8.22.2005
A Very Tanzania Christmas
Originally sent January 4, 2005. This is the third of 8 mass emails I sent while living in Tanzania.
Gentle Readers—
Well, this dispatch is overdue and apologies to those of you who have put the less important parts of your life on hold in order to check your email compulsively to see if this update has finally arrived. Fortunately for those of you with an insatiable appetite for EmilyNews, this email is not only overdue, it is also overlong.
The major development in my life is that I moved. I now live with my boss' eldest daughter, Genya, who will move out in February when she gets married. We have two rooms, with electricity. One room has our beds and a small amount of storage space; the other has living room furniture, a fridge, a small kerosene stove, a cupboard for dishes, and about 6 inches to turn around in. Until recently, it also had our Christmas tree—a few evergreen branches in a pot of soil, decorated with ribbons, Christmas cards, colored lights, and bits of leftover wrapping paper.
Our rooms are part of a compound that we share with three other families. Next door is Jacinta, a single mom with a little son whose dad is married to another woman, but who visits on his motorcycle sometimes under cover of night. Across the courtyard is a woman that everyone calls Cousin, who is very nice. She and I have polite-fights every night when I go to wash the dishes ("Oh are these your pots?Please go ahead." "No, I have more dishes than you, you go first"). We also have another set of neighbors who earned everyone's ire recently when their failure to pay the bill resulted in our water being cut off for almost 2 weeks. They are now in the process of covertly moving their things out bit by bit when nobody else is around.
Our compound has a shared courtyard with a sink for washing dishes, clotheslines, and various containers for holding water. Even having lived here for a month, I invariably use the wrong bucket ("Why didn'tyou tell me I was washing dishes in the laundry bucket?") and I swear that at night people come and mix them all around just to confuse me. We also share a bathroom with our neighbors; it has a tap and a toilet. It recently occurred to me that I have managed to move into the Tanzanian equivalent of a dorm.
As for Christmas, our kids went home for the holidays for three weeks, my boss went on vacation, and no volunteers were around, so I was largely on my own. Anticipating this, I had agreed to stay with one of the kids who didn't have a family to take him. So into our cramped two rooms entered 6-year-old Sharifu. I had had visions of him tagging along happily when I ran errands for work and coloring happily as I worked in my quiet office at school. But my boss forbade me from taking him to school when I told him we were going totown, he refused to go. So, during the day, I went to work, andSharifu played at my boss' house. In the afternoon I came home to find him completely filthy and usually having been robbed by some other child who did not have a white surrogate mother to buy him toys. I found it hard to predict his preferences (likes: my alarm clock, a Christmas service at "white people's church": dislikes: spaghetti marinara, dogs) and I was surprised to find myself arguing with my roommate over various aspects of child rearing. I was living like a single mother, albeit one with an extended African family, and it had its ups and downs.
Most importantly, Sharifu kept me company over the holidays. On Christmas Day, our little family opened presents—me, Genya, and Sharifu. My parents had sent me boxes of gifts that I had been surreptitiously shaking but not opening until the 25th. I loved all of them. Then we all dressed up in our very best clothes and went to church. I had had an outfit made for the occasion, Genya had a new hairdo, and Sharifu had shiny new shoes. Jacinta cooked a lavish lunch for the whole compound and I bought a round of sodas. The afternoon we whiled away, Sharifu with his new toys, me with my new books.
It was like at home, but not like at home at all. It was hard for me to imagine shopping malls all decked out and caroling in the cold and gingerbread, though I knew those things were there, all those thousands of miles away. It's been noticeably hotter the last few weeks, so that even though the air is dry the sun is almost unbearable from 10 am to 3 pm and the dust just hangs. The fruits in season now are mangoes and pineapples and tiny red plums. They are incredibly delicious, but certainly not like Christmas food at home. Talking to my family on the phone on Christmas made me want to trade in my dusty bare feet for warm socks and strangers talking about me in Swahili everywhere I go for my own family and being home, even if it was just for 24 hours.
New Year's Eve I stayed home with Sharifu. We fell asleep and woke to the sounds of my neighbors banging drums, singing, cracking homemade noisemakers and shouting to each other. Lying there in the dark, listening to them, I felt happy to be starting a new year here, even if it's not my home and even if I don't know where I will be when it ends.
