Meeting Neema
In a spotless room in a dusty slum at the edge of palm-studded Dar es Salaam Tuesday morning, I met Bill Clinton's sister Neema. Right away, she considered me family - thanks to her son, who immediately christened me "Bibi" (grandma).
Never mind the improbability of his having a 32-year-old, white, non-Swahili-speaking grandmother. Never mind the poignancy of that mistake, or the overwhelming strangeness of receiving such a visitor in the slums of Kigogo, where chickens scramble up and down the garbage hill at the edge of the settlement, and the sight of a mzungu is rare - or, even, unprecedented, if the stares as our little party trooped around were any indication. He knew I had come from America, and to 4-year-old Briton Joseph, America is the Land of Bibi.
This was not his only misunderstanding connected with my visit. The moment we met, he began to weep: "Where is my dog?"
Aloisia Shemdoe, the astute Tanzanian social scientist who is interpreting between us, was puzzled. "I've never seen a child cry like this for a dog," she said.
The boy was inconsolable, even when we told him a dog awaited him in the suitcase we were lugging toward his home - a large stuffed dog in NBA sports attire that was a particular gift from his 7-year-old uncle, Igey. When I pulled it from the suitcase, the tears intensified. "That's a doll!" he wailed, "It's not real!"
It seems that in phonecalls over the past few days, his grandparents had hyped the dog - without clarifying whether it would be toy or live.
Briton was quickly mollified, however, when we produced the remaining contents of the suitcase, including lollipops, Igey's treasured toy helicopter, and a creepy talking Santa head. For the next few hours, he and a band of dusty, shorts-clad youngsters ran up and down the hall of the tin-roofed building, and through the maze of footpaths between their cinderblock homes, listening to the head, until they, too, were shouting to passers-by, in English: "Happy New Year!"
More tomorrow on meeting Neema herself - and on Day 2 of our visit. Meantime, to stay up to date on the journey, join us on and .Travel in Tanzania for this project is supported by , in Washington DC.
