Tanzanians say the darndest things!

After several long blog posts, I took a short break from writing more, and then I went on a couple of week-long trips, one to volunteer at my church camp for a week and one to go on vacation with my sister to Chicago and Cedar Point Amusement Park in Ohio. These travels took me away from blogging even longer. Now a new school year is just about to start! In any case, it's time to see if I can get back in the routine of blogging....

We in America live an abundant life. Even those who belong to the middle or lower socioeconomic classes have far more to their names than most rural Africans do. The simplicity of life in Pommern led to some questions for us about the abundance of America.

Depicting the simplicity of the village of Pommern: Dirt roads, a bicycle transporting
a load of firewood, and one of the shops in the market area

On the very first night in Pommern, a village woman asked my teammate Amy: "Is it true what they say? Is it true that every American really has their own car?" The woman asked the question in complete seriousness, and though taken aback, Amy's response had to be "yes," that most every American does own a car. And that's not just one car per household, which in and of itself would be ultimate riches in Africa. We have one car per person....and in some families there are even more cars than people! Coming from a village where the only motor vehicles ever seen were the Global Volunteers vehicle, a vehicle for the Lutheran church and one for the Catholic church, a handful of motorbikes, and a bus that comes through Pommern early every morning to take villagers to Iringa Town before returning to Pommern late in the afternoon, it's no wonder Amy's response left the woman unable to comprehend such incredible wealth. The interchange left me suddenly feeling very wasteful.

Mohammed washing the GV jeep -- to be washing a car was a strange sight in Pommern!

Two days later, while I was working at the construction site, I was walking back to the "lumber yard" to get more boards to carry down to the school, along with a couple of my teammates and quite a few students from the secondary school. Teo was among the secondary students and asked me where I was from. Now, when the villagers and especially the secondary students ask that question, they don't just want to know that I'm from the United States. They want to know specifically what state -- and if they don't recognize that particular one, they want an explanation of where in the country it's located. Pretty incredible, given that I would hasten to suggest many of my readers have no idea where in Africa the *country* of Tanzania is, let alone its individual regions (like our states).

In any case, I told Teo I was from Iowa, and then went on to explain that it is the state just south of Minnesota. The people of Pommern know about Minnesota because Global Volunteers is based there and because several church congregations in Pommern and the surrounding area have partnerships with churches in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. I also explained that Iowa is known for the corn it produces, and I added that Iowa's cornfields are much larger than the small homestead cornfields in Pommern. Teo pondered this for a moment and then asked me, "You mean, like an acre?" After taking a quick moment to recognize the gap in our life experiences, I explained again, "No, more like hundreds and hundreds of acres." And I further explained that the fields are farmed with machinery and that the corn crop is used throughout the country. I didn't even try to explain how most of the corn isn't even for human consumption but instead for animal feed, ethanol, and so on. Yet again, the abundance and prosperity of America stood in stark contrast to the basic, simple life in Pommern.

Teammates Kendra & Jack; Teo; teammate Sonia; and another secondary student
whose name I cannot think of (perhaps one of my teammates can enlighten me?)
(photo taken by Amy)