It was our experience that everyone spoke Kiswahili and knew at least a little English, depending on how far they went in school and how much their work required them to interact with English speakers. For example, our tour guide, Rob, spoke English quite well. The hotel staff spoke it adequately. Many of the other Tanzanians we spent time with -- Oju and his family, our driver, our cook -- had varying amounts of limited English.
By the time we arrived at Oju's parents' house, muddy and damp, we had been in the country for a little less than 24 hours. In that time the urge to speak and understand Swahili had become an obsession for me. Despite the fact that I had not yet mastered basic greetings, I was working hard to acquire more words and would repeat them whenever the situation plausibly gave me an opportunity. With Oju, I had practiced some simple phrases, such as introducing myself and my family. Of course, with such a small repertoire, almost all our conversations ended a few moments after they began with me saying asante sana, thank you very much, and Oju saying karibu, you're welcome, and then appeals for Joni to translate.
Thus, when we arrived at Oju's family's house, most of our communication was with smiles, gestures, and a word here or there, or sometimes a longer phrase directed at someone who would render it into the language that the listener could understand. This would be followed by nods, more smiles, handshakes, hugs.
In addition to Oju and his parents, the other family members included Oju's brothers and sisters, brother-in-laws, sister-in-laws, a niece and nephew, and a baby. Among the adults of Oju's generation, it was never clear who was a blood relative and who was a relative by marriage. To make things more complicated, the women in the family with daughters were not called by their given name; instead, their family called them "Mama" followed by the name of the eldest daughter. Thus, Oju's mother was not called by her given name, but was referred to as "Mama Joyce" because Oju's oldest sister was named Joyce. Another of Oju's sisters had a daughter named "Pray," and so she was referred to as "Mama Pray."
After all of our greetings and after presenting the gifts we had brought, we were ushered into the larger room of the two-room main house, where we packed ourselves in around a low table. I sat between Joni and Peter on my right, and Oju's brother Emmanuel ("Imma") and sister Joyce on my left. Imma was gregarious and engaging. He had studied enough English to both keep a conversation going and be able to answer some of my questions about how to say things in Swahili. It turned out he also knew some French, so our conversation, which was mostly on his side, shifted from English to French, with a little Swahili thrown in. Throughout the meal, He also made it his personal mission to make sure I had seconds, thirds, and fourths, of every one of the delicious dishes put in front of me.
Peter, Joni, Jon, Imma, and Joyce. Imma is telling a story and plotting to get me to eat all of the avocados and bananas on the nearest plate.
I don't know how long we sat at the table, passing around the dishes of rise, beans, vegetables, and fresh fruit. It seemed like many hours, although perhaps it was less. With our limited language skills, we did the best we could to express all that could be expressed, and especially our gratitude for the meal and for their hospitality to us and to Joni.
After our feast, we went outside and a decision was made to see the house of one of Oju's sisters, a little way up the road. So we all walked to that house, went inside and sat down around another table, where we were served glass bottles of coke and Fanta. Although we were all quite full from our large meal, we would not have considered refusing this gesture of hospitality. Unlike Oju's parents' house, his sister's house had electricity and a TV. For the entire time we were there, the TV played a music video showing alternating shots of a singer crooning away, some African drummers, and a line of men doing cheesy dance steps in apparently traditional tribal costume (think: grass skirts). The music was catchy, but the video was... well, pretty silly, actually.
(We would be surprised when the next day, we visited another Tanzanian home with a TV and saw another similar video playing over and over. It was hard not to think of these as some kind of joke, but they must have been very popular.)
When we had drunk our sodas, someone else had they idea that we should walk up the hillside to a ridge where we could see a nice view of the valley. So we walked out and up, under banana trees, past small garden plots of soft rich soil, and up a steep hill. Oju led the way, bounding up the steep grade like a mountain goat. By this time, everyone knew that Joni had arranged for me and Oju to go for a long run the next day, and as they saw Oju swiftly and effortlessly climb this hill, most of my family started speculating on how long I would last. Only Loren expressed confidence in me, saying that Oju looked like a sprinter to him.
The view from the top of the hill was spectacular and well worth the climb. Although we couldn't see downtown Arusha, we could see far below us the road we had walked in the rain to get to Oju's house. We took lots of pictures, and then walked along a ridge to try to get a glimpse of Mt. Meru, the second highest mountain in Tanzania after Mt. Kilimanjaro. I've included a picture of Mt. Meru that we took at the end of our trip from a different location, but on that day only the shoulders of the mountain were visible, and the summit was shrouded in mist.
Oju's brother Zakayu takes a picture of Joni and Oju.
My running partner, Oju.
Mt. Meru on a clearer day.
As we walked down the hillside again, the afternoon was getting quite late. We stopped again to admire the building site for a house that another one of Oju's brothers (or brothers-in-law) was building. It was explained that construction on a house might start and stop many times, as money became available or scarce. We admired the foundation, but secretly worried that the house, built on the side of this steep hill, would wash away with the rest of the hillside if there was too much rain.
Then it was time to say our good-byes to our hosts, to take more pictures, to promise to print out some of those pictures for them, and to begin the long walk down to the main road, where we would catch a dala dala and head back to the hotel.
We began our walk with half the family walking with us, then one-by-one, they would stop and turn back. It was getting late, and there was less than an hour of daylight left for our journey. Both Oju and Joni made it clear that we did NOT want to be out after dark. With the sun setting, we reached the end of the dirt road.
A few minutes later we were on a dala dala, and a half hour later we walked through the gates of L'Oasis in the twilight. None of us were hungry, but we all gathered in the large common room of the hotel with bottles of beer to talk about and relive our amazing day. As we thought of our hosts and their home, we couldn't help looking around at the hotel with its electric lights, its running water, its refrigeration, and its TV showing English soccer on TV. What had appeared rustic the previous evening, now seemed opulent.
NEXT: Running With Oju
2 comments:
Sounds like an amazing experience Jon. You should set up a slide show and have it at the library--"of lands and seas".
This is a wonderful journal! Looking forward to the next installment...
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