2am. Sticky situation 3072.

Blog 1 may 2007

It’s 2am and my guts are churning. I think sometimes when things don’t work out exactly the way we planned, we tell ourselves they’re working out wrong. And then stress. Which is just stupid. It’s highly probable that the universe is all-knowing and unfolds the way it does for the best, whether we are capable of comprehending that best or not.

So what’s not working out the way I planned? Ah…just little things. Most of them barely worth mentioning but you know how fingerlings become sharks at this wee hour. It’s like that Leunig cartoon, that has two pictures. The first he is awake in bed and his thought bubble shows three viscous sharks, hunting, hunting, bearing their teeth…The next, he is at the breakfast table and his thought bubble is three little fishies swimming around happily, harmlessly.

I have a list of about 3 foolscap pages of “things we’d do differently next time”. I keep adding to it, but interestingly, it’s all the Western stuff. All the planning, implementing, support, reporting, funding procedures – and most of the ideas on the list stem from this being the first time we’ve done this. When I reflect on the suggestions in daylight, none of them take on the overwhelming horror that they seem to take on at this shark-bait hour. In fact, mostly I feel proud that the 3 foolscap pages aren’t 3,000. They could well be, except we put enough planning (4 years) and expertise into this project. So most times, I feel a deep sense of satisfaction about how smoothly our project has been running. I attribute bucket loads of that success to Dazzie Pants (who obstinately refuses to allow obstacles to deter him from charging on), yet the fact is the whole team here does that – every minute, every day – so I’m being biased in attributing this quality to Darren only.

But he is on my mind right now, because he has just been woken by our across-the-road neighbours – a grandma, mama and her husband. The mama has her mouth slashed. 2am. It begs some questions, but of course, with our limited kiswahili, we’ve only managed to half understand. The cut has been made with a spear. We don’t know if the husband has done it. All we know is, once again, we are being asked for the use of our car, our wits and our hearts.

We have a policy that, for security reasons, none of us EVER are to go to the front gate at night. The guards are meant to handle all night-time queries to avoid us being tricked into an ambush or something… Well we broke that policy when our guard Elle Macpherson (we added the prefix to this wise, old Tanzanian’s name to give him some Australian flavour!) mentioned Nolasco’s name in trying to explain our car was needed to help. (You’ll know that Nolasco is our friend and village elder, someone who is very dear to us). Daz ventured up to find not Nolasco but this family, with their urgent problem.

On returning to our hut, Daz explained the little he’d managed to work out and then headed up to the car with his keys and phone in his pocket. I phoned him to check whether the slash was a hospital type problem – or maybe something we could wake Heather about and ask her to address. “Definitely hospital”. In moments, Daz was again, back at our hut – looking for his wallet – there was only a skeric of petrol in the car.

So this is where the list comes into play. We can fix the “no petrol in the car in an emergency” situation. I’ll just explain again tomorrow that we’d like whoever uses the ute to fill it up before they embark on the 40-minute trip home, but this time I’ll have a reason to prove it’s important. In emergencies, we MUST have fuel in the car…everyone can appreciate my nagging when they finally see a reason for it.

That’s the “Western” side, the bit I’m comfortable with, the bit I feel is fixable – even in this black of night. The bits that I’m forever at a loss to navigate are the African bits, the “Tanzanian life” bits… those seemingly random eventualities that make up life for our African neighbours. How does a young woman get a slash across her mouth at 2am? How do we help her from experiencing similar situations again? How many corpses of our neighbours has Corky delivered to the morgue – we have a neighbour die every month. And don’t go thinking I mean old, long-lived, happy-to-check-out grandparents. I mean 28 year olds. People younger than ourselves, with life ahead of them and young families relying on them… How many kids does one of our most upstanding labourers look after now his brother has abandoned his family – 13, or is it 14? Withdrawing his meagre savings two months ago, he’s still supporting them. He’s not yet asked us for help, but he will – the current system is unsustainable. How many knocks at the front gate do we get to tell us about newly orphaned kids we need to know about? How many mamas find it difficult to get to our meetings during this wet season because either they themselves or the kids are sick – as a result of eeking out a living in a mud hut with flooded floors when it rains day and night? How many kids are sent home from the local primary school because they haven’t paid their school fees – we see the droves of them wandering home at all hours every day. How many problems need our help in this community alone?

Innumerable. And sometimes it’s just a matter of time (the Kesho mamas will enjoy next year’s wet season –their new home will be dry!). Sometimes it’s a matter of money (I look forward to the time when we give this worker supporting 13 kids a full-time job at Kesho Leo as a farmhand or something of the like), and sometimes it’s just a matter of using our car (we’ll continue to run our dead neighbours to the morgue, it’s our service to our community)…but oh, how my heart bleeds and my guts cramp when I see problems I’m not convinced we can fix. It’ll be almost impossible to find out whether this woman’s slashed mouth was a result of her husband’s hand (Tanzanians don’t readily discuss these things and it would be extremely rude and culturally inappropriate for us to ask. We’ll need to make discreet enquiries through Nolasco. And then it will be culturally inappropriate for us to address the situation. Nolasco will need to on our behalf…if he has time. Fortunately, he is at least, one of the few Tanzanian men that solemnly believe it’s wrong for men to hurt women physically). Even if the husband is responsible, in this country it’s no big deal anyway – its traditional culture for a man to beat his wife whenever he wants, even if this type of domestic violence has recently become illegal in statutory law. And I mean recent – I’m talking 5 years max. How do I help here? How do I help the woman that looks after her 3 kids, her sisters 2 kids and her dying sister (who has HIV-AIDS) but doesn’t live in Sinon, so doesn’t fall into our described area of beneficiaries? Yet her local priest, a lovely Irish man, keeps ringing me for assistance – “she’d really be able to help these kids, if she just had a hand,” he says… What can I do to help here? A few months ago I began calling these Tanzanian situations “Sticky situations 3072s”. I can’t think of a better way to describe them. All my Western situations with this project are so simple and solvable – they number into the thousands also but there’s no counting them because instead you just solve them, quickly, cleanly. All my Tanzanian 3072s seem so complicated and dare I say it…unsolvable.

And yet they are the very reason we are here. So while my stomach churns, I guess, all I can do is address the 3072s the way I address other problems. One at a time. Even if the time is 2am and I’m guilt ridden because I’m not the one actually at the hospital. Darren is.

Beck