The Homestay Experience

For the last few months we have been in the training phase of the Peace Corps experience. It is crazy how fast the time has gone. We only have one more week of training before leaving for the “swearing in” ceremony when we officially cross over from trainees to volunteers.

The daily routine for training generally has been to get up around sunrise (6 or 630 AM) and do all the regular stuff (eating, showering, etc.) Generally this routine is similar to America although showers are taken by taking water from a bucket. Sometimes there is running water and if it is hot enough (outside) I will take a shower with running water but it is not heated at all.

After the morning routine we go to one of two sites. The first site is the Christian Council of Tanzania. The compound is guarded, spacious, and clean. There we learn all the ins and outs of surviving in Tanzania and we train for our volunteer positions. The second site is at a secondary school where we spend the majority of the time studying Swahili and the rest of the time “student teaching” as we would call it in the states. Here we are broken up into smaller groups (about 6 people) and so there are about 8 schools in town with volunteers student teaching. I should mention there are 47 people in the group coming from all corners of the country and of all ages with the youngest around 20 and the oldest around 65! The day raps up around four in the afternoon. After that some of the volunteers hang out in town or head back to home stay.

During training we spend a lot of time with fellow American volunteers and are in a bit of a bubble with respect to the rest of the country. The home stay is a way to truly engage in the local culture. I have helped cook some meals, washed clothes by hand, and gone to local celebrations with the home stay family. The family raises chickens and they grow some of their own food like the majority of families here. Sometimes dinner is nothing more than what was running around the yard making noise a few hours earlier! The fresh chicken and meat in general has a very different texture than super market meat. It is very lean and chewy. Sometimes it takes an hour just to chew one piece of beef. Of course the cooking style plays a huge role here. I remember reading a National Geographic article or something years ago about how the human jaw and teeth structure is changing due to higher consumption of processed foods. Indeed my jaw has gotten quite a workout since being in Tanzania.

My home stay family makes a juice out of avocado, mango, and sugar cane most nights. I have become quite addicted and I need to find a way to keep making or buying this juice once I leave training. Some volunteers to develop a mango allergy while in country due to the absurd amount of mangoes we consume. Mangoes cost about five cents when in season. Yes a lot of the world lives on less than one dollar a day and this needs to change but at the same time I had an awesome lunch for 60 cents today!

The home stay experience has been an experience like no other. Living with them for several months allows for the initial false or over polite character facades to fade and allow for true integration into an African family. My home stay family has five “blood” members who go by the names of David and Joyce (parents) and Betty, Mtefu, and Sea. However, there have been many other people staying in the house who are considered family. They include Romward, Fadhili, Happy, Abduli, Gifti and several others. Some are blood related but not in the nuclear family. Others are just good friends. As my Swahili has improved I have had a chance to get to know all of them better. They all know at least some English.

I will have many good memories from home stay. At one point we had twelve people staying in the one story rancher like house and the power was out for several days. We all had dinner on the family room floor and sofas around a kerosene lantern while telling jokes and laughing.

Having my family teach me how to wash clothes by hand and chop vegetables without a cutting board were both amusing experiences.

Recently I attended a work party with David and Joyce. Afterwards, Joyce (homestay wife/mom) and I rode back in the bed of a pickup down the rough red dirt roads of Morogoro in the pitch black.

I will try to put another blog entry in soon. I visited my site which I will be living at for the next two years recently and realized I will not have the decently fast internet of Morogoro anymore. It took five minutes to send a 50 word email there.