Thanksgiving away from Home

Wow, I cannot believe that today is my absolute favorite holiday and that I will not be spending it with my family and friends in the states. I will not have the traditional feast nor will I be spending the day watching my favorite sport football. However, I have so many things to be thankful for so in the true spirit of Thanksgiving I will just remember what I have instead of what I do not. I am first thankful for the opportunity to be here at all. Secondly for the loving and supportive parents who have made it possible. Thirdly, I am thankful for all of my friends back home who are keeping in touch. I am also thankful for my host family and the new friends I've made here who have made this transition smooth. Lastly, I am thankful for the technology to easily reconnect with everyone.

So since Thanksgiving is centered around food I thought I'd let you guys know what my new diet here in Dar es Salaam is. For breakfast, I usually take chai (black tea) chapatti (fried flat bread) or mandazi (similar ot dounuts). I absolutely love chapatti and mandazi, I will continue to make is when I return. For lunch, I usually have a plate of fruit or chips mayai. Chips mayai might be one of the best things ever thought of. It is chips or for us Americans, french fries cooked in a skillet with 2 eggs. I will also be making this all the time when I'm home. One of the perks about living with a host family is that I get to try all the different traditional meals such as ugali and makande. Ugali is like a stiff pourrige made from maize while makande is a mixture of beans and corn. Ugali is eaten with you hand and by itself it doesn't have a strong taste but you eat it with a variety foods and come with a sauce like baked beans of example. Also I have a patterned diet of rice, beans and meat (usually chicken, fish or beef) in a stew. I'd say this is the staple diet of most Tanzanians. These meal is also sometimes added with chips (french fries) or cooked banana. Little bit of useful information bananas when cooked no longer taste like bananas but instead more like potatoes. Aside from the traditional food there is a strong Arab and Indian influence in diet, which makes me very happy because I can find samosas, shawarma and curries which adds a little spice to my life.

Sometimes I find myself missing food (especially condiments) from home, however I haven't found a cure for this and the only fast food chain from home I've seen is Subway. That's right no KFC, which as translates to most Tanzanians haven't heard of Kentucky at all. To deal with this I remind myself that I will have American food again so for a while I can deal with missing the traditional Thanksgiving meal.

What I've found different here is definitely eating habits and table manners. Before eating, there is a bowl with a pitcher of hot water on the table to wash your hands with. Therefore, eating with your hands, is perfectly normal and not considered rude. Interestingly enough however they don't seem to lick their fingers after eating but instead wash them again. My thought process tells me to lick my fingers afterwards, I mean after all I was already eating with them. Elbows on the table seem to give you better leverage to eat with you hands. You are expected to finish your whole plate as well, although in some parts I've been told that if you finish your whole plate it means you weren't satisfied and then you get more. Sorry baby sister, slurping is done often.

In reality it wasn't that hard to get used to the diet or a less composed way of eating. When it comes down to it I'm still eating meat, a carbohydrate and vegetables for my meals so is it really all that different?

Hakuna Matata,

Kimberly

No car? No problem.

As most of you know I do not like staying in one place for long. Therefore transportation is an important part of life and it's one thing I tend to notice most about places I visit, especially now where I do not have my own ride to get anywhere that I need or want to go. Here I am relying on public transportation (or nice people with cars). When living in Kentucky I did not use public transportation, one because I had a car that I could drive and two, because it's not all that common for most people.

Here, I have to use public transport everyday and I'm actually pretty happy with it for the most part. I love daladalas, they are cheap are easily found and get you close to where you need to go. They remind me a lot of the mini-buses in South Africa especially with the amount of people packed into them and the rules of the road according to the drivers. While this is a method of public transportation, they are privately owned buses. I have seen them switch drivers and conductors on route which leads me to believe that a few people get together to buy one and then share in the profit of the day. There is always one driver (obviously) but also there is always a conductor which beckons people in and collects the fair. Once while riding a daladala a friend and I saw another one for sale in which we devised a plan that we should buy it and then I would become the driver and she the conductor and we would then have a nice little side business. Daladalas drive on a specific route which is clearly marked on the front and while there are certain stops along the way there isn't a set schedule. You cannot plan when one will come you just stand and wait but usually it does not take very long to find the next one.

Daladalas stop running after 9 and I've been advised by my family not to take one after dark anyways (about 6:30pm) so the other forms of transportation include bajijis and taxis. Bajijis are also another privately owned vehicle which looks like a motorized tricycle with a carriage to me. You can fit about three people inside and they will take you anyway for a negotiated price. The trick is to barter for a cheap price (especially being white they always try and charge more) but overall I'd rather take that than a taxi. Taxis are like taxis everywhere else, with the exception that I haven't seen a meter counter yet, so here you also negotiate prices with the drivers.

This weekend I traveled to Morogoro which is about 2-3 hours away from Dar es Salaam which gave an interesting insight into driving here and made me really think about the differences in ways people drive. One obvious difference is that they drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. This, I was already used to thanks to my stay in Cape Town but it would definitely be an adjustment to others coming here. Also I'd like to point out that while I am in Africa and it's a third world country a majority of the roads are paved. There are some that are not but even to other towns and cities there are paved roads. One big difference I've noticed is that there are a lot less stop lights and I haven't seen one stop sign but there are more speed bumps then I've even witnessed. Speed bumps are everywhere you can't get away from them! In general driving is the same except people have no problem going around you if you are in their way, too slow or for whatever reason and by whatever means.

Ok now back to the trip to Morogoro, we traveled there by tour bus which is supposed to take 2-3 hours depending on traffic so we decided to wake up and leave early Saturday morning. Everything was going very well at the station; we easily got our tickets, found the bus and were on our way until right as we were pulling out of the station. So as we were pulling out a motorcyclist stops to let us through but the truck behind him does not, he tried to go around and over the highway divide and ends up running over the motorcycle and hitting the tail end of our bus. Luckily the motorcyclist had jump off and was therefore unharmed also it did not cause a lot of damage to our bus, but none the less it caused us a great deal of time lost and we had to go back in the station to change buses. We eventually got to Morogoro in the second try without any problems. However, on the way back into Dar es Salaam we experience heavy traffic which took us about an hour just to get back into the station. Sure I've experience heavy traffic before but nothing really like this, especially with only one street light there was barely any movement for quite some time.

So sometimes I miss having a car of my own to drive and get me to where I need and want to go but public transportation has been doing just fine here and I've not run into any major problems.

Hakuna Matata,

Kimberly