An African Wedding

So, valiantly trying to stay up for Top Chef Masters, which aired from 11-midnight(eek!) Wednesday night, I caught up with a mindless guilty pleasure- Jessica Simpson's The Price of Beauty (I know. . .)  Anyway, she and her cohorts visited Uganda (which along with Kenya makes up East Africa.  OK, I just said that and realized I totally made that up, I'll get back to you on the verification of that geography).

The particular tribe they visited fattens their women up, as it's a sign of wealth and status to have a fat wife.  The fattening takes discipline, as you sit as motionless as possible in a hut for two months drinking milk.  To Jessica, this was completely foreign, as she is part of culture where all discipline is focused towards thinness.

One weekend when I returned from a weekend jaunt to Zanzibar with my 3 far-flung volunteer friends, my Tanzanian Mama said to me "Oh, you have gained weight!  I can tell!  You are getting fat, my daughter!"

Yeah- that made me feel great.  However, she meant it as a compliment, and proclaimed that I was fat with pride for it meant she was taking good care of me.  Still- a hard cultural difference to swallow when you're twenty-two.

So Jessica, Casey and Ken got to go to a wedding.  I stopped watching at this point, because it was finally time for my Top Chef Masters hotties.  However, I was instantly brought back to the wedding I went to in Tanzania.  I wish I had more pictures of this kind of thing, but I was trying very hard to not be a mzungu, and draw as little attention to myself as possible- trying being the operative word. 

Let me set the reception scene for y'all-  orange and pink and white tissue paper decorating every surface of the big meeting area.  On top of the dais was two large white throne-like chairs for the bride and the groom.  In front of the chairs was a dead goat on a spit, hooves dangling in the breeze, head lolling to the side.  Interesting.  Of course, I had a dead pig at my wedding, so looking back I can't say too much!

There was an MC on  a mike narrating the entire ceremony.  This was not uncommon- I also went to a fancy birthday party, and an anniversary party with MC's, which was pretty hilarious in all honesty.  I was kind of zoning in and out, which was my tendency when confronted with long uninterrupted quickly spoken Swahili. 

All the sudden something grabbed my attention.  The word mzungu.  I quickly glanced around, praying that another white person was magically in the crowd, and he wasn't referring to me.  Nope.  Then he starts speaking in English.  This is problematic.  Apparently, having traveled the farthest (Tennessee to Tanzania) to attend the wedding, I am now the guest of honor.  Shit.  I have never seen these people before in my life, now I'm their guest of honor? Then I see them to start to hack into the goat.  Double shit.

Tomato-faced, I have to tentatively make my way through the crowd to the bride and groom.  I unsurely hug and kiss them in the manner my Mama hurriedly whispered to me, beaming with pride (she was a bit of an attention lover, to say the least).  Then, a piece of the goat is hacked off, and fed to me by the bride via a toothpick.  Everyone watched expectantly as I blushedly chewed, and smiled, and chewed, and tried not to grimace, and chewed, and chewed.  That goat was cooked til it couldn't cook no more.  Good thing I'm not a picky eater.

Baaaa.

Mzungu in Africa

I started wearing the kerchief to try to disguise my blonde hair- it did help.  My hair drew some unwanted attention due to the arrival of internet cafés to my town.  As embarrassedly explained by my boss Frieda, "Your yellow hair is bad because of the sexy on the internet."  That one took me a while, but boiled down to the fact that the majority of women in porn have blonde hair.  Therefore, Tanzanian men, who don't see blondes on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, except on the rare occasion they use the internet, assume that all women with blonde hair are big ole slut buckets.  Exactly the image I want to project while completely alone in a third world country with a high rate of AIDS.

Coupled with the fact that all Americans are rich (a just perception considering the circumstances which most residents of Arusha see Americans- on luxury safari), I was the perfect wife- rich and promiscuous!  The marriage proposals came left and right- my "mama" would retort "My daughter is here to teach school, not to get married!"

Ha- you can see how I stand out in this picture- also, in the foreground is the dreaded dala dala which I refused to ride, preferring to walk 4 miles home. I didn't realize until I had been walking to work at dawn for a couple of months that I was strolling through the worst part of town that mzungus were never supposed to visit.  Oops.

Also, the background shows the mountains which surrounded us- on a clear day you could see Mt. Kilimanjaro from our kitchen window.

I loved this sign for a school near my home.  The little students would walk by wearing the exact same uniform as the statutes on the sign.

