My Day

This is a picture at the village Yamatala this afternoon. This week and next I am working on visiting different NGOs to interview and see what they do. Church of Christ is a Church working in Tanzania to evangelize and also support churches that are in beginning stages. The Sakuma people (a major tribe in Northern Tanzania) are receptive to the gospel and eager to learn. So this village had begun a church on their own, and had a choir and everything and sang when we came. Church of Christ was asked by them to come and support them in learning more about the Bible and understanding what it means to be a Christian. They are hoping to do baptisms next week and teach about the Lord's supper! Definitely a new experience.
So today marks the end of Ramadan fasting for about 50% of the population here. I contacted a friend and was able to (kind of but i like to think not so much) invite myself over because I wanted to see what types of things Muslims were doing. So David, who was a worker for Streetwise (the NGO I support by living at this guesthouse), took me to a friends house. Unfortunately I got there kind of late because of going to the village Yamatala with the Church of Christ this afternoon. But it was interesting. The family, at least the family I visited tonight, here in Tanzania is not as much of a nuclear unit as it is in North America. Girls who aren't your first sister are still called sister or daughter and same with boys. I was a little confused, but came away with the conclusion that families are much bigger; the terms sister and brother, mother, daughter etc. don't necessarily mean what I think they mean. Again, hospitality is so important here, so even though I arrived after they had been cooking and had eaten, they sat me down in their house (concrete walls, tin roof, kind of a shared courtyard deal in the middle of about 5 rooms/houses, and the cook'room' which was very small) in the living room. The rooms are generally very small with big chairs and furniture all kind of crammed in, and decorated with nice crochet coverings or other cloth coverings with embroidery. This family was living okay I think because one of the daughters is going to Uganda for university in January (university there is much cheaper though than in Tanzania. By the way- they say Uganda like "oogaanda"). They gave me rice cooked with really good spices and beef in sauce, they said it was Arabian cooking. I felt like SUCH a spectacle walking in as the TALL white girl and everyone looking at me...i should have prepared some more swahili sentences!! haha! o well. The people here are so gracious it really doesn't matter as long as you make sure you say the right greeting to your elders and say asante sana (thank you) alot!! i was glad to be able to experience some of the more Tanzanian night life. Then I was escorted back to my house because I said I brought no money for a taxi (I'm so cheap) but it was fine, a short walk, but it was funny because David wouldn't let me carry my bag- he was very concerned I wasn't watching it carefully enough. I was blessed to have escorts.