A Day For The Memory Books.

Yesterday proved to be yet another very interesting day full of quite a few surprises, some of which we didn’t find out about until today.
Thursday Tim and Peter went out on a village visit with Mchungaji and then Steve and I were supposed to go out to a village yesterday. At breakfast, we were told to meet at 9 am and Mchungaji and Luka would come pick us up after getting a new tire. Well at about 8:30 PH walked past my door and told me that we wouldn’t leave until 9:30 now because one of the cars that the group was going to take had broken. So PH and Luka left at 9 to get the new tire and around 9:30 Steve and Moreto and I were ready and waiting. We waited and waited with no sign of PH or Luka. By about 11 we went into the common room to wait. When PH hadn’t come by about noon we figured that we wouldn’t be going to the village anymore. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and doing a lot of nothing – which felt great after a week full of visits and Swahili class. I took a walk with Anne to go pick up the shirts she had made for her niece and nephew and then we talked again later last night. We probably talked for about 2 or 3 hours total. Like usual, it was nice to talk to her since it feels like I have found someone who understands me. We talked about all sorts of different things again – a person’s ability (or lack thereof) to heal completely after a traumatic experience, concern for others’ well-being, family, responses to people who may ridicule you, and faith and the practice of it. Then at about 7:30 at night the boys came into the common room and told me that PH had gotten back about an hour earlier. The pretty much concluded up the excitement for the day.
Then this morning I woke up and went to breakfast and PH told me, Steve, and Anne about his day. He apologized that we didn’t get to go with him and explained that the other people traveling with him had basically taken over the car due to impatience to get to their destination so he wasn’t able to come get us. They were going to a village were the lybone (Massai spiritual leader) was practicing black magic and putting curses on people. They took along a prophet who was going to tell the lybone that he needs to stop cursing people and hurting them or else he will face a lot of death.
The PH started to talk with us about the conflict that is arising between the Waswahili people and the Massai in one of the villages. Basically, some cows had been stolen and when a Massai warrior had gone to talk to the Waswahili, he was killed. From there the violence and revenge killings have only escalated. The police have come in to try and handle it, but they tend to only go after the Massai (the native minority group). But the situation here is very similar to one that PH said happened in 2000. One of the big challenges faced by people across the world is injustice and violence against the native populations. Tanzania is no exception to the norm. The conflict is still going on and many different people are working to try to resolve it. Interestingly enough, this is the village PH is supposed to visit on Tuesday (although he may not now since it might pose a risk to him as well, since he is a friend to the Massai). But when PH talks about this he always mentions a laundry list of people who are actively trying to resolve it – the church, people within the villages, the police (although they might be doing it unfairly and unjustly), and a member of parliament who had helped peacefully resolve the conflict in 2000 (which had been in Kidege’s village).
Does the situation sound familiar? The repetition reminds me of something I read in a book I have been reading in my free time here – “American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century” by Kevin Phillips (yes, I am aware that reading books like this for fun might make me a bit of a dork). The book says, “history repeats itself only in outline.” It is a lot like what happened in colonial America between the Native Americans and the Pilgrims. Can we never learn from the mistakes and bloodshed of the past? It breaks my heart, even after the early American took the land of hundreds and thousands of Native Americans and then killed 75% of them, we still have rampant killings of a land’s native population – something to think about with Thanksgiving coming up.
Until this is resolved, we hope for the best and I ask you to keep this community in your hearts in minds.
Peace (for everyone, everywhere).