Mzungu Give Me Money

Life here is exhausting. I don’t sleep well here. The kerosene from the lantern makes me sick, it’s hot when a blackout means no ceiling fan, and then the animal noises are incessant – roosters, who contrary to myth, do not merely crow at dawn but virtually all the time; the cat in heat that hangs out behind the house and periodically seems to get stuck under the tin roof; and the bush babies, whose screams sound like babies crying and who, at night, go racing around, turning the tin roof into a snare drum.

I had to call off the NGO Summit. Not enough people were going to come, then the people from Nairobi couldn’t get a flight out and Michael had client duties in Dar. But mostly the problem has to do with the per diem payments. This practice really has to stop. I’ve lost so much of my idealism trying to prepare for this meeting. Not just preparing for the meeting, really, but living here. Just walking down the street and having so many people yelling to me, mostly with great if exhausting ritual politeness but some, no matter how they initiate the conversation, angling for money. The pitch is always the same: Mzungu, give me money. Those might be the only words a person knows in English: give me money. As much as I would seem prone to be an apologist and blame the stupid, post-colonialist patronizing approach of so much that passes for foreign aid from the west, I find myself angry at the people who ask. I hate being called mzungu and as much as I like children, I find myself resenting the endless, mzungu bye-bye, that I hear each day as I walk the four km route to the office and back.