While the sun still shines / living in a raincloud

Mariko reminded me of a saying yesterday as we were waiting for the incessant monsoon rain to stop. We had been waiting all day so I could go treat patients and teach moxa to a couple families. "Make hay while the sun shines." Kind of a funny saying, but with a deluge going on outside and no sun in days it seems very apt. Right now I have working internet and it's far too rainy and muddy to go out. So I blog. 

I'm hiding out indoors these days, listening to the constant rain. It feels like have been living in a waterfall for the past week. The acoustics are amazing, but our clothes never get dry. Is it worth constant dampness for being able to fall asleep every night to the sound of rain on tin? I will contemplate that one a bit as I spend a few more hours trying to iron the undrying damp and undying mold out of my clothes. It sure looks beautiful with the mountains wreathed in constant mist. I've always wanted to try living in a raincloud. It's not nearly as fluffy as it looks.

For now let's go to sunnier times and warmer climes. A few weeks back we took a little trip to the area around Mt. Kilimanjaro. Our ultimate aim was to get my visa renewed for another 3 months, but we also wanted to experience some of the unique culture of that area. After a fascinating form of bribery I was able to procure my visa from a local visa agent. He sent my passport to Kenya (without me) where it got a Kenyan visa and spent the night  before returning to Tanzania with a new 3 month visa stamp. Highly unorthodox, but it did the trick. When I came to pick it up at the immigration office the portly official was inspecting a brand new camera and beaming like a kid on Christmas. With shocking enthusiasm he proclaimed that we were now closer than best friends and I should invite him to my wedding or the birth of any future children. I think I might have paid him a bit too much. 

While my passport was engaged in it's international travels Mariko and I too the opportunity of a rare sunny day to do a little cultural tourism. With a wonderful and highly knowledgable guide we spent the day exploring one of the few agricultural Maasai villages at the foot of Mt. Meru. Most Maasai are still pastoralists and are one of the few fiercely traditional tribes in East Africa. They are incredibly distinctive in their red and purple robes, heavily armed with clubs and spears and beautiful large knives. The Maasai have a very detailed and ornate culture. They have amazing beadwork, facial scarification and a warrior caste with elaborate rituals. As pastoralists they live almost exclusively from cow products. Meat, milk and fresh blood straight from the living cow. If you haven't checked out the Maasai, I highly recommend you spend a few minutes on google. If you enjoy getting your facts clothed in semi-fiction then check out the German movie called The White Maasai. 

The folks we visited are no longer pastoralists but have taken the next step along the typical chain of cultural evolution, they are now agrarian. Instead of living in the plains these Maasai moved upward to more fertile land and planted little farms across the lush mountain foothills.

Mariko and I visiting a Massai bomba (house compound)

It's pretty dark in a Maasai house. Here is the sleeping spot for the adults.

Clay cooking, water and food storage pots. In the lower right corner is a long wooden water gourd for water on the go.

The indoor cooking fire and family sitting room.

The cows live in the house with the family. When your whole sustenance relies on cows it makes sense to keep them close and safe.  

Good oral hygiene is universal

We climbed a small mountain to enjoy this incredible view of the village, Arusha city and the Maasai plains beyond.

 I spent the whole walk going from bush to bush eating wild black raspberries and a delicious strawberry relative. I want more.

An idyllic farm. I can see why they moved out of the arid Maasai plains for this amazing and fertile land. 

Killer bee honey. Traditional beekeeping uses hollow logs split in two then tied back together.  They have a variety of bees inhabiting the hives in this forest. The most common are killer bees. Second most frequent are tiny stingless bees.

Our guide was terrified of this little guy. I thought he might faint when Mariko picked him up. Apparently parents tell their children that chameleons are poisonous and have sharp teeth that can take your whole finger off. I have yet to meet a dangerous chameleon, but I'm certain they are happier and safer for the fierce reputation.

