A day in the life

Everyday is getting better and better as I can communicate better and better with my family. I have gotten a pretty regular schedule down during the week but this weekend I had no idea what to expect and realized my whole weekend was pretty much in the hands of my host family. On Saturday at 645 my momma knocked on my door saying “mambo Abby!” and so I realized that it was probably time to get out of bed. That morning I helped momma clean the WHOLE house meaning washing all the windows, sweeping both the inside and outside of the house, watering down the inside and outside floors, cleaning the bathroom and shower, washing dishes, doing laundry, and chopping wood all before breakfast which was around 8ish. After breakfast I went with Baba to Bibis house and met 1 of my Babas 3 or 4 sisters and 1 of Babas 7 brothers. As we were leaving they asked me if I had a camera, I said yes, so we grabbed it and proceeded to scramble down a mountain to this awesome waterfall. At the waterfall my brother, Baba and a bunch of other boys got sticks and this root thing and started to catch crabs. After they caught the crabs they put them near each other on the beach so they would start fighting, it was definitely an interesting cultural experience to say the least. After the crab ordeal we went back home and I went and hung out with a few friends, returned home, finished up the laundry and helped momma with dinner.

            On Sunday I was able to sleep in a bit (7am), showered, ate, did dishes and then went to church with my momma. We got to church which was basically a building made out of half logs with some benches in it. The men were all on one side and the women on the other and the whole sermon was in Kiswahili. At one point the pastor started talking to me and he made me come up to the front of the congregations and in Kiswahili and English for some reason explain who I was, where I came from and what I was doing here. After that throughout the service the pastor would say praise the lord and only I would have to say praise the lord back, it was a little embarrassing. After church we went home cooked lunch ate and then my momma took me on a long walk to a couple of my friends houses. We decided that our mommas had literally planned a play date for us. After “playing” with all my friends momma and I headed home. On the way home I said “shikamo” to a old man and he invited me into his backyard to show me all his ducks. After letting them all out he was trying to tell me how to say duck and got 2 inches away from my face over pronouncing duck (badu) it was definitely a Tanzanian experience to be invited into a random strangers house to be shown all their ducks and have him so close to my face, but I was totally comfortable the whole time.

            After learning all about his ducks we started walking to what I thought was home but ended up being a 2 hour walk through town visiting and running into about half of my Babas brothers, conversing and having chai with most of them. Once we finally got home there were about 20, 10 year olds waiting to play so we played tag for about an hour the only catch is I am always it. Always. The day ended with junior pooping on me so I cleaned my kanga helped make dinner and went to bed.

           Its been really interesting being here and observing the gender and age differences. My momma definitely does WAY more than my baba and I'm always so surprised how much work my twelve year old brother does. I always forget how young he is until we play and he giggles and plays like a regular twelve year old. But my momma wakes up way before Baba, works all day and then stays up later while baba just goes into Arusha and is a motor cycle taxi driver. And not to say that baba doesn't work hard because he does do a fair amount of work around the house but in general the women and kids here have to do so much more than the Babas. 

Also random note im pretty sure my momma arranges to have people walk with me everywhere because whenever I go anywhere ( school, friends, dukas (shops)) my momma has a “companion!” to go with me.