Homestay & Iraqw Culture

Homestay

I am slowly catching up on reporting on all my experiences here! Last week I had my homestay with a family in Rhotia. Every student that comes to Moyo Hill participates in a homestay for one day with a local family in order to immerse us more in local culture. I really should be saying, “day-stay” because we are only there from about 8 AM-5PM. The way they conduct homestays here is SFS has a series of families that participate every year and look forward to having us spend the day with them. They send us off in pairs for the day equipped with a jerry can of clean water from camp and two big bags of foods. Part of this is to ensure that there are no health risks that we may be subject to. The other reason is because our homestay families do this voluntarily so it is SFS’s way of saying thank you for putting up with a bunch of awkward American kids for a day.

My homestay family ended up being a minute walk away from camp, and turns out I had actually been to that home before! They have a small window shop they run from one of the front rooms in their house and I bought laundry soap there once. Lindsey, the other half of my pair, and I, spent the day with Mama Regina, the matriarch of the household, and her daughter, Thina (pronounced Tina) who is about our age. Both of them were overwhelmingly excited by our arrival and I could tell how much they look forward to the homestay time of year. I am very much not used to the genuine open and welcoming attitude that everyone in Tanzania seems to have. Honestly, I’ve never met more genuinely good-natured people in my life in one place. I feel that in the states it is much harder to find those people in your life and hold onto them, which is really sad considering we have so much more to be happy about in comparison to what the people have here. They have far more reasons to be miserable people, yet you can turn a corner and be greeted with a big smile and a greeting by a complete stranger. I am making it my personal goal to carry these attitudes back home with me.

Anyways, after we finished with introductions, we were wrapped in kanga, which is a decorative piece of fabric that women wrap around their waist. You can see mine in the pictures below. Before we did anything we had to sit and have tea, which is apparently a very frequent activity especially with guests. They make their tea by boiling milk, sugar, and loose chai leaves together. In the morning they didn’t add the milk and I found the tea with warm sweetened water to be absolutely delicious. I did not care so much for the milk during afternoon tea. Once teatime was over, we were put to work! First, they gave us these short brooms made from grasses and we swept the leaf litter off the front of their property. After, we started cooking lunch around 10:30 and it took us until almost 1:00. I may or may not have had a minor anxiety attach about having to help cook a meal for this family, as many of you are well aware back home that I am a highly incompetent chef.

Around here, many homes have a separate structure where they do all the cooking to reduce damages in case of fire and keep smoke away. Basically, this structure was built out of sticks and mud with a dirt floor and a small wood fire in the middle. The only light we could get was from the open doorway as we worked sitting on small stools about half a foot off the ground. Now please don’t read these descriptions as if I am complaining about this situation, as I am only trying to paint a picture of how these people clean and cook everyday.

Together we cooked rice, beef, and cut up a lot of vegetables and made them into various sides that I am not quite sure the name of. The cutting of vegetables was mostly assigned to us, where we had to cut them in both of our hands with a knife and without any cutting board or surface to cut on. Back home, you know that this is especially the worst idea they could have had by giving me a knife to cut anything, let alone using only my hands. After severe concentration, vegetables were cut mediocrely and I still have 10 fingers. So, overall, I considered the day to be a success. We also cooked ugali, a staple Tanzanian food, which is basically boiled cornmeal flour into a thick porridge like consistency. It is a super bland tasting food that I am personally not the biggest fan of, but it certainly composes a lot of the diet for most people here. Once we were done cooking my throat burned and eyes watered from all the smoke and I wondered how the women cooked like this everyday for three meals a day.

Together we ate lunch and then sort of awkwardly sat around for a while. I should probably mention that Mama Regina does not speak very good English and was not around most of the morning because she is a hired “laundry mama” at camp. Thina, however, spoke very good English, making us lucky compared to some homestay families who spoke no English. Mama Regina disappeared again for most of the afternoon, so we hung out with Thina. Lindsey and I ended up teaching her Chinese checkers, banana-grams, and multiple card games. This was how we spent the whole afternoon before doing dishes and then having one last round of tea. Before we left we took pictures with both women and this seemed to be their favorite part of the day. They loved having their picture taken and having me show them how to use my camera. They had so much fun with this and it was really cute to see Mama Regina trying to take a picture by pointing the camera at the sky and not at us. Before we left they were asking when we were going to come back to visit, which was really sweet. I will certainly stop in for a visit again.

I would like to take a moment to reflect on gender roles here. In many of the tribal cultures, including the Iraqw, which my family belonged to, women and men are divided into strict gender roles. It troubled me to have to adopt these gender roles for a day, even though I understood this was an experience intended for me to immerse myself fully in a different culture, which I did appreciate. Back in the states, good luck even hinting to me that a man can do something better than me because he’s a man, because I will prove them wrong. Or good luck telling me that because I am a woman I should and shouldn’t do certain things. Seeing the limitations of women here to the role of housewife is something that I struggled to fully understand. I also was able to reinforce that thank goodness I was born into a society where women are no longer subject to these gender roles, because I would make a pretty crappy housewife, based on how the cooking experience went. However, I will say that based on my observation of my homestay family and other people in general, it seems that women here are respected individuals despite their strict societal roles. This helped me see that although some cultures can hold onto strict gender roles that it doesn’t necessarily mean that women are less valued for what they do. Also, my homestay women in particular break free from some of these molds. The husband is often away because he is a builder, so Mama Regina makes income from running the small window shop and doing laundry at camp. Also, impressively, Thina is attending the Tanzanian college, the University of Dodoma, where she is studying biology and chemistry to become a doctor. Actually, I was surprised to find out that all of her siblings either already have or will attend college. I found it so incredible that these women are certainly not an example of direct cultural conformity and that this family has found the means to send all of their children to college, which is invaluable to their futures, especially in this country.

Overall, my homestay experience was a success. I had been nervous in the days leading up until the homestay because I had no idea what to expect. We were warned that we might witness some serious poverty and be subject to the worst culture shock we have had to far. However, I found myself slightly disappointed by the ease and comfort of the whole experience. I was sort of hoping for that extreme culture shock experience and to be put in a situation where I was forced to communicate in ways other than my native language. However, this doesn’t change the fact that I was lucky enough to have met and spent a day with some amazing people.

Iraqw Culture

In addition to the homestay, we traveled to the home of Daniel Tewa, an Iraqw elder, who gave us a wonderfully entertaining and insightful lecture on Iraqw culture. This is probably my favorite man that I have met in Tanzania. His energy, enthusiasm, sense of humour, and intelligence made him just about the coolest old dude ever. From him, we learned that the Iraqw tribe is one of 126 in Tanzania. Everyone in Tanzania grows up on their tribal culture and language and also speaks