So I’ve been living in Tanzania for about four months now and thought it would be good to write up a bit about Tanzanians, their culture, and how I have been handling the cross cultural aspects of my Peace Corps experience. Hopefully this will help you all to learn a bit about what I am doing and about Tanzanians in general.
Greetings: It is absolutely necessary to learn greetings to survive here. There are a thousand different ways to ask how someone is doing. You go through a series of greetings before you can move on to any other business, and you must greet everyone you see. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if you are in a hurry or not, you must go through the greeting process. At first this was a bit tedious and difficult to learn all the different versions of “how are you?” but I actually enjoy it now. It is the majority of my interactions with people and it’s nice to live among people who actually care about how you are doing. It is very different than in America where you might ask someone how they are, but you don’t always wait to hear a response and keep walking by. I have people calling me (even though Tanzanians never have money on their phones…) just to say hi and go through a series of greetings with no other purpose than that. I also get a lovely 6:30am and 7:00am wake up knock at my door everyday from two of the older wazee babas (wazee= old people, baba=father). Even though it’s annoying to get out of bed everyday just to say hi, how are you, how did you wake up, how did you sleep, how is your household, and where are you headed to, it’s just a normal friendly gesture that I go through and then return back to bed for a little.
It is also different with the use of the word karibu (welcome). This is a word that is used all the time and it is difficult to decipher whether someone is actually welcoming you to something or just saying it as a polite gesture. No matter who walks by, if people are eating (everyone eats outside) they will welcome those that pass by to their food. Usually the reply is just asante (thank you), but like I said it’s difficult to figure out whether you should actually accept a food offer or not, especially if they karibu you to food repeatedly. Unless I am around for the cooking process of the food, I will just give an asante and continue wherever.
Another interesting word is pole (pol-eh=sorry). People casually tell you they are sick, hungry, tired, etc. but all you reply with is pole. Most of the time all they want is to hear you say pole and don’t expect you to even actually feel bad for them. It is a very normal phrase and there was even one bibi (older woman) who had a different complaint every day that I passed by her house, but all she wanted was to hear me say pole. However, pole is used often when people are carrying water, walking a long distance, or anything involving a lot of energy as a way of simply saying sorry you have to do that. The reply is always asante. Pole is used from anything minor, such as tripping over something, to something serious, like death of a family member.
Another weird interaction that I often have as an American is the asking for gifts and money. Every time I left to town or on a trip during my home stay, numerous people would ask me for a gift from wherever I was going, and would ask where the gift was when I returned. However, people never actually expect you to give them anything. So you can have fun making up excuses to entertain them with as to why you didn’t get a gift, or simply say sorry I forgot. Now that I am at site, I don’t get many requests for gifts, but do get asked for money here and there. I just simply say I have none, and people never really expect to get anything. It seems to be more of a fun interaction for them than an actual request. Tanzanians are not direct with anything important at all so if money or something is actually requested, they make it much more formal (a note, a personal visit explaining why, etc.).
Respecting elders is huge here, so the most important greeting is shikamoo and the reply is marahaba. You have to shikamoo anyone older than you (we were told in training roughly more than 5 years older). It is always a respectful way to greet someone, although the age difference is sometimes hard to tell (especially at night- I usually just shikamoo everyone if I can’t tell whether they are older or not). If a group of kids walks by, each one will say shikamoo to someone who is older. You can shikamoo more than one person, shikamooni, but I see more people individually greet each and every person to show more respect.
Overall, if you can master greetings in Swahili, Tanzanians will usually reply that you know Swahili very well. The various “how are you” greetings can take you through most day to day interactions, and even if you tell people that you only know a little bit of Swahili, they insist you know it well if you can greet them.
Transportation: Mom, don’t read this one so you don’t worry too much J Transportation is crazy here! Most of the time I have no idea how I actually made it somewhere because of the quality of the buses. There are different types of buses, but all are very run down/falling apart. In Tanga, if we headed to town, we would take a daladala, which is basically a minivan that is filled with 30 people. It stops frequently along the road, and it is a known fact that you can never have a full daladala. People sit in the few seats while everyone else piles in the isle and holds on to a railing along the ceiling. It’s actually pretty easy to stand since you are so squished in you don’t move too much.
