Tanzanian Life

The last 3 week have been awesome! After orientation ended I moved into my village, Kiserian Chini, about 35 minutes outside of Arusha. The village is not far by American standards, but it is a completely different world than town. Nearly everyone in my village is Maasai, who are mostly farmers and raise a ton of livestock. My village is filled with cows, goats, sheep and chickens roaming the dirt paths with a herder who may be anywhere from 5 to 95 years old.

I am in a teaching group of 3 American volunteers and 2 Tanzanian teaching partners and we teach at Muungano Primary School. The other girl volunteer, teaching partner and I are all living together in a homestay. We live with a Maasai family that consists of mama and baba plus their 7 children. Our baba (host dad) is a businessman in Arusha who leaves everyday about 11 am and gets home between 10-11 pm at night. The first night he greeted us with a huge smile saying "karibuni" (which means welcome) over and over again. He came into the house dressed in a suit with his blackberry in hand, but 10 minutes later emerged from his room clad in traditional Maasai red and blue plaid sheets.

A normal day for us in the village consists of waking up around 6:30 for an early morning run, although everyone in the village is already awake by then. Erin (the other volunteer I live with) and I run down the main road where all the kids are walking to school. The kids laugh at us and often join us; the other day nearly 20 kids ran with me for about 10 minutes until they got to school. The mornings are my favorite time in the village because everyone is out and about and the sun is not too hot! A couple days ago Erin and I decided to go for a walk to explore the other side of the village and ended up having chai (spiced ginger tea with milk) with a few old Maasai men who invited us to see their home. Everyone her is extremely friendly to "wageni" (visitors) and it is common to meet people just on the road who invite you in to talk and have tea.

After our morning run we come back for showers and food. Breakfast is usually chapati, white bread or chips na mayai (eggs with french fries cooked in them) with fruits and avocado. Avocado here is delicious! Then our group usually gets together to lesson plan for a couple hours before teaching. We teach at the primary school in our village everyday from 12:40-2 pm. After teaching we go home for lunch then spend the afternoon exploring the village, doing community teaching to adult groups or listening to choir practices at one of our villages 4 churches. Last Thursday we went to hear the Pentecostal choir, but since they didn't have enough people to practice we had the chance to teach a little bit of our curriculum. I love the spontaneous teachings since people here are interested and often shocked by what we have to say. After just the first few days in the village word spread why we were there and people began to ask questions on the street.

Every evening we come home before dark, usually around 6:30 pm and play with the kids for a bit. Our mama has 7 kids, but with their friends and neighbors there are almost always 10+ kids around. We sing songs, dance, and the older kids try to teach us Swahili. Then I love to go and sit in the kitchen as mama and her friends cook. The kitchen is a dirt boma, separate from the main house. Mama picks tiny rocks out of the rice for nearly an hour, chops vegetables, cooks beans and rolls chapati.

There are so many more details and stories to tell that I thought I would make a list instead of attempting to describe them all:

*The streets in Arusha are often named after landmarks (if they have a name) eg. Fire Road is where the fire station is.
*The kids carry jugs of water to school to clean the floor.
*Pop is sold in glass bottles that are reused and often rusty. If you take one away from a store you often have to leave a few cents.
*Chickens sleep in the kitchen boma at night.
*About 6 kids sleep in one bed at my home.
*There is only 1 traffic light in Arusha.
*Babies don't wear diapers. In my home the baby often goes to the bathroom on the floor and you often see naked babies crawling around in the dirt.
*There are TONS of kids of every age, everywhere, all the time.
*The girls primarily do the chores. In my home there is only one daughter and she is always the one to fetch things for mama and carry around her baby brother.
*At the Lutheran Church our family goes to they collect alms 3X per mass and church lasts about 3 hours.
*People mock us nonstop about our American accents because we speak very high-pitched.
*It took me 2 hours to do my laundry (which was not very much) and by the end my knuckles were bleeding and there was still dirt in everything! but it was a lot of fun to try. Mama is amazing at handwashing.
*People only use spoons in the villages, no knives or forks.
*We eat very late, usually at 10 am, 3:30 pm and 9:30 pm.
*Our bathroom, called the choo, is a hole which is about 6 in. by 6 in.
*There are Merry Christmas metallic decorations hanging in our house.
*Dirt is everyone it sticks to clothes and doesn't even come off my feet in the shower.
*I tried magugu, a traditional Maasai dish with corn, beans and ash which sits in a wooden jug for a few days before being eaten.
*The stars are gorgeous at night!
*You buy credit for your cell phone as you need it.
*Younger students are disciplined at school by older kids with sticks.
*Dogs here are scavengers, usually very skinny and without a home.
*Our baba has 70 sibilings.
*Everyone in town knows our baba since he is a successful business man and well-respected.
*Our mama got married when she was 15.
*Donkeys deliver food to our house.
*Everyone here loves Obama.
*Daladalas are minivans that serve as group taxis and are often jam-packed.
*Taxis here are incredibly cheap, from one end of town to the other is less than $2.
*I ate breakfast today (chapati and chai) for less than 30 cents.
*Ants here are HUGE.
*We saw a dead chicken on our walk randomly stuck in the rocks.
*There are beautiful shiny blue birds here.
*We went to a funeral and there were probably 500+ people there. We wore 2 kangas, one as a skirt and one over our head and we were greeted as guests. We all drank a pop to be respectful and place flowers on the grave.
*Tanzanian time is very late.
*All the teachers at the school come from far away, walk 1 hour or more everyday to school. The principle rides a motorcycle.
*They think it is weird we aren't married since we are old for village standards.
*Many people here wear old American clothes shipped over.
*Girls don't ride bikes and our family got a kick out of it when Erin and I rode one.
*We sleep under mosquito nets every night.
*We often wait around since things start late. We waited over an hour to teach at the Pentecostal church.
*There is a butchery in town that was roasting a goats head the other day, just as is without taking off fur or anything.
*The clinic in town tests for 4 things--bacterial infections, amoebas, malaria and typhoid--these are incredibly common.
*We went to an event called nane-nane which is Aug. 8th. It was basically like the state fair, but even crazier. Erin and I almost bumped into a dead chicken a boy was carrying around. We were happy to see a VCT at nane-nane and we bought glass bracelets for less than 50 cents.
*Our town consists of 4 churches, 1 school, 1 dispensary and 3 dukas (small, one-room shops that sell underwear, soap, superglue, shower shoes, candy, mandazi, cell phone credit and a few other odds and ends) and that's all!
*Nearly everyone here has a beautiful voice and sings often.
*Baba refers to our teaching partner, whose name is Nelson, as Mandela. He also asks a lot about America and Obama.
*I say "shikamoo" and "Nzuri" about 100 times a day.
*I love it here!

The last 3 weeks have been great. We spent last weekend on safari in Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater and Tarangire National Park which was spectacular. Ngorongoro crater especially is breathtaking. Next weekend I'll be in town again and write more. I'd love to hear from anyone about their summer and beginning of fall! See you in 3 weeks.

Avery