Our last week in Dar
The following blog post is brought to you by Jacob.
Day-to-day life in Tanzania is much different than in the United States. As I write this blog post, I am sitting outside my house in front of a small patch of grass. A baby monkey walks along the fence on the way to steal a mango from my family’s mango tree. My young host sister continues to ask me to play despite my explaining that I am attempting to stay focused on homework. She is six and rides her bike around the house shouting for me to watch her each time she rounds the corner. A big part of what has made me feel welcomed into Tanzania has been my host family. My younger brother and sister are always excited to play games with me. No matter how many times I try and tell them that I am tired or busy, they keep trying to get me to play soccer, card games, or imaginary shop. Every time I oblige, I have a ton of fun and enjoy their company.
When I am not at home enjoying my welcoming family, I’m with my fellow SSTers learning about the many aspects of the city. Before we explore, we first have to make it to school. This has become one of the most complex parts of my day. Every morning, I navigate the bumpy dirt road through my host family’s neighborhood. I then arrive at a busy bus stop and try to find a bus that takes me into the city. I ride a Dala Dala (small bus) or a bajaje (Tuk Tuk) for thirty minutes to an hour. After I ride the Dala Dala, I arrive at a larger bus station called a Morocco. I purchase breakfast from a small vendor with “God First” in front of his stand. The man who runs the stand, Christian, is extremely friendly. He always greets me with a smile and provides a solid breakfast. Once breakfast is secured, I take another bus farther into the city. If I am lucky, I run into a few of my friends.
Griffin, Emma, Simon, and Beka all share my bus route. We often meet up at different points in our journey. Sometimes we can’t even talk to each other because the buses are so full, yet knowing they are close by always makes the commute more enjoyable. We arrive at the bus stop and walk to a small restaurant called Galitos. At Galitos, we usually finish up homework and chat. The restaurant staff is awesome and some of the friendliest people I have encountered here. They often help explain different words from our homework or pass us notes written in Kiswahili asking us questions about our lives. We order fresh fruit smoothies or surprisingly good instant coffee and catch up with what we did with our host families the previous night. Then we begin class for a few hours before our afternoon adventure.
This week was our last one in the city before we head out on service. On Monday we had class in the morning and spent the afternoon planning a goodbye celebration with our host families. Emma, Beka, and I were in charge of buying gifts for our host families, so we went to a picture store and bought picture frames. We then met up for ice cream before heading home. On Wednesday we had our Kiswahili final followed by our last Nyumbani Goshen time. The cooking group made a wonderful meal, and we talked about what we’re looking forward to in service. Kendra Yoder, Co-Director of Global Engagement, was visiting from the United States. She brought with her a variety of candy, which was a hit. Who knew you could miss Sour Patch Kids that much!?!
On Thursday morning we had a celebration for graduating our Kiswahili class. We also got to meet students from Japan who were studying Kiswahili! After our Kiswahili graduation we went to the United States Embassy. It was a cool experience and insightful into how United States policy affects international relations. We met with an US embassy representative, who gave us a rundown of what happens at an embassy. Inside the main office corridor of the embassy they had a beautiful carved wooden door called the Zanzibar door. Our embassy guide explained that with the political transition in the US there is some confusion about how to proceed with the lack of foreign aid, and that was disheartening to hear. There is a chance a lot of people who work with US AID may lose their jobs. It was sobering to learn more about the attacks on the Kenya and Tanzania embassies in 1998 and how there was a shift in security measures following those incidents. Visiting the embassy was really fascinating and the embassy staff we met there were very kind.
On the way home from the embassy, I decided to try some street octopus… in hindsight, that may have been a bad choice. While I’m not positive the two are connected, I was feeling quite ill over the weekend. I may not be eating street octopus for a little 🙂 I spent Friday bedridden while the group went ahead without me to the first and only addiction rehab center in all of Tanzania. My fellow SSTers had nothing but positive things to say about it! Overall, it was a very exciting week and a great way to end our time in the city!