Our hotel was invaded by a plague of huge flies. We hid in our room. Later when I emerged I was shocked and confused to find not a single fly left from the thousands that were crawling all over our hall. I found the flies in question in the dining room. A fellow guest offered me a bite from his delicious dinner of fried flies. Alas, I was going to be on a long bus ride in the morning and didn't quite know how fried flies would sit in my stomach, so I gracefully declined. 

Here we are at the end of this blog installment and the sun is suddenly shining outside. This is my cue to quickly put on my shoes, grab my bag of medical supplies and make a mad dash through the mud to my next appointment. Make hay while the sun shines.

This one is dedicated to school kids everywhere. You understand. 

Captured nature and fresh fruit.

The view from Irente Viewpoint. 

A week or so ago we went on an adventure to check out the local look-out spot. Mariko and her Peace Corps friend had been there years ago and were telling me about the amazing view. When we got up to where they thought it was, we couldn't find it. We asked around for a while and discovered that the ex-president had purchased the narrow bit of land leading up to the view point and constructed a hotel. Now they charge you to walk through their tacky hotel to get to enjoy this amazing view. Funny how that works. No value added, just a sneaky way to capitalize off of the inherent natural beauty. That's politics and economics around these parts.

On our way home we ducked into a thatch restaurant on a biodiversity reserve to eat lunch and wait out the monsoon rains. They served amazing fresh bread, homemade cheese, fresh butter, cottage cheese, vegis straight out of the ground and passion fruit juice. Our entertainment was the drum of torrential rains on the thatch roof and a slow dance performed by the little guy in the picture below. I will have to arrange to get waylaid there again soon.

Some of this grass is not like the others. I get paranoid to walk on grass now, looking down at most steps. So many beautiful things hiding, blending in, that I wouldn't want to step on. This is yet another local chameleon. 

Our village Beauty Saloon.
Right now I'm letting my hair do it's thing. But when it's time for a cut, I'm going to the beauty saloon. At my barbershop in Denver they would offer me a beer or a shot of whiskey. I imagine this place serves banana wine. It helps take the edge off of a bad haircut. Notice the shoes in front of the door. Yes, the floor is dirt, and you take your shoes off. Some dirt is dirtier than others. Many buildings are built in this style. Use whatever you can find and put a roof on it. I like it.

A favorite hangout for the local Colubus Monkeys. Fractal treetops.

Magamba forest reserve. Giant fern trees. 

 Due to forces beyond our control, we have been exploring as much of the local forests as possible. These forces are inherent in Mariko and I and probably almost every other human being, whether they recognize them or not. We must spend time in nature to feel balanced. We need to experience beauty on a regular basis. It's nice to feel the interdependence and interconnection that are the essence of natural ecosystems. Not to say that interdependence isn't everywhere, but in the forest it speaks of a deep balance. Unfortunately there are very few natural ecosystems left, even in this part of the world. 95% of the forests in the Usambara mountains have been deforested. It's a complex situation. Much of it happened in the 1970's when Finnish logging companies looted these beautiful ancient forests. The local water supply was poisoned for over 200,000 people. Nobody really cared until the 1990's when NGO's started noticing that the Usambara mountains were one of the worlds great biodiversity treasures, and they were almost entirely gone. The foreign logging companies moved out and Finnland donated money to help set up park systems to protect what was left. Yet the situation isn't that simple. Population growth has been steady increasing, and subsistence farmers need land to grow food. There is also either no access or no affordable access to any source of fuel for cooking and heating, so people cut down the forests for firewood and charcoal. They know that it's not sustainable, they just don't see any other way to feed their families. What to do? Even the local forest reserves and national parks are being cut down for fuel and farming. It's a sad situation. We will do what we can, and I am looking into some ideas to make little changes. I am fascinated by the idea of biomass charcoal making. For more info check out the work of Amy Smith. She has a wonderful TED talk on the subject.

"According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the country’s forests are disappearing at a whopping rate of 4,200 square kilometers (1,620 sq. miles) annually. That’s about four times the size of New York City."

Nature also eats. But this little seething mass of grasshoppers will give back all that they devour.

