Mzungu!

Going into the villages is quite an experience. It’s the Africa you imagine – kids everywhere, mud brick houses with thatched straw roofs. It’s amazing that this is still considered part of urban Kigoma; I’m interested to see what Kigoma Rural (where the control group is located) looks like.

To reach these areas, we have to travel along crazy dirt roads (our dala dala got stuck today, we all had to get out and push it!). They are groups of houses with small dirt paths tread in the grass. The TBA comes to welcome us – a series of welcome, thank you, thank you, I give you respectful greetings, thanks for your respectful greetings, how are you, I’m fine, how is your morning, good, welcome, thank you, thank you, thank you. This series of exchanges happens with almost everyone you see, and is made even longer by the fact that the response to thank you is also thank you, so you end up in a cycle of asante’s that can last a while. The TBA then leads us through the village to the woman’s house. Usually I am lost in my surroundings, watching where I walk and taking in the environment. So it usually takes me a few minutes to realize that I’m being followed. It starts off with one or two, and then usually builds up to around thirty kids, who follow me through the village. Children that see me start yelling mzungu!, which in Swahili means European but they use it for any white person. The mzungu! Mzungu! Yells follow me wherever I go, and usually when the interview starts the TBA has to grab a stick and start swinging it at the kids to shoo them away. That works initially, but during the interview I notice little heads peering around the yard fence (or should I say mud wall) or little eyes peering through the windows of the house. I feel bad for disrupting the interview, but there’s not much I can do. Whenever I stop walking through the village, the kids crowd around me but usually stay a few feet away.

The really brave ones will come and touch my skin when I’m not looking. The interviewers say they are fascinated by me because they have never seen a mzungu walking around their village before. They have seen them driving around in cars, but never walking from house to house. The TBAs get very concerned that I will overexert myself (as do the interviewers), because they believe mzungu only travel by car or plane; they do not walk. Yesterday James became very concerned because I had a “rash” from too much sun exposure, and told me I needed to bring an umbrella next time. I had to explain that the rash are freckles, and they are there all the time.

It’s an amazing experience being out in these areas, and very humbling to see how they live. It’s a reminder of how poor this country is. I notice it in the markets and restaurants – there’s not really any food to buy, which feels annoying to us but is due to the lack of wealth in the area – but it really hits home when you walk inside someone’s home here. In spite of it, I have to say that Tanzanians are the most welcoming people I have ever met. The women greet us with karibu (you are welcome here), and we have to go through a long cycle of karibu, asante, karibu, asante, karibu, asante everytime we enter or leave. Many women have asked the interviewers to tell me how thankful they are that I am here and doing this work, which makes me feel really good about what I am doing. They also say either they want me to marry their son, or they wish they had a son I could marry, so that I would never leave. Very sweet.