Jumanne 5 Octoba 2010
Today was my third day at homestay and the first day I felt like I was actually communicating with my family on a level higher than a two year old. A couple neighbors came over while Mwasi was cooking dinner and I sat outside chatting with them. It was a slow-going conversation and most of the time my head was in my dictionary and a smile was on our faces. They asked me the question everyone gets asked, how can we help them get to America? I wasn’t sure how to reply, and even if I would have known the appropriate response I wouldn’t have been able to say it in Kiswahili. I said something along the lines of when they find themselves in America they can stay with me in Wisconsin, but I will be in Tanzania for two more years. They said they will wait.
A brief explanation of my homestay: Sunday afternoon I arrived at the Zagwi household where I was taken in by a mama, dada, and babu, my new mother, sister, and father, who have accepted me as their own for the following eight weeks. Mama has nine children and I am the tenth; they have christened me Dani Wilson Zagwi. Mama’s youngest child is Mwasi who is 28 and she is the only one who lives at home and the only one in Morogoro. (Four are in Dar es Salaam and two are elsewhere; I have been told I will meet some of them soon when they visit Morogoro. Two have passed.) Mama and babu are mzee, elderly — mama is 64 and baba is 78. Baba speaks english but spends most of his time in his room so I seldom speak with him; mama and dada Mwasi speak a few word of english but speak almost only in Kiswahili so I have been learning lots of vocabulary from them. It’s hard to remember so many words but they are both incredibly patient, Mwasi especially. She has the patience of a saint.
For the next four weeks my schedule will be fairly consistent. Monday through Saturday we have classes at a local secondary school (which is equivalent to a high school). I wake up shortly after 6:00am, usually before my alarm to the sound of a rooster an arm’s length outside my window, I take a bucket bath, get dressed, and have breakfast. Breakfast is usually my choice of instant coffee, milo, or cocoa, and varies between bread, chapati, and eggs. These past two days Mwasi has accompanied me on the four-minute walk to school. We walk down the dusty and unpaved main road, past mango trees caked with red dirt, and greet almost everyone on the way. Baba says people in the village respect Mwasi and she keeps the “hooligans” at bay. My Kiswahili lessons begin at 8:00am and from 10:00 to 10:30 I take a break for chai with my four classmates and teacher. Our chai break is black tea and one or two fried snacks, sometimes a samosa, other times some kind of donut thing, and occasionally something sort of hashbrown-like cake thing. Always fried. Lunch is usually rice, beans, and vegetables, either cucumbers and tomatoes or incredibly salty cooked spinach. We continue our language lessons and finish our classes in the afternoon.
All 39 of us trainees have been broken up into what the Peace Corps calls CBTs, Community-Based Training groups. There are five trainees in my CBT and we live in the village of Bigwa in the town of Morogoro. Other trainees are a five- to twenty-minute drive from Bigwa in other surrounding villages of Morogoro and we each study at different secondary schools. Once or twice every week we meet at a community center for large group lessons. Our time at our homestays is meant to teach us how to survive on our own and to give us an opportunity to practice our Kiswahili. My language is progressing but I still have a long, long way to go. These past few days I have been able to understand a few words here and there from mama and dada but today was the first day I felt like I could form coherent sentences. I’ve decided I need to carry around my dictionary everywhere I go in the house, because without seeing the word written I can’t remember any vocabulary and without my dictionary I can’t find the words which I haven’t yet learned in class. I am learnin kidogo kidogo, and pole pole
I’m eating well and staying clean. I eat five times each day and shower twice, not by choice but by custom. I’m not sure if the entire country breaks for chai twice per day but there hasn’t been a single day here I haven’t been served mid-morning and mid-afternoon chai and snacks. After school mama or dada usually prepares milk and bread or cookies for me, I spend time napping or studying, and around 7:30 mama tells me to shower. Tanzanians shower twice per day, every day — once before eating dinner and once in the morning. Their standards of cleanliness are very high and even though I use a squat toilet which doesn’t flush and I bathe with a bucket rather than a showerhead, I feel cleaner here than in America. We wash our hands before and after dinner, and again after cleaning the dinner table. And mama won’t let me eat until she prays.
