24th to 26th of April, 2018.
If I had to describe J, and I hope this not sounds mean, I would have to say that if somebody was born to be called like that it was him. I do not know why but when I look at him all that I see is someone called J. And also, to the Brazilians reading this, he also looks like a mini craque. Oh! One more: Apu, the character from The Simpsons. That is it.
I do not know… is not that I do not like him it is just that there is something else I guess. He makes me too many complements, everything that I do is a great thing to him, as anybody else couldn’t do it. And I know that is not true, it is just because he hasn’t met / stayed with some foreign / not African citizen before. I mean, I am not try to be humble here or I am saying that I am not intelligent as he says. I just know that there is so many people further more intelligent than I that every time he makes me a compliment about that I feel bad. And of course because of the whole uncomfortable thing with the compliments. I will tell him.
First thing we do it together is going to the college. So, you see, after this point, everything start to look different than I had thought about coming here to help in a school.
The college run by J. it is a private one, to those who not attend to the university have the opportunity to have a diploma. The students are usually around eighteen years old up to twenty something. He has another school, also not for kids but for teenagers up to the ones who can go after there to his college. So, I am a little disappointed with the whole system because I was expecting to help a simple school, with simple kids who cannot afford to pay a private education but still deserve a good quality of teaching. J. might have a good intention but at the end he is still a rich man who is running projects that are not for everyone.
So we go to a few schools where I make a little speech to the kids about a better way to speak English, faster and easier. The kids like, the directors of the schools like (but I do not know until where this ‘like’ it is just because I am a white person) and J. also likes. But at the end, it is just to attract more students to J. projects and I do not feel good about that. I feel guilty. He really want to bring more kids to his project because he believes he can help than to become someone better in the future or he just want to increase his numbers? Of course that passed for my mind, I hate the capitalism!
We also go to the university, where he ministers some classes. I also talk to the students about improving their conversation in English. Middle time, I correct a dissertation from one of his students and what at the beginning make me feel good, made me feel so guilty later, when I saw he simply giving the work back to the girl, without even check my notes. I mean, I might helped her because there were so many mistakes involving grammar, but at the end who am I to tell her anything? He is the one who has been helping her with the work (at least should be) not me. Also, she has been writing things for the past few years and nobody correct her properly, making her get at this point with such big problem to write in English, and then I come and correct her whole work, with my methods and ways, changing all her conception of writing overnight? No way. That it was wrong and I regret it. I was even chocked when after I explained all of this to him, he said I would be helping him (not exactly her, but him) because her work could go to some important place and since everybody would know he was the one supervising her, if the work looked bad with a lot of mistakes, what they would think about him? Ow, excuse me, the truth, maybe? If you are not good in something that you need in your work / life, you work on it to make it better, you do not put a Band-Aid in a exposure fracture.
We supposed to have pizza for dinner but the place it is full and it is late. That because he have always something to do or to pick up in somewhere, so we pass so many time walking around in his car and most of the times I have to wait for twenty up to thirty minutes! Anyway, at the place we go to eat, at least I had another Tanzanian beer, Kilimanjaro.
Last night, during dinner, J. tells me some big and totally unexpected news: we would go for a travel. Over one week, passing a few cities and going to the schools to invite them to his project. And he thought it would be OK just tell me the night before we should go. He does this a lot actually, always waiting until the last minute to communicate me about something. Well, it is not exactly in my plans but I like to travel and be in a few cities, where I would not before, it does not sound so bad, so I agreed.
Unfortunately I have to finish this chapter with some bad news. Today is celebrated the “Union Day” of Tanzania. In 1954, the country of Tanganyika it got unified with the country of Zanzibar to form what is known nowadays as Tanzania. So there is this whole event about it and we decide that would be nice for me to go.
Things start wrong because the event is in a stadium. How can most of the people fit in a limited place? Then, J. uses me as an excuse (as a white person) to get us inside. Once inside, there is no place to sit but he figures out one for him. I say I am OK being standing but he pays, yes ladies and gentlemen, he pays the boy beside him to give me his seat. I wanted to leave the place immediately (and I should) but I did not. Big mistake. After one hour of so many stupid and disinterest people coming in their fancy cars, the whole kind of military people, about eighty groups I guess, marching in the stadium, I am exhausted. At first it was nice I have to say but then, after two hours, when they were just marching and marching around, it sucks! The whole thing became a circus! The Circus is in town, people! With a lot of presentations of the army and policemen, fighting and combating something. And to make even more ridiculous, they dressed some kids as soldiers, gave them guns, and they were performing some combat stuff. What? Yes. I was chocked.
I show J. that I am uncomfortable and want to leave. I even ask him for how many hours more we should stay otherwise for me we could leave now. But then, when I tell him I am leaving and would wait for him at the car, he says he was there just because of me. Bullshit!
It is when it happened: I have the worse luck ever to pick the moment to leave. They had opened one of the gates to people go inside the grass and do something. A disorder started and people started to push in while the stupid asshole security guards were pushing out. My feet were stepped a few times just making my scratches worse and bleed. When I lost control and said – all right people, I want to leave and not going inside the stupid place – they left me pass but then a bastard rude guard, in suits, yelled with me, push me back and said I could not leave. Oh, I should yelled him back and make him feel bad for what he did. I should, for the first time, have used the colour of my skin (since everybody else sees that as a big thing) to make him regret for his act. But I did not. I was almost crying already, so sad with the whole situation, so many fucking different policemen and that kind of disorder and disrespect? People clapping hands to the president on the back while just right here we were being treating like shit.
When the other guards from the gate saw me almost crying they do not say one single word and let me pass. At this time J. was trying to keep me near to him, as I needed him to leave the place, but I was already running away. When he came closeerI just said I needed some time alone.
I got so pissed off! I was claiming go back to Europe where people are civilized. I remembered the girlfriend of Aidan, in The Zanzibar Chest, when she got sick in Africa and started to say that she wanted to go back to the U.S.A., because she could not be here anymore. Back that time I judge her. Today I was her.
I could not even look at J. when we sit at a restaurant (where I refused to eat because it was to expensive) and he started to say he was sorry and trying talk about the event. I just tell him I will not to talk about it. We drop my clothes in a Dry and Clean (ridiculous moment that I will not even talk about it also) and after eat some rice, beans and vegetables (again). He drops me in the hotel where I eat a fried cake (luckily they still had one from the morning) and sleep for two hours.