Elizabeth

A couple of weekends ago Elizabeth, who started the Eleroy nursery school, invited Kaleigh and I over for dinner on Saturday night. Kaleigh has been volunteering at Eleroy for a month now. Elizabeth and her husband are quite well-off by Tanzanian standards. Their house is structurally sound and there are a couple of bedrooms for her three children and new granddaughter. They have a tv, computer and functioning kitchen. By our standards the inside is decorated like a home from the 1970s a grandmother lives in that hasn't changed a bit. Nothing is really on the walls except one small batik that was a gift from a volunteer, and a small picture of the Last Supper hanging above the crucifix.

Elizabeth greets us warmly as one of her daughters is outside frying the bread for dinner. We each choose a soda and chuckle at the Celine Dion playing the background. They LOVE Celine here. There was a lot of other early nineties soft rock in there as well. I haven't heart Micheal Bolton in a long time. One of the first questions off the bat is, "Jeska, are you married?" I explain that I am not, and she continues to ask "Why? When?" etc. etc. The best part of the conversation is when she offers to throw me fundraiser. I think the intent of this fundraiser is to find me a husband. Maybe a match-making party of sorts to get donations for a wedding? Maybe a way to find a man with the most cows? A future husband must give cows to the brides father. The more the better. We don't get into the specifics but it is probably the most memorable offer I've ever had from a stranger.

We sit down to eat and Kaleigh and I explain we already had dinner (there was a bit of confusion over the invite, confusion and lack of specifics is standard here). Elizabeth asks intently what I do for a living. I usually gloss over this topic because it doesn't translate well, and it's refreshing to not talk about my profession, which is all NYers talk about. I try my best to explain starting with the words Advertising, Marketing, Media, Communications, all to be met with blank stares. The word commerce resonates with her and somehow I think we netted out with her understanding I make commercials for Coke (she was drinking one at the time and it was the only brand she knows), or take photos of football (soccer) players. She asks if I work a lot, still fascinated by my corporate job and the fact that I am single. And a woman. I explain that it is a lot of hours and keeps me busy and often involves travel. She asks if it is hard work. I think closely about this question and explain that it is a different type of hard work - not like making dried fruit by hand like she does, or running a school, or selling corn to make a profit.

She shakes her head when she grasps that work is a large part of my life and asks the scary question, "What do you work for?"

She wasn't asking what type of paycheck, but the look on her face said it all. Meaning, what does all this work gain me in life? It is as if this woman climbed inside my brain and poked around at my inner most thoughts.

And the conversation just kept going. She then asked "What if you die and have no son or daughter?" Oy vey! Apparently Elizabeth is really worried about me at the old age of 32. I explain "Um, there is still time, and I have a very full life with friends and family." Kaleigh and I explain that back home, if you move away from your family, friends can also be like family. Elizabeth is fascinated by this and it puts the 20 questions at bay at least for the moment. She explains that here in Tanzania women marry young and have babies and people like us from the US and Canada, work and travel and see the world.

The food then arrives on the table and she exclaims, "I made you a hen from the yard!." Oh boy. The pot looked a bit mysterious. Looking on the bright-side I tried to tell myself we were lucky it wasn't a goat, or something else. A hen I can deal with. Kaleigh and I dish a few spoonfuls and stare. I come to terms with the fact that I may be in the bathroom for the next week but that is better than being rude. We picked at the food, took a handful of hearty bites and said it was delicious. I finally braved the hen for us both, thinking it really couldn't be that bad. And it wasn't. Although it was kind of like eating rubber-cement on a bone. More gummy than meaty but  my strong stomach survived all the food just fine!

Elizabeth is truly an amazing woman. She opened her school in a teeny-tiny room that back home would function as a shed for a lawn-mower. She adores the children and does so much. Most schools only serve porridge and she often provides beans and rice. We discover later that a year's tuition is under $35.  Unfortunately, many of the students can't afford this, but she does not turn them away. Kaleigh also determined that a large majority of the children haven't paid in almost a year, but Elizabeth continues to welcome all the children into her home.

Then there is Luca, the teacher of the school (who I get the hunch she wanted to set me up with). Unfortunately when the children don't pay, Luca doesn't get paid. But he still shows up every day with a huge grin on his face. His paycheck (when it rarely happens) is around $65 a month. He rents a room close to us. Luca has a few other part-time gigs. He apparently is also a barber, and makes ice-cream (freezy-pop like things). Good for him for being resourceful to find other ways to make an income with all the children he knows!

Elizabeth asks us about our family's and backgrounds throughout the rest of dinner. She tells us many times how lucky we are that English is our native language. She speaks fairly well but it is a challenge to converse in depth so her daughter translates. Speaking fluent English already puts us leaps and bounds above a large part of the world. She is fascinated by how our school system works in the United States and Canada and can't fathom a free public school system that the government pays for. She then asks, "Can you tell us how to get our children smart like you?" We talk a lot about reading, practicing, studying, but also having fun and teaching children to use their imagination and be creative. Unfortunately sometimes education feels one extreme or the other here - no real structure to teaching and all chaos and play, or rigorous repetition of just writing numbers and letters with no context, comprehension, or creativity to make learning fun.

Kaleigh has been such a blessing to this school. She currently teaches in Canada and is one of the most kind, sweet, loving people I've ever met. She has a huge heart and the children adore her. She has taught me so much and helped with my zillions of questions about how to attempt to teach successfully. I respect and admire the path she took from modeling, to working in fashion and PR. She has traveled to Morocco several times with CCS and is a true inspiration. When her corporate job wouldn't allow her even 2 weeks to go volunteer and visit a child in an orphanage she was extremely attached to, she quit. Now a few years later she just started teaching. It's been wonderful to hear how an experience such as this changed her life.

I leave dinner deep in thought with the questions Elizabeth posed going over and over in my head, "What do you work for?" It is such a profound question. People here mostly work until there is enough food on the table. Being here has reminded me how lucky I am for the education I've received and the access I have to such opportunities. While I may complain about the challenges in determining the next step, I realize how fortunate I am for the access I have and what is really available to me. The opportunities are endless relative to what I've seen here.