You heard me. No, I’m not married. No, I don’t have a baby. These are the two of the most potent culture-bombs I drop on unsuspecting Zanzibar citizens on a near-daily basis. The reaction hints at devastation for some, others are just confused. You’re thirty-five and you don’t have children? Never been married? In my [...]
Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein
I just had another flurry of rude text message exchanges with my landlord, Mohammed. The subject? Maji. (Water). No running water now for days. No shower. No cooking. No cleaning. No water. I called him, no answer. Then I texted him. His response? Sijui. (I don’t know [what to tell you.] Texted him again: say [...]
Some people think it was my love for a certain local fisherman that brought me back to Zanzibar. True, I did fall in love. But it was my obsessive love for kangas — those vibrant textiles inscribed with poetic Swahili text messages at the bottom — that truly seduced me. The ubiquitous kanga, worn by [...]
Is there really beauty in failure? We sometimes romanticize failure as a kind of revelation. Honey in the garbage heap, lesson in the crease. But lately I’ve been thinking about schooling. We advocate a certain kind of failure, risk, and experimentation as essential pedagogical values in the progressive classroom, and that’s beautiful. But I’m talking [...]
I’ve always loved a good talent show. Doesn’t matter what time or how far, if there’s a talent show, I’m there. Admittedly, I’m not usually the one performing, but I am a devoted audience member with the enthusiasm of a thousand parents. Maybe my love for talent shows comes from my years as a teaching artist, or [...]
In Swahili, uhai means “life.” In Hebrew, it’s chai. In Arabic, it’s haiya. So there it is, life itself braided into three languages entangled with my own history as an American Jew strangely drawn to life in East Africa. I often explain my ability to speak Swahili as some wacky fallout of a liberal arts [...]
I lucked out, living in Hurumzi. I live right by a small, tucked away Hindu temple. As a Jewish-American woman living in a predominantly Muslim world, I’ve sometimes taken comfort in the “otherness” of Hinduism here, visiting the temple, barefoot, on my days off, just to enjoy the cavernous silence of its inner courtyard — [...]
“Siri ya mtungi aijuae kata.” The secret of the water pitcher is only known by its ladle. — Swahili proverb Where did you learn about sex ? I mean, not just about sex, but about pleasure? My sex education happened haphazardly in hotel lobbies during Bar Mitzvah time-outs, when we’d lounge on couches after sweaty [...]
Last night at sundown my Zanzibari boyfriend and I decided to take a stroll over to Forodhani gardens for a coffee & sunset. On our way there, we stopped to look at an outdoor photo exhibit on display at the House of Wonders, hosted by the German Goethe Institute. The Germans have a lingering love [...]