She spent the whole performance riveted, with her right hand hovering near - thumb gently resting on the corner of her mouth, as if to protect herself from something out of the ordinary coming out of her: a loud laugh, a cry of surprise, fear, pride. She had a front row seat: the row reserved especially for grandmothers.

(It was an out of the ordinary day, though. And wasn't that what we all came for?)

When she arrived with two others, she was carrying a large bowl of avocados on her head: "Avocados," she informed me, that she was "on her way to sell at the market." I ran to them when I saw them linger for just a moment on the road by the entrance to the field where we had set up our makeshift stage - ran to them to welcome them, to invite them to come and see our play. "Karibu," I urged them, after greeting them with the traditional respect - Karibu, which means "welcome" - "come near." "We'll just sit on the ground back here," they told me in Swahili, after explaining about the avocados. "Come and have a seat," I tried to persuade them, but they held back, clearly suspect (and also perhaps a bit terrified) of this new and unusual occasion. "Are your children students?" I ask - "Yes, Festo is my grandson," one of them says. "Lucy is my daughter," says another, and at my recognition of these names and my exclamations of praise, their faces break, smiling with pride and with pleasure in our connection.

It was forty-five minutes past the time when we had said we would start the show, but still they ambled slowly to the gathering of chairs, lingering on the outskirts, in no hurry for us to begin. A few minutes earlier we had gathered the children to ask who thought they might have relatives coming (wondering how long we should wait for an audience before beginning) and only one or two raised their hands - "this is a busy time of year for families in this area," a teacher explained - "there is a lot of work to do around the house."

(And didn't we say those same things when we tried to break away from our important New York lives, and didn't that make it sweeter - all of us sneaking away, gathered to watch this play, wicked in our way...)

"Hello Sweetie," a boss says to his employee, grinning despite himself, "You are the queen of my heart, I love you, by the way... you have the problem of money? No problem, I can help you, I can buy you a house and a car, this company is very rich..." A play about the lure of corruption - the innocence of love, the desire to please, the position of power.

They draw closer. One old grandmother begins to rock back and forth, her face animated, her body engaged in the rhythm and the spirit of the play, although she most likely can't understand the English. They begin to exchange glances with each other - laughing. This new thing their children are creating before their eyes.

The next play takes place in a doctor's office. (The doctor played by Lucy, one of our shyest girls.) In strides a short man in a paisley tie: "I am Michael," he says, lofty, sits down to wait, eyes the beautiful receptionist, and then adds, "I am a banker." He awaits his results for an HIV test - flashes his money at the receptionist, charming us all with his air of importance, his outraged torment of the suffering companion in the waiting room, demanding to be helped first, breaking our hearts at his disbelief when he is declared positive - "What, me? A banker? What, me?"

More of an audience is gathering, just appearing from all directions. Out of the fields of corn, of sunflowers, from under the banana trees, from down the slopes of Mount Meru. Carrying things: children, avocados, untold histories. Running through airports, barely making flights, crossing our oceans. 

Our final play. Two sisters hold hands, call out to an imaginary grandmother: "I don't understand why my parents choose our brothers," looking up - "They are not allowed to do any of the work, and we are allowed to do all the work - " Help us, they call out, simply. Help us, please.

(An ordinary day, out of the ordinary.)

One by one we came to gather and listen. To break from our day for a moment to gather together and step back from the work of this time of the year, to look at life and declare it wonderful, terrible, to see ourselves as ridiculous, impossible, true. One by one we came.

Afterwards, there is applause, cheering, laughter and disbelief. One mother grabs me and tells me in Swahili - she loved it, YES, it was a GOOD play - congratulations, she tells me - no, congratulations to you, I tell her, they are your children. She pauses, looks at me, and says: "Lucy is my child." She looks at the empty stage where the play has just happened, and thinks for a moment. 

"She was a doctor." She says it slowly, thinking, quiet.

I hold her hand, looking together with her at the empty stage. She is moved, but doesn't say anything. Just presses my hand, holding it tightly.

Song of the Open Road: Dar Es Salaam and Bagamoyo, March 2008

(This post began as a letter to the American half of this year's team of ITLP (International Theatre and Literacy Project) Teaching Artists - a report on a trip to Dar Es Salaam to choose the five Tanzanian teaching artists who would be their teaching partners for the two week teaching project in Arusha, June-July 2008. More information about the project can be found at www.itlp.org.)

An empty seat in a classroom of the Fine and Performing Arts Department at the University of Dar Es Salaam

March, 2008

Marianna and I have just returned from Dar Es Salaam, where we spent a bright hot three days on the other side of the world: three days of air thick and full, of slow walking down hot pavement and quick sweating through clothes, of the smell of corn roasting, of simmering maharagwe with coconut, of sunflower oil, roasting chapati, and the grill cooling at night after, which is the smell of nimeshiba ("I have been filled"). Three days of resting after the brilliant ache of walking though waking night in bright daylight, the peace of new nightfall and a full stomach, knowing you have enough sleep ahead of you and nothing but the next day ahead.

