No more curry please.

6/30/09:

Hamjambo!

Well today wasn’t terribly exciting, but we did have another round of Kiswahili lessons. We’re moving really fast…already conjugating verbs and making full sentences. We talked a lot about animals since 1. Some people went on safari this weekend and 2. I had my meat run-in at the market on Saturday.

So time for your mini Kiswahili everyone!
Animal names:
-Twiga → giraffe
-Kiboko → hippo
-Tembo → elephant
-Ngiri → warthog
-Nyani → baboons
-Swala → gazelle
-Punda milia → zebra
-Nyumba → wildebeast
-Nyati → buffalo
-Kifaru → rhino
-Kima → monkey

And now some sentences..
-Jumaa tulikwenda shule yaw a masai
→ Friday we went to a Maasi school
-Sisi ni wanafunzi, si watalii
→ We are students, not tourists
The rest of the lesson was just going over homework, so that’s it for today.

In regular class, my group gave our presentation on the topic, “should women own property?” We started off with a very philosophical explanation of property and the value of property (this kid Milan did this…he’s a philosophy major so he definitely brought an interesting perspective) and the correlation between free speech and essentially existence and property. We then moved to the specific treaties and conventions that deal with women’s rights and specific property rights for women in Africa. It’s important to note that countries sign off on treaties, but there is no municipal law to enforce the treaties and customary practices are allowed. Not to mention, women have little to no hope brining a case to court over property loss because of costs, time, social stigma and the male dominated legal system. We then focused on the 3 biggest issues that result from property loss / not being able to own property: effect on the agricultural and economic sectors, property grabbing as a form of gender-based violence and the correlation between property loss and higher rates of HIV / AIDS. Tom took agriculture and the economy and what’s most important about that is that in most African countries, women are half of the population, and contribute to 60-80% of the labor force for agriculture. So they work the land their husbands own, yet they can’t have their own land or they loose their property if their husband dies. This means you’re essentially hurting production by prohibiting women from owning land. I dealt with gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS. Simply put, if a woman’s husband dies, she is forcibly evicted by the husband’s relatives and forces to return to her home village or an urban slum. If she has boys, they will inherit the property and they can let the mother stay, but only if they are 18. She has no rights whatsoever over the property or any possessions. To hold on to property, an evicted widow may be forced into “wife inheritance” in which she can stay in her home if she sleeps with an uncle / cousin / etc but in order to be cleansed (as most husband’s are probably dying from AIDS related illnesses) the sex will be unprotected. Or, a widow may have to turn to sex to provide for herself and her children if she’s been evicted.

It’s a hard system to break in Africa, especially because men dominate law and government. And customary traditions and practices are deeply entrenched in many rural villages and societies and men are viewed as the “protectors” of women because they are too weak on their own. It’s a system, which enables men to constantly control women and the few women who are educated or own property, are seen as a threat to men. Being a woman is far from easy on this continent.

The rest of class was spent finishing the video on the different kids going to school in South Africa, only now they were in their 20s. I didn’t find it that interesting to be honest, and the sound quality was really poor and hard to understand. After lunch we talked a little about genocide, but we’re getting into it more tomorrow.

After class Carrie and I went to the Tanzania cultural tourism board to get some pricing about a camping trip we want to take this weekend. It’s to a place called Tengeru and for 40,000 TZS and 500 TZS for transportation (which comes out to about 40 bucks), you get:
-8 different tours (coffee farm, Lake Diluti, a local village, local market, primary school and some other things)
-Lunch and dinner (and I believe you learn to cook a traditional dinner)
-Tents / sleeping / camping equipment
So it’s a great deal! We really want to do it this Saturday so we’re probably going to sign up for it tomorrow.

The rest of my afternoon / evening was rather dull because I’m continuing to have stomach aches and my dinner was yet again a curry vegetable dish, so all I ate was some rice and soup. I’m going to email Martha tomorrow to ask her to speak to the hotel and politely ask for them to leave the curry sauce out of my veggies and I’d be happy with just plain, steamed veggies. I know what you’re all thinking, not only am I vegetarian but I’m picky. Well, I have no argument because that’s correct! But I did get to chat with Dani and Alan on skype, which made for a pleasant evening after all.

Lastly, mom if you’re reading this, please speak to the UPS store by our home and give them an earful about my letters / resume not arriving at NYU. Waitlist decisions are supposed to come out this month and I really want them to have those letters! What good is paying for UPS to ship something if they loose it or send it to the wrong place! ARGH!

Time for a bit of reading followed by sleeping (hopefully…things could be noisy as always, or the usual insomnia could kick in).

Kwaheri! <3<3<3

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