Random Musings from the Vill

Internet is being super slow so I'm just posting all of these together to save time one uploading the blog entries.  This is a compilation of things that are fairly random.

- When you beckon for someone to come over, you have the palm of your hand facing toward the ground rather than your palm facing upward.  With your palm downward you also make a motion like you’re grabbing the air.  It took me a little while to get used to it but now use it all the time.  It is almost like there is a power of the motion that will get someone to come over to you.  If this motion is accompanied by the phrase "njoo" (n-joe), it is incredibly rare to not have a Tanzania answer the call.  Part of the culture, I suppose, but if I don’t go over (like if some guys want to talk to me and I have no patience at that moment) people look genuinely surprised that "njoo-ing" me over didn’t work.

- Tanzania food is bland.  Like really bland.  There just isn’t much flavor to it.  In areas where there is a large Indian or Iranian immigrant group, there might be more flavors and uses of spices, but for the most part, in very Tanzanian areas like my village, the food is bland.  The main staples in my village are rice, beans, mkande (I probably spelled it wrong but it is when corn kernels and beans are cooked together), greens (spinach or sweet potato leaves are most common here) and ugali (oh man I will explain about ugali).  Besides salt, spices aren’t common in food.  For special occasions people will cook pilau (rice cooked with meat and pilau spices, which include cinnamon, cloves, pepper and cardamom) but that is mostly for holidays and weddings.  Chai is another matter, since people will swarm me if I give out spices for chai (the usual cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom) that I can buy for cheap in town.  My wonderful mother has sent me lots of spices so my food is definitely not bland, and I thoroughly enjoy cooking my own version of curry here, as there are some really good curry blends that I can get.  Anyone who has eaten my food (including guacamole, which they have all the ingredients for but just don’t make cuz its not part of the culture) has been astonished at the fact that there is more than just salt in there.

- "Pili pili" means chili and holy crap the chilis here can burn your throat off.  My first encounter was a few days after we arrived in Dar and went for a walk around the city.  At lunch there were a plate of cut up chilis for us.  Thinking I was all awesome cuz I was willing to try new things, my friend Willy and I ate a slice of the chili each.  That was the day I gained much more respect for chilis and I almost cried. Since then I still eat them because I like spicy food (and it is flavor for goodness sake) but I have learned to eat it with food rather than straight or to dab it on (as even this is enough to spice up those beans and rice).

- Concrete here sucks.  It falls apart too easily for my taste and I am quite ignorant of building materials.  But even I know it isn’t a good sign if part of your house wall falls off every time you sweep even remotely close to it.

- Football (soccer) is king.  One of the other sports my students play is netball (like a combination of ultimate frisbee and basketball but with no backboard) but I have only seen girls play.  There is a bit of sprinting and other track and field events but for the most part playing is limited to football.  My students had never heard of rugby and didn’t know it was a sport.  That was when I figured out I needed to pay a wee bit more attention to what my students are actually familiar with rather than assume they've heard of some of these things I take for granted.

- I might be alone in this but before arriving in Tanzania I had never cooked beans that weren’t from a can.  I didn’t know how to cook dry beans but just always saw them used for crafts in the US. Now I have finally figured out to soak the dry beans (overnight preferably) then cook them for literally hours.  Depending on the kind of beans it can take up to 3 hours.  That’s a lot of fuel when you have to carry firewood or get bags of charcoal.  I bought a pressure cooker for myself as a Christmas present (best PCV Christmas present to oneself ever) and have a small gas stove that I use.  If I presoak the beans it can be only about 30 minutes from the start of my cook time to when my beans and rice are finished. Don’t roll your eyes and sigh that it still takes too long, that's a fast meal for here!!

