My Experience In Tanzania

"What exactly were you doing there?", some people asked me.

I was volunteering there through AIESEC. I used to go to Membe primary school in the morning where I taught English to two classes; standard three and standard six. It was not easy especially because I didn't know Swahili and their English was very basic. My English as well wasn't that good. I started to learn some words and phrases in Swahili but since I'm not good at memorizing, I sometimes forgot what I should have said in Swahili and ended up talking in English. Other times, I found myself talking in Arabic which was ridiculous. 

I must confess that their language is different and complicated. A lot of words start with two consonant letters which made it difficult for me to pronounce like; mbili, nne. Also, they don't greet each other by just saying Hi. No, they use many phrases depending on the time of the day and age of the person and every greeting has a different answer. Later in the afternoon, I used to attend a class with students from different standards where I taught them basic topics in English, and let them draw and play. This was when Adolf joined me so he helped with translation. Adolf told me that I was teaching well. I'm not sure if it was true. I had just tried teaching once in Egypt and gave up after a week. Maybe I was doing a good job because I liked being there!

As for the meals, I had most of them at Mama Chipe's house which was a few steps away from my room. Mama Chipe's children were; Chipe, 12 years old, who is also called Agnes, Johari, 8 years old and Riama, 4 years old. Recently, I found out that Riama is her granddaughter from her older daughter who lives in the town. This daughter is a half-sibling to the others and has a different father. In Tanzania, it is very common to have children outside of marriage or not to know who the child's father is. Having sex starts at a very young age, and they have a similar thing to the one night stand in western countries. Although most of them, Christians or Muslims, believe in God and are religious and practice religions, it seems they don't follow what their God says, forbidding sex before marriage. As well as that, a married man who only has daughters can go and have a relationship with another woman without any official procedure just to have a son.

Another common thing there was that people like to share. In Egypt, the owners voluntarily offer to give others something from what they have. Adolf shared a lot of what he got with me. I also shared some. But most of the time, he didn’t wait for me to offer, instead he asked me directly to give some of what I had. I once asked him to buy me bananas, when he got them, he said directly "give me one and keep the others for yourself". These direct repeated requests were very odd at the beginning but later on, I started to get used to them.

Another unusual thing was that the Muslims had been asking Adolf since I arrived "why hasn't the lady from Misri (Egypt) joined us for prayers yet?". They believe that anyone from Egypt will definitely be a practiced Muslim. I told Adolf that I don't practice prayers anymore. As well as that, women in Egypt don't usually go to mosque for prayers except for Eid and Ramadan. He tried to convince me to join them one day since they might think that he stopped me from going there as he's a Christian. I joined them in Adha Eid, but not for prayers of course, just to see how they celebrated the day.

As for Adolf himself, he was cooperative and turned my wishes into reality. One day, I told him I wantED to learn to ride a bicycle as I never had one during my childhood. A few days later, he brought one and he asked a high-school girl to help me learn how to ride it. He also brought a coconut and an avocado to me after I expressed that I would like to try them. When he knew I liked the papaya I had when we visited Dabalo Lake, he brought some to me now and then.

On the other side, he asked me to lend him 2000 TZS. He said he would return it but he didn’t. Also he asked me to pay for him when we went to town. Also, I’m not sure if the story he told about the robbery that I experienced was true. I don’t know if all this is a part of their culture there or what! 

In general, I learnt a lot from my experience in Tanzania. My biggest lesson is to be open but at the same time cautious and not to trust anybody 100%. Keeping some space with others is always good.