When Mama came to visit, we spent a couple days living my volunteer lifestyle, then went on safari where I had a shower for the first time in many months.  Have I told y'all about my bathing situation? Taking a bucket, as I referred to it?  I (or Anna the sweet house girl who did not like me tackling chores in her domain) would heat water on the stove.  I would drag the bucket into the washroom area, which had a sort of shower stall. I added cool water to the hot, dipped a cup in bucket, and dumped its contents on my head.  I have very thick hair and tromped around in ten feet and ten miles of mud everyday.  It was time for an actual shower.

I love this picture of Mama in the tree.

My favorite thing on safari was the big cats, more specifically the lions.

Maybe because I'm a Leo, maybe because we have the same coloring, but I have always loved lions.  Feels a but childish to have a favorite animal, but there it is.  Lions and golden retrievers. Love them.

If we could afford it, and if Hubs would have been into it, I think an East African safari would be the most amazing honeymoon ever. Dream trip- maybe someday.  What is your dream trip?

Mwalimu and Watoto

This is Mary, the Shinda School's headmaster's second child.  She was tough as nails, and in true middle child fashion did not take any guff from anyone.  It was confusing to my Western eyes at first, that all children regardless of their gender had short hair.  However, when the complexities of bathing when you don't have running water were presented I understood the ease and practicality of short hair.

Speaking of hair, y'all are seeing my natural hair color dried in the breeze, and no makeup.  I still can't believe I went that long without fixing myself up.  When my Mama came to take me on safari at the end of my teaching sojourn, after pouncing on her, I immediately pounced on some mascara.

 These are all of Mr. Kimaro's children- Betty, who was 6, Mary, 8, Rose, 9, and Wisdom 10

Rose is actually Mr. Kimaro's niece from Kenya, who lived with his family. Tanzanians seemed to have a certain, um, bias against Kenyans. Rose, was as sweet and mild-mannered as you could get, yet I was told to watch her.  Why?  Oh, because Kenyans are "shifty".  This was told to me in various forms by pretty much every Tanzanian I encountered, which I found rather hilarious.

Betty was the youngest and smallest of my students, and barely spoke a word. Sometimes, she had tea with her father, the other teacher and myself during the mid-day break, while the other children had their porridge outside. This is because she is "petticated", as Mr. Kimaro put it.  An English word invention of his own, it means exactly like what it sounds like.  Sometimes, I catch myself using it in conversation and receiving askance looks.

My favorite teaching tool became the spelling bee when I discovered that Betty could beat everyone in both classes in spelling.  She rocked out the bees!  The best part was when she won this is what the class looked like!  They were so excited, that they would carry her in the air, like she had just scored the winning touchdown, chanting "Bate-tee! Bate-tee!".  Adorable!

Mtoto (child) and Mwalimu (teacher).

I've Seen the Rains Down in Africa

I saw a short clip on CNN the other day about Kenyans using solar power to provide electricity to villages and Nairobi's biggest slum (read about here) It immediately brought me back to my time in East Africa, where I taught school for four months after graduation from college.

My father later admitted that the only reason he allowed me to do this was because he thought there was no way in hell I would actually go.

This is Anna, the housegirl, and me in my "Mama"'s kitchen.  I was the first mzungu (white person) she had ever seen and I think at first I freaked Anna out.  But then she got over it, and we bonded quickly over our love of Nanansi (pineapple).

Here in the living room was where I ate breakfast every morning- avocado from the tree out front, hardboiled egg, mango or watermelon, and sometimes leftover popcorn.  I just went with the flow, but I still can't eat mangoes due to the amount I ate there.

My Mama had about ten different businesses ranging from a cleaning service to a nursery and florist. This is pretty amazing because most women I encountered in my part of Tanzania did not work out side the home.

I taught school in a village about 3 miles away from where I lived.  Most people took the Dala-Dala's, which are Toyota vans crammed with about 15-25 people.  I have a very strong personal sense of personal space, which does not exist on the Dala Dala. So I walked.  No problem right?

Here's the thing.  It was rainy season, which equals mud, and lots of it.  About a mile and a half of my walk was paved.  The rest was slogging through the mud.

My students were well aware of my mud hatred.  They would battle for who got to clean my shoes before stepping into the classroom.  Check out the chalkboard.

I taught 4 4th graders and 20 (!) third graders in a one room trailer type building which was divided in the middle.  No electricity, no notebooks, but a bunch of watoto (children) who were so excited to learn.

My fourth graders- who were very well behaved.

My third graders, who were not so well behaved.

More to come on Africa next week. . .