“What’s her name?” I ask.
“Whose name?” She replies, breast in hand.
“The baby” I say “your baby.” The question hangs in the air with the smoke from the cooking fire.
“She doesn’t have one.” She says, lifting the other side of her shirt to switch breasts.
“Well, what should I call her?” I have the strange desire to help her try to get the child to latch on, but that’s probably inappropriate.
She laughs distractedly and exchanges amused glances with the woman next to me. “Greta, why would you call a baby?”
“A baby needs a name.” I say, “Especially one that’s already a week old!”
“I haven’t thought of one yet.” The baby makes a few gasping noises and finally takes hold of her nipple.
“What were you thinking of for nine months?” This is one of those this makes perfect sense to everyone in the village but Greta conversations.
“Thinking? I don’t know, I just haven’t thought of a name.” She smiles completely lost in her nursing child.
“When will you give it a name?” I persist, “see, doesn’t it sound bad calling it it?”
“Sometime next month when I get her weighed at the clinic, I have to give her a name then.” This seems to be the definitive answer, as if I asked what time the bus was leaving and she told me.
“You should start a list, every time you think of a name you like you can put it on the list, then next month you can look at your list and choose one.” I say as if I’m a baby naming expert.
She gives me a since when are you a baby naming expert look and says “Thanks for the advice Greta.”
I laugh. Though Agnes is five years younger than me, the tables in our relationship have been suddenly and irrevocably turned by this five minute conversation.
. . .
Agnes was the first girl I met in my village. She was outfront gardening as the village car pulled up and dropped me off in front of my new residence. “Really?” I said, “this house is for me!?” The place was less I live in a hut in Africa and more I summer in the Southern Highlands version of Versailles; I’d hit the Peace Corps jackpot. The leaders beamed with pride. “Yes,” they said, “this is your house, and this is your live-in house girl, Agnes.” She stepped forward and smiled. I took a step back. I had no intentions of having a maid; besides the fact that I’d joined Peace Corps to help people, not hire them, I was also afraid of getting my ass kicked by other volunteers. If another Peace Corps volunteer ever came by and saw me in my castle, having my breakfast on the terrace as Agnes mopped the floor, there would be trouble. I tried to politely decline and was politely ignored. After a brief struggle with my basic Swahili a compromise was made: they would give me a month on my own to do my own house work, then Agnes would pick up what I couldn’t handle. I went back to my “I live in paradise” bliss.
The next morning I awoke to Agnes knocking on my door at 6 a.m. I declined her offer to help unpack, and went straight back to bed. She showed up the next morning, and the next. Each time she agreed that she wouldn’t start for a month, but everyday she’d sneak around behind my back and tidy things within her reach: sweep the dirt off the rocks out back, churn up the soil in the flower bed, pickup sticks from the terrace. After two weeks of covert cleaning I caught her in the act of removing leaves from the gutter at 7a.m. “Ok,” I said, “You start on Monday.” I could hear her continue to remove leaves as I lay in bed.
She started coming around every few days. She’d show up at 7a.m. in high heels and kanga wraps. She tended the garden in her heels while she waited for some direction. Having no prior experience as mistress of a house, I had little to offer her. While I’m not the cleanest person in the world I felt pressure to keep my house tidy so as not to be judged harshly by Agnes. The night before “Agie days” I’d clean up the house, then dirty a few dishes, and strip the beds so she’d have work to do. It occurred to me that it was more work to have a house girl than to live like a happy little pig in my own private pen.
After a few months we fell into a rhythm. Ag would show up a few hours too early, laugh at me while I did yoga while she did the dishes, watered the garden, and did the laundry. I was meticulous in my laundry sorting so as not to include anything in Agie’s bag that might embarrass her. One day I wandered outside to find Agie hanging a pair of my chupies (panties) on the cloths line. I quickly apologized and promised her it wouldn’t happen again. She giggled, “I’ve been wondering if you wear them. These ones are nice! I don’t mind washing your chupies.” From then on she washed the chupies, I often caught her twisting and pulling the lacier ones with a confused look.
We had a few miscommunications; the most fatal was the case of Bob and Mkude, the guinea pigs Agnes sold me for three dollars. Bob and Mkude lived in a room off of the courtyard which they shared at night with Betty and Wilma the chickens. Many people in my village keep guinea pigs to eat, I kept them because they pooped a lot and Agnes said it was great manure for my garden. They were kind of cute; admittedly, I grew attached. One day I discovered Bob was pregnant. When I told Agnes she wasn’t surprised. “But why didn’t you tell me she wasn’t a boy when I named her Bob?” I asked. She shrugged. A month later I opened the door to let the chickens out and found three little guinea pig carcasses pecked clean. When I explained this to Agnes she said “of course, chickens eat baby guinea pigs.” I asked her why she didn’t tell me, or move the chickens herself, she shrugged. A few months later I left Agnes in charge while I spent a few weeks training new volunteers in the Northwestern region of Tanga, Tanzania. I returned to find poor little Bob and Mkude dead beneath their bamboo leaves. Agnes, still smiling said “Greta, it’s the cold season, you need to keep guinea pigs in the cooking room where there’s a fire.” I believe she then shrugged.
