easing in

Well, it’s already been wiki moja (one week) since we left the U.S., and I’m happy to report that everyone seems to be handling our new environment relatively well.  We have had some bumps along the way, but all in all, our transition has been smooth.  But, as I alluded to in the title of this post, we are still enjoying some creature comforts and are hardly living life in the bush just yet.

Our first stop in Tanzania has been at a guesthouse of the Benedictine Fathers here in Dar Es Salaam.  This location serves as an entry and exit point for many missionaries and religious persons who are assigned to mission sites throughout Tanzania.  The guest master is a German Benedictine priest, and I suspect that because of his presence, the meals here have much more German than African influence.  We have enjoyed fresh salads and cheese, various meat dishes like fried chicken and sausages, and lots of delicious fruit including pineapple and watermelon.  Not quite the lean, plant-based diet we were expecting here in Africa.

Our accommodations, while modest, are clean and more than adequate.  All six of us are sleeping in a single room, but we have the luxury of a much-appreciated room air conditioner and our own bathroom.  And although we are taking weekly prophylaxis against malaria, we have also started the practice of sleeping under mosquito nets, as the mosquito population is highest from dusk until dawn.  The kids love the nets and say that they feel like they are camping.

Additionally, most people on the campus here speak English, so our Swahili knowledge has yet to be really tested.  But I will admit that trying to converse with native Kiswahili speakers has been humbling.  There is a big difference between a theoretical study of a language on Rosetta Stone and actually stumbling our way through a live exchange.  Recognizing and pronouncing the words, knowing the placement of the subjects and verbs, and the use of the appropriate tenses are a lot harder in person than on a computer screen.  Everyone here, however, has been incredibly gracious, kindly correcting our mistakes and often encouraging our enthusiasm in trying to learn this completely new language.

Though we are enjoying some creature comforts, air conditioning in the car is not one of them.  And because Tanzania is sub-equatorial, winter time here is in June-August, so we’ve arrived at the hottest time of the year.  So while everyone back in the U.S. faces brisk, sometimes freezing weather, we are surrounded by sunny, warm, humid days, without any rain since our arrival.  

Living for a week in the heat and humidity made finding this little roadside treat extra enjoyable. 

Joshua had been on the lookout for “dafu,” or fresh coconut, from which you can drink the delicious and light coconut water.  The kids all enjoyed watching the roadside vendor cut the top off of the coconut, allow us to enjoy the cool, refreshing liquid inside, and then cut out the coconut “meat” with a small knife he carved from a stick as we waited.

When it was time for lunch, we followed the recommendation of a well-meaning new acquaintance here, and found ourselves in a very touristy, American-style restaurant with a menu full of burgers, fries, and ribs, and a sound system piping Michael Bolton tunes through the speakers.  It was like Applebees had been plopped into the middle of Dar Es Salaam--not just kind of surreal, but really not at all what we had in mind for our first meal out in Africa.  So after a few uncomfortable minutes, we decided to start over.  We politely excused ourselves, asked our wonderful driver to take us to a yummy local eating establishment, and ended up here...

We ate at a plastic table behind a simple open air restaurant, where our waitress spoke almost no English and where the food took over an hour to be prepared.  We also happened to be just a few feet from the wonderfully blue Indian Ocean, from which we enjoyed a warm breeze while we dined on some of the most incredible seafood we have ever tasted.  We had fried calamari, shrimp with noodles, grilled shrimp, whole fried fish, rice, and calamari curry.

It was an amazing meal and (because what good is a blog post if I can’t learn something from it?) we were reminded of the importance of being true to what we feel called to, be it in the great, big, life-altering decisions, as well as the small (sometimes culinary), yet still important ones.