Foods:
Chapati
Rice and beans
Greens (spinach stir fry)
Mangoes
Bananas
Stewed cabbage
Potato soup
Milk tea (tastes like Chai tea)
Ginger tea
Peas marinated in Coconut Milk
Cucumber, Tomatoes, and Onion
Fried potatoes
Sambusas (flaky dough fried with potatoes/meat inside)
Lamb stew with carrots and onion
Culture:
– Traditional Maasai clothing: Men have gauged ears with strings of beads hanging from their ears and necks. They wear bright colored shawls around their necks and waists, and usually carry a walking stick of some sort. They also pull their front bottom tooth out. The women also have gauged ears, and wear similar colored shawls. They have nine marks tattooed on their faces; three, three, and three on their left cheek, right cheek, and forehead.
– Typical greeting is a handshake downward, then upward, then downward again, and for the women, it is a hug and kiss on each cheek.
– The roads are dusty and very bumpy. I often found myself slipping in my flip-flops because of the slope of the road. (I am also stubborn and love my flip-flops)
– The school children all wear uniforms, usually dark blue skirts/shorts with white tops.
– There are multiple greetings dependent on age. For a child, you can say, "mambo," for an adult, you say "habari," and for an elder, you say, "sheekamo."
– Farming is all done by hand, and it is common to see a young boy herding a group of cattle or goats through the marketplace or down the street.
– Hand-washing before meals consists of some warm water being poured from a pitcher onto your hands.
– Water is a precious commodity, and it has to be hauled into buckets outside the home. There are no sinks, showers, toilets, or pumps with running water.
– Little market stands are everywhere, selling fruits, vegetables, and other miscellaneous items like laundry soap and spices.
– Facilities are most often 'squatty potties,' which look like outhouses, in which a hole has been dug into the ground – and they don't use toilet paper (still not sure how they do that, but we bought some to make life easier).
– Clothing: women always wear long skirts or pants with a Maasai-type shawl covering their waists. They often use another shawl to wrap a baby piggy-back style on their backs. Men often wear modern t-shirts and pants, and are often quite dressed up with socks and dress shoes on, even on the dusty roads.
Landscape:
– We are right under Mount Meru, and about an hour from Mt. Kilamanjaro, so the landscape is beautiful. The mountain air is cool, especially in the mornings and at night. It gets down to the low 60's at night, and it can get very hot on sunny afternoons, into the mid 80's.
– Farming is the most common living, so there are fields of corn, sugarcane, and banana trees everywhere.
– There are typically three different types of homes: Maasai huts that are usually circular and built out of mud/clay. They have broken mirrors and bottle caps embedded into the sides as decoration. The second; wooden or corrugated steel shacks that usually house farmers or manual laborers. And the third type; cement structures that usually have one to two rooms and a few windows.
– Most people have chickens, cows, goats, dogs, and even pigs roaming through their yards. I have yet to see one horse here in Tanzania.
