Arriving in Tanzania (Part 3)

SHOPPING

Buying … almost anything … is not easy for us. Gone are the days of 2-day Amazon shipping or Costco one trip shopping. It seems like you can find most items in Mwanza – if you are willing to look for them. But looking for them is often not easy. And the language barrier Kyle and I face is still very real. We have both noticed improvement over the last few months – and with the help of Google Translate we have successfully bought several household items that I’m not sure we would have been able to find before. Options for buying are: 1) small storefronts downtown that specialize in certain commodities, 2) open air markets – some permanent ones and some that travel to different parts of town throughout the week (these are similar to our flea markets back home), and 3) overpriced items at the one mall in town. Almost all transactions are done in cash, as well, which is very different for us. ($1 US = 2300 Tanzanian shillings (TSH) for those interested). We’ve used debit cards in the US for so long now I almost forgot what an ATM was! Because labor is so cheap here, many items are still handmade. Shoes, clothes, chairs, desks … All these items can be bought from a local “fundi” (specialist) for a decent price. Getting shoes resoled here is still a thing. I picked out cloth from a local store and had several skirts made for the girls and myself from a local seamstress. And all the kids’ uniforms were measured and made by a local tailor. (All these items are made on old Singer sewing machines with foot pedals and no electricity!) Those professions are, for the most part, long gone in the US and it’s been fascinating to see locals with skills that we no longer possess in our US American culture. Most the items we buy back home anymore are made in China or abroad; it’s been so interesting to be able to buy locally and see the product actually being put together!

THE FOOD

The food in Tanzania is mostly simple, but nutritious. It is perhaps one of my favorite parts of living here so far. There are several small brick and mortar grocery stores in Mwanza and we do buy a few items at these each week: a small brick of cheese (dairy products are expensive here as a rule and hard to find), a few boxes of juice, coffee beans, tea, packaged cookies to put in our kids’ lunches. Most items, though, we buy at the open-air market (or “sokoni”). There are many of these located throughout the different neighborhoods, some small and some quite large. We’ve found our few favorite ones (2 are within walking distance from our house) that we frequent several times a week. Here we buy 90% of our food for the week. A typical week of market purchases for us looks like: onions, garlic, eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, fresh spinach leaves, cassava leaves, cabbage, pineapple, watermelon, apples (expensive but it’s a treat I continue to buy for the kids), bananas, passion fruit, potatoes, plantains, various beans, lentils, rice, and eggs. Our family doesn’t eat meat, but you can also find chicken (live ones), fish from Lake Victoria, and cow, pig, and goat meat. My understanding is many locals don’t eat a lot of meat, but those that can afford it do include it in their weekly diet. A typical meal for us in the evening includes beans or lentils, a starch (potatoes or rice), and some sort of cooked greens or vegetable. A typical meal for a Tanzanian family might be a type of porridge in the morning, then a dish called “makande” in the evening (hominy-type corn mixed with beans). They often may include “dagaa” (a small sardine-like fish that is dried and sold in the markets) and “ugali” (a cornmeal mash that is similar in consistency to grits but without the butter or spices added). The ugali is eaten with the hands and used to scoop up the dagaa (or chicken or some other brothy meat dish that it is typically served with). I’ve gotten pretty good at whipping out banana bread a few times a week in our little oven, and we’ve created a weekly Sunday homemade pizza night tradition at our house. Finding pizza sauce isn’t easy, but when I do find it I buy several jars of it. Because the oven is so small, I have to cook miniature pizzas in batches – but nobody seems to mind that one pizza is cold, one is warm, and one is hot when we sit down to eat. Pizza is pizza! (And Collin’s favorite dinner of the week!).

COFFEE

Coffee is not a big thing here, and it seems that many locals don’t drink it at all. Kyle and I are big Northwest coffee drinkers and have continued our morning cup of joe since arriving in Tanzania. Someone gave us an old French press and a local Kilimanjaro coffee bean brand is available in the grocery stores (though the cost is quite high compared to other goods here, so it really is a luxury). Chai tea (spiced and/or sweetened tea) on the other hand IS a big thing here and something that everyone seems to partake in – whether the sellers at the market, teachers at school, even vendors on the side of the road. There is a heavy Indian influence here in Mwanza, so a good milk chai seems to be a very important part of many people’s day.

WILDLIFE

So far, I’ve been most impressed by the variety (and number!) of birds in Mwanza. Being close to Lake Victoria (we are perhaps a 10-minute walk down dirt roads to the shore) we get a variety of water birds, as well as many song birds and birds of prey. As I sit here writing this I can hear no less than 5 or 6 variety of bird calls out our window. Small, large, unusually long tailed, hawks … The variety is overwhelming and beautiful. I forgot to bring a bird book of East Africa with us to Tanzania and I haven’t any luck finding one locally in Mwanza. I’m hoping to have someone bring one when they visit us. There are monkeys all around – though none on our property yet. We’ve heard they like mango trees (which we have none of). But we see them on all of our walks and the kids have them in the trees at their school. They are funny to watch and always bring a smile to my face – especially the babies that can be silly and playful and often get in trouble with their mums. Other than that, we see an occasional stray cat or dog and plenty of chickens. The cats are dogs are rarely seen as pets here except by the foreigners. Dogs are sometimes kept to guard houses – but as a rule they are locked away all day in a kennel and only let out at night to guard the fenced property. Otherwise, you mainly see them wandering the roadsides in search of food, usually looking malnourished and mangy. That said, it’s a vast improvement from what we saw in Mexico last year. The dog population here is not out of control like it was in Baja and the dogs people do keep to guard their houses seem to be properly fed. Having an animal as a pet is culturally just not a thing here, as it’s not in many other countries (I do feel that Europe and North America are more the exception than the norm when it comes to animals as pets). We haven’t had the opportunity to see the Serengeti yet – though it is only perhaps 3 hours driving from us. We did skirt the edges of the park on a visit we made to Musoma in February and got to see a hyena, wildebeest, and baboons. We look forward to going into the park sometime later this year or next.

ASANTE SANA

My hope is that these last 3 blogs (Arriving in Tanzania Parts 1-3) would give readers an opportunity to understand a brief overview of what we have been experiencing since arriving in Tanzania. As you can imagine, it is very hard - if not impossible - for our family and friends back home to imagine how daily life has changed for us over the last 3 months as we adjust to a very different new "normal." My intention moving forward is to have shorter, more specific blog posts. If there is a topic or area or question you would like discussed, please feel free to leave a comment and I will see what we can do! Asante sana (thank you very much) for reading our blog!