One very pale trombone led the big parade

Sorry folks - been out in places with no running water, no paved roads, and certainly no internet. (A lot of fancy chickens, though.) Here's a couple of backlogged entries taken from scribblings in my notebook (the "ana-blog").

A few days ago my frisbee friend Matt, an incisive fellow, casually but pointedly asked what it was like to actually be here. Not what I was doing, per se, but what my mental/emotional state was from day to day. So today, Sunday, I spent some lazy hours eating mangoes and thinking about just that.

I was planning a walk to the Bunge, the Tanzanian Parliament building maybe a mile away, and I realized I actually had to pysch myself up a bit before I ventured outside by myself. It's not that I feel unsafe here in Dodoma; I think I'm much more likely to be involved in a daladala bus accident than be robbed. (Given the daladalas I saw driving directly over the road median the other night, probably significantly more likely.) And it's not even that I'm an outsider, here and everywhere in Tanzania. I'm not particularly averse to being alone, in the grand tradition of Myers-Briggs "I"s everywhere. And if I do feel lonely, I've gotten a bit better at chatting up random, friendly-looking folks.

Rather, the thing that really intimidates me is the constant, focused attention. It's mentally exhausting in a way I've never really experienced before. I think my need to steel myelf before taking a walk springs from the simple knowledge that I will be watched the whole time. The triple whammy of being a solitary white female (and a kind of goofy-looking one at that) means that I constantly catch everybody's eye. There's no "blending into the crowd" here for me, and I hadn't realized what that would feel like. It's by far the hardest thing I've experienced in my time here, much harder than the absence of creature comforts like hot water or net-free sleeping.

And it's not just being watched. If it were just watching, I could cloak myself happily in denial and pretend no one was looking. But my life in public here also involves a lot of greetings and approachings and chatting ups. Sometimes it's actually super cute - a little girl today biked very, very slowly next to me for about half a block, staring, before offering a very quiet "Shikamoo", the traditional Tanzanian greeting for elders. I replied with the requisite "Marahaba", which caused her to smile nervously and wobble on her bike before zooming triumphantly back to her friends. And sometimes it's just people shouting "mzungu!" and pointing at me, sort of the same way I shout "Hummer Limo!" whenever I see one circling around the MCI center in DC. Only sometimes do the approaches really make me nervous, mostly young men who follow me for a long time, trying to find out my phone number, figure out where I live, get me to listen to their mix tape.

So I guess I miss anonymity, which is strange. Always took it for granted before. I have a theory that a small city like Dodoma is actually the worst of it - in a big city like Dar I'm not as rare, and perhaps in a small village, people could actually see me day-to-day and get used to me as a person, not just a hummer limo. I'll test this theory in a few days, when we head out to Kongwa region. (Very rural.)

Reading over this, it seems like I think that the people watching/approaching me are being somehow rude or unkind. I don't, actually. If I were a Tanzanian confronted with me I'd be rather intrigued, too, and this isn't a culture that politely looks away from differences. They want to know what's up. I plan to ask some of my wazungu associates in Dar how they deal with this attention phenomenon in the long-term; I wonder if it's easier if you're a more naturally extroverted person.

But regardless, I still went on my walk today. I refuse to stay in my room, if only because my Dodoma room is severely dinky (I've whacked my elbow on the mosquito net frame quite a few times now). There is a big country out there and I am going to see it, even if it feels like I'm a one-person parade each time I leave my door. I saw the Bunge. It looks a little like a dusty space station; pictures coming soon. I saw a train go creeping by on the ancient, German-built national railroad. I found a really delightful smelling flower that sort of became my talisman as I headed back into the downtown area. And I waved and Salama-ed and dodged my way through the masses, as individual situations dictated, and it wasn't too bad.