"It's okay, don't worry"

After a wonderful week at the hospital as I described above, I had an amazing weekend. Friday, I met a peace core volunteer who is an American from New Jersey. After only seeing and speaking with Tanzanians for an entire week it was really, really, REALLY nice to be able to use my sarcasm and American humor again. It was really nice trading stories, quirks and observations of our experiences, including how our new names are “muzungu” and how noticeable we are EVERYWHERE  we go.

Mary, me and Chediel's mom cutting vegetables (well, I'm trying)

Saturday morning Chediel’s wonderful family (who I am now just going to refer to as my host family as I spend more time with them than I do at home) invited me to a wedding send off. In TZ, not only do they have a huge wedding ceremony and reception, but the wife’s family hosts a “send off” party where the bride receives gifts and is sent away from her home village or city to live with her new husband and his family. I arrived to the ceremony and was quickly stolen away from Chediel by his mother, who wrapped me in a kitenge (the colorful wraps), sat me down in a chair, handed me a knife, bucket and a bag of onions and put me to work. After a few minutes of me failing miserably to keep up with the onion peeling rate she expected of me, she took it from me and gave me mandaazi (donuts) and tea to sip on instead. As I sipped, I watched dozens of women cut vegetables, stir huge pots of boiling rice over wood burning fires, dance, laugh and prepare for the ceremony. After a while I started to feel really useless so I tried my hand at cutting up green pepper, which was again a miserable failure but the women were very appreciate and commented “it is so amazing and wonderful to see a muzugu (white person) participate in domestic activities!” (I didn’t really know what to say to that so I just smiled and chopped on). After Chediel decided that I was working too hard (I literally only chopped up 1 green pepper and 1 red onion), I went to sit with him and the other men who were congregating in a circle and drinking while the women prepared (I’ve noticed this happens a lot). At this point I realized all the chairs were still empty and it was 11 am-the ceremony was supposed to have started at 10 am. When I asked Chediel about this he looked at me and said, “its African time, so you have to add two hours.” Of course, how could I forget J. An hour later, some noise came the path to the ceremony and I saw a dozen or so men and women singing and clapping. Chediel explained this was the grooms family announcing their arrival (apparently they counted on it not starting on time). After they were greeted with hugs, tears and dancing, they took their seats. Slowly, men starting taking their seats, then Chediel made me sit down and eventually, at 1:30 PM the bride came down the aisle preceded by dancers and accompanied by he rmatron of honor and a “special bridal song” according to the guy sitting next to me.

Chediel emceeing while his parents say goodbye to his cousin 

The next few hours were full of clapping, singing, dancing, giving gifts, crying and the bride saying her goodbyes to her family. Afterwards, the meal was served and eventually the bride was taken by her husband’s family to the city of Arusha where their wedding would be held the next day. The whole ceremony was absolutely beautiful and I feel so lucky and honestly, a little bit awkward, to be there. I don’t know if it was because I was the only muzungu there or if it was because Chediel’s family wanted me to really feel like part of their family, but I felt like a guest of honor. They announced me during the ceremony, I helped Chediel’s mom give a ketenge to her mother and I announced the total amount of gift money given to the bride and groom and presented it to the groom (again, really awkward as this was my first time meeting both of them.) Either way, it was an amazing experience and I cannot thank the Daniel family enough for their karibu-ness.

After the ceremony, unfortunately Chediel’s parents had to travel to Arusha for the wedding (they had originally invited me to stay at their house that evening as they thought they would be there). Chediel and I therefore watched his mom’s store for her and then his sister, Eva, made us dinner (fried bananas, beef and pumpkin leaves) and their parents’ house. As soon as I came up to the house, Chediel’s daughter, Grace, took my bag from me, took my hand, and led me to the living room. We then ate, talked and eventually retired for the night. 