- Hospitality is different here.  People are still amazingly welcoming and love to have you to their house.  Whereas my family raised me to sit and talk with the guests or have things prepared ahead of time (or my favorite, where the guests and I hang out and work together in the kitchen—I have very fond memories of hanging out with our Siemer relatives around the kitchen at Thanksgiving), Tanzanians have a different approach.  As a guest you should relax and sit down in the nice cushioned chairs in the sitting room (if the family can afford it).  Then the hosts tend to leave you alone while they go prepare tea or food in the kitchen.  You don’t really talk to them much either, as they will bring you the tea or food then leave again or sit by you but not eat or drink themselves.  It's very odd for me.  I mean, if I just cooked or made tea for you, I damn well want to enjoy it too, not look on as you enjoy it without me!  Maybe I am the only one who feels this way, but it still catches me off guard sometimes.  When we first arrived with our homestay families, many of us complained that they were treating us like guests.  It was only later when I went back to visit my homestay family that I realized I had been wrong and they had in fact been treating us like members of the family.  They had let me sit with them while they cooked, do small tasks around the house, and would hang out with me.  When I went back to visit and they talked with me about my village, I was the only one who got treated to a soda, the house girl was out working and barely talked to me though she looked happy to see me again, and eventually people left me to sit quietly until I felt awkward and decided to leave.  Though it is merely a cultural difference, it is still taking me a while to get used to it.  When 3 teachers and I were invited to lunch at the school cook's house, we waited for 2 hours while his wife and him prepared stuff for us, hardly talked to them, and ate while he watched us and his wife was off doing other work.  It was odd but the hospitality is so heartfelt, you just learn to accept it.  Lately people have been letting me hang out with them while they prepare tea more but I anticipate that when my parents come, the three of us will be sitting in a room while the hosts are bustling about.

- "Hodi" (pronounced hoe-dee) is the phrase used instead of knocking.  When people come to someone's house, many won't knock (some do) but will stand outside the door yelling “Hodi."  One man who is the village bum has come by my house at 6:45 in the morning (NOT the best time of day to say hi to me on a day we don’t have school) and just stood outside my door yelling "Hodi! Hodi! Hodi!" repeatedly without taking a breath in between syllables.  To be honest, I sometimes get wildly annoyed with people hodi-ing because they hardly get you a chance to get to the door without sounding like you're being really slow and inconveniencing them.  It’s also kinda like the njoo where you have to answer the call, but there are times I don’t want to.  Then I suck it up and think "Cultural integration" and answer the door.

- I know its been mentioned in a few different movies like Pulp Fiction but think about how awkward many of us Americans feel during silences.  Maybe there’s a lull in the conversation.  No one is talking but may be staring off into space or playing with his or her cell phones. It starts to feel uncomfortable.  No one has spoken in what feels like hours...you start to try to formulate some sentences but you’re flustered and feel awkward and unsure of things so it feels like the awkwardness is just building and getting worse.  Finally you spew out some words and your companions smile or comment lazily before the silence descends again.  You wonder if you should go...and then you remember you're in Tanzania and it doesn’t seem to bother people in the slightest if people don’t talk.  People don’t seem to get awkward.  Maybe Americans are just too aware of things or don’t like a situation to be uncomfortable in the slightest, but people just don’t seem to feel that situations are awkward.

- I don’t think it’s considered rude to wake people up here.  If it’s early morning people still hodi.  If you’re taking a nap (which is very culturally acceptable and many people do, though I don’t take advantage of it enough, methinks) and they wake you up, they just chat with you as if you weren’t sleeping and don’t apologize for waking you. In the grand scheme of things I know it isn’t important but it can be quite irritating when I’m sleepy.

- I’m sure plenty of people will judge me for this one, but I am incredibly sick of people asking me for stuff.  At first I would do what I would in the U.S., where I offer to let someone borrow something then they return it when they're finished.  Here, I am like a boyscout—I’m always prepared. I think ahead and plan accordingly.  Like, if I’m going to be lesson planning, I bring a pen and paper.  If I’m walking to the village an hour away and will be there for the day, I bring water.  Unfortunately that’s been something that seems to have caused me more problems than you think it should.  People always ask to use my things, even if I am in the process of using it.  I’ve had a few teachers take a pen out of my hand, something that infuriates me (I’m a big believer in asking.).  I know this shouldn’t be a big deal, but it gets really old.  No, you can’t use my knife again, buy your own knife since you know you're going to need it.  I have wanted to say this but haven’t....I know it’s just cultural that people lend each other stuff, but because I am the white American, my village sees me as having absolutely everything.  So they all ask me.  It isn’t just the occasional mama.  It’s sometimes every single person I come across.  And most of the time, if I do lend them something, they don’t bring it back unless I pester them.  Endlessly.

