First post from Tanzania

I wrote this a week ago and I am currently working on a new post--coming up next: 3 weddings and a funeral.

Two and a half weeks in Tanzania!  The first 5 days were spent at a convent/hostel in Dar es Salaam, where we sat through a bunch of Peace Corps administrative sessions that seemed oddly familiar… and a quick and dirty intro to Kiswahili.  Then we took a bus to Tanga district, about 5 hours north of Dar, where I was dropped off at my host family’s house in a small village between Tanga and Muheza.  Our training class of 40 was split up into groups of 5 or so, each group placed in their own village and each trainee with a family of their own.  We five will have class together with the same instructor for the entire training.  Luckily I got a great teacher, a capital-L-Lady named Rahema as well as a very compatible group. 

My host mother is a widow named Halima.  Mama Halima has five children. Fatouma, 19-years-old, lives at home, as well as Jeska, the 11-year-old granddaughter of Halima’s son.  They are exceptionally patient and helpful.  I love making them laugh, which I can do without even trying to be funny.  Just cutting an onion is like the most hilarious thing they have ever seen, not because I’m doing it funny, but just because I am cutting an onion.  So they almost died laughing when they were teaching me body parts and I pointed out the only body part I knew at the time—the butt.  What?  It’s “tako” like “taco al pastor,” so now go ahead and try to forget that tako means butt in Kiswahili. 

The tin-roofed house has two bedrooms, a pantry, and a living room.  No glass in the windows here, just metal bars, a screen if you’re lucky.  The toilet and shower are outside, and although there is no running water, I do have electricity!  We listen to Tanzanian radio and tapes all the time.  Sometimes American country music I’ve never even heard of comes on and I don’t like that as much.  There are banana, papaya, orange, and coconut trees within spitting distance of the back yard, and I enjoy the fruit from all of them with every meal.  Last year in Niger, getting my hands on a banana every other day was lucky. Here I’m actually having too many bananas. I always have a banana with breakfast and the other day I had boiled bananas for lunch, and boiled bananas for dinner.  That is too many bananas, and I won’t go into why at this time.

My village for training is in rolling hills between the mountain and the ocean, so the climate is very tropical. I am dripping in sweat the whole day long.  But it’s okay because, you know, my mama makes me shower at least twice a day.  I wake up at 5:30 am to the sound of Mama Halima banging on my door, hollering “NORA! KUOGA!” : “NORA! BATHE!”  For the first few days when my Kiswahili was limited to only a few greetings, you can imagine I was pretty frazzled trying to find the words to say “yes, I’m up, I’m coming!” when really I just wanted to say “oh hell no!”  I was pretty amused on my first night, when I was going outside to brush my teeth, Mama Halima took my toothbrush and toothpaste from my hands and showed me how I should brush my teeth.  I have had to relearn almost everything the Mama Halima way…how to sweep, how to eat an orange, how to pour tea, how to wear my hair…how to wash my clothes (but that is something I was and still am bad at anyway--I’ll be walking around with soap-stiff clothes for awhile).  Several times now Mama Halima has told me to fix my hair, but I haven’t yet figured out how to say, “mama there’s no fixing this mess” in Kiswahili. 

I give mama a hard time for being a micromanager, but really she’s been great.  Not only has she been an invaluable help for my Kiswahili, but she also spoils me.  She warms up my bathwater every morning, she serves me delicious food, she teaches me how to cook, she buys me sodas, and she finishes washing my laundry when she sees how terrible I am at it.  Today she took me on an excursion to her farm field, about a mile from the house.  Dennis the neighbor came with us, and I realized why he was invited soon after we arrived at the field—he promptly climbed a 40ish foot coconut palm and started sending coconuts down.  We gathered the coconuts and sat under a mango tree cracking open coconut after coconut with a machete, drinking the milk and scraping out the meat with a spoon fashioned out of coconut shell.  I was delirious with delight, and meanwhile Dennis the neighbor grabbed a palm leaf and quickly wove a basket.  We put coconuts in the basket and I carried it home on my head.

One third of the way through training, there will be more stories from Nyumbani Mama Halima to come.  Please leave any comments or questions!