tanzanians

I LOVE Tanzanians…They are a beautiful people. It's fortunate that I do, because everywhere I go everyone wants to be my friend.

I've always envied those people who just make friends wherever they go--Mari Haraldsson knows the name of every security guard at NYU, they like bake her cookies and name their babies after her. Lindsay Handrich has always been able to start a friendly banter with every checkout girl, ending with them divulging all the discontentments of their day/life to her.

I, on the other hand, have always been more overly independent, not wanting to ask people for help and avoiding unnecessary interaction with others (as far as being out in public, shopping, etc)--preferring to take longer or pay extra or be inconvenienced rather than involve someone else in it! Kind of ridiculous.

This is slowing being chipped away...

I take the same route to school every day--by bus and walking through town up to a neighborhood called Mianzini, where both the school and church are located.

Now, in Zanzibar I started ignoring most people who greet me, because they're mostly all men and it's hard to discern in half a second whether they are safe to respond to or whether they will follow you home, confessing their undying love to you for 20 minutes ("Wherever you go, whatever you do, always know there is someone in Zanzibar who loves you! Who knows, maybe one day you will return home to find your lover in the arms of another woman, and then you can come to me!") So to avoid people like that, I decided to ignore the 200 greetings addressed to me per day…the downside of this decision being that I usually had to ignore 4 to 8 repetitions of the salute, each increasing in intensity.

At first this was also how I acted when walking around here. But lately, I've experimented with giving Arusha inhabitants a chance. It's proven to be pretty safe as far as men are concerned--although I still choose to ignore those addresses which include the words 'baby', 'sweetie' or 'mchumba' (dictionary: "one who is sought after in marriage"). And as far as the rest of the community, it's been the most awesome eye-opener to realize how small the community is and how friendly everyone is. Sometimes I walk the 5 minute route between the church and the school 4 times in a day--I greet or am greeted by pretty much every person I pass,

An example afternoon, on my way back from school on Tuesday:

I'm walking to the bus and pass Juditha from the worship team, who convinces me to come visit the restaurant where she works. Don't picture 'restaurant' as in any restaurant you've ever been to--this is like wooden stakes and aluminum sheets for walls, a sheet waving in the wind covering the holes for door and window, dirt floor, and some planks nailed together into long thin benches--2 low for seats and 2 high for tables. But the food is traditional home-cooked Tanzanian fare and cost about 75 cents! I sit down inside and Sifa, a mama from the church, lectures/encourages me for 20 minutes about how I should never ever say "Hapana" (No), but every morning, afternoon and evening I need to say "'I can!' 'I can'!" ("Naweza!") as in, "I can learn Kiswahili!" and God will help me because "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, hallelujah!" She makes me repeat after her a prayer of blessing (in Swahili) over the newly opened restaurant. She says it's hard for them because there's never enough money for people in Tanzania, but God is in control.

I stopped in a duka la dawa (medicine shop) to pick up some meeds, and greet the two men trying to fix the antenna of the TV showing fuzzy black and white figures running around on a soccer field. When I didn't know my weight in kgs for the dosage, he took me across the street to a dry goods vendor to step on their scale used to measure sack of flour and beans. We go through the usual exchange of where I learned Swahili and why I am here. Deogratis explains how his name is Latin for 'freedom in God.'

"I really desire to be your friend. You must come by here and talk with us, and when you need drugs, don't go anywhere else." For 3 seconds I was confused, thinking he was propositioning narcotics to me like the wannabe rastas on the Zanzibar beaches…wondered if there was some under-the-table commerce going on in this unassuming drugstore…subsequently wondered if it was a commonly known fact that you could get dope at every little duka la dawa… My split-second confusion was also probably influenced in that moment by the fact that he had just asked, "Are you a drunkard?" To which I did some cursory soul-searching... But then he thankfully clarified: "Do you drink alcohol? Me, I just like juice. I will go to the restaurant, and sit, and drink some juice." I left, promising to stop by time to time to say hi and that I would be faithful to their drug services.

Walking down the path, a group of young boys 20 meters behind yelled after me, laughing and asking if I like popsicles (which they were eating). Most definitely they didn't expect me to understand them--when I countered back in Swahili, they cracked up and we joked around for a while before our paths split. Down at the bus stand, a guy carrying a mattress on his head greeted me and was like, "Hey! You're going to Njiro!" I laughed, realizing he must be a bus driver I drove with at some point. Then on the bus home, a high school girl starts asking me about America and telling me about her dreams to be a fashion designer… "One day when you see my famous designs, you will say, Eh! I remember to sit on the bus with her!"

People are just so engaging, and excited for me to be around. If I say the correct greeting to an elder, or a slang greeting to someone on the street--kind of a "sup--nothin' much" equivalent--people often freak out. I'm getting a lot better at overhearing the random remarks and asides not directed to me but said about me:

from a fruit stand vendor overhearing me greet someone: "Eh!? How does she know Swahili?!"
or by a passing pedestrian as I get on the daladala: "Hey, you got a White on your bus!"

Been having these flashes of happiness lately, where I look around at everything and am filled with joy about the reality of life here. Like during sports afternoon at school this week: I'm sitting in the shade on the sidelines, the air is brown and foggy from the dust kicked up as a group of kids run around playing Foxtail, and I look around and realize how many faces I recognize, how many names I know, how many genuine and loving people there are--simple people that have been working together for years, living and eating and playing and teaching the same kids as they grow up from class to class, and that have welcomed me, taken care of me, been so hospitable & friendly & giving. All these things are comforting, after so many weeks of feeling ridiculously uncomfortable and out of place. Not that those feelings don't also still exist every so often… But it's nice to start having these moments where I feel at home.