Mambo!

That's like Swahili street for Jambo, which is like the informal way of saying Habari, which is like Hello. Hello!

I'm starting to settle in to my new Western Tanzania home fairly well. I'm still living in a hostel, which is mostly inconvenient for it's lack of kitchen access, but once I pass that hurdle it will all be on the up and up.

So I think it's time for the first of what might be an occasional series comparing the wonders of Tanzania and Ghana.

Things that are different about living in a small city in Western Tanzania, as compared with a village in Central Ghana, include:

More consistent electricity - it's only been out for about 2 of my 7 days here so far.

Easy access to beans - one of the first words I learned in Swahili was "maharagwe," and I haven't looked back since. Although Tanzanians don't immediately seem to grasp the idea that if they're eating beans, ugali (a cakey cassava/maize thing) AND meat, and I'm only eating beans and ugali, that I'll want relatively more beans. It's not that I just want to eat LESS. (Although who knows what motivates the crazy white guy who keeps running back and forth on the roads out of town and doesn't accept offers of bike-taxis, though he seems to be in some great hurry...)

An audience while running - more people to encourage me as I jog! They are cheering, right?

When you run up a hill here, which are generally smaller than their Ghanaian counterparts (though still tempting to those who like vistas), and topped with exposed boulders instead of dense forest and cocoa plantations, you might be greeted, not by confused cocoa farmers, but by a Tanzanian in full camouflage uniform who doesn't speak a word of English, but whose presence is nonetheless enough to indicate that this is some kind of militarily strategic 50 meter hillock just outside of town and please don't run here anymore. Asante! Well -- to be honest I've run up two such hills, and only met one such man, but I can only assume that 50% of the small hills in Western Tanzania are protected as such.

The water runs slightly tinted from my tap here. And it smells like lake water -- water plus dirt. But it could smell worse.

The constant motivation to learn the language - I never thought I'd say this, but it turns out that there is a relative excess of English in rural Ghana. In large part, it's that everyone in Ghana uses English numbers, which is enough to get you by in a lot of day-to-day activities, but it's also that West Africa lacks a unifying African language with which to communicate, and so, even internally, they sometimes use the English or French left to them by their colonizers. In East Africa, it's Swahili, Swahili and only Swahili. Not really, there are other local dialects too, but there sure isn't any English. I think I already know as much Swahili as I did Twi, although I'm not as functional with it.

The roads may be bad here, but that is made up for by the fact that Everything is a Road. In the Ghana village cluster there were few roads, and they were all in terrible conditions. Still, once couldn't help but drive along these roads because the alternative was wrapping your car around a huge tree. Here, the sandy soil and seasonal rain support at its densest, some well spaced little trees and various grasses and scrub brush. This means that when one is in the village cluster in the the project's safari-style land-cruiser (did you know that Safiri is the Swahili verb for Travel? Aaaahhhhh! Just blew your mind...), and you want to get from point A to randomly non-contiguous point B, you just ask a villager for directions and drive your beast of a car along the little footpaths that connect essentially most all points of any even minimal interest. It's fun! But don't open your window too much or you'll get slapped around by the vegetation.

In Ghana there was this cool little plant that would fold up its leaves if you blew on it or brushed it as you walked by. It grew like a weed along roadsides and footpaths. No one seemed as entertained by it as I was. Tanzania doesn't have those, but it does have random stands of Mint growing wild, and driving or running through them is always a pleasant olfactory experience.

I'm in the office right now on a Saturday morning because we're having some kind of diplomatic visit by the Japanese government this afternoon. Japan is a strong supporter of the Millennium Villages Project and it's initiatives in a number of countries. And a large Japanese corporation donated all the LLIN (Long-Lasting Insecticide-treated [anti-mosquito bed]Nets) for several village clusters, including this one. The former prime minister was supposed to be coming, although I'm told that his plans have changed. No one seems quite sure who is coming anymore, but I'm expecting to be entertained by a weekend of pointed cultural contrasts.

I haven't taken any pictures around here yet, so here's one from Reunion:
This is the view from the most recent lava flow (spring 2007, I think), still steaming. You can't see the baguettes and wine, but I promise, they were JUST off camera.