At site, I take a gari (car) to town, but it is basically a large minivan/small bus. The same gari goes to town every morning at 6am and returns at 1pm. This gari is unbelievable- I have no idea how it has not completely died. You can hear it from far away since it makes so much noise. The door does not shut, the seats are not bolted down for the most part, many seats are broken so they recline into the row behind, the windows don’t really shut, etc. I have waited hours on the side of the road with everyone when the bus broke down and the driver and other men that work for him had to walk to the nearest village for parts. The morning that I left my first house to stay with another volunteer until the second house was ready, out gari lost control on the muddy road since it was raining. We almost flipped, ran off the road, bags and people went flying, we stopped about five feet from a tree, and a little girl fell out the open door. Although no one was hurt and we didn’t flip, I was shocked that I barely even reacted since the bumpy ride is so normal. We all had to pile out, wait on the side of the road again, and they shoveled and pushed the bus inch by inch back onto the road, and we were off again. So although there are no safety belts or all the parts intact, there are usually smelly fish or chickens on board with all the people and their bags/items purchased in town. And for anything that doesn’t fit inside the bus, it is strapped to the top with a rubber rope (that’s how I got my bed frame and bike home).
The bigger buses (technically luxury buses back home but here they are in no way luxury) that go from Dar es Salaam to Mtwara was an adventure in itself! It was a 15 hour bus ride to get to site and we were all in the back row (worst spot on a bus since you get more air with every bump). Our seats weren’t bolted and it was the bumpiest ride I’ve ever experienced, so I think we were flying out of our seats as much as we were sitting in them. However, the 15 hours did not feel like 15 hours, so I don’t think I will ever complain about a long car/bus/or even plane ride again! It will be so weird to use transportation in which you have your own personal seat with safety belts and leg room! It is very normal to have someone else’s kid in your lap if you are sitting in a bus. Kids are passed to passengers sitting if the parents are standing, which is so funny to think how people would react to this back home. I’ve even seen a kid handed out the window when the bus was super crowded so only the mother had to fight her way to the door.
Figuring out which bus you need to get on at the standi (bus stand) is pretty simple since the moment you walk up to the standi, tons of bus conductors swarm you to ask where you are heading and take you to the appropriate bus. So even if you have no idea which bus, there is always someone/ a bunch of people there to help out. So far, I have arrived wherever I intended, although late sometimes, and despite the terrible road conditions, I haven’t had any major safety issues (just the one almost flip and basically floating down the river from Dar during the rainy season) – but, I have had a smelly fish held over my head, a chicken crawl under my seat and skirt, and many, many armpits, butts, and bags in my face.
Washing dishes: So this is a fun process with no running water or dishwashers, but is a pretty simple daily routine. At home stay, I was shocked to learn that Tanzanians wash their dishes with dirt. They fill two pots with water, one to wash dishes with soap and one to wash off the soapy dish. For particularly dirty dishes like sufurias (cooking pots), they use a bit of dirt to help the scrubbing process. So yup, I have now eaten lots of dirt here. Ha. I still don’t fully understand the process of picking out the “right” dirt for dishes, but my home stay family definitely picked out a handful of whiter dirt (the soil was pretty red in Tanga) from a certain area. Now that I am at site, I use a sponge and soap to wash my dishes. But to conserve water, I do the two pots with water to wash with and water to rinse off dishes with. So, there is a bit of recycling dirty water, but so far it’s worked out well. (Still think I’m a germaphobe, Mom?)
Washing clothes: Take a moment to really appreciate your washing machine right now! This is one hell of a chore and yet clothes never seem to get that clean. Washing clothes involves a bar a soap (sometimes I use powder soap), two buckets of water, and your hands. There is a process of scrubbing the clothes together to rub soap into them, and while at home stay, this actually made little rug burn marks on my hands. I’ve got the hang of it now, though, so it only takes me about 2 hours to do a week’s worth of clothes now. Sheets and jeans, however, are a pain in the ass so those don’t always get washed weekly. Repeatedly scrubbing clothes and hang drying them has now caused them to be pretty stretched out and worn. I guess I don’t really ever care how clean I can make them since they get pretty disgusting right away from so much dirt and sweat from the heat. But yes, I really do miss washing machines!
More to come later!