A happy day of bush whacking. The only trails through this forest are from illegal logging. Our guide spent his childhood sneaking into the reserve with his parents to cut down trees to sell charcoal.

We met a few monkeys in the Magamba reserve, some incredibly strange bugs, and this Two horned Eastern Usambara Chameleon. He's looking good in his bark browns.

An idyllic little home by a stream. 

Small villages steadily grow and expand into the forest reserves. 

Local ladies sell their wares at a bus station on our way down the mountain. The woman in front is waiting for her bus. Her luggage consists of a bag of charcoal, a bag of vegetables and a goat immobilized in a basket. Now I know how to travel with a goat.

Mariko and a Baobab tree. Apparently this is a small Baobab. 

A successful market day. Every Thursday and Sunday farmers bring their wares from the surrounding villages.  The gems of this harvest are the passion fruits (amazing juice) and the furry looking tubers in the bottom left known as Cocoyams. The cocoyams melt into a rich and creamy base in stews. I love market day.  

Cyclical time

It's the bumblebee time of the day again.
Every day at this time they come to visit. I can hear their deep drone from inside the house as they circumnavigate our roof. Not sure what it is about the roof that they are so attracted to, nothing flower-like about it. It is nice to have little guests humming away every day.

Another cyclical event in the house is the ill-fated tower of termite.

They keep building, and I keep knocking them down and relocating the builders outside. A few days later, I find a new tower growing grain by grain out of little holes in the enamel hardened dirt floor. Tenacious little guys.

In the realm of cyclical events, we cannot forget the monsoon rains. Every afternoon a torrent comes. Usually we are holed up at home working or spending time with friends who are also waiting out the storm. The day before yesterday we waited it out under the awning of a little bakery with a couple school kids. I splurged on a round of tiny muffins for all of us as we watched the deluge and waited.

Today's medical news is pretty interesting. I visited the local Montessori compound where they have a school, nunnery, little store that makes cheese and jam, and the best medical clinic in the area. The head doctor worked in Southern Tanzania in the 70's with a Chinese acupuncture doctor. He was impressed at his ability to use needles to take away pain in a very short period of time. The Chinese doctor trained him in some basic techniques, but he hasn't been able to practice them since due to lack of supplies and support. We exchanged numbers and I will give him a call soon see if he is interested in renewing his studies and/or having me treat some of their difficult patients. 

Now it's time for another cyclical occurrence, the afternoon nap. There is a puddle of sunshine on the couch that is calling my name.  

This is the Africa I dreamed about. 

We made it out of hellish Dar es Salaam yesterday and into the mountains. It's amazing up here in Lushoto. Forested, lush, calm, and cool. It seems like a paradise after the past month and a half in the city. This morning I spent 30 minutes watching a horned chameleon cruise around and eat bugs. He was so tame and friendly that he would crawl up on our hands and hang out, looking up curiously with his swiveling ball and socket eyes while gently balancing on his little two toed mitten feet. After that entertainment I sat on my bed and looked out over the greenery and meditated for a bit. Much to my amusement a trio of white breasted crows did an aerial dance with three large brown hawks in front of my window. I think I'm home.

Eastern Usambara Two Horned Chameleon

There are about 30 different Chameleons in Tanzania. They make up an odd bunch, with varied horns and head gear, different sizes and colors. I highly recommend you do a google photo search of African Chameleons. There are quite a few different ones up here in Lushoto. I will try and get a few to pose for your pleasure. 

On a walk through the forest we were followed by a flock of inquisitive Silvery Cheeked Hornbill.

I'm feeling much healthier now that I'm out of the heat and pollution. Nothing like cool mountain air and relaxing daily hikes through monkey filled forests to clear the city from the lungs. It was getting pretty bad in Dar. I guess it's usual to have to go through some levels of hell to make it to the more paradisiacal places. Not quite a trip through Dante's inferno, but a close human approximation.  Dar is the one of the fastest growing cities in the world right now. With no infrastructure, no running water for 80% of people, no housing, no trash collection, poor sanitation and sewage, no medicine and extremely expensive food you can imagine the chaos and suffering that ensues. Yet the exodus continues as almost an entire generation of youth swarm to the city. I shudder to think what it will look like in 10 years without an intervening miracle. 

