um....?

Hello friends and family! I wish I could write each of you with a little message, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen. I have twenty minutes and five seconds, so here it goes.

For three weeks in West Viginia and DC, we kicked it in hostel-style area below a church, visted a sustainable meat farm (Polyface Farms for all y'all Michael Pollan lovers), felt nauseated inside the bowels of the World Bank, got a tiny bit sick from living in close, underground, unventilated quarters, took classes about how capitialism has replaced Christianity as the dominant faith and global warming is used as a political fear tactic similarily to the Global War on Terror. But most importantly, our three central terms for our environmental policy class are hope, surprise, and friendship. And I got my head buzzed with T and H at Diego's - an Italian barber who has also cut the pope's hair might I add.

After eating salad, pizza, ice cream, and a cheesburger (all at different places) and staying up the whole night, we left DC, straggled our way through the aiport, and made it on to the plane - twenty six students, one fellow, and two profs. Besides our sketchy nighttime landing in Rome - the giant planes's weight swerving side to side right after we touched down was a tad unnerving - we made it to Dar Es Salaam by one in the afternoon.

(I can't summarize everything. Just gonna point that out.) We're paired up in rooms at in the center of the city. I'm rooming with C - we've got two mosquito netted beds, a fan, our bags, and a little closet. It's hot and sticky, but comfortable and simple. I sleep in a sleeping sack at night.

Our first two days have been free days: time to get our bearings. This involves lots of walking. Ch, who will be leading our processing/discussion sessions, has lived in Dar his whole life and now is a freelance writer writing social commentary columns for Tanzanian newspapers. By talking and walking around the city with him, we learn a lot. We've seen food markets with tropical fruits and vegtables and smelly chickens, restaruants with a lot of Chinese and Indian cuisine, and an outdoor book cafe (tables on sandwiched with a bar and a bookstore) a recent intiative of Ch's mother to encourage readership amoung Tanzanians, especially youth. The goal is that readership is essential for an independent, just Tanzania. We arrived for celebration of Mahmoud Darwish, the widely celebrated palestinian poet, who recently died. A professor spoke, a facilitator read some of his poems, and many other attendees (in an audience of about 25) stood up to share their thought or poems, as most of the time was open for anyone's contribution (a logical way to facilitate a community space we could use more of in the U.S.).

The English/Kiswahili dynamic. The professor had spoken in English, often directly at us, the American students, with the intention that he was poking holes in our supposedly pro-Israel brainwashing. Most of the the other contributors, spoke in Kiswahili. One man came up, reluctantly told the crowd he would speak in English, but when everyone immediately told him that was by no means necessary, he said, "Thank you for letting me have my own culture" and spoke in Kiswahili. Without knowing the specifics, I know that the theme of the discussion was oppression and violence and how we can spread peace and human dignity, both in Palestine and around the world. None of us U.S. students spoke, and Ch's mother called us out on this at the end. Why didn't we? "We were absorbing so much; I'm afraid of public speaking" was in essence our answer. "I didn't want to go up there and speak in the oppressor's language," C told me afterward. I sort of regret not speaking, for imagine how six silent white U.S. (we need an adjective) students looked during an open discussion like that. But I'm also not kicking myself about it. It was our second day in Dar/Tanzania/Africa/Abroad. After the session, we had several good discussions where we got to express ourselves and ask more questions. We got called our a lot about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? was Ch mom's main question. Why? Did you not learn anything from Vietnam? Those bombs are killing innocent people. She expressed utter perplextion, anger, patience. Frustrated with us trying to explain why (which sounded like justfying why) I blurted out, we're asking the same questions you are! I ask them everyday! My response to her WHY?: Because we're taught in the U.S. in the U.S. to dehumanize people our borders.

Ah, it's so hard to start writing and cut it off just when my thoughts are beginning.