ABSOLUTELY
After 28 tedious hours in airports and airplanes, we finally arrived to our first destination, House of West Kili, last night at 11:00 p.m. We woke up ready for the day, beginning with a delicious breakfast and team bonding activities. Our team bonding began with a simple Swahili lesson turned tag game, in which, in proper Tanzanian fashion, we had to change our greeting depending on the person. Here are the greetings: “Jambo” responds with “Jambo” (this is very casual). If someone say “Mambo”, you respond with “Poa”, however this is only for peers around the same age. If you’re addressing someone older than you, you say “Shikamu” and then they’ll respond with a kind “Marihaba”. After our lesson in greetings, we played a game of Knee-Tag, in which everybody was “it”. In order to freeze someone, you had to slap their knees, and then the only way for them to be unfrozen was for them to receive a double high five. However, if you had your hands on your own knees, you could not be tagged. While the Knee-Tag seemed to simply be a fun game, it actually symbolized getting comfortable with risk – something that we’ll have to do as we explore a new community and a new culture. From there, we ventured into the three realms of comfort: safety, stretch, and panic. We decided that as a team, it’s always better to push ourselves to be in that stretch zone, because that’s where we’ll learn the most. Then we took off to our second destination; The River of Mosquitoes. Known to the locals as Mto Wa Mbu, The River of Mosquitoes is home to a local tribe, Chaga. Here we were served local cuisines such as okra, cassava, mchicha, eggplant, spiced rice, and ugali along with a wide array of freshly sourced fruits and vegetables. With our stomachs full we embarked on a tour of the village and a banana plantation. Along with learning a lot about the everyday Tanzanian culture, we were exposed to the natural relationship shared between the farmers and their products. We were able to understand the banana on a new level, from the 30 different species, how the banana is used in the fermentation process, to understanding the asexuality of the plant. We arrived at Karatu Lodge around the evening and concluded our day with a meal and a discussion of our expectations about the homestays. We are ready to embark on the next leg of our journey… - Hannah and Mass Comments are closed.
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