Arriving in Tanzania (Part 2)

DRIVING

Driving is a thing here. Like – it’s kind of insane (compared to the States). I would have said that about several other countries I’d traveled to before coming to Mwanza, but it’s like real here (although a Tanzanian friend here has suggested driving here is nothing compared to the Congo!). The funny thing is, I realized today that I was getting used to it. Seeing a pikipiki (motorcycle) headed straight at me down the wrong side of the highway doesn’t even bother me anymore. Dodging pushcarts filled with grass or bananas, avoiding pikipikis that zoom through red lights, maneuvering “roads” to our house that would be called nothing more than rough jeep trails in the US – in less than 3 months it has become our new normal. Even the kids don’t point out the crazy things we see going down the road anymore (“look, it’s a pink bedazzled coffin strapped onto the back of a pikipiki!” or “There is a guy with his wife and 4 kids all crammed on the back of that one!”).

MUZUNGU = TRAVELER

The people here – from the short few months we’ve been in Mwanza – are very friendly, open, and welcoming. Being White, we are referred to as “muzungus” (the word for “traveler” in Swahili – but now used to refer to anyone with light skin). Because “muzungus” make up a very, very small percentage of the population here – we stand out. It is rare that we can walk by a group of school children, vendors, pikipiki drivers, etc. without being pointed out and talked to. The reasons for this are varied: curiosity (mostly from the young children), opportunity (perhaps the muzungu will buy this item for a good price or needs a ride on a pikipiki), charity (it doesn’t hurt to ask a muzungu for money), novelty (outsiders that aren’t from here are considered interesting – we’ve even been told that locals are proud to introduce their muzungu friends). It’s all a bit odd for us if I’m perfectly honest. As a rule, I like to blend in and not be noticed. That is an impossibility here – and will be for the next 3 years. It doesn’t matter if I live here for 100 years, I will always be an outsider, a traveler, a muzungu. I’m adjusting. (And honestly, I don’t mind making the groups of little kids happy by simply waving at them and saying “hello” back to them in English. They all laugh and squeal and get a kick out of a simple greeting from “the muzungu” who speaks English.)

LANGUAGE SCHOOL

Kyle and I are in language school 5 days a week from 8am until 11am. Swahili (referred to as “Kiswahili” here in East Africa) is not a particularly hard language as far as the structure of the language. The part that is challenging is that the words are just so DIFFERENT for us; they are not at ALL similar to English or Spanish or any of the romance languages. Swahili is the native language of the Swahili people (primarily found in Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique); it is a Bantu language with a number of words borrowed from Arabic and Persian. There are also the occasional adapted German or English word. For the most part it requires pure, simple rote memorization of sounds for both Kyle and me. Karibu = Welcome. Ninapenda chakula = I like the food. Tunaenda sokoni. We are going to the market. Mtu = Person. Mwalimu = Teacher. And so on. It’s been 3 months. Progress is slow. But it’s being made. I actually had a conversation with a lady at the market yesterday and (think) I understood all of it! Duolingo is an amazing tool/app and I recommend it to anyone wanting to learn a language! It’s really been helping us. Between language school, Duolingo, talking with locals, and a few workbooks we’ve been given I think we will learn enough to get by.

THE KID'S SCHOOL

The kids are at Isamilo International School – a small school here in Mwanza that runs off the British Cambridge system of education. Interestingly, English is used for teaching starting in about middle school in all the schools in Tanzania. Isamilo uses it from the get-go – so the kids did not have to adjust to Swahili for schooling. There are obvious pros and cons to that. Learning Kiswahili will be a challenge for them as they are surrounded by English both at home and at school. But it has definitely made the transition to East Africa and a new school easier and they seem to be adjusting well. Ideally, I would have loved to have sent our kids to a public school here so they could have become fluent in the language quickly. Unfortunately, local schools in Tanzania are not a great option for several reasons: the use of corporal punishment is still very much in use, the class sizes are often 80 or more students to one teacher, and the public schools still use what most of us would consider outdated methods of teaching (mostly sitting and copying notes from a blackboard all day). The hard reality is, though, is that the cost of private schooling for most Tanzanians is simply not feasible and public school is the only option. Because our kids had been homeschooled while living in the US, the change to a Monday through Friday classroom setting was a huge adjustment. We joke that it was probably a bigger adjustment than moving to Africa. We are incredibly proud of them for the way they embraced the changes and I’m happy to say they have done a beautiful job adapting to a very different style of learning.

A NEW WAY OF BEING

Of course, all the above observations (driving, schooling, language, etc.) are simply what I am seeing and experiencing as a Westerner stepping into East Africa during my first several months. Both Kyle and I are trying very hard to simply experience and observe without too much judgement or attachment as we navigate what feels like (at times) a very different reality and very different world than the one we came from. I recognize that my Western way of thinking often looms larger than I would like it to. I will be very curious to revisit my observations 12 months from now to see how they have shifted or changed. And that is part of the beauty of traveling outside one’s own country and culture. That these new experiences and observations might mold us, shape us, nudge us (and sometimes dramatically fling us) into new states of being. Into new ways of being in the world – and with others. And that I believe, is a very good thing. 

