Last Week of home stay

My last week in Bangata with my homestay family was amazing and stressful at the same time. It was Midterm week for SIT students so we had 4 long papers to write, 3 other assignments and a Kiswahili oral exam. Needless to say, it was a hard week, especially since we needed to find time to do all of the outside work while also interacting with our families. In class last week we went into Arusha and used our Swahili bartering skills to buy fruits, vegetables, and spices at the markets. Then we went back to school and made guacamole, fruit salad, and traditional Chai masala, so it was a pretty successful school week. At home I was being bombarded with Tanzanian men and I am pretty sure that my Mama was trying to set me up. There were probably at least 6 different around 20-year-old men that would conveniently come over to talk to my Babu while I was home. Each of them would say hello to my Babu and then sit down with me somewhere and have extremely long conversations in broken English and even more broken Kiswahili. One morning I woke up at 6:30 in the morning and went outside to go to the bathroom and there was a boy waiting in our cooking hut to talk to me.  Luckily only 3 of them mentioned looking for a wife and children so they weren’t too obvious about it. I also got to milk my neighbor’s cow last week, which was very exciting.  My Dada taught me a few very important African skills such as how to tie a baby to my back with a kanga, and how to carry full buckets of water on my head.  I was extremely excited to learn and school children find it very funny to see a white person in her pajamas attempting to balance a too-full bucket of water on her head.

There was a big SIT party on Friday and I finished all of my work just in time to spend the day with my family. The party was a great way to say goodbye to my family, and my Mama even had a beautiful traditional Tanzanian dress made especially for me just for the occasion! My oldest dada, Amani, left for boarding school in Dar Es Saalam this morning, one hour after I left Bangata so today was an extremely sad day for my Mama. I really enjoyed my time in Bangata and saying goodbye to my family was pretty hard but I am very nervous and excited to leave for Engaruka tomorrow to begin my ISP research and learn more about Maasai culture!