I have been living with my host family for almost two weeks now. My host parents are Mama Theresia and Baba Frank, both of whom are retired primary school teachers. Mama and baba have 5 children. Of the 5, only dada (sister) Jenny currently lives here with her 2 month old baby girl, Peniella, but I have been told that they will be leaving soon to move back to Dar es Salaam where Jenny’s husband lives. Also living here is mama and baba’s granddaughter, Teddy. Teddy is 4 and is the daughter of mama and baba’s eldest son, but she lives with her bibi and babu (grandma and grandpa) and has become my best friend. Every day when I get home from school or training she runs to me yelling “Auntie Calista” and gives me a big hug. It doesn’t matter to her that we can’t communicate much with her only speaking Swahili and me speaking very little Swahili, we still find a way to communicate and play together. She likes coloring with the colored pencils I brought and sometimes we do homework together. I help her practice writing her numbers while I work on my Swahili homework.
This week we also gained a house girl who will be living here and helping with the chores and cooking because Dada Jenny is leaving soon. In addition to a house girl moving in Baba told me that this weekend two of my kaka’s (brothers), Andrew and William, will be back from university, so the household will grow even more! Andrew and William are both within 5 years of age as me so I am looking forward to meeting them and being able to learn about life as a college student in Tanzania.
In the almost two weeks I have been living here I have learned so much! Baba taught English to primary school kids so he has pretty good English and is able to translate things of importance, but Mama, Jenny and Teddy speak little to no English so I have learned some important Swahili phrases very quickly along with some gestures and charades in order to communicate. I have also been taught how to wash my laundry by hand, how to boil and filter water for drinking, heat water for bathing, fetch water from the stream, light the charcoal jiko (burner), cook an entire meal on the one charcoal jiko, wash dishes by hand without running water, sweep and mop my room, and wash and prepare fresh fruit properly. Many of the things I have learned are things I knew how to do in the US, like washing dishes, sweeping, mopping and preparing fresh fruit; however, when our water comes from either a village pump or the stream we need to be conservative of the water, as well as make sure it is clean and safe to use so I had to be taught the best procedures for doing those chores.
Cooking/preparing a meal has been the biggest challenge and also most interesting part of living with and learning from my host family. Not only are we cooking everything on a single charcoal jiko outside, there is also no such thing as a cutting board in my house. I have already improved in my ability to thinly slice onions, peppers, and mchicha (spinach) all with just a knife and my hands. Each night I sit outside with dada and help her prepare each of the dishes we will have for dinner that night. I have already learned the recipes for a couple different Tanzanian dishes. The one that is easiest to explain and is common at restaurants is chipsi mayai. It’s simply homemade potato fries/wedges fried in a scrambled egg pancake. That’s it, a potato and egg pancake, and it’s delicious.
Another thing I’ve noticed about life in Tanzania is that it feels like we are always eating. Every morning I have chai (breakfast) around 7:00 before heading to either the school where I am doing my internship teaching and Swahili lessons or the teachers college for technical, medical and safety training. At both the school and the teachers college we have chai (tea) break at 10:00 which is usually served with chapati. Sometimes we have chai break twice, once with the other teachers and then once with just me, the 3 other volunteers and our LCF (language and cultural facilitator). We have lunch at 12:30 and then on the days we are at the teachers college for training we also have a 3:30 soda break which includes a snack. Every evening at home we have dinner anywhere form 8:00-9:00. Let’s just say, I will not be going hungry while I’m here.