Scrunchies, toilets and another "just produced" baby

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Our last trip to Geita, well my last trip to Geita, and I think I’ve gotten use to the long days and interesting toilets. We started out Monday afternoon joining the bustle at the ferry terminal. There’s stands selling the local chips maii (they add eggs to a fry pan with the chips so its more like omlette than chips but still good) and vendors try to sell you hair scrunchies that belong to the eighties or English learn-to-read texts assuming that because I’m a mzungo (white) I’ll be interested be anything written in English. We joined in along with the locals pushing to make it through the ticket “booth” and onto the boat, filing in between the vehicles. A Brit could do great things at that place, teaching people how to queue. Living in London, I almost forgot how to stick out the elbows and make room for myself, but one jab in the ribs and a stranger pressing a little too closely along my back and it all came rushing back. It could be a beautiful crossing out on the deck but the exhaust from engines of the diesel trucks makes it impossible to stay outside the car unless you manage to find space along the railing. It’s hot commodity though and hard to find. I couldn’t figure out why the trucks would leave the engines on for the 45-minute trip until we docked and the one poor trucker who had tried to save fuel couldn’t re-start the vehicle and caused a scene holding up all the traffic behind him!
We gave a lift to another woman with a baby that had just been “produced” that morning. His face was covered to protect him from the sun and I couldn’t figure out if the woman holding him was the mother or grandmother which is a lot harder than you’d expect. When women are impossible to age because they all dress the same and don’t seem to have any wrinkles until 80 or so and giving birth is something that happens from the time you’re 16 until 45, the mamma/ gramma question becomes difficult! No worries though, five minutes down the road and we passed a young women on the back of a bike (the local taxi). She waved and the woman with the baby waved and it was explained to me that the smiling girl riding side-saddle on a bike that probably didn’t have breaks (shoes are cheaper) was the mother on her way home. Once again, I was shocked. I guess when you have as many children as they seem to out here, child-bearing is nothing special. Still, I was pretty shocked.
If Celin Dion ever does decide to go for another tour, she’d do great out here. I don’t think either of my brothers or my father would be caught dead blasting her music from their car speaker but the second the classic “Titanic song” came on the radio, my colleague, whose my age, turns up the music and starts to sing along. Our driver didn’t go quite so far but he definitely adjusted the volume another notch in the direction of more noise. It’s all about the nineties soft rock this side of the Atlantic.
The toilets though... what can I say... it's either a urinal in a cement floor that takes some serious thigh muscle to squat over or a whole in the dirt or a crudely cut-out square in the cement floor of a shack. The last was by far the worst because corrugated metal heats up pretty well in the sun and there's a lot of sun out here and certain things should not be allowed to ferment... It's almost enough to make you sick but then where are you going to be sick? It's a lose-lose situation that means you hold your breath, don't look to closely at anything, get out as fast as you can and chalk it up to part of the experience. The part of it that you hope to forget as soon as possible.
The problems associated with the health care system in Geita just go on and on. It seemed like the more questions we asked, the worse the situation got. Every facility gave a different answer when asked about how they order supplies or how often supervisors visit. It’s like no-one has bothered to co-ordinate anything and being so far from the District Hospital, the staff are pretty much in complete control of what goes on. It gives me a headache thinking of it now but we’ve got a meeting tomorrow with the project coordinator so that the higher ups can sort out these issues. They’re way beyond the scope of a master’s project… PhD thesis maybe but definitely not a masters. Back to the office for the rest of the week, maybe one last quick trip out to Geita but then it’s off to the Serengeti to FINALLY see some animals- it’s the only reason I came down here!

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Comments

[Chris Schroeder]

Hello Mzungo, how are you I am pine! Thanks for the updates, wish we were there! 4 more days until baby!