Banana beer and clean underpants!

Thursday, January 14, 2010

I’ve been busy, ok? I know my last post is dated January 9th, but its been a very hectic past few days and I’m finally getting down to getting all of this stuff out of my head and on to disk, etc. I say “on to disk”, because as you may have noted I have not updated this blog in awhile. That is mainly because in TZ the internet is in horrible shape - or should I say, internet connections are in bad shape. I have been online twice since I’ve been in the country, and to top that off, have only been able to call home and speak to someone live once. Both times I have been able to check my email but due to limited bandwidth and limited time, not much else. So my plan is to continue updating this blog/journal as if I’m online and when I can get reliable access either in Europe or at home, I will post all I have so far. Mass/electronic/wireless communications-wise, this is a very different place from what I am used to.

So what has happened since last Saturday? A lot - and be warned, this will be a long post. I’ll do my best to update on a more regular basis and I’ll break up this post into segments if it gets too long.

Lets start with today, Thursday, January 14th. Today was actually a pretty easy day - I spoke with the faculty and student organization at the Moshi Town campus and led a lecture/discussion with both IT courses as well. This is the third, and final meeting I had with the university’s student organizations and faculty members. The other meetings took place on the 11th at the Mwika campus, and last Friday, the 8th here on the Masoka campus. Today’s meeting with the faculty was the smallest one yet, as many faculty members had already heard me speak last Friday. Many faculty members split time between here (Masoka) and the Moshi campus, so y’know...

The faculty meeting at Mwika was a good one - it was a pretty good turnout over tea and snacks. The interesting thing (to be included in my official report to the ELCA) is the common concerns each faculty group has. It has boiled down to three things: reliable acess to the internet, materials and resources for libraries, and resources and funding for research. In regard to libraries, the disparaties between each campus are striking. At Moshi, the campus has a HUGE space for library resources and materials - but it is completely empty. Apparently the campus was able to acquire some old warehouse and manufacturing space which is in the midst of being retrofitted into academic facilities such as classrooms and offices. Picture a storage warehouse about the size of an airpplane hangar - and picture it empty. There are a handful of tables and chairs that are being used for temporary classroom space and that’s it.

At Mwika however, they have less space but their shelves are almost overflowing. It is difficult to turn around in their library, much less look around. But don’t let that fool you - they have many books, but many are copies of the same book and even more of them are outdated and very old. I recognized some titles from my undergraduate days over 20 years ago. Here at Masoka, the library is somewhere in-between - there are more books than at Moshi but there are nowhere near as many as there are at Mwika, and not nearly as many different titles.

While I don’t think reliable internet access will solve everyone’s problems, I think it will go a long way toward helping alleviate some of them. With reliable internet access, it would be easier to access books and journals online; if the university decided to subscribe to online versions of journals, they could save a lot of money in subscription fees as well as save a lot of space on the shelves, and as is the case in Mwika, instead of having 30 copies of one book, possibly freeing up shelf space to have thirty different books in the same area. I also have other ideas regarding the benefits of online access for funding, research, and publication and applications. I’ll try to dig into those ideas here, but they will definitely show up in my final report to the ELCA. I’ll also try to get pictures of Moshi and Mwika campus the next time I’m there. The point for now is that these students don’t have a pot to you-know-what-in and they’re still doing good work - the best they can do anyway. I know now that we’re incredibly fortunate in the US and that too often we take these basic services for granted.

