Labda Hata Mimi

So back to my time line. We arrived in country on September 19th and we were promptly inserted into a thick bubble. It was three days before we really saw a Tanzanian who was not in the employ of Peace Corps. I’m still impressed that they managed it so thoroughly. Our hotel was a simple full-service closed compound, the single rooms not much different from a motel in the states. We had mosquito nets and a good fan for the humid, mosquito-y days in Dar Es Salaam, the financial capital of the country. A pair of chartered buses took us from the airport to the hotel compound and the next day from there to the Peace Corps compound on the other side of town. We peered from our bubble charter buses out onto the streets and wondered at the developing country we would serve in. The first thing you notice about East African cities are that most people are walking, very many more pedestrians. In the pedestrians we saw a huge spectrum of dress, Tanzanian dress is very important. Even if someone doesn’t have much money it is common to put on your best when you travel. We got a few more briefings and eventually we started to get the rhythm of the Peace Corps office. A few days later we were moved to the Peace Corps training site in Morogoro Town about three hours away from Dar Es Salaam (aka Dar).

When we arrived we realized how beautiful Tanzania could be. Morogoro is a lush environment that is surrounded by the Uluguru mountain range. Our base was ostensibly a women’s empowerment center but had been largely taken over by PC Tanzania for a few months as our headquarters. It is impossible to forget the cool, calm sunset and full moonrise over the mountain that first night in Moro. We sat on the dining terrace with a mature palm tree and thatched gazebo, some of us played Frisbee. We chatted with the infinitely more seasoned volunteers from the area. Still, we were firmly embubbled. I remember as we drove into this compound being amazed at how one of the largest cities in Tanzania still doesn’t have any two story buildings and at how even in the nice part of the city there were cows, pigs, children and chickens roaming. I guess I came to terms with these things over training, neither of them phase me today. It is Tanzania, a land of awesome agriculture, one story buildings and glorious peace founded on staunch anti-tribalism political policy. After a couple more days of training at that hostel it was time for the bubble to be abandoned. As our first weekend abroad drew to a close we prepared to spend our first night in a Tanzanian home instead of a hostel. That Sunday afternoon they gave us our first language session, a major crash course, four Swahili books: a staff-designed text, a grammar book, a worthless Oxford English→Swahili dictionary and a solid Swahili→English dictionary. Finally they dropped us off at the Home-stay. *Prick* and the semi-permeable cultural bubble is burst.

Arrival: Homestay

Just in time for supper! Well that was the plan. It was 3pm. In my case they had to explain to the family, who spoke not ten words of English, that I didn’t eat meat. Regardless of that: quite possibly my most awkward night, ever. They had warned us that many Tanzanians eat late. I was anxious to share photographs of my family, pull out my maps of Tanzania and the US to see where they were from and to show where I was from with their whole family. That first afternoon and evening I’d sat on the couch waiting for the family to sit down to dinner while my Mama worked in the mini-shop (”duka”) beside the living room. Eventually I came to know this room as a pretty high-end but typical Tanzanian abode but at this point it looked positively foreign: There was a TV but it still had the stickers and labels on it, the remote was still encased in its clear plastic sheath. The decorations in the room were white babies with unintelligible Swahili subtitles and strange doilies made of aluminum pop cans and colored plastic.

For several hours, alone, I studied the two dictionaries and painstakingly crafted a translation of “when is dinner” and “I would like to eat together with the family”. Occasionally the kids would pass and I would smile at them and they would nervously rush past. When I offered it, I thought my translation was somehow successful: I got numbers which resembled times, which I looked up in my dictionaries. They made no sense so I had them write the times down. They wrote “1:30″. Ack! Too late! In such a cultural muddle any expectations are dashed. I ended up eating alone with my eldest sister Stamili at 6:00pm. It turns out that in Swahili, since all Swahili speaking countries straddle the equator, clock times are pushed a further 6 hours from East Africa Time (+3 GMT) to coincide with sunup and sundown as our “midnight” and “noon”. Ages later I learned that “1:30″ meant one and a half hours after sunset. Next, I stumbled to get the names of all of my Homestay siblings. They were all Muslim names, difficult to remember. The task is made more confusing, as they warned us in training, because Tanzanians often have extended family staying at their houses, sometimes very transiently. I wasn’t really certain that I would be seeing these same family members again. Still, we established each others ages and tried to say anything to each other.

At 8:30pm they sent me to bed, I frantically texted our Peace Corps volunteer couple who had lead us around for the past week (and also happen to have lived in my site before me) asking for advice. I thought maybe I’d failed in my cultural exchange. They told me not to worry and I dozed off with much less trouble than I expected for such an early bedtime. I think I also wanted simply to construct some English and be understood–it was the first time in my life where I was truly isolated by language. The following day Swahili class began at the secondary school not so far away–only a 35 minute walk. I had my first Bucket bath, not so bad but they are certainly more effort than an overhead pressure-driven shower. My TZ Mama walks to school with me, I was reunited with a few nearby trainees–it felt like a full week had passed! Amazing how time gets drawn out in these kind of core-gritty cultural exchanges.

* I have no idea why TZers don’t smile in pictures unless asked, still good kids.

to be continued…next week

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