The answer to that question is only you. Right now I’m in the middle of my third full day in Tanzania and I’ve had a lot of thoughts. One of them being why am I so bad at learning languages and I may be consigned to be the village idiot while I’m here, but slow steps.
I got into Tanzania at about two A.M. It was a stop over flight and most of the passengers were headed to Zanzibar so I got onto the tarmac with about 10 other people. Interestingly enough all women. This made the Visa process very easy but Abel the guy whose family I am staying with wasn’t expecting it to be so quick. This left me standing at an airport gate with a very friendly Taxi man for fourty minutes wondering if I’d told him the wrong date. The Taxi man kept asking me if I was sure someone was coming and if I was going to be alright and this was my first taste of how friendly people here are.
I did get picked up and we went to the town of Usa where I’m now staying, which was about a fourty minute drive from the airport. The room they have given me to stay in is very simple but very neat. I have my own bathroom and shelves to set my stuff so I have no complaints except that because there is not a closet I have to keep my stuff exceptionally neat. Ah well I had to learn some time.
Friday we got up ate peanut butter toast and went to the school. I got to meet the other person who was staying with them a wonderful British lady named Caroline who is very very cool and very very very talkative. She has been on holiday for three months wandering around Africa learning about volunteer organizations. She hasn’t been volunteering persay as she says she is too old but she has been doing social media campaigns for the places. She speaks even less Swahili then I do which makes me feel a little better but she makes up for it in confidence and friendliness. She leaves on Sunday and I will be very sad to see her go.
LITU (Lift Them Up Foundation) is for kids 3-5. They get two meals, English lessons, and basic sums. (See I’ve already been spending too much time with the British lady). There is also a section for young women to learn how to sew and start their own businesses. I stayed far away from here as I would do nothing but embarass myself if I got anywhere near a sewing machine. I’d probably honestly break the machine as well.
As soon as I stepped foot into the school the kids ran up to us dancing and gave us all hugs even me who’d they’d never seen before in my life. They were very giggly and happy and honestly filled with so much joy. I got set to help kids with counting and writing numbers. This was a very manageable task for me as although I cannot do a lot of things I can count between 30-50. The kids then get a break where they dance and sing. They do everything from the Macarena to If You are Happy and You Know It. I will have to think of some songs to teach them to dance too. Perhaps they will learn the joys of the Duck Song.
The kids then get breakfast and the teacher went off to take a break so I got to watch the kids. Kids all around the world are the same as soon as the teacher went out the room they were standing on tables, stealing each others hats, and being absolutely ridiculous in the best of ways. As soon as the teacher or Lilian, my host and the CEO of the company would come back in they would sit down and snigger quietly to each other. The kids also taught me how to play a version of Tic-Tac-Toe where no matter what I do they win. I have to figure out the rules to this one. The kids are substantially better behaved then kids I’ve worked with elsewhere but you can’t help but try to pull one over on a random person in your classroom.
After breakfast was recess which I think is really smart. The kids have so much energy that it’s for the best that they have so much time to run around. I pushed kids on the Merry Go Round and only got yelled at by the teachers once when some kids fell off because I was going to fast. I think the problem was they weren’t holding on but I did slow down which dissapointed the kids but probably saved me from getting kicked out of the volunteer program. The kids were very fascinated by my tattoo and everyone wanted to touch it and ask what it was. I’m not positive they believed me when I told them it was a tree.
Recess over the kids go to work on English. They have flash cards with colors and numbers and then figurines for animals. The teachers were truly excellent joking with the kids and being super positive with them. When it got to vegetables they asked Caroline and I how to say some of them and it probably isn’t for the best that we gave slightly different answers. The kids not one to sit still long got to play a game where they had to sit in the color chair that was called out. They did this two at a time and it was very entertaining to watch some of the kids watch their partner before dashing to the proper chair. Perhaps my favorite part of this is after each group was done the kids would congratulate each other. I got to lead this activity.
After working on their English the kids get to do art and puzzles. The older kids got to paint-which if you are feeling generous the kids could definitely use some new supplies-and were working on painting vegetables. In the states I would have never given kids paint without a lot of forethought but the kids did wonderful. I got to help the younger kids do puzzles and we practiced making different car sounds for fun-the kids specifically enjoyed the ambulance noise.
After this was lunch time which the cook had spent all morning preparing. I’m not entirely sure what it was but it was excellent. I will have to learn how to cook it before I leave and perhaps I will spend some time working with the cook instead of the classroom. Perhaps when my Swahili isn’t quite so limited.
We left after lunch and they let me sleep which was wonderful. Then Lillian sent her daughter Gianna with me to go to the ATM. It’s a very different sensation and probably very very good for me to stand out in a crowd so much. Everyone was very friendly and the kids would run up and say hello. We got to pick our way up the road as there is so much rain that the dirt roads are covered in mud and potholes. Gianna was fairly quiet but her English was excellent and her favorite activity is studying which means she is probably going to be smarter than me in no time.