Agnes’s favorite expression to welcome me home after a trip was “Greta! Ka! Umenenepa!” Translation: “wow Greta, you’re fat”. Agnes wasn’t’ the only one who said this to me, it’s sort of a compliment in Tanzania, plus compared to a 5’ tall, 90lb villager, I am fat. Late August I returned to Ujindile after a few months of on-off traveling and found a somewhat rounded out Agie. I beat her to the punch line, “Wow Ags, you look like you put down a few dozen kilo’s of ugali flour.” She smiled the Greta’s crazy smile and shrugged.
. . .
To an outsider, life in the village can appear to be a somewhat monotonous affair. Catching up with people after a month or so of travel usually goes something like this:
Me- “How are you?”
Village Friend- “Fine, you?”
Me- “Good. How were the many days?”
Village Friend- “Good. You?”
Me- “Great. How’s mama? The kids?”
Village Friend- “Everyone’s good.”
Me- “Alright, good to see you, catch you ‘round.”
Village Friend- “Great, come by for chai sometime.”
It’s when you make the cross over from an outsider to a somewhat observant resident that life begins to get more interesting. When I got home from travels last August my first greeting went something like this:
Me-“How are you?”
Village Friend- “Good. How are you?”
Me- “Good. Does Agnes look fat to you?”
Village Friend- “She’s five months pregnant.”
Me- “Ka!”
. . .
There comes a point in every volunteer’s service when the honeymoon is interrupted. The place you’ve come to think of as home slowly reveals itself to you, and sometimes it’s not the colorful paradise you’ve come to love. The dry season drains the life from the rainy season; the dark side of a close friend exposed. In a small village where the favorite past time is gossiping, it doesn’t take much digging to find the trash buried in a garden. Agnes’s garden had one big piece of trash in it, his name was Pizza*.
Pizza is the Village Executive Officer, aka big man on campus. He’s the most charismatic man in our village, and was at the time my supervisor and best friend. He’d been my right hand man on every project I’d done, and he was my favorite social outlet: two beers on Tuesday nights, which got us both a little giggly. He got my sense of humor, and made great fat jokes “Greta’s so big, soon she’ll need her own sub-village.” Not to mention he was a devout Christian, husband, and father of four. When I found out Pizza was the father of Agnes’s baby my heart sank.
One thing about digging around in other people’s trash is that you never know what you’re going to find. In August Agnes asked me for money to rebuild her house. When I asked her what happened to her old house she said “fire”; I assumed it was a casualty of the dry season. When I started talking to a close friend about Agnes’s relationship with Pizza he had more to share than I was ready for. It turns out that Pizza is sort of the Genghis Khan of our village; he’s got children all over the area. Agnes was the latest and most public affair. As retribution for her relationship with Pizza someone lit her roof on fire in the middle of the night while she was still in there. The revelation was shocking! Adultery, pregnancy out of wedlock, revenge arson—and that was just from scratching the surface. A landfill of mischief had been buried in my backyard and all I had seen was a slightly bloated Agnes, and an irritated Pizza.
I spent a few month confused and hurt. I expected more from both of them. Agnes was set up to go to school in town in January, an opportunity most girls past the age of twenty don’t get. We’d been planning for months, and I was excited to see her get out of the village, I thought she was just as excited. Pizza was my go-to guy. I held him under a different standard than other Tanzanian officials, who can be prone to lying (what politician isn’t?), and other Tanzanian men who are prone to adultery (as are men from many cultures).
. . .
Eventually you stop trying to fit the realities of your village into what your own image of the village is. You stop trying to control and contain your garden. American seeds are thrown away and local shrubs (the kind that sustain all seasons) are planted in rusty paint cans and that are placed outside your door. You focus your energy on seeing things a new way, instead of trying to get people to see things your way. You invite people to share your garden, and learn from each other. You don’t go looking for other people’s trash (we all have something buried back there), instead you appreciate the beauty of their flowers.
. . .
Agnes may not have the things that I want for her: an education, a secure future, and empowerment; yet when I see her smile at her baby I question whether any of those things were ever what she wanted for herself. I see things in Agnes that I never recognized while she was hiding behind the façade as my binti: she’s strong, she focuses on the positive,and she never loses her sense of humor, even with a silly mzungu who thinks she knows what’s best, though it was Agnes all along who taught me to tend my Tanzanian garden.
*Name has been changed to protect the identity Pizza
Coffee coffee coffee buzz buzz buzz, mmm!
11 months ago
