Who do you worship!?

GL, the illustrious executive editor and publisher of this virtual publication, once told me that if I wanted to write down my daily occurrences, only my mother would be interested in reading them. However, since today was my first day of work in Tanzania, it might be worth mentioning. In my short life, I’ve been a waitress, an SAT tutor, a shopgirl, a lab rat, a nurse’s assistant, a financial consultant, a food blogger, a public health research assistant, and a medical student, but I’ve never been a field intern for an international medical NGO. Therefore, I had almost no idea what to expect on my first day.

Before coming, I had corresponded briefly with several of the local office staff about my position this summer and what I would be working on. I had done some other work with male circumcision for HIV prevention, so I knew the science behind it, but very little of the actual field implementation. I also just couldn’t guess what the day to day work flow would look like.

I arrived in Dar es Salaam on Saturday night, and spent most of Sunday at the hotel sleeping and getting unpacked. This morning (Monday), I woke up at six, but really had no idea when I was supposed to arrive at the office. I had been told via email that a driver from the hotel would take me to the office. After wasting some time unsure of what to do with myself, I sat down to breakfast in the dining room sometime around 7:30. A little while later, one of the receptionists found me to tell me that my ‘car was ready.’ I thought this meant a driver would be ready to take me when I wanted to go, so I thanked him and continued to eat breakfast. A little while later, I saw the same receptionist wander back to the dining room to smile nervously at me. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ll just finish and we can go.’

After I ate, I went back up to my room, packed my bag, and wandered downstairs. When I stepped outside the hotel, I saw to my horror that a Toyota Landcruiser with my NGO’s label stamped on the side was idling in front of the door, and inside sat a very impatient looking man. It dawned on me that someone from the office had come here to pick me up, and had been waiting the whole time while I lackadaisically spread jam on toast.

I ran to open the door and breathlessly apologize for the mix-up. S., the supremely irked driver, informed me that he had been waiting over half an hour, and that there were a limited number of cars to go around! I apologized repeatedly while trying to awkwardly hoist myself into the rather elevated car, and in the process bumped my head against the doorframe. While apologies continued to stream out of my mouth, I thought, ‘Oh shit, did my headband just crack?’

I closed the door and saw the two pieces of forlorn plastic that had fallen from my head onto the floor of the car. S. had already started pulling the car forward. My mind raced as I tried to think of some way to salvage this situation without asking him to stop the car. Did I have any spare clips? No. Did I have some way I could wear my hair down? No. Did I want to show up for my first day looking like a raving lunatic? Um…

Finally, when we had reached the end of the block, I blurted out, ‘I’m SO sorry, but do you mind if I run back upstairs to get a headband? Mine just broke…’ S. braked, and looked at me like I had just asked him for a blueberry lollipop because I had left mine at home. He narrowed his eyes and said, ‘You have another one upstairs?’ I quickly nodded and darted out the Landcruiser before he could say no, yelling that it would only take a minute.

After we were back on the road, S. turned out to be very nice. We drove the dramatic distance of half a mile to a white gated compounded on the side of a major road. Pulling into the parking lot, I saw a lot of Tanzanian men in business casual congregating around the front door of the building. Everyone was busy greeting each other good morning and shaking hands. S. pulled us to the front door, asked me to sign a car usage form, and waited for me to hop out. Wait, I thought, weren’t you supposed to take me in? What now? I nervously stepped out of the car and looked around for someone to save me. And then like a miracle, the country program director, and American, stepped out from behind the vehicle and asked me if I was Linda. Yes! If I ever was.

H., the country director, took me upstairs and rapidly introduced me to several men who’s names I promptly forgot. I noticed that despite the dirt roads outside, 1) this was a normal office, complete with copy machines, communal fridge and water cooler and 2) everyone else was wearing business casual. I, on the other hand (and to be fair, against GL’s explicit advice), was wearing hiking sandals, North Face capris, and a Columbia hiking shirt. I suppose the native Tanzanians here will just forever think that Asian American medical students are all a very poorly dressed lot, or else hopelessly over-zealous outdoorsy types.

It was somehow decided that my first day would be best spent attending a training session for a new community outreach team helping us with the circumcision campaign. This sounded like a reasonable idea to get me oriented, so I enthusiastically agreed. And so, I followed three of my new colleagues a short drive away to a hotel conference room, where I proceeded to sit through an entire day’s training…entirely in Swahili.

Luckily, my three Tanzanian colleagues were extremely nice, and gave me background materials to read in English, and also translated bits for me along the way. It was interesting to see how the audience interacted with the presenters, and hear the questions they had about the campaign. (This is an outside media group contracted to do community outreach ahead of the campaign dates in order to address local concerns and create demand, more on this later.) I also wrote down individual Swahili words that stuck out (tohara means circumcision).

Halfway through the day, I saw a slide that looked like a biblical quote in Swahili. Curious, I leaned over to C., one of the community outreach officers, and asked him what it meant. He explained it was the pact between God and Abraham. I nodded, but really I had no idea what this meant.

‘You are Christian?’ C. whispered to me.

I smiled apologetically and shook my head no.

‘Oh,’ he nodded understandingly, ‘In China you have your own…?’

Again, I shook my head no.

‘You have…nothing?’ he asked. ‘Who do you worship?!’

I dumbly shook my head and flexed my lower lip from a smile to a nervous pout. But he wasn’t done.

‘Who do you pray to? ... No one? …It’s just you?’

I nervously glanced around at the presentation that was still going on around us. I timidly shrugged my shoulders and turned back to my empty notepad. Of course before coming here, I had read about Tanzanian culture, the breakdown of different ethnic and religious groups in the country. Somehow, the percentages of Christians and Muslims and indigenous faith-ers all seemed very abstract in my mind. I never expected to encounter this kind of reaction to my own beliefs, which I found very irrelevant to my coming here.

Luckily, a few minutes later C. nudged me to help him add me on Facebook, and this relieved some of my fears of being a complete social outcast for the next two months.

Despite a rocky start, it would be unfair to end this post without saying that I ended up having a fun day and enjoying my co-workers a lot. I felt the palpable disorientation of being plunged into a culture I know very little about, and a language I don’t understand at all. Still, I’m looking forward to having a great summer, especially when we leave Dar next week for the rural Iringa, where we will actually be conducting the circumcision campaign, and where my awkward hiking shoes will have their day to shine. Stay tuned.