Installment 2 - Mwanza

Mwanza. I went to Mwanza last weekend. Mwanza is Tanzania's second largest city, and sits on the south shore of Lake Victoria. It was an experience somewhat in the vain of my blog post on 11/15/07, in which I talked about Africa and Africa, as well as the opportunity for more than a few of what have become cliched Small World comments during a expat experience that is often far closer to home than you might imagine. It started with -- what else -- Facebook. For those of you who don't know (Mom, Dad, etc. -- and Mom -- don't pretend you don't like getting special mention, even when I'm making fun of you), Facebook is an online social networking site. You sign up and waste time creating a list of friends stretching from grade school to rural Africa, and then do things like play online scrabble with them, post embarrassing pictures of them, and write notes to them which are broadcast publicly and therefore gratify our not-wholly-disavowed propensities for both exhibitionism and voyeurism. I recommend it!

Anyway. A few days before I was planning to take off for a weekend in Mwanza, I was friended (some people say "facebooked" as in -- "I facebooked you yesterday") by a friend from college. It's not that I don't have wonderful memories of Melanie Curtin, or my sophomore year at Stanford in which we lived together in a little house called Phi Sig on the Row, but I think she would agree that, thanks to the nature of the facebook network, the word "friend" has subsumed a variety of more complex descriptors that include, but are not limited too, 'friend,' 'acquaintance,' 'schoolmate,' 'someone I liked but never knew that well,' 'someone who never knew very well how much I didn't like them,' 'someone I'm trying to flirt with,' 'someone I'm trying to stalk,' 'someone who I maybe met once but I'm not sure,' 'someone I hooked up with, but I'm definitely not going to admit that when facebook asks how we know each other' and 'total stranger who has a cute profile picture.'

I would put Melanie in the categories 'someone I liked but never knew that well,' and 'schoolmate.' In the quick message exchange that followed the establishment of our everlasting Facebook Friendship, we established that she was working doing something in California, I was working doing something in Tanzania, and she happened to have a friend from Stanford working doing something in Mwanza. So, obviously, it was up to me abuse this dubiously scant relationship and make some new friends.

In Mwanza, I met and hung out with Emily (Melanie's friend), as well as her coworkers and from the Touch Foundation (NGO working with the Regional Referral Hospital in Mwanza) and McKenzie Consulting. They live in Tanzania (not Tanzania) -- a compound constructed for wealthy visiting donors that has four large apartments which are, frankly, nicer that anywhere I will live in America for the next 10 to 15 years of my life. I took special note of the showers - they were pod-like and had more omnidirectional shower-heads than I could count while urinating out the Single Malt Scotch Whiskey that was left by their boss on his last visit.

Remembering the currently non-functioning nature of my shower (well -- a bucket and a pitcher are always a functioning shower, but...) I quickly modified my open invitation for visitors in Tabora to include a warning about squat toilets, and bucket showers.

Also occurring that weekend in Mwanza, Tanzania (not Tanzania), was a barbecue held by the town Ultimate Frisbee team. Yes. Mwanza, Tanzania has an Ultimate Frisbee team. For those of you who don't know, Ultimate Frisbee is a game beloved by intramural college athletes and those with hippie tendencies across the US, but remains little know in other circles. Obviously, I'm a fan. It involves two teams trying to get a frisbee down a football field and into an end-zone, with the caveat that you can't run with the frisbee, and if the frisbee hits the ground, then the throwing team loses possession. I don't think that my medical school could find enough people to field a team, but Mwanza didn't seem to have a problem. The barbecue was most enjoyable, and notably wazungu (remember, mzungu the new obroni -- and don't be confused: mzungu is singular and wazungu is plural).

On the topic of small world, and given that I've recently decided that I might be a future Med-Peds doctor, at the barbecue I met a recent graduate of the Harvard Med-Peds residency program. He and his Nurse Practitioner wife have just moved to Mwanza with their 2 kids for a 3 year stint at which he is working in (running?) the Medicine department of the regional Hospital. It also turns out that he is from Annapolis, and that his little brother is a Junior Attackman for the Hopkins Lacrosse team, about which my father has recently sent a few emails proclaiming the start of the new season, and and lamenting their early season losses, especially to our dreaded rival Syracuse. Oh, and I also learned that Emily (Melanie's friend) was roommates at Stanford with Alida, my ex-girlfriend (who may or may not be listed as such on facebook).

The remainder of the weekend was enjoyable and not particularly blog-worthy. There were dinners out. There was reading on the lake shore. There was a beach outside of town. There was wandering around. It sometimes looked like this.