Arriving in Tanzania (Part 1)

The journey to Mwanza, Tanzania was long – but thanks to Qatar airlines (with their amazing food and endless on-demand movie options) – it was a very comfortable 40 hours of travel. The entire trip felt a little surreal, however, as we stood in line at the international terminal of LAX loaded down with luggage knowing we would not be calling the US home for the next 3.5 years. It wasn’t until we arrived at the Kilimanjaro airport in Arusha (almost 35 hours later), though, that it really started to hit us. As the airplane came to a stop, the doors opened, and a set of old metal stairs were pulled up for us to disembark the plane from – we suddenly felt the energy of Africa around us. In an instant, everything was different. The colors, the smells, the sounds. Kiswahili filled the air. Technology from the 1980s (a paper list to check our names off a list of arrivals, an outdated x-ray machine for luggage) abounded. After boarding our next flight to Mwanza, I couldn’t stop staring out the window of the plane, gazing down on the plains of Africa. Orange dirt roads crisscrossed the land below me – but hardly any cars (and certainly no paved roads) could be seen. Our flight path took us directly over the Serengeti and skirted the edge of the Ngorongoro Crater; it was hard to imagine the wildlife that were roaming below us. My entire life I have always dreamed of visiting Africa. Now here we were!

Our first week in Mwanza was a complete blur. We were picked up by fellow missioners at the Mwanza Airport (a very small airport that brought back memories of the North Bend, Oregon airport from when I was a child) and crammed into 2 vehicles with all our luggage. It was hot. And as we started to drive, I felt like I had stepped into a documentary. Which is why I love traveling to new places. The things that we read about and watch on screens suddenly become real: no longer just some faraway imagining, but flesh and blood. Women walked the roads in beautifully colored dresses – large buckets and baskets balanced atop their heads. Both men and women worked in the fields, hoeing corn, squash, and beans. Birds I never knew about circled above and stood near the roads.

We stayed for one week in a lovely Airbnb in the Isamilo neighborhood (very near where the kids now go to school). That first week was simply trying to adapt to a massive 10-hour time zone change (we had to completely flip-flop our internal clocks), as well as recover from 40+ hours with no sleep and a covid infection that I somehow caught along the way (thank goodness no-one else tested positive). The kids did amazing, never complaining once. We learned how to take showers on a very limited hot-water schedule, washed our own clothing by hand in buckets, and figured out how to cook on a small gas stove with a very different menu of food choices. I think the fruit of Tanzania saved us our first week. In no particular order, some of our favorite fruits so far: watermelon, passion fruit, mango, papaya, guava, bananas, pineapple.  Everything is so sweet and ripe and luckily for us using the US dollar, affordable. We ate (and continue to eat) a lot of fruit that first week.

House hunting was a blur, as well, since we had only 8 days to find more permanent housing and we were recovering from both jet lag and for myself, covid. We found a wonderful home just a 12 minute drive from the kids’ school. It was actually much bigger and nicer than what I was expecting to live in for the next few years, but it fit our budget and was available immediately. Josephine was a little upset as she had visions/expectations of our family living in a mud brick hut with no electricity or running water (we have houses like this scattered throughout our neighborhood so she reminds us of this frequently while walking). We’ve tried to explain to her multiple times that the romantic ideal of that might just run itself short after a couple months – but she continues to insist she would prefer that. I remind her she is welcome to join the Peace Corps as a single adult when she’s bit older. =)

So the house was a surprise: lots of room, high ceilings so that the rooms stay relatively cool during the day. The yard is planted with corn. Lots and lots of corn. One thing we have learned here in Tanzania is if there is space to grow something: plant food. Makes sense to me. We have hot water – one of those instant water heaters that as long as you keep the water pressure low enough puts out nice, hot water. We have a refrigerator. We have a stove. Most of the time we have electricity (that seems to come and go in spurts … sometimes we can go 3 days in a row with long power outages during the daytime and evenings – other weeks we will go almost an entire week without losing power … so I’ve quit trying to figure it out and am just letting it be what it is). But here in Tanzania we don’t heat or cool the house, and all our cooking is done with portable gas (those that cannot afford gas use charcoal stoves or wood fires). So when the electricity goes out the main loss is hot water for the shower and lights. We brought 5 solar camping lights with us and already have put them to good use. I actually don’t mind the electricity going out too much. It makes it easier to get to bed on time.

Sailing Away

Welcome to our family blog! We are Kyle (dad), Anna (mom), Josephine (12), Collin (10), and Charlotte Rose (8).

We are starting this page to better share stories and observations from our time in Tanzania, Africa, where we arrived on December 31st 2022 to begin 3.5 years of work as a Maryknoll Lay Missioners.

As you can imagine, doing mission work in East Africa is a very different life compared to the relative comfort of how we lived in our small town of Sequim, Washington, USA. It was a big decision to leave and now that we have been in Africa for about two months, the decision is even more profound than what we expected it would be.

Sequim has a small marina where I kept a sailboat for a few years. Sailing that boat was one of the things I most loved to do when we were there. I've always thought that sailing has a lot of great metaphors for life. Before we left, someone shared a quote by John Shedd, which articulates how we felt about leaving the save harbor of our lives on the North Olympic Coast:

 “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”

Sixty days into our 3.5 Years, it definitely feels like we are sailing in new waters. Our lives here encompass the gamut of emotions. Everyday is a learning experience, both for Anna and me as well as our children. We have left the harbor and for better or worse, we are learning to navigate a new ocean. Thank you for stopping by to share in our journey.

With Gratitude,

Kyle, Anna, Josephine, Collin & Charley