McGyver's got nothing on Africans

Saturday, 12 May 2007
Africans are nothing if not resourceful. I've known this for a long time--both Bob and I served as Peace Corps volunteers in Kenya, so we are used to how people squeak by on very little. When we came back to Tanzania this time we were living a decidedly different life. First and foremost, Bob was not working as a volunteer. Oh and we had three kids this time...But as we quickly realized, many things were pretty similar: people were friendly, service was slow, roads were bad, etc, etc. So I guess the resourcefulness should not have surprised me, but it did. Folks here are amazing at making something out of nothing. It really is impressive how they have embodied the spirit of necessity being the mother of invention. Here's an example..or two.
We have a gardener who works for us. His name is Mr. Ngowi and he is a really lovely person. He missed his calling in life as he is the quintissential teacher. He loves teaching me Swahili and he insists that I say everything correctly. He even teaches the kids Swahili. During lunch and after work he does the reverse and teaches English to the housekeeper and guard. we've all taken to calling him "mwalimu" which is Swahili for teacher. Anyway, Mr Ngowi calls me outside one day and tells me that there is a "shida ya bomba ya maji" or a problem with the water pipe. Sure enough there is a puddle in our driveway and little bubbles indicating a broken pipe below. Of course, like any good problem, this has occured at 4 PM on Friday. But the need to get it fixed is serious because the water from the pipe comes straight from our water tank and if it all leaks out we won't have any left. I tell him I'll call the person in charge of house repairs but he tells me to wait--that he wants to look at it first. So he digs up the pipe with a stone from the driveway (it was only about 6 inches underground) and we see that it is leaking from an elbow where the pipe branches between our house and the outside faucet. Mr Ngowi walks over to his bicycle and rifles around for a moment and comes back with a scrap of inner tube and a plastic bag. He digs a little furrow to drain away the still leaking water (we can't shut off the water from the tank) then proceeds to wrap the pipe in plastic and then tie the whole thing tight with the tire tube. And amazingly, it worked! My hope was that it would hold over the weekend until we could get a plumber in to fix the elbow but it's now been 4 weeks and it's still working.
Here's another story of resourcefulness. In mid April I went away on a 4 day language trip to Zanzibar. It was super cool and I promise to share pictures and stories about it soon. Because Bob works long hours (7 AM-6 PM) we knew that we would need some help while I was gone with watching the kids and cooking. Our friend recommended someone to us so we hired her for the week. Stella would come over in the afternoon and play with the kids and make dinner. Stella is a damn good cook. Josie adores her and together they make cakes and juice. Anyway, while I was gone Stella made a particularly good dinner and afterwards brought out a chocolate cake. This would not hav been nearly so surprising except that we didn't have any chocolate in the house! We didn't have cocoa powder, chocolate chips, baking chocolate--none of that. Finally Bob asked her how she did it and she showed him a single serving ready-made pudding cup. She took that and turned it into a family size chocolate cake. I don't know how she did it but I'm suitably impressed.
Oh and after that we hired Stella to come every week. Anybody who can make a cake out of nothing is a friend of mine. We may never eat out again.