Dig this - in order to obtain reliable internet access, the students at each campus have to ride/hike/trek into the nearest town, enter an “Internet Cafe”, plop down good, hard-earned cash for internet access in 30-minute increments (generally on older computers with slow connections), and then ride/hike/trek back to campus or home. And if they use a flash/USB drive to store or save information, they’re *lucky* they won’t get a virus on the flash drive that destroys or damages their data. How do I know this? Because last Monday I was able to venture into one of these wonderful enterprises (I *had* to send an email to my wife somehow). I had typed up a Word document to send to her, which I saved onto a flash drive on my laptop. Earlier today, I was inspecting/using some of the student computers here at Masoka and decided to try to download some content on to my flash. In goes my drive and -pop!- congratulations! You have a virus! The student techie told me it happens all the time and not to worry about it. Nonetheless, I deleted everything on the disk and will eitiher format it or give it to one of the students to format and use for themselves - either way, it goes nowhere near this laptop. I’ll buy a new flash drive in town tomorrow, thank you very much.

But see, that’s the point - I can afford a couple of bucks to buy a new drive if and when this happens. These students can’t, and I get the feeling that they’re just reserved to the idea that this is just how life is. I mean this when I say it - I don’t think the average Susquehanna University student would last 3 days here with some of these conditions in regard to communicating with the outside world. I doubt many SU professors would either - we are all very fortunate and as an unfortunate result, very soft. I know I am - for instance, did you know that for those of us who are lucky to have laundry access, that it takes 3-5 days for your laundry to return? Yep! No dryers here - well, there’s the sun but you know, most days it rains here and any drying that happens could be wiped out by a good 10 minute shower. No washers here either - well, there is the laundry and cleaning staff who have to wash everything by hand using an outdoor faucet and some soap packets. Yeah... And when you bring only 3-5 days worth of underpants & socks... yeah... lets just say two things and then we’ll never speak of this again...

#1, I’m on day three of my current pair of socks, and day two of my current pair of underwear and both are starting to get pretty gamey. Fortunately some of my clothes came back today, including five pairs of underwear. I nearly jumped for joy (ASANTE SANA!!!) - but realized there were no socks in the pile. So day four will be brought to you tomorrow by Gold Bond Medicated Powder (tm).

#2, we’re going shopping for clothes tomorrow. Shopping in the street market that is. No Wal-Mart of Penny’s here.

Ok, I’m blabbing - what else happened today? Oh yeah - I had my first experience with local banana beer! I’m really ticked at myself for not taking my camera, but I didn’t know what to expect and the last thing I wanted to do was be distracted by taking pictures all the time. So... here is the best way I can describe it - this afternoon, a little after 3pm, two teachers and a staff member here on campus invitted me to visit a local “bar”, about 1/8th of a mile up the road from campus, to learn more about (and try) the local delicacy known as banana beer. Yes - beer made from bananas! Cool! Lets go!

So we walk up the road, again, about 1/8th of a mile. When I say “road”, I use the term loosely. This is more like a bombed out road than anything else - anyway, we reach a home and meet the owners, who make banana beer and serve it to the locals for a living (I wish I could remember their names, but I guess it makes sense I suck at remembering Tanzanian names as much as I suck at remembering American names). The “tour” took place in two areas. The first, was referred to as the “factory”. This is where the bananas were processed and basically turned into beer, but they could also be turned into wine, simple juice, whiskey, or anything else. Let me explain the process (as it was told to me):

• First, the bananas picked from the trees are skinned and then mashed into a thick paste with water. This “banana mash” is placed into a vat/pot that I would say is about 15 gallons large, and is placed on a hot fire to boil. They had a pot boiling as we were there - if you have ever smelled boiling bananas, you know what I’m talking about. It smells so good - sort of a sweet... banana smell I guess. But really good nonetheless. However, if you have ever *seen* boiling bananas... ewww. They turn into this purplish/red color, and the parts that don’t get mashed turn almost black. And its a “thick” boil - think of lava boiling. Very - slow - bubbles - POP - POP - POP. I was able to take a taste straight from the pot - very very good! Very sweet - like bananas! Just don’t look at it...

