A Day in the Life - Tanzania
“Woken up at six by cockerel and bleating goats outside my window! Got up, legged it outside, through the banana trees to go to the long drop (!) then waded back again (very muddy, always raining) to greet my Chagga father, Edwin, mother Edina and cool little bro Eliona - I say ‘Kum sam mbe’ to Edwin, ‘Kum sam my’ to Edina which means Good Morning in chagga, and in a very high voice(!) they would reply ‘haika monoko’ – thank you my child. Eliona would be dressed for school, and Edwin and Edina would have been seeing to the animals and doing general chores already…
Edwin was also chairman of Mshiri so we frequently had hundreds of villagers visiting with their many problems for him to sort out! Breakfast was a family affair – we would all sit around to a feast of roast bananas (bananas featured regularly in meals – in many different forms!) and avocado – some of my friends in other houses got glamorous things like chapattis and eggs and bread… not in our house though, just hundreds of banananananas!
Work at the school started at eight, I lived at the top of the village so would sprint down the hill (by the end of it, we knew pretty much everyone in the village which was lovely, so many people to stop and chat with) and compare breakfast stories with the others before embarking on our building!
The workers at the school were so cool – Alan, Arnold, Reward, Mosha, Oneesa…Sefania (a very old man we affectionately called the Samiad, you know from Five Children and It, that childrens programme!) and we got sooo muddy by the end, shovelling cement, lugging it around, heaving boulders, slapping cement on the walls, repainting the boards, poles, etc. Such a good laugh though – it made us all appreciate the workers talent. The children were very funny, many of us had ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ at the school so we were very much involved with them too.
Lunch time was always disgusting – gristly meat, bananas, yum yum yum! We have photographic evidence of the fatty greasy food, ha ha! In the afternoons we would often go for walks – down to the waterfalls, over to the football field where all the lads went to play, sat in little sheds and got banana beer forced down us!
And then it would be home to our various families – to ‘shower’ (I use the term loosely because it was just a bucket under a tree), to help in the kitchen (a fire and a pot) and to then have about hundred helpings of dinner – UGALI, is like PLAY DOUGH – my mother would watch my plate with eyes of a hawk and fill it up at any opportunity! Edina was a bit of a show-off in the singing and dancing area…after every dinner Eliona would drum and Edina would sing songs all night! These nightly performances became legendary round the village. I loved them!
Bed was at eight thirty (nine o clock considered VERY late, what losers!) as we only had two oil lamps which would start to burn out. Early to bed, early to rise!”
Jen Pearce, Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, July 2003