Moving in
Recently I took the step out of campus and moved in with a family (or half a family) in a neighbourhood close to campus called Msewe. Msewe is a small community located on the top of a hill between campus and Ubungo, in effect swallowed and surrounded by Dar es Salaam. It has still managed to maintain a familial, village-like atmosphere and is a very agreeable place to stay at. I moved in together with a Tanzanian friend in a small house he shares with his grandmother, his aunt and her child as well as a small boy called Scotty, whose father is an uncle in the family. “Baba yake hamtaki” (his daddy doesn’t want him), is all grandma said when I asked about it.
My main reason for moving in was that I felt campus-life didn’t really give me the kind of “African” experience I was looking for, but I also wanted to practise my Kiswahili, which is still far from fluent or even conversational. And Msewe is good for this: apart from the many university students that live there, hardly anyone speaks English and since only about 1000 people live there, it is easy to start talking to people. Like anywhere in the country’s smaller communities, there are children everywhere, and I have a personal gang of five kids that hang out in front of the house and greet me when I get home (some even hug me, which is really very cute). They still haven’t gotten the whole business of saying my real name yet, so “mzungu” (white person) will do for now, although grandma keeps reminding them that “mzungu anaitwa uncle Seba!”
So far living off-campus is great. I get chai and cassava for breakfast and if I want food I only need to pre-order it from grandma. For dinner there is ugali or rice and beans and sometimes fish or meat, and you eat with your hands, of course. There is no running water and electricity, and after dark there is really not much to do. Luckily Msewe can also boast over ten different bars and restaurants so you’ll always find a way to pass the time.
For the first few nights Bahati and I had to share the same bed which he thought would be fine to do for the rest of my stay in the house as well. “See, this is no problem, we are used to this” he claimed, but my spoiled westernized genes kicked in and I went out and bought a nice bunk bed for a small fortune. So now we each have our own bed which is fine and gives a bit of privacy as well.
As most people will know, in many African societies the women still carry the brunt of a substantial part of manual labour both inside and outside of the home. This is quite obvious also in my new adopted household. Grandma – albeit being a woman of considerable age – cooks, cleans, washes clothes, takes care of Scotty and even fetches water, which is no easy task. The nearest well is not far from the house, but there is only water occasionally and on these occasions it seems like all the women of the village gather around the well with their plastic buckets. Last Sunday I was home and thus able to help with carrying water, but most of the time grandma handles it by herself, carrying about 15 big buckets (5-10 litres) of water, one by one, on her head. I told her I insisted to help out next time and that she should let me know the next time there is water. She just laughed and gave me a look that probably meant that she has carried a bucket or two in her life and is well able to carry a few more.
As for university, most things still go on rather unchanged. I have been cutting down on classes to instead teach English at a primary school in Msewe, which is a lot of fun. Last week there was uncertainty about whether university would go on at all, since there were protests in connection to the presidential elections of the student body of UDSM. The campaign had been going on for a while, complete with intrigues and drama and other things that make elections worthwhile. A Ugandan student who was said to have a good shot at becoming the next president was banned from the campaign one day before the elections were supposed to be held, and the elections were subsequently postponed. The students took a liking to this turn of events and started supporting the candidate who is now said to have the support of a majority of the students. At least a large number of them liked to shout his name from the roofs of the halls at night. The Ugandan student was asked to produce some proof of having finished secondary school, since the university supposedly had doubt that he was eligible to be a university student. Never mind that this should have been proven already when the student got accepted to UDSM in the first place, but there you are. In the beginning of the week it looked increasingly like there was going to be a strike, which probably would have resulted in a six week lock-out – kind of like last year. But since then it has been very quite and classes have resumed normally. If there are any developments, I’ll keep you posted!
- Seba