That some volunteers greet news of any activities with the response "that will look good on your resume" and report their own activities in terms of future resume building. There have to be easier ways to pad a resume that do not involve having fungus growing on your skin. There just have to be. Also, XKCD is applicable. Granted I am in a field that is typically 100% employed, so I can afford to be judgmental about others' obsessions with their future job potential to the detriment of their ideological devotion for, or at least interest in, the present.
That the English VSO couple who work at the college will remark nostalgically on the ways in which the educational system was better under British rule. I sort of agree with them and I hate myself for it. Even convinced as I am that a major reason the educational system is so cripplingly broken is that the Tanzanian government built schools in every district of the country in only a few years, a feat of educational ambition that far outstripped any hope of being able to supply every school with teachers. Or even every school with a teacher. Even so, I think the British would at least manage to have and stick to some sort of reasonable academic calendar and that would help a lot. This year, for example, all schools everywhere are being cancelled for an entire month so that the teachers can be census workers instead of teachers. Colonialism, however, is horribly horribly bad and left many countries infrastructually unsound, ethnically or religiously divided (see Rwanda, India/Pakistan), generally with an excessively racist socialization structure in place to teach people that the ideals of physical beauty and also forms of achievement that actually matter are only found among white people.
That the chaperon for a group of annoying primary school children from Dar got angry and defensive when I yelled at her charges to greet me as is culturally appropriate to greet an older person in Tanzania rather than with the ubiquitous mzungu, meaning both white person and any generic foreigner. I happen to think that people yelling mzungu at me is at best rude and also kinda the definition of racist even though I do exist in the privileged world of white people where I can always get good seats on the bus so I'm not going to whine too much about that. I do not, however, think it that much to ask for me to be addressed by strangers as dada or mama [sister or mother, the typical terms of address for a woman one doesn't know] or the particular-to-the-tribe-in-the-area term Mwenda. You know, how any person who looked like them would be greeted as a matter of common politeness. The chaperon agreed that the students should have greeted me politely but thought it more important to make it clear to me that I had no right to say anything because they didn't know any better than to go teach them better. Also, these kids are from Dar, they see white people all the time, what gives?
That if one is sporting any scratches, cuts, sunburns, or any other skin irregularity, people, even strangers, will feel free to remark and then touch it. I really really hate that. I even had someone bend over and pull my skirt from my ankle up to my shin to better view a cut. This is probably a cultural difference that I should get over, but it drives me bats.
That when I say "no" to men who ask me to marry them (who are, incidentally, complete strangers) the instant followup question is "why not?" It is completely culturally inappropriate for them to even ask a strange woman on the street (technically speaking, they should negotiate with my father on how many cows they have to pay in order to marry me), why do they think they are entitled to a reason on why I refuse inappropriate advances? From strangers? Oh right, they are entitled enough to ask a stranger to marry them in the first place.
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