Just down the way from the rusted skeletal
remains of two cars, which children climb on like jungle gyms, is the baridi
duka. We named it the "cold shop" because once, early in the year,
we were able to buy cold beer there. The name stuck despite the fact that cold
beer is rarely available and usually, the only brand we can find that is cold
is Safari, a weak watered-down brew
with a strange aftertaste. We preferred Castle,
Kilimanjaro or Tusker. The baridi duka
always has customers waiting at the screened window for the serious woman who
runs it. In the mornings, it's crowded with school children in golf course
green uniforms buying pencils, notepads and mandazi,
deep-fried donuts. I'm usually there for fresh eggs and I often see customers
come up to the window to buy one or two cigarettes at a time or bring an empty
Coca-Cola glass bottle to be filled with kerosene.
Theresa
and I duck our heads as we walk through the red gate into the dirt yard of our
home. The electricity is out. I know this when I see Fatima
outside the house bent over a boiling pot above a wood fire. She straightens and
her small mouth turns upward into the vaguest of smiles.
"Hello
JoAnn and Teresa," she greets us.
She’s
one of the most solemn eighteen-year-olds I’ve ever met. Her sand-toned skin
and straight nose are from her Indian father. Fatima’s dainty features bear no
resemblance to her Tanzanian mother, a large boisterous woman who is frankly
intimidating, at times. The neighborhood children call her "mama mchafu" or rough woman. Diane,
a volunteer from California, respectfully calls her Mama Abbas, which sounds a
little like “Mama Bossy” if said quickly. Abbas is the first name of her oldest
son, which is the customary way to address mothers in Tanzania.
Mixed marriages of any kind are
rare, but a marriage between an Indian and Tanzanian is extraordinary.
Typically, these groups don't associate other than by necessity. Indians own
most of the businesses in town, the grocery and liquor stores, video and electronics
stores, and restaurants. Tanzanians and tourists are their customers.
This is not only a mixed race
family, but a mixed religion family. Mama Abbas is Catholic but Fatima chooses
to follow Islam, her father’s religion. I often see Fatima sitting in her
Muslim robes below crucifixes and pictures of Jesus hanging on the living room
walls.
The oldest son, Abbas, is here for
the winter school break but will be leaving soon to start his second year as an
Engineering student at the University
of Dar es Salaam . Fatima
has just finished high school. She must take a year off and will spend it working
in a bakery in town. She hopes to go to medical school next year to become a
gynecologist. Azim is the sulky sixteen-year-old bad boy of the family, the
kind who mouths off and gets into trouble all the time. Azim is periodically
assigned the labor-intensive task of milking their five cows at five a.m. every
morning and every evening at dusk. Sameer, the baby at twelve, is first in his
class in school getting all A's, except for a C in Swahili, a subject he
refuses to study.
Each side of the house has four
large bedrooms and three bathrooms. We are living in luxury compared to the
average Tanzanian, but our house reminds me of an above-ground bomb
shelter. The inside is floor-to-ceiling
concrete. There is no carpet, tile, rugs or linoleum; everything is gunmetal
gray except for the walls, which are painted white. There are no shower stalls
in the bathrooms, just shower heads and an area next to the toilet with a drain
in the floor. There is a water heater so we can take hot showers, provided the
electricity doesn't go out. But since the electricity goes out all the time,
anywhere from a couple minutes to days at a time, cold showers are common. All
of the windows have burglar bars but no screens, which I can’t understand since
malaria is an enormous problem.
We have a refrigerator, a small
stove with two burners and a microwave-sized oven. When the electricity is out
we use kerosene stoves. A twelve-foot high fence surrounds the house to prevent
burglary. The yard is dirt surrounded by bougainvillea bushes. Chickens and stray cats are running
everywhere. The upstairs balcony where I spend many hours reading and offers a view
of Mount Meru, Africa’s fifth tallest mountain at just under 15,000 feet.
Theresa and I walk into the kitchen
and tell everyone about trying cassava.
“Watch out for that stuff, its
poison,” said Tom.
“Poison, what do you mean?” asked
Theresa.
“It’s loaded with cyanide,” said
Tom. “It builds up in your system and the next thing you know you’re
paralyzed. Konzo disease. Usually hits
women and kids. Saw it in Mozambique .
One minute they’re fine, the next, they can’t stand. Have to hobble around on
sticks with their legs dragging behind them, poor useless cripples for the rest
of their lives.”
Cassava is a root vegetable and
staple for 500 million people. Called yucca or manioc in other parts of the
world, it can be dangerous if not properly processed through boiling, grating,
pounding into mash, fermenting and sun-drying, which removes the toxic cyanide.
Konzo disease, which does tend to strike women and children more than men,
usually is found only in rural, famine or drought-stricken parts of Tanzania,
Zaire and Mozambique where the processing time is reduced so the cyanide isn’t
properly removed. But, in the town of Arusha ,
there is little threat that the cassava hasn’t been processed correctly. Unfortunately,
I didn’t know any of this standing in the kitchen listening to our resident
doomsday expert. I didn’t have cassava
again for the rest of the year.
No comments:
Post a Comment