It began in Nairobi: an impossible lightness, a knowing, an elation in my spirit, a buoyancy. Remembering that there is pleasure in suspension. Language forming in my mouth before remembering that that I know it, and not just the words, but the space between them, the lyric of their intonation, the lightness of bearing that has in it allowing, rest, trust, and most of all belonging: Habari za jioni? (How is the evening?) I ask, finally, unable to hold it in any longer (I am so anxious to speak! Oh Swahili - lugha ya malaika! - language of the angels!). And then, the room changes: one moment we are just another couple of tourists buying duty-free Amarula, and the next we are friends, citizens, brothers and sisters on the earth. Nzuri, he says, (well) - looking up in surprise - Habari za jioni? he asks in return.  A pause before I say it, wanting not to rush, wanting it not to be business. Pause, breath, the moment of waiting at the end of that exhale, a pleasure in knowing I will inhale again, knowing I can enjoy the meantime, trusting it will come.  Nzuri.  Pause, pause, breath, wait, and then something else, coming out of me: pole na kazi, sorry for your work - a flash of his delight in my gift, surprise that I knew to give it, his reply full of its meaning and his pleasure: asante. Thank you. A shop in the airport in Nairobi, a moment of sheer light, of joy welling from deep within. The beginning of the elevation of my spirit.

The first few moments of any conversation in Swahili are like a liturgy, and for those of us who have been let in on the secret it is full of pleasure, a game. It begins in a series of greetings, questions, always the same with tiny variations, Habari za subuhi? (Nzuri), Umeamkaje? (Salaama), Habari za nyumbani? (Nzuri). How is the morning? Good – How did you wake? – Well, or safely – How is your home? – Good. The reply is always the same, nzuri, well, it is well, it is good. Every conversation and every day begins in the practice of proclaiming “it is well.” The back and forth is soothing, grounding, full of the pleasure in and need for interaction, communication, presence with another being. Then also there is the waiting at the end, wondering how long you will linger together, whether or not it will go on or you will part ways. There is pleasure in that, too, in the waiting together, the not knowing together. And then, in the parting – Aya, tutaonana – Aya - we will see one another.

This was my second time in Tanzania, and this trip was in sharp contrast to the first: three days (as opposed to six months), on a week’s notice (before, two years, and countless hours of class), but like the first this was in the end a surprise, a gift, a choice to bullet through the shock and clash of polar worlds, habits, ways of being. This time, I went with my friend Marianna Houston in search of five Tanzanian theatre artists at the University of Dar Es Salaam. I went to help her, and also for myself, a response to a feeling of restlessness, knowing I needed to find something, trust in the journey to help me discover what it was I was looking for.

Michael Howard says that living “moment to moment” means living each moment fully, until it is finished, before moving on to the next. Even in the air, flying: the thing to do is to be present in that suspension of knowing, to get interested in what it means to be not in one place, not in the other yet. In the moment of not knowing for sure what that new place will be, who you will meet, how it will affect you, who you will be in it, even that you will arrive at all.

What I discovered the first time I went to Africa is that you go on a journey not because you know what you will find but because the act of setting off on that journey guarantees you a reward – most always a surprise, and almost always better than the thing you thought you were looking for. What I learned then was to take pleasure in the places you find yourself, to find in each moment the gift it is to you, and let that be reason enough for being there. It's easy in Tanzania: where in each moment you are greeted as if you have finally arrived - welcomed, and given gift upon gift. The peace, the gentle knowing, the restful joy and trusting generosity, welling up from inside the hearts of these blessed people!

In three days I met fifteen colleagues: 10 theater students and 2 teachers from the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Dar Es Salaam, and 3 theater artists from Parapanda - the oldest theater company in Dar Es Salaam. Yes, that's right: on the other side of the world there are also artists - in a place where there are even less jobs for us, the burning in their hearts to create plays will not be quieted - alive and strong, they breathe: poets who demand not to be left behind.

Richard Ndunguru, a teacher from the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Dar Es Salaam, went with Marianna and I on our last day to visit Bagamoyo, a town just North of Dar Es Salaam, where there is a College of the Arts - a place both Marianna and I had always wanted to visit. Upon arrival, in typical African fashion, we were told that, despite our best efforts to plan, we had missed the only classes in session that day. Disappointed, we walked around the campus, and saw a play at a local elementary school. On the way home, in the midst of quiet, I begin to inquire about the meaning of words.

"Dar Es Salaam?" I ask.

"Dar Es Salaam means 'Haven of Peace,'" he replies.

"And Bagamoyo?"

"Bagamoyo comes from the Swahili words 'Bwaga Moyo'" he says - meaning - "rest down your hearts."

He explains about Bagamoyo: this coastal town has a long history, and part of it is that when the slave trade was beginning in this area, those who had rounded up captives from all over Central Africa would allow a few days of rest here, before sending them off to cross the ocean. "Bwaga moyo means: rest down your hearts," Dunguru told me. "Can you repeat?" I ask, wanting to get it exactly as he told me. He takes a breath, patiently raising his voice above the sound of the car and the wind through our open windows. "Bagamoyo means something like: Rest down your hearts, before the long journey ahead through unknown waters." Each word slow, patient.

There was silence in the car, as we continued to bump along, dust in our pores - dust mixed with sweat and dried by the wind through our windows. Silence, except for my pen, which had started writing - handwriting rough because of the jolting, words few, because they were all I needed.

Richard Ndunguru, faculty member in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, East Africa