Let’s avoid a lengthy post here. My brain is on cultural overload (in a
wonderful sort of way) so let me just bullet point the mentionables. Hopefully
this method will give you a more thorough understanding of Tanzania than any
sort of lengthy, metaphor-filled prose I could attempt to write.
If you decide not to read all of this, at least read the last point. It
will blow your mind.
This is home sweet home – the room that Melina and I share.
Southerners, we have nothing on Tanzanians when it comes to being
friendly. Yes, it’s hard to say, but it’s true. People here are ridiculously
welcoming and upbeat. I mean ridiculously. It even has roots in their language.
They have a common greeting “Habari za…”, which means “News of…” (and then you
fill in the blank: day, work, school, family, etc.) . The only response that is
ever used to answer this greeting is “nzuri”, or “good”. You hear “habari”, you
say “nzuri”. Simple as that. If you are have a bad day, you say “nzuri”. If you
just got fired, you say “nzuri”. Both probably accompanied by a slight wrinkle
of the brow, but you are still “good”. See? Optimism.
I live in Makimura, a small area near Arusha in the Usa River region. The
highways are nice but the side roads we take to get to our house look like
dried creek beds, which make for a bumpy ride. Now that I think about it, they
probably are dried creek beds since the rainy season just ended.
Those images you see in movies of 15 Africans sitting in and hanging
off the side of a truck…are completely accurate. We had one driving around our
street the first night we got in. Students were campaigning for the election of
the local university present. Pretty cool if you ask me.
Our bedroom is never quiet, even in the middle of the night. People in
the street are constantly laughing, conversing, and listening to music. It’s
fairly comforting to fall asleep to these sounds. The roosters and the dogs
however, are not as welcome. I’m sleeping with ear plugs tonight.
We have electricity but no running water and boil everything we drink.
Our toilet is a “squatting toilet”. Basically a porcelain rimmed hole in the
ground that is connected to a drain. This hole also doubles as the shower
drain, as we bathe with pitchers of water just standing on the bathroom floor.
You would be surprised at how little water you need to get clean. I have heard
that some homestays have running water and wifi. I think I’m better off without
them it for this trip. We spend a lot of time with our family playing games,
doing homework, talking, and joking around.
Tanzanians value relationships above anything else. You slow down,
having meaningful conversations, and get to business only once you have
invested time in that person and shown them respect. “Tanzanians are never
late, just delayed” said one of my instructors today. If you show up a tad
“delayed” because you were speaking with your mother or a close friend, no
biggie! Time is just slower here.
Tanzanians call white people “mzungu” which is derived from something
along the lines of “one who is still spinning”. It’s very cute and clever
actually. People, of all races, who don’t live here are still on the move (not
settled) and are still spinning. A lot of their words have interesting origins
like this.
Dhalla-dhallas, a type of taxi, are small vans with three rows of
seats. I think there were about 15 people aboard on the way home from class
today. My ride to school only costs about 25 cents one way.
If I zone out during class, it is probably because I am watching the monkeys goof around outside of our classroom.
Tanzanians love volleyball and soccer and that is how we spend most of our free time. Could this be any more perfect?
The food here is awesome! Rice, beans, veggies, coconut curries, fish,
ugali (described to me as a stiff porridge), fresh fruit juices. We are
culinarily spoiled. We had some sort of sautéed greens with dinner tonight and
I have never enjoyed wilted leaves more in my entire life (or ever).
Telling time in Swahili is different. And I’m not just talking about
military time. Imagine a clock. Not digital you cheaters. The minute hand
pointing straight up and the hour hand pointing due east. This is 3pm, right?
Not in Swahili time. This would be 9 pm. Instead of reading whatever the hour
hand is pointing at, they read what is directly behind it. So they would look
at an English 3pm and say “oh, it’s nine o’clock”. But…when you really think
about it…the odd thing is that they still associate the Swahili 9pm with the
afternoon. 9pm is the middle of the day, just after lunch and before dinner. IS
YOUR MIND BEING BLOWN?? It took Melina and me a good ten minutes to figure this
out. Poor 8 year old Ruth must think we are incompetent. The only thing I can
kind of compare it to is how we associate December – February with winter and
they associate it with summer. The time is still now and it still looks the
same, we just call it completely opposite things.
Hope that gives you a little image of this world I’m experiencing J Signing off.
(And yes, I realize that ended up being a bit lengthy. Sorry!)
