It's because you're so white.

Hello! I'm in Arusha for the day before leaving for a safari in Tarangire National Park and Lake Manyara. While I've LOVED the homestay this far, I'm excited about camping again. This time I only packed one t-shirt and one pair of pants/shorts (the zip-off ones ;)) to wear. It's been raining pretty hard here recently – some people think the rain season has started unusually early – so we're all hoping our tents hold out.

Since my last entry was cut short, I want to catch up a bit. About a week ago we had another Baba Jack led lecture about two readings. One was a couple chapters out of Dead Aid, by Dambisa Moyo. Her main point is that macro-scale aid is actually perpetuating Africa's poverty by supporting corruption, stimulating inflation, and creating a psychology of dependency and inferiority (this is really summarized). The other reading was by James Ferguson. He discusses the amoralization of economic discourse. A great example he provides in Lawrence Summers' declaration that it is economically efficient to dump our waster into developing countries. I agree with him that the whole concept of “efficiency” is sterile, cold, and devoid of any sense of humanity. While I had read Dead Aid before, reading the articles together made me re-evaluate my initial acceptance of Moyo's stance. The fact is she herself uses the same amoral economic language to prove her point. She even uses Pinochet's Chile as a good example of a dictator helping a country achieve growth. Clearly, she still cares more about economic growth than people's lives. I would never wish a dictator like Pinochet on any nation. Ferguson's article also talks about how the West is associated with individuality while African society prioritizes social relations. However, I think that recent African history has shown that many African leaders (i.e. The Big Men) have acted purely in their own self-interest, pursuing Western images of wealth and power at the expense of their people. Even on a smaller scale, it seems like many Africans (I should just say Tanzanians, or even Bangatans because these are the people I am really interacting with) admire America. Everything about it. For example, when we had a focal group about development and aid with 5 Bangatans, we asked what they thought about American foreign policy. They responded that they thought it was good because America intervened in international conflicts when countries needed help. We then asked directly whether they thought the US acts for its own benefits or for the benefits of the other country, and the group unanimously agreed that the US always acted selflessly. All the students in the group were shocked. I was scared – is the US actually successfully bullshitting people around the world about their foreign policy? Yikes.

So, when we all came together to talk with Baba Jack, I mentioned my disturbance at the idea that Africans themselves are now driving the bus towards Westernization. If this is true, who are we to come here and discourage their pursuit of economic wealth and adaption of Western culture. This led me to the idea that African who don't have money equate it with happiness (I mean cash – most goods such as food are traded without money, it is almost unnecessary in village life yet everyone seems to need more), but to people who do have it is so clear that money does not equal happiness. Excess cash in Bangata seems to go to goods like nicer clothes and electricity, luxuries compared to the needs of others in the rest of the country. I should mention that Bangata is in the top 25% of the country's income and is not really representative. The whole thing about this that really moved me though was the fact that I was thinking and saying these things was only possible because I come from a place of privilege. I feel like I know that happiness is more than material goods, but am I wrong? I can never completely understand the view that money is happiness because I've never needed to. It really hit me the innate otherness that I will always carry with me in Tanzania. I will always be a mzungu, and being a mzungu gives me power I didn't ask for and can't get rid of. All of this is really heavy, and though I can't consider anything I'm doing studious, I feel like I'm always thinking and it's nice because it's about things that I care about.

I also finished reading The Doors of Perception, which was a really interesting compliment to my experience. Here are some cool quotes:

“Literary or scientific, liberal or specialist, all our education is verbal and therefore fails to accomplish what it is supposed to do. Instead of transforming children into fully developed adults, it turns out students of natural sciences who are completely unaware of Nature as the primary fact of experience, it inflicts upon the world students of the humanities who know nothing of humanity, their own or anyone else's.” - I guess this is what this semester's “experiential” learning is all about, and this was nice reminder to teach us through our senses and interactions

“To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human bring obsessed with words and notions but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large – this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially the intellectual.” - Word. This seems really similar to the goal of religious meditation and also Sartre's description of existentialist nausea. Is the desire to explore our consciousness inborn and eternal? Huxley elaborates on how we “take refuge from inner and outer reality in the homemade universe of common sense – the strictly human world of useful notions, shared symbols and socially acceptable conventions.” I like this image a lot and I think that because I have been surrounded by things, speaking a language, interacting with people, and eating food that has been completely foreign to me up until now, I do not have any labels or symbols of reference for them. This has really helped me just experience things as they are. Sometimes it's so overwhelming, I think I'm going to explode, in a good way of course.

This Thursday we had another focal group about culture and gender. It was REALLY interesting and I'm fascinated by perceptions of love and sexuality here. I'm thinking of studying this for my Independent Study Project at the end of the semester. I'm out of time again, oops. I'll be back in Bangata after a week of bonding with giraffes, which I am now sure are my spirit animal (I switched over to a gazelle for a while, but now I'm back to giraffe). And, because I feel like this post has been pretty heavy, here are some pictures of the trip thus far. Lots of love :)  

This is a cool tree we learned about in Ndarakwai. If you throw a rock at it, it bleeds a milk that is enjoyed by baboons, but poisonous to humans.

The peak of Kilimanjaro from the top of the hill we hiked in Ndarakwai.

Playing with the orphan elephant in Ndarakwai! Normally people aren't allowed near them let alone touch them, but the rangers must have been in a good mood and let us :)

The door to my family's kitchen building.

Mama Dori! The best mama in Bangata. She sings while she cooks. We look at each other and start laughing for no reason. When I told her I did well on my Kiswahili quiz, she was so happy I felt like one of her actual children. Ninapenda Mama Dori.

Our sitting room.

That's all for now because it takes a century for each picture to upload. P.S. The title of this post comes from a funny experience yesterday. My homestay cousin, a 23-year-old studying animal production in Arusha, brought over a 2-year-old mtoto (baby/child). She set her down to play with me but the child looked at me with eyes filled with fear and hid behind my cousin. When I asked my cousin why the baby was scared of me, the title was her answer.