We got up to where the bank is and stopped to talk with a man in a stand. He was very friendly again but I didn’t no how to ask where the ATM was and so Gianna and I came to the conclusion that the Bank was closed so we turned around and walked back to the house. The ATM in fact is 24 hours and Lilian thought this was hilarious that we’d gotten so confused. We did get to see some ducklings on the walk back so it wasn’t a total loss.
I helped with dinner and I expect that by the end of this trip I will be very adept at peeling potatoes and that was the day. The people I am staying with are very reserved but friendly. I think I will learn a lot from them.
Caroline, the Brit is very talkative and effusively friendly. She is completely confident in going out and talking with the people in the village without speaking any Swahili. She has regailed me with stories upon stories of her travels. Since retirement, for the third time, she has been to India, across Africa, Victoria B.C., and sold her house in Italy. Her husband died 35 years ago and she still speaks very fondly of him. She takes in lodgers and in one of her careers was a journalist which I also got to hear about. Next week she’ll celebrate her birthday in Nairobi and then head home.
Saturday we didn’t have school and so the day was spent on my part doing chores, studying Swahili, reading, and napping. I really like the system they have for doing dishes which is done in a series of three washtubs outside. There is a tub with soapy water, a tub for rinsing, and a tub for setting the clean dishes to dry. This one you move into the sun when you are done. It’s way easier than trying to wash dishes in the sink and if it wasn’t so cold outside half the time at home it is a practice I would seriously think about adopting.
Washing my clothes was done in a very similar way and I was very proud of how well I’d done until about an hour after I’d hung my clothes out to dry it poured rain for the next five. I guess God thought I hadn’t done a good enough job. (Ah well, I think they are nearly dry now and I am watching the weather much closer today.)
Stitching the skirt that I tore climbing the sacred steps was another task that I failed abysmally out and if I have some time latery this week I will rip out my stitches which I was very thorough with and try to make it a little neater. I caught a piece of fabric way away from the seam and now there is a very weird fold in my skirt that I’m not sure anyone could call “artistic freedom,” art afterall usually has to have some sort of purpose or message although I suppose the one I’m spreading is my incompitence with a needle.
We made it to the ATM today and it will be something I have to go back to rather soon because I couldn’t do the math in my head well. Turns out I took out $20 and sunscreen is something that is marked up susbstantially probably because only white people buy it. I then got to help with the grocery shopping and by that I mean I got to watch her haggle for Plantains and Potatoes while I carried things. The butcher just had slabs of meat hanging up and you would simply state how much weight you wanted. That was pretty cool to see.
I learned how to count to ten in Swahili on saturday and also how to respond properly to greetings in the street-which I messed up this morning but I’m learning pole pole as they say which is the equivalent of glacially slow.
I helped with dinner again peeling potatoes and grating carrots and tomatoes which are a fruit I’ve never grated before. I was banned from helping with the plantains so I set to praying or doing something useful while waiting for dinner. Dinner last night was a pretty tasty stew and they cut up avocado into everything which is very very tasty. Think of the best avocado you have ever had in your life and then think again.
Caroline left this morning, which while I will be sad to see such a confident English speaker leave it will definitely be quieter. I was picked up for church at 8:30 by the family I’m staying with father in law-Gabriel and we walked to church which was two blocks away. The Tanzanians really know how to do church we were at it for two hours. There was lots of insence and the music was like nothing I’ve ever heard before. The choir sat in the front several rows and knew all the music by heart. They also danced in unison and every time I caught a glimpse of their faces they were filled with joy. They used a lot of percussion, an Organ, and different yipping and yelling noises to make something really moving. My Swahili is worse then my Italian and so I’m not sure what the homily was about or the second two after mass were about. I think the only difference that I noticed in the service was during the penitential act everyone knelt. (These people are trying to build a new church and so it is another thing that needs money.) It is truly beautiful that it is the same service everywhere-it helped make me feel a little more at home.
After mass we walked out and ran into the next group coming in which was school kids and they gave me high fives which is something I don’t get coming out of mass very often. Then when I got back the father in law insisted several times that I stay in the compound and do not leave no matter what or go to the door. I have noticed that they don’t want me out by myself and so I’ve been waiting for them to get back from their service which instead of two hours is apparently four. I’m not sure I’d make a very good pentacostal.
Quote of the Post: The kids while doing the dishes were arguing whether or not you could get babies at the super market the consensus was only the smallest Giovanni had come from the super market. This left him in tears.
Song of the Post: Africa by Toto (I had to at somepoint might as well do it now.)
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