• After boiling for awhile, a bit more water is added to the mash, which is then filtered to extract the water. What is left behind is this sort of purple goo that has the consistency of wet clay. Various herbs (mostly millet, I’m told - they wouldn’t divulge much else) are added to help the mixture ferment and the whole thing is stuffed into a separate tub/vat/pot, about 10 gallons in size and then LEFT OUTSIDE to ferment. And when I say ferment... dude, I mean it. They had three buckets in the process. They were sitting directly in the sun and covered with flies and bees. Some of the mixture had cracked and separated and some had turned this sort of gray-brown-purple color, and the smell! Oh man... yeah, fermentation. If I had seen it without knowing what it was, I would have thought someone had cleaned their pipes and decided to discard the sludge. It was just flat out nasty. And to top it off, the mixture would sit that way for three to five days. Woof. I'm just glad my Cipro treatments were still going on...

• After the 3-5 days are finished, a bit more water is added and another filtration process takes place. What is left is - banana beer. The thing is, the amount and time of fermentation affects the alcohol content in the brew. I was told that not only could a person make beer, but he or she could make wine and whiskey, or simple juice, depending on how long they left it to ferment. Five days was the max however - after that you apparently run the risk of the mixture rotting and making someone very sick if they drank it. Great! So will the Cipro help keep me from going blind when I drink this stuff?

To finish off the entire experience I was invited to the second base of operations, the bar. Now, small-town home bars are different in Tanzania. We walked through the “servant’s entrance” which was a door attached to the back of a wall - once inside, the bar consisted of a wooden counter and a table and two chairs. The bar was operated and supervised by the husband (this beer process was overseen by a husband and wife team). I was informed, without hesitation, that the husband is always in charge of serving the beer, while the wife is the only person who makes it. Whatever floats your boat.

The barkeep grabs one of the filthiest plastic cups I've ever seen - it is yellow with so much dirt and smudging on the outside of it... and the inside didn't look much better. He takes the cup and fills it about halfway from a small keg he has behind the bar. I notice at this point that the only other drinks available in the bar is a brand of bottled banana beer that is made further up the road by a larger facility. Nothing else is available.

So he fills the cup and hands it to me - everyone is watching. I look in the cup (yeah, its really dirty in there too) and I see that the banana brew is sort of purplish/red in color and that there appear to be small black things floating in it. At first I was taken aback but then realized that when you liquify bananas you usually get small black things - make a banana daquiri sometime and see what I mean.

The beer was also warm - it came straight out of the keg, remember. A keg that who-knows how long had been sitting there. It smelled great - kind of fruity but with a bit of a beer hint. After noticing all of this, I looked back up at everyone else in the room. And everyone was still watching me... well, whatever doesn't kill me only makes me stronger...

It tasted like it smelled - fruity with a bit of beer. I tried it again. Hey, that's pretty good. One more time. Well alright! There was no funky taste, no bad aftertaste, the consistency was sort of runny, but not bad... hey man, this is good stuff! So I had a couple more sips - everyone was happy and started laughing.

And then the hammer came down. My stomach was fine - but this stuff went straight to my head. As in "Do not pass Go, Do not collect $200" straight. Bing! And there was still over a quarter of a cup left. After admiring the brew some more and admitting that it was very strong (something the barkeep liked to hear), I had to confess that I could not finish the entire thing. If I did, I would basically roll downhill back to campus. Fortunately everyone was cool with that and understood. Sometimes it sucks being a flyweight when it comes to alcohol (but most of the time it doesn't).

The professors pass on finishing my cup, but the staff member who accompanied us... I never caught her name, but she was probably about 5' 3" and maybe about 110 pounds - she asked if she could help finish the brew. "By all means", says I.

She proceeds to take the cup from the bar and completely POUNDS it down in one straight shot. She slams the cup on the bar and everyone cheers.

Ok, I am so not getting into a drinking contest with you.

We pay the barkeep for his brew (and a little extra for showing me around) and head back to campus. By this time it is almost time for dinner so I bid my new friends adieu and have a most excellent meal. As I work on this now, at the end of the day, I realize that today was a pretty damn good day.