Lushoto on the other hand is the polar opposite of the city. As I type this there are two brightly colored tiny tropical birds with long curved beaks doing a little mating dance on my window grate. I love this place. I've started treating a few patients. It seems that most everyone has health issues, which is status quo for having a human body. The difference is that they don’t have much access to medicine, and typically they can’t afford to see doctors or pay for the drugs they prescribe. Average yearly income here is $300. Gas prices are more than $5 per gallon and food prices aren’t all that much different than in the US. Needless to say I keep meeting wonderful people who have learned to live with all sorts of health problems that are totally treatable. I would describe some of these but I will spare the squeamish, as well as my own stomach, which is working on a big breakfast of banana pancakes made with cassava flour, finger millet flour, bananas, cow fresh milk and organic yellow yolked eggs. Even the food here is better. You can see it growing in little farms covering the mountain sides. Everything tastes so fresh and vital.  

Hanging out with my new friend. I like his hands.

A master of disguise

So far we have been too busy settling into our new house for me to do much leg work for the education project. Even so I have a few leads on some healthcare practitioners to train in acupuncture and TCM. There is one local doctor so far who wants to learn a little acupuncture and moxa. I have also started teaching a few patients how to treat themselves with moxa and next week I'm going to go visit a few tiny village clinics to show them some simple moxa techniques they can use for TB and immune compromised patients. We are off to a great start.

Two of my favorite South American flowers growing together on the edge of a wetland rice paddy. This intertwined entheogenic pair is Morning Glory (Ipomoea tricolor) and Angel's Trumpet (Brugmansia). I wonder if the locals know that these bushes induce visions. 

2/28/13

Despite my good intentions, I don’t seem to get the opportunity to blog or use the miracle of Skype to call anyone from home that I’m missing. Our power has been going out pretty much daily, sometimes for several days at a time. We asked about it and were told it was accidental, but it keeping going off and coming back on right on the hour or half hour. Alas my digitally powered pen and technologically enhanced voice are silenced. The one power company here has been getting millions and millions of dollars from foreign donors and the government to update it's infrastructure over the past few years. Apparently most of that has gone into bonuses for the CEOs, paying for their company supplied mansions, and paying for their own personal state of the art power generators at these mansions. Reminds me of our bank bail-outs. The government just announced that the incompetence of the power company might bring the entire country to a new state of financial ruin within the next few years. Without a complete overhaul of the current system things look dire. Luckily they have been in negotiations with the World Bank, who will of course step in to save the day and give a mountain of money to make it all better. That is if any of that money ends up going where it is intended for. The World Bank will require their usual stipulations that the Tanzanians open up the energy market to “competition” with foreign companies. Have you ever seen an ant compete with an anteater? All I can say is, something’s gotta give. A city haphazardly built somewhat attempting to mimic the northern European model cannot function without power.

 My air conditioner and water don’t function without power and meanwhile I've been down yet again with a heat and toxin related illness. It arose after spend all night without power, awake, sweating in the heat and breathing in thick suffocating clouds from a giant trash fire. I've got a nasty rash-like heat induced something all over my neck, thick yellow mucus, nausea and dizziness. Fun stuff. Thankfully I've got a giant box of yincare to keep the skin stuff at bay and I happened to bring along the perfect Chinese herbal formula for my current conundrum. I love Chinese Medicine.

I haven't searched out an herbalist around these parts. It's not easy in a city of 4 million with no infrastructure to find a decent herbalist. There certainly isn’t any nature around from which to pick herbs. I also discovered during my research that the form of herbal medicine here in Dar es salaam has an interesting belief system. They feel that leaving their herbs on trash heaps and compost piles until it starts to rot makes it more potent. This isn’t just metaphorical, apparently they actually aim to supercharge the herbs. It relates to the observation that life comes from death. I find it an interesting philosophy, but I have no desire to take their medicine. Luckily up in Lushoto (mountains) they have a more sophisticated herbal tradition and some good healers I have been invited to meet. Just need to hold in there a little while longer.