Women lining up with various utensils, plates and bowls to give to the couple

At this time, I want to comment on family roles I have observed in Tanzania. While Chediel has been a wonderful friend and host and without him this experience would not be nearly as rich, the women in his life are phenomenal. I am attempting to portray these gender and age roles in the least biased way possible as they are very different from the general American roles, but I do not believe this is all negative. Every meal that I have been served at Chediel’s house is made by either his mother or his sister Eva. Whenever Chediel and I are ready to eat, we sit around with his dad and any of the other men hanging around while he simply beckons to his sister Eva and BAM! there appears tea, bananas, meat, whatever else we are eating and water to wash my hands with. While this makes me feel really uncomfortable as I am used to everyone participating in the production of a meal (well, mostly everyone), this does not phase Chediel and I feel no resentment or begrudging from Eva. It simply is how the house functions. The children are even more astonishing to me as they do most of the housework and cleaning. The other night as I was about to take my really, really, REALLY muddy shoes off before entering the house he said to me, “don’t do that, we have enough kids around here to clean, they will mop later.” The next day, I saw his 10 year old Grace washing the household laundry and hanging it up to dry. Children as young as 3 or 4 are fully expected to not only participate, but do the majority of, laundry, dishes, running of errands and cleaning. (Suddenly I am feeling way worse about rolling my eyes at my mom when she asked me to empty the dishwasher). Moreover, I have never heard a child lip off, give attitude to, or debate their parents or elders. They are obedient, timid, shy, but also just as rambunctious and energetic as other children. Looking back at my childhood I feel embarrassed at how little I contributed to my household and while I would have put up a fight at the time, I wouldn’t have blamed my mother for making me chop a few more vegetables, do a few more loads of laundry and mop a few more floors. After doing a couple of loads of my own laundry manually, I have a newfound respect for how hard these Tanzanians are working to create a home. 

In addition, I have realized how far removed all of us in developed countries are from our food and from worrying about basic needs. As described above, women and children often spend entire weekends and several hours every day of the week just doing laundry, cleaning and preparing meals. With our technology, grocery stores, dry cleaning, house keepers, etc., some of us spend less than an hour a week on all of these combined. While I am really missing my Trader Joe's and Whirlpool there is something really satisfying and pure about doing your own laundry. In addition, it feels really amazing to eat food that I know was grown right in the village, has had no processing done or preservatives added and hasn't sat on a shelf for 3 weeks. While obviously there are many structural and economic reasons behind all of this, and we are so lucky to live in a country where we have these conveniences, there also is something to be said about doing a little more collective, family manual labor. I think how hard they work, and how much they have to work together, puts an indescribable bond in these families that is sometimes missing in our developed, air-conditioned, water heated homes. 

Off of my soapbox and back to the rest of the weekend, Sunday morning, Chediel and I (after another wonderful breakfast made by Miss Eva and Miss Grace) headed for his favorite site to take visitors-Dooguru Waterfall. Although he warned me that the hike was a little tough, when I asked him how long it would take us to reach the waterfall he said “ehh maybe 15 minutes.” 15 minutes later, we were nowhere near anything that looked like a waterfall and instead continued following two other local guys through farmer’s fields, past a medicine man’s house, down rocky mountain goat paths and finally to the top of a cliff where we saw the waterfall (which was definitely at least 30 minutes later). Chediel then explained that he brought the two other guys along because he wanted to take me to the very bottom of the waterfall, and he wasn’t quite sure of the way. I soon realized that no one really knew the way and found myself sliding the side of the cliff I had just looked over, while trying to grab onto every root, shrub and tree I could find (all of which were infested with nasty little biting ants). About halfway down I was about ready to kill Chediel as he kept telling me, "Its okay, don't worry, just go slow." Yeah, okay, Chediel, I'll just try and go slow as my arms are starting to break out from whatever poisonous bush I just touched and my feet are sliding out from under me. Finally, we reached the bottom, and I have to say, as crabby, dirty, itchy and sweaty as I was, it was absolutely worth it. The waterfall was breathtaking, and we spent the rest of the afternoon washing our feet off in the water and sunbathing on the rocks. The hike back up was much easier and afterward I felt really ready for Kili.

My guides

So fierce

A redbull waterfall selfie

My view during my nap

So happy to have made it back to the top alive!

Grace and I with her new backpack!

That afternoon, Chediel walked me back home, but not before we stopped at a store to get his daughter Grace a haircut (all the girls have to buzz their hair for school for some unknown reason to Chediel). Since she was so sweet to me all weekend I wanted to get also get Grace a small gift, when we went to the shop, she immediately picked out a purple backpack and a compass for her math class. I couldn't believe it-I was expecting her to want candy, or a toy, or anything that other 10 year olds want, but she wanted a school bag and a compass. After taking a really cute picture in our matching backpacks, I said good-bye to the Daniel family and went home for a long, cold shower.