- People don’t know their birthdays a lot of the time.  Most of my students only know their birth year, and sometimes they don’t even know that.

- There are things that are gendered in the US that aren’t here, where as there are small things that are gendered here you wouldn’t thing would be.  It’s interesting the things that are considered gender specific or neutral.  For example both women and men wear the color pink with no comments being made toward the men.  I love walking around and seeing big burly men wearing a bright pink dress shirt made of glossy material.  I think it's healthier and better than the paranoid approach some people have back home where men can't wear pink without getting some kind of comment.  I know it is just a difference in culture but I like the bright pinkness.  

           But then there are some bizarre things that are gender specific.  In English, if you don’t hear someone or need clarification, many of us say "What?" or “Huh?” or if you’re proper, “Pardon?”  ("Hey Amy, Mumble mumble mumble."  "What?")  In Kiswahili, though, women say "Beh?" and men say "Nom?"  My homestay family made this very clear when I accidentally said “Nom” and they spent 10 minutes explaining why I had to say “Beh.”

           Fabrics are also kind of gendered which I don’t really understand.  For example the other day at the end of a meeting with teachers, village elders and students, one of the teachers told one of the older boys to stand.  Wrapped around his shoulders was a khanga.  As it was cold (even I had a khanga wrapped around my legs all day), I thought it was better the kid be wrapped up than shivering and whining.  But the teacher stopped the elders and asked them if the student was a boy or girl.  A few responded that he was a girl because of the khanga.  I was really mad at the teacher for being such a jerk, and feel that if it's cold, who cares what someone uses to keep warm.  What made me even madder was that the most respected elder in the village was there with a different kind of fabric around his shoulders in the exact same way.  Man, I was angry after that.  After the teacher started berating the student, I was trying to get him to stop (“Daniel, it’s cold, stop,” etc.) but I don’t think I was loud enough.  But in this incredibly sexist society, God forbid someone use the wrong kind of fabric.  I'm being immature and holding a grudge against that teacher because I disagree with what he did.  I’ve seen some of my male students who have used fabric and wrapped it around their heads like the girls (the stereotypical headscarf that many people think of with Muslim women) and I just smile at them.  It doesn’t bother me, but I’m crazy and believe that men and women are equal.  Sorry, the double standards and little things like sexism with fabrics start to really get to me after a while.

- I am now the teacher who has been at my school the longest.  The others have left for various reasons and I feel so incredibly bad for the students whose education is being deeply affected by things outside of their control.  I’d like to think that at least I’m there and have been consistently, but the students are the ones who suffer as a result of things completely outside of their control.

- When I did the Wyoming Conservation Corps, I was a wee bit snooty.  I admit it.  After we would run out of real milk (those gallon jugs can only last so long when you're using ice and a cooler in the summer in Wyoming), I would either wait until we got more or simply not have milk the rest of the project.  I just couldn't stand powdered milk.  I wouldn’t use it at all.  Then there was the coffee issue.  My co-leader my second summer suggested using instant coffee like Starbucks Via so we could save time in the morning by not having to make coffee with the percolator or wash it.  I didn’t like that idea either, as instant coffee just seemed…bleh (I had worked at a small coffee shop, albeit not super fancy and just in the library at my university).

Wow I was a snob.

Now I am super excited if someone gives me Starbucks Via or other really good coffee packets.  They're just as valuable among PCVs as water-flavor packets.  Milk is difficult to get in my village (it's unreliable because there are only so many cows and loads of people who rely on their milk) so I’ve taken to using powdered milk (the best kind being Nido).  I don’t drink it straight but will mix it with coffee or cocoa or tea.  I use it all the time and rely on it for calcium and a source of protein. Considering I'm kind of accidentally vegetarian, I drink a lot of that fancy milk powder stuff.  But these were all things I scoffed at during my fairly "roughing it" summers.  I guess Peace Corps has made me a wee bit less snobbish and come down to earth.  I think I needed it, though I refuse to do the same for beer.  I'll forever be a beer snob because of Germany and microbreweries.

So the moral of that story is that if you wanna help out your favorite PCV…send some Starbucks Via packets.  Or any other simple snacks.