eggberta.

ive not got anything big to say but maybe a couple stories here and there.

we have these five dogs (mom and dad and three puppies) that live at the volunteer house (theyre the caretaker's dogs) and we always hear them yelping and fighting in the night, theyre really cute though. there are lots of muts around here of course, as theres not any spaying and neutering going on. anyway yesterday on the way to class one of the volunteers, Vi, saw a tiny little dark brown (rotwelier colored) puppy underneeath a bush in our house, and it was shaking. it looked seconds away from death. so vi and lisa and i looked at it, lisa picked it up and it was shaking and all curled up. then i turned it over to look at its stomach for ticks and there were literally hundreds of fleas on its belly eating the little puppy alive. so we got flea bath stuff and gave it a bath and now shes perky as can be and so cute, must be only a few weeks old. its strange however because we havnt seen any dogs that have her coloring (as in we havent seen her parents) or the rest of the litter she came from (there must be more, though they mightve died already). it was so sad just like this little orphan pup dying in our yard. so we saved it and named it Eggberta. we're going to try to nurse her back to health, i only hope future volunteers will help look after her too but im sure they will. i wish i could take her home, but of course the quarantine the shots, etc.

another little story thats really funny. so i did an impromptu geography lesson for the women's group yesterday using a world map i found and didnt prepare anything so i just started talking about the continents and oceans and the equator and the countries that border tanzania. and then accidently i started talking about how the earth is getting warmer at the equator. which then brought me into a few sentences on global warming, to which they looked at me like i was absolutely nuts. i laughed at myself as i left because i remember distinctly saying something like "Because of the car exhaust in Los Angeles, it might get hotter in Tanzania". i can just imagine after i left how they probably were like "what the hell was that lesson about?!" hmmm well some lessons are hits and some are misses. this is why i need to prepare. funny though huh.

another tidbit. last night we went out to a very popular bar in town Pub Alberto. at our volunteer house we have full on maasai guards guarding the house (you know with the crazy stretched out ear lobes and jewelry). but somehow we convinced two of them to come to pub alberto with us, haha, of course we had to pay the cover charge and taxi for them. it was probably top ten funniest things ive seen in my life watching the security guards there pat us all down for weapons, and then pat the maasai down in their traditional gear with their full on machetes and spears tucked in to their skirts. they just handed them to the guy at the door to hold while they were inside. the maasai are so great they are SUCH happy wonderful people. we had so much fun with them . it was cute we asked them what they wanted to drink and they just said "COCA COLA!!!!!" like little kids, because you see coke is like a delicacy here. they were just hanging out happy as clams in their full on maasai gear with us at the bar, drinking their cokes. it was awesome im so glad we brought them out, i think they had an amaazing time. i know we did too. that was probably one of their only times ever being out at a pub, if at all!

last story, im really jaded about the corruption ive witnessed here, and with the volunteer company of i-to-i. i could go on about it forever, but NONE of my projects or anyone's projects sees a dime of money, not clean water for the schools or funds to even upkeep the classrooms. i to i makes pure profit off us volunteers. i thought they would use my money to support my projects but ive been astounded and how much i've had to dole out of my own money for the people here, instead of i-to-i using the money i paid them to do so. i am glad i went on my first volunteer trip with i to i because they hold your hand, but now that i know the ropes however, im going to go directly to a school or nonprofit to help. for example, the local guy here Heriel who works for i-to-i in Moshi is very very nice but driven by greed. listen to this story. so his job (with i to i) is probably one of the best jobs in Moshi for pay (even though i to i unethically pays them a couple bucks a day and never gives them days off). he began running a janky tour and safari company on the side, writing off the taxes as a nonprofit while he pockets the money (i think). so when we planned our safari, we went with another guy in town Pawa Rafiki who gave us the best deal for our money. When heriel found out, he yelled at me and said we're not allowed to go. we all kinda laughed and were like "we came here voluntarily, we paid to be here, and we're adults. we're going" and we went. Anyway THEN we had a house meeting, all the volunteers, and Heriels first words were "From now on, nobody is allowed to go on tours or safaris with any company at all except mine because otherwise we at i-to-i will be in trouble if something bad happens to you." at this point there was laughter and a huge uproar in the room. all of us were bickering with him about it and i was feeling ballsy enough to say to him "youre trying to force us naive volunteers to go with you at a higher price so you can monopolize the tourist industry in moshi, its not fair to the other companies also trying to survive and its not fair because they are often willing to offer us more competitive prices and better service." he BLEW UP when i said monopolize but what the hell, it was true. THEN he finally conceded and said "Ok fine, you can go with other tourist companies" (as if he has the right to tell us that anyway) then he said "but they must pay me a fee for using one of the i-to-i volunteers." ARE YOU KIDDING ME? pay Heriel a FEE because we're from i to i where he works?????? At this point Holly, another volunteer shes really funny, yelled "What is this, rent-a-volunteer?" it was so funny. But anyway, we yelled at him for that and in the end we realized he has no jurisdiction over what we do at all, he wont be able to charge companies a fee for taking us volunteers on safari, no company would pay him that. i hate when people here talk to us like we're idiots who just hand out money blindly. its one thing to ask for money when i have built a relationship with a person, but the whole "mzungu give me money" thing i hear on the way to school 100 times a day is the most frustrating sentence ive ever heard. FYI, i am so passionately anti-Heriel that every trip we are going on is going to be with other tour companies than his, and we are going to tell the next generation of volunteers to go with other tourist companies as well and boycott heriels. it sounds bad but come on heriel, we come from capatilist countries we know what youre trying to do were not going to be like "okay we have to do everything with heriel's company" my god hes like a dictator. end of rant! i hope you understood that story, if not ill just explain it later when i get back. it does make me irate for obvious reasons. One dollar can go SO FAR here and yet so many of them get caught up in the i-to-i bureaucracy. like for example, i-to-i gives us free t-shirts for volunttering. many of the kids here dont have shirts. why didnt those shirts go to them!??! Us volunteers are all equally jaded about it, but its true that if you want to work in the third world, the first think you have to cope with is the relevance of corruption in everything you do.

~suz