The local water supply. It runs outside of our compound, and our waste water flows into it. I was a bit startled the first time I saw a neighbor dipping in for drinking water. 85% of the city has no running water and relies on ditches like this or local water taps that seldom work.

Tuk Tuks are the easiest way to get around, but incredibly dangerous. These guys drive like madmen. 

I don't know when we can leave yet. We are waiting for Mariko to get her residence permit. Unfortunately it is an epic endeavor. There are mythical trials including evil witches (can also be spelled with a B), corrupt petty bureaucratic warlords, constantly changing riddles and requirements, and astronomical fees that raise day by day with no warning. Poor girl has had to go there 5 times so far and every time they are incredibly mean and rude and corrupt. Maybe today we will find out when we can leave town. We should have found out yesterday but they decided to add on a new $50 fee only payable in US dollars and didn't let anyone know or post anything about it anywhere. Yep, interesting times, learning patience and learning what it's like living in the bureaucratic heart of one of the world poorest and most corrupt governments.   

Hanging out at the local corner store. The pineapples and mangoes are delicious.

This is the little tiny closet sized shack of one of my neighbors. Their 2 1/2 year old boy is my buddy. Every time I walk by we wave at each other and smile and laugh. It's nice to have a friend. He has a little car made of a plastic water bottle and another little water bottle boat he sometimes plays with in the gutter. They don't have room to sit in their house, and it's all corrugated metal so it is probably hellishly hot, so they use the dirt street as their living room. It's nice to see them out there braiding hair, playing, resting and preparing food. A very domestic scene. I hope my little buddy finds a way out of the shanty town.

A few old masks from the wood carvers market where Stoney came from. 

Che Guevara and Bob Marley, patron saints of Tuk Tuk drivers and motorcyclists.

Stay Tuned... good developments, brighter days, and the beauty and culture of Tanzania begin in our next episode.

sick today. Incessant trash fires and heat left me up all night with a sore throat and a bit of a cough. Today it's worse out there. Hellfire and brimstone. I'm staying inside, closing all the windows and being thankful that the power is on and the A/C works. Mariko and I were ruminating yesterday that all of the elements that we humans weave into our hell mythologies actually exist in some reflection of our collective experience. The one about being stuck in a burning iron box? My neighbors live in a little tin shack that must be a similitude. I had a little taste lying in our room a few nights back with no power, no air moving and sweltering heat, dripping sweat, being eaten by mosquitos, unable to sleep and breathing in the foul plastic stench of garbage fires. Being human isn't always fully humane. And we've got it lucky you and I.

So today, just some pictures for you to enjoy. I'm going to meditate a bit and go back to bed.

 Our trash burning heap. Even the rich burn their trash, plastic and all. I did see a garbage truck of sorts the other day. The funny part was that the garbage men were lighting little trash fires in the street as they went along.

I had a dream, where the whole world was turning into gated communities and shopping malls. Here, this is the dream, to live in your own little ubiquitous streets of identical middle class houses. This one is surrounded by guards and next to a mall. A little bubble amidst shanty towns.

This is the other part of that nightmare, the part with the mall. Yes, there is a shopping mall about 20 minutes from us. I do have nightmares about being stuck in one never ending all encompassing mall. This place scares me a little. The tower of Babel is happening in reverse. All human cultures are being replaced by this and slums that could be Calcutta or Sao Paolo or Beijing. Yet in reality a mall is just the fate of the lucky upper class. One of these days soon I will try and snap some photos of the surrounding neighborhoods, so far I've been over protective of my only camera and haven't taken it out much yet.

Luckily this is not all of reality here. I will nap for now, and hopefully dream of the mountains and those little wild places where mal-developed city hasn't yet invaded.