Hamna Shida (no worries)

There comes a time when you are in a developing country that your American arrogance takes over and the frustration level gets so high you want to burst.
I think when you are trying to assimilate into a foreign country there is part of you that constantly fights the process. This is where the frustration comes from. The American, puritan ethic, in me kept fighting against the TZ culture. It hit a head at about 2 weeks in. This is when I met Jessie (my roommate for a week before she went back to Kansas, funny I know) and to be able to talk to another American (English speaker) that shared the same frustrations was cathartic and gave me an interesting mirror in order to look into.
The frustrations were many, but I'll only list a few:
The drivers here are horrible, not just don't use blinker lights horrible,but dangerous horrible. I thought I was going to die on my 18 hour (I thought was 7) bus trip to Mbea. We had to travel through the mountains to get there. Isaw more overturned semis on this 36 hour trip to and from Mbyea than I have my whole 48 years traveling through out the US. Anyone of those semis could have taken my bus out. Not that the bus driver was lacking any opportuniyt to take us out himself driving down the mountains.
Tanzanians have a different sense of time. When they say 'soon" they mean about 3 hours. When they say now they mean within the hour. The wait patiently for everything. The bane of American's existence.
The Tz also will say "God Willing" for everything intheir lives. Most are deeply rleigous and their hard lives make them accept (without question) the things that happen to them. One of our students died at the school I was at and no one knew why, not even the doctor. It was just his time for God to take them, a perfectly healthy 7 year-old.
I had a deep desire to fix everything I saw that was not working well, from broken doors to filling in a walk way with sand so the children didn't continually trip. Learning to let this go was very difficult for me.
I was pulling water up from the well and noticed there was a hole in the bottom of the bucket. When I got the bucket to the surface it was only half full. When I inquired about this I was told thatsome people are careless and if they replaced the bucket it would just happen again so they leave it. Ugh!!

I did fix the bathroom door because it had no handle and you had to grab the wood plank with your fingertips in order to lock it. Trying to shut it was an act in futility. I also fixed my door because the locking mechanism was falling off.
Jessie and I commiserated about our perception of the Tz inability to problem solve or goal set.

It was later that I refelected that I was imposing American values and standards onto a country that is still struggling with feeding their countrymen. Life and death are very precarious in Tanzania. Malaria, HIV and Typhoid are rampant as are unemployment, poverty and lack of education. There is no municipal trash pick up and sewer and lean water services are scarce. I suppose the fact that you have to grip the wood plank on a door to shut it is really not that big of a deal to them.

After you are here for a while longer you begin to assimilate and your frustration level drops, and you don't mind being stopped by everyone you see on the path you are on to see how you are even if you are suppose to be somewhere. After all you told your friend you would be there soon.