Tanzania, Chake Chake and a barrier broken
Okay so you have five days to interview twenty farmers, sounds easy, right? Four farmers each day and it will be done in no time! Easy Peasy! Well when none of them speak English, you have a lost guide, and the country that you’re visiting is constantly trying to deport you it becomes just a little harder.
For some background in Kenya Swahili is used as a national language but each region has their own mother tongue, so most people use Swahili very little. Tanzania is completely different with Swahili being both their mother tongue and their national language, so their Swahili is very refined with a large vocabulary. When surveying it ended up taking one hour and fifteen minutes to do one survey translating from Swahili, compared to 20 minutes in Luo or 10 in English.
Our trip in Tanzania started out very interesting! We crossed the border after a strenuous visit to immigration services. We thought, “Oh we made it through the worst part the rest of the time will be clear skies.” We couldn’t have been any more wrong. Only 10 minutes into our 6 hour drive we were pulled over by the police. They went through our passports and then proceeded to ask our driver Salem things like, “can I see your fire extinguisher.” Four minutes later the immigration officer was giving us a ticket. Only 30 minutes later we were pulled over again and told to report to the immigration office in Mwanza, our destination. Along the way we drove by the Serengeti and saw wildebeests, zebras, and ostriches! We were only pulled over once more that day. The rest of the trip was spent listening to three angry Kenyans complain about almost every aspect of Tanzania!
Tanzania may have sounded like a nightmare, but I assure you that there was at least one good thing and that thing was Chake Chake. Chake Chake in Swahili means Us Us. Who the heck would name their restaurant Us Us you may ask, well I have no clue and I’m here to tell you it doesn’t matter because their food was amazing. Chake Chake was a mix of traditional Tanzanian food and Indian food. The food was quick, awesome, and our waiter even spoke Luo! When we weren’t enjoying Chake Chake we were interviewing farmers and exploring the city. Mwanza is a city built on these insanely weird mountains of boulders that look like they could fall at any time. People build their homes and shops on top of these weirdly shaped rocks and have no fear that the 2-story rock 10 feet away will tip over onto their house in the night. These people had some real stones *badum tsss*.
Color is a very important part of Tanzanian clothing, in my time in Tanzania I think I saw only one or two women not wearing Ketenge, or Leso (a traditional african fabric.) Even our mentor Matilda made sure to bring her most colorfull dresses, so she could fit in! Ketenge is highly popular due to its bright colors, and its long history. It is a verstile fabric used for head wraps, scarfs, skirts, basket covers and even baby slings!
Even though I couldn’t understand most of the people by the end of my time in Tanzania I had learned enough Swahili on top of what I already knew to actually hold a short conversation with a boy about my age. From talking to this guy, I realized how different our lives really were. He was 19 years old, had the cutest little baby, and part of his own farm. I am an 18-year-old student from Iowa who fears even the idea of children. He was on a whole different stage of his life already. We talked about our lives and ambitions and of course the World Cup Final that was just a week later. I never really realized how impactful it could be just to be able to say a few words in another’s language and how much you could learn in just a few sentences. I have had the opportunity to use every language in my repertoire in just a few weeks and I am thankful for every second that I spent studying a forging language. In high school I studied mostly Spanish and even used that to get myself out of a sticky situation! So, to any student thinking about not continuing in a foreign language I encourage you to continue the class and continue to learn more even if it doesn’t seem relevant at the time. Plus, it makes scrabble way easier!
So go out there and learn, strive to understand, and always be patient.
