Karibu Sana!

Hi family and friends,

Karibu sana! This is Swahili for welcome! I’ve heard it a lot over the past few days. The experience of getting to Africa is long but now that I’m here I can safely say it was worth it. The airport in Dar es Salaam, which is where I flew into, was very different. Very small, no air conditioner, all the stores were stands outside. The drive to Bagamoyo was long as well – we passed by shanty houses with tin roofs, so small and crunched together. Kids played with bike tires and there were no traffic lights, only dirt and stone roads.

Bagamoyo is an interesting town. The houses I’ve seen so far are mostly mud houses built into bamboo frame houses. Most are so small, smaller than my bedroom in North Carolina. Since Bagamoyo is on the coast I’ve also seen the fishing boats, and learned a little about the history. To this day there is a divide between the slave-trader descendants and the slave descendants. Intermarriage between the two groups is not encouraged and everyone seems to know who’s in which group. The slave-trader descendants argue their ancestors were just in good business at the time, and that the slaves got to travel to exotic places like the Middle East and the Americas. The slave descendants argue that families were separated, the labor was hard, you were not guaranteed or even likely to survive the boat ride there, and selling fellow brothers into slavery was not right. Thus the name Bagamoyo means lay down your heart, for if you got to the coast you were leaving on a ship and likely never to return.

The Cross Cultural Solutions house is nice – really nice – and the nicest in the area by a large margin. I do have running water but it’s not hot, so cold showers is the daily routine. Malaria nets are on each bed and you tuck it in around you at night. The rooms are reasonably spacious and have fans to keep things cool. The food is good and mango-passion fruit juice in the morning is my current favorite part of starting my day! There’s a bar around the corner with a thatched roof that you can enjoy a “Kilamanjaro” beer with your neighbors and other volunteers.

My reception so far has been mixed. I am called “Mzungu” by the children that see me, which means “white person!” in Swahili. They so rarely see white people that they will run after you. They know we come with cameras so they yell in English “take my picture” and jump around. They are really sweet and really cute. Everyone stares at you, because you look and dress different. The language barrier is hard but I’m trying to learn. So far there’s hardly any free time which has been the most exhausting part, I’m someone who likes my alone time a little very day!

The feeling that best describes the experience so far is overwhelming. It’s hard to explain what it’s like to see people living on less than 1 US Dollar a day. It’s hard to see people who can’t meet basic needs, like food, clean water, and medicine. Children with no shoes play happily with old busted tires and appear infinitely joyful compared to some of the unhappy spoiled children I have seen in the United States. I’ve seen people with no teeth, a missing eye, unable to walk, and children playing with machetes as toys. All in a matter of 2 days. The houses hardly seem able to withstand a breeze or rainshower, much less the monsoon season which is what we are in now. Yet they do, and it makes me feel eternally grateful and surprisingly aware of how happiness doesn’t seem to translate the more you have in terms of society. The people have so little yet offer to give so much – it is hard to relate to coming from the United States, where it is much more independence and acquisition of items for yourself and your family and friends. It’s not bad or good really, it’s just interesting. The people are quite content and I’m just starting to understand cultural norms and values.

Still the people are so giving, they invite you to their houses and some try very hard to speak English and they are patient with you as you stumble out phrases in Swahili. I use frequently “Jina lunga ni Dana, natoka Marekani” which means my name is Dana, I am American. I am often greeted with “karibu sana” or “habari gain” which mean welcome, or how are you. The rest is a work in progress. Common farewells are “badaari” which is just later and “tuta onana” which means we will meet again.

The art in the community is beautiful, everything is made here and we get to watch craftsmen make carvings out of black wood that are gorgeous and really beautiful paintings with bright vivid colors symbolic of Africa. The music is really fun, so far I learned this to teach at school:

Simama ka
Simama ka!
Ruka! Ruka! Ruka!
Simama ka

This means standup (simama) sitdown (ka) standup (simama) sitdown (ka). Ruka ruka ruka (jump jump jump), standup (simama) ka (sitdown). It’s supposed to settle the kids down. I’m going to try to use it tomorrow at school! I’ll be teaching English, Mathematics, Science, and Singing at the Bagamoyo Anglican Daycare with the 5-6 year olds. I have 50 students in my class so wish me luck!