My Lonely Planet guidebook begins its description of Tanzania by saying “Let Tanzania get its grip on you and you won’t be able to shake loose. There’s a magic to this country, an alluring equanimity and simplicity, a natural magnificence that all only begin to take hold slowly. But, once they do, they never let go.” The longer I am here, the more true this becomes! The everyday normalities that, at first, I thought were crazy, absurd or down right ridiculous; are now moments that just make me appreciate and love Tanzania all the more!
Tanzania is a beautiful country-with it’s main form of beauty coming from the people and their way of life. If you think Australia is friendly, you should come here! Everyone is so welcoming, it gets to the point here where you’re almost offended if someone doesn’t say hello. Our 20min walk into town highlights this more than anything. Connie and I are constantly greeted and usually not just with a fleeting ‘hello’. People stop, shake hands and have a conversation (a short one in our case as our Swahili still isn’t great) before continuing on their way.
Walking into town has become one of our favourite things-no matter what kind of day we have had; the constant cry of ‘shikamoo’, ‘mambo’ and ‘mzungu’ by the kids is guaranteed to put a smile on our face. Since visiting the Primary School and introducing ourselves, a lot of kids now know our names so we get a constant ‘Alisha, Connie, Alisha, Connie’ the whole way. Makes us laugh!
Town, itself, is really cool and somewhere we always enjoy visiting. We get all our fruit and veggies from the markets and then food like rice, beans, sugar etc from the ‘supermarket’ (which is really just a 3 walled small room with the food along the walls and a man to serve you). They are in huge bags and they weigh out how much you want.
Town also contains the most AMAZING fresh juice place (fresh passion fruit juice is incredible!), next to which is our ‘chef’ (for want of a better word) who cooks us up chips and goat meat kebabs (chipsi na mishkaki) which we treat ourselves to once a week. Is our weekly dose of meat so, needless to say, we love it! However, Ramadan has just begun here so it looks like it may be a month before we get it again :(
The lifestyle over here takes a little getting used to, but not at all in a negative way. The pace of life is much slower, no one is ever in a rush and being ‘late’ is non-existent (you learn patience pretty early on!). Ibra (one of the Primary School teachers we have become friends with) often tells us we walk too fast and wants to know why Westerners always seem to be hurrying. Rushing to do something over here is just unheard of! It’s also not unusual here to spend hours doing a single job; like doing washing or preparing and cooking a meal (took us 3 hours just to make and cook chapattis the other weekend!).
As school only goes until 1:10pm, I was a bit worried about being bored of an afternoon; but Connie and I find plenty to keep ourselves busy. Cooking, cleaning, planning lessons, trying to kill the rat that thinks I should share my bananas with it (and it is one smart rat!), visiting students houses, having students over, going into town, attending football (you aren’t allowed to call it soccer over here) matches, having cooking lessons, visiting the Primary School and having dancing lessons (we’ve only had one so far but we were pretty terrible! We just can’t shake our booty’s like they can. So much fun though!) and hanging with the local kids who come around to use Connie’s soccer ball so they can give their home-made one's (of HEAPS of plastic bags wrapped tightly into a ball with string) a break; successfully takes up most of our time.
Teaching is going well. Can’t believe I’m already in my fifth week! It’s flying by-have been in Tanz nearly two months already! Took a little while to get into the swing of teaching but think I’m getting there slowly. It’s hard work but rewarding and the students (most) are absolutely awesome! There really is nothing quite like walking into a classroom and having 50-60 students yell out “Good morning Madam!”. Is definitely something I will miss when I leave!
My students have exams in 4 weeks time (which I’m responsible for writing AND marking) so am looking forward to getting a bit of a better idea as to their ability and what they are struggling with; as with such big classes it can be hard to gauge. Is strange to start thinking about what I will examine them on; makes everything feel all the more real. At the moment I still sort of feel like I’m role playing being a teacher or something, rather than actually being one!
After exams, we get a one week holiday; at which time a group of us are planning to do a 4 day safari of Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater. Should be awesome, I’m really looking forward to doing some more travel! So, at the moment, Alex and I are in the midst of contacting lots of different companies and getting quotes etc for it. Exciting stuff!
There are so many moments here where you’re reminded of what a different country you are in-from things such as watching men in town make furniture completely by hand (without a single power tool) (their bodies show it!!!) to seeing men ride past our house on bicycles with logs over 3m long and probably close to 100kg strapped on the back. Then there are things like seeing women with babies strapped on their backs by khangas, a few kids at their feet and a 20L bucket of water balanced on their head; on their way back from the well and moments such as squeezing that one extra person on the Daladala, even though it means they are half hanging out the door!
As a running joke between the group of volunteers over here, we have decided to document these crazy, funny and special moments; so have started a collection of ‘you know you’re in Africa when…’ sayings. We are quickly building quite a list! Will have to write a few on here every now and then for all you folk back home :)
So, all in all, I am loving Tanzania more and more everyday! Miss home and life back in Aus but wouldn’t trade this experience for anything!
I hope you’re all well and are enjoying whatever path you have chosen to take!
Alisha
