When in doubt, Shikamoo

Friday, August 1, 2014

Tarehe Ijumaa, moja mwezi wa nane, mwaka elfu mbili kumi na nne

      My host mama finally allows me to pour my bath water by myself, so that means it is probably time for another post!  Today is the first day of August, and we’ve been in-country for over three weeks now.  My class spent our first week together like 61 kids in summer camp.  We stayed at the Kurasini Center – a Christian conference facility in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania.  We had little time to spend away from tedious trainings during this first week, but eagerly awaited our visit to the city outside of the walls of our compound.  For me, the half-day spent visiting the markets of Dar brought about the realization that I really was in Africa – in Tanzania, Africa – and here to stay for long time.  That day, I bought kitenges – wonderful printed fabrics – and drank from a tender coconut.  Dar has an exotic hustle and bustle and a dynamic different from any city I have been to.  Being in Peace Corps Training is hardly different from being in preschool again (we even had to “potty train” again with the porcelain Tanzanian style toilets!).  But, about four days in, I realized that the real reasoning behind Dar week was for Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) to meet, greet, and learn from one another. I’ll post more about some remarkable lessons I learned from one of my peers during training.

      After “Dar” week, it’s safe to say that each and every volunteer was ready to move on.  We rose early one morning (OK, actually, we rose early every morning) and boarded a bus to Korogwe, a town in the Tanga region north of Dar.  Shortly after our arrival, each volunteer was whisked off in safari-style jeeps and shuttled to host families’ homes in the villages surrounding Korogwe.  My village is called Masuguru, and it is but a 10 minute walk from the town center.  Every PCT knows that the first night in a homestay family will inevitably be awkward – and mine was no different.  Within 5 minutes of my arrival, and before my bags had been stowed away, guests began arriving, filling the couches and even floors of our sitting room.  Soon, we were engaged in a prayer service.  I understood four or five words from the entire service – and felt pretty proud of it!  After the guests had filed out, I got to meet the rest of my host family – my baba and mama, Benson and Agnes, and my host sisters, Estella, Amina, and Rehema.  (Well, they all aren’t exactly my sisters, but I’ll get to this in a later post, too!).  My problem was, the family was very attached to their cat – to which I’m allergic.  I figured there had been some sort of mistake with Peace Corps’ placement policy, but the five or six Swahili phrases I had memorized at this point were not much help in me explaining my allergy.  I spent an uncomfortable few days as we worked for a solution for the cat, as I eased into life with my host family.

      During the first two weeks of homestay, I learned about the culture of a Tanzanian town just as a child would.  My family is Anglican, and Sunday services are a marathon four-hour affair.  However, I really feel the presence of God in the joyous song, swinging hips, and clapping hands – and four hours passes by soon enough.  My language mastery is nowhere near the point where I could understand the theological jargon in Kiswahili, so the customs can be hard to understand.  For example, this past Sunday, I noticed a shiny red motorcycle inside the church during mass.  At the end of the service, it was wheeled out ceremoniously so the pastor could bless it once again.  As with most things that seem strange to me in this country, I shrugged and hoped that one day soon I might understand.

      As I make slow progress with my Kiswahili, I realize that there are so many more important pieces to assimilating in this culture.  I can greet people I meet in about 20 different ways, and this is the paramount skill to gain respect in Tanzanian communities.  There are different greetings for the old and the young – so when in doubt, I’ve realized it’s safer just to offer a respectful, “Shikamoo,”  which loosely translates to “I hold your feet.”

      I’m learning how to make food on a coal-fire jiko, and challenging my tailor, or fundi, with ever-more challenging designs for my clothes.  I know enough to get good prices on fruit and cloth at the local market, and have survived getting lost in the neighboring village through driving rain.  The smell of the red dirt is becoming comforting to me, and I’m learning how to bike around the titanic fractures that decorate our village roads.  Our town is perpetually blanketed in a dramatic sea of clouds, and the mountains that stretch across the horizon are a feast to look at no matter which way I’m walking.  Life here is simple and gracious, and is described best by the words, “Karibu Tanzania!”