over crowded dalla-dalla home.  “Before the heat of the day” is of course a relative term as I usually had sweat dripping off my nose before reaching the highway...and I am someone who usually only gently glistens.

On Zanzibar, the community is safer where I am living and again I’m staying in a large walled house with askari’s (1 daytime, 1 night).  There ended up being 3 volunteers living here, by choice, as it is large and spacious and much nicer than the alternatives being offered.  It’s directly on the busy road with pros and cons to this.  Those 3 volunteers had refused several bad options, meanwhile trying to live in a 2 star hotel for several months. They quickly learned that it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease here.  Margaret, a young Canadian living in a northern more isolated region of Tanzania, tells me that she has lived for 11 months in 2 rooms, with no-where to sit but on the floor.  Michael, a retired teacher from the UK, had to refuse to live in the place they first offered, saying it was ‘uninhabitable’ (and even he says that’s saying something when a guy says that).   Eduardo, a 50 y.o. Filipino,  has finally moved into a large VSO apartment (5 bedrooms) since he was tired of living miles from town (on the Spice Farm where he is supposed to be teaching but so far has not found acceptance), no fridge, no running water, and most often no electricity...he too had no-where to sit but the floor.  So back to the squeaky wheel...I have noticed that the older more assertive volunteers end up with nicer or at least suitable digs, eventually.  Of course VSO assumes ‘all’s good’ if you don’t complain (repeated times is usually necessary), or demand or take matters into your hands to find something better. 

The following pictures are of Diana Hernandez, a Columbian-Canadian woman who is working in Education here.  Her tiny place is deep in the heart of Stone Town.  The woman in the kitchen is Johan,her neighbour and cleaning lady.  Just down the street is a point where 5 paths converge, known as "Jo's Corner"...there is a painting of a large shark and the word Jaws painted above it...but if you are lost and ask for Jaw's Corner they will not understand.  I often buy greens from this gentleman.  This corner is a large open sapce and men gather to drink tiny cups of tea and talk.  I was unable to take a picture of that. 

 

Currently, we have 3 young women from China working here.  Mingjiao and Miao are working for VSO in Secure Livelihoods and are lucky to be sharing a house together (although they come from different parts of China, they are similar in age, mid to late 20’s, and have a common language besides English).  This may sound planned but I can assure you it’s just a coincidence...could have just as easily been the Filippino and the South American living together (although even that could be good as there is a lot of Spanish in the Filippino language; didn’t know that before).  Mingjiao sent me a picture of their yard and plants which she likes very much.  She says “I like the pilipili tree; it is like a gift from the god!”  It is pretty and the fruit plentiful if you eat hhhottt peppers.

Mingjiao works with the corporate sector of the fisheries industry.  She is building capacity via helping them to find projects to increase investment possibilities and linking them with investors.  Miao is working with a specific rural community to try and increase their employment possibilities.  Although she has had a hard time developing a relationship with her ‘employer’, she has managed to create a project for the area which has viability (developing a weekly market to attract tourists to the area).  Miao has carried out a survey with tourists and from there is following ideas like; featuring particular arts and crafts, having a permanent cultural exposition with interpreters, training youth to work as guides at the market, linkages with hotels (there are 18 in the area), plus looking into sustainability ideas such as a ‘community investment scheme’ where the communal fund gets maintained and grows via micro-loans to community members.  There’s nothing like community pressure to ensure that a loan is repaid.

The third Chinese woman, Wenxi (wenshee), is a Labour and Delivery Physician.  Unfortunately she has struggled against a lot of prejudice as she is a woman and Asian working in a mostly Muslim culture.  She has been here since July and has only started to actually deliver babies since January.  She goes to work faithfully every day and stays at the hospital all day, even though she is often ignored or not allowed to do any work.  She has started to give impromptu in-services to the nurses (although she is unsure that this is appropriate as she says “I am not a midwife, nor a nurse”).  Wenxi and I are starting to explore ideas for her to do a project via the VSO Gender Fund or access another Development Fund which supports small one-time projects like paying for ‘the materials and labour for a sink and washing area to prevent the spread of Cholera’ at one of the hospitals. 

One volunteer used that fund to buy and install a washing machine at an orphanage so that the childcare staff could spend more time with kids (v.s. doing laundry by hand).  These are examples of ways that volunteers work outside of their official duties.  Jody Paterson and Paul Wilcocks, Victorian journalists volunteering in Honduras, unofficially volunteer on weekends at a local orphanage (e.g. doing wonderful things for the infrastructure such as washrooms and painting walls, with spin offs for the staff and kids of course).  On March 8, International Women’s Day, Wenxi and I hope to join with the women in the Ismaili community to run some kind of health forum.  The only limitations to creating projects or helping at a grass roots level, are the limitations our minds!!