Hiking (and academics) in Hong Kong: And so we go

Quick clarification: James did not get stabbed, he stabbed his own hand. Important difference, I think.

I was recently asked what my weirdest experience has been in Tanzania and my mind drew a complete blank. I suppose this means I’m used to the shouts of “Mzungu! Mzungu!” that follow me down every street, the sardine packed dala-dalas, the marriage proposals and confessions of love, the t-shirts from various US high schools (I’m still searching for an Andover or Dartmouth shirt), the cars driving on the wrong side of the road (both in the sense that by law the cars drive on the left hand side and in the sense that some drive on the right hand side just for kicks), the packs of guys who sit on motorcycles all day at the end of all the streets, and any of the myriad of other cultural nuances. In all likelihood I’ll return to the states and experience reverse culture shock. What, you can’t sit five people in that back of a taxi?

But last Sunday I had my weirdest experience in Tanzania: a squirrel stake out. Probably not what you were expecting but there you go. The four of us were on a walk with one of the guys who I met at the wood shop. The week before, we had held a session for him, and another guy, at our work site at EARD to teach them about briquetting from sawdust to finished pressed product. They were so into the charcoal production and the briquetting and both are now eager to try it themselves. That’s cool. Anyway, we’re on a walk around a nearby forest which includes a fair amount of pausing to contemplate streams, pausing to look at wild flowers, pausing to name trees, and pausing just to pause. There was a lot of pausing. We take another short pause to stare into a rustling and chirping bush. And then it becomes a longer pause. Finally I just have to ask, “What are we looking at?”

“There’s a squirrel in there,” says Emily. “Samuel says if we are very quiet and stay still, it will come closer so we can see it.”

Did you just say squirrel? Like the little grey ones that literally cover New England? The animals that you can’t walk 10 feet without seeing perched on a branch or on the sidewalk in front of you? I just wanted to clarify that that is the animal we are now waiting to see as we sit on a path in the middle of Tanzania, Africa with monkeys scampering in branches over our heads and a bull insemination farm ahead of us. It was a weird and ridiculous moment. I never did see the squirrel.

To finish the other moment that I wanted to elaborate on from the last post. The immigration officer. Tim had a nice conversation with her when she called him over to her car as we were walking to the dala-dala stand. I could only hear his side of the conversation, “Yes, we’re tourists…Traveling, we’ll be here for another two weeks….Staying in a house that we got through a contact here…Checking out the area, now we’re headed to the fair and we might see a film after…” and so on. We’re just tourists. Tourists. Now every time I walk down that road carrying a compound lever press which looks decidedly un-touristy I get a crick in my neck from turning to look for the officer’s pale pink car. At the sound of any approaching car, I’m ready to ditch the press in the bushes and hightail it home. A little nerve wracking to say the least.

Today (Monday) Emily and I returned to the group of VICOBA women we have been working with. (That reminds me. For anyone who didn’t know, I am also blogging for Scientific American Expeditions Blog which I think is kinda cool. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/expeditions/ The thought process that brought me to this is that I just send in a blog to Scientific American about this group of women. Check if out if you’d like some more background. It should be posted soon.) This is a group that DHE taught how to briquette last spring and summer. This summer we got to check in and see how things are going. The full story will be posted on Scientific American so I won’t rewrite it here. Today when we returned to Leganga, we brought with us two presses for the women so that they might expand their operation. The cheers and smiles that we received needed no translation. In that moment, with a group of 14 women smiling and thanking us and looking beyond happy, I felt completely at home. I felt that the entire summer had led up to that one moment and that everything had fallen into place. The hundreds of briquettes and piles of char that we had produced (and often rejected) actually had a purpose beyond rigorous data collection—we were actually using our knowledge to teaching others.

Apologies that that got a little sentimental. It was a good feeling.

This afternoon we did a deep clean of our yard space and decided what equipment would stay, what we’d pass on to the V4Y group tomorrow, and what was beyond salvaging. Surprisingly a summer’s worth of accumulated stuff didn’t take that long to pack up. Packing my trunk at the end of camp takes days longer.

And now we are into our final week in Tanzania. The last of our Dutch friends leave tomorrow and on Thursday we fly off to Zanzibar for a few days to try being real tourists. Then next Tuesday it’s back to New York. Woah. But between now and then lie 8 full reports to write (and I thought this was an off term), two more groups to wrap up and say good-bye to, and a house to clean and pack. Pole pole. Slow and steady.