And a very happy new year to all of you,
Emily
Gentle Readers—
Well, this dispatch is overdue and apologies to those of you who have put the less important parts of your life on hold in order to check your email compulsively to see if this update has finally arrived. Fortunately for those of you with an insatiable appetite for EmilyNews, this email is not only overdue, it is also overlong.
The major development in my life is that I moved. I now live with my boss' eldest daughter, Genya, who will move out in February when she gets married. We have two rooms, with electricity. One room has our beds and a small amount of storage space; the other has living room furniture, a fridge, a small kerosene stove, a cupboard for dishes, and about 6 inches to turn around in. Until recently, it also had our Christmas tree—a few evergreen branches in a pot of soil, decorated with ribbons, Christmas cards, colored lights, and bits of leftover wrapping paper.
Our rooms are part of a compound that we share with three other families. Next door is Jacinta, a single mom with a little son whose dad is married to another woman, but who visits on his motorcycle sometimes under cover of night. Across the courtyard is a woman that everyone calls Cousin, who is very nice. She and I have polite-fights every night when I go to wash the dishes ("Oh are these your pots?Please go ahead." "No, I have more dishes than you, you go first"). We also have another set of neighbors who earned everyone's ire recently when their failure to pay the bill resulted in our water being cut off for almost 2 weeks. They are now in the process of covertly moving their things out bit by bit when nobody else is around.
Our compound has a shared courtyard with a sink for washing dishes, clotheslines, and various containers for holding water. Even having lived here for a month, I invariably use the wrong bucket ("Why didn'tyou tell me I was washing dishes in the laundry bucket?") and I swear that at night people come and mix them all around just to confuse me. We also share a bathroom with our neighbors; it has a tap and a toilet. It recently occurred to me that I have managed to move into the Tanzanian equivalent of a dorm.
As for Christmas, our kids went home for the holidays for three weeks, my boss went on vacation, and no volunteers were around, so I was largely on my own. Anticipating this, I had agreed to stay with one of the kids who didn't have a family to take him. So into our cramped two rooms entered 6-year-old Sharifu. I had had visions of him tagging along happily when I ran errands for work and coloring happily as I worked in my quiet office at school. But my boss forbade me from taking him to school when I told him we were going totown, he refused to go. So, during the day, I went to work, andSharifu played at my boss' house. In the afternoon I came home to find him completely filthy and usually having been robbed by some other child who did not have a white surrogate mother to buy him toys. I found it hard to predict his preferences (likes: my alarm clock, a Christmas service at "white people's church": dislikes: spaghetti marinara, dogs) and I was surprised to find myself arguing with my roommate over various aspects of child rearing. I was living like a single mother, albeit one with an extended African family, and it had its ups and downs.
Most importantly, Sharifu kept me company over the holidays. On Christmas Day, our little family opened presents—me, Genya, and Sharifu. My parents had sent me boxes of gifts that I had been surreptitiously shaking but not opening until the 25th. I loved all of them. Then we all dressed up in our very best clothes and went to church. I had had an outfit made for the occasion, Genya had a new hairdo, and Sharifu had shiny new shoes. Jacinta cooked a lavish lunch for the whole compound and I bought a round of sodas. The afternoon we whiled away, Sharifu with his new toys, me with my new books.
It was like at home, but not like at home at all. It was hard for me to imagine shopping malls all decked out and caroling in the cold and gingerbread, though I knew those things were there, all those thousands of miles away. It's been noticeably hotter the last few weeks, so that even though the air is dry the sun is almost unbearable from 10 am to 3 pm and the dust just hangs. The fruits in season now are mangoes and pineapples and tiny red plums. They are incredibly delicious, but certainly not like Christmas food at home. Talking to my family on the phone on Christmas made me want to trade in my dusty bare feet for warm socks and strangers talking about me in Swahili everywhere I go for my own family and being home, even if it was just for 24 hours.
New Year's Eve I stayed home with Sharifu. We fell asleep and woke to the sounds of my neighbors banging drums, singing, cracking homemade noisemakers and shouting to each other. Lying there in the dark, listening to them, I felt happy to be starting a new year here, even if it's not my home and even if I don't know where I will be when it ends.
And a very happy new year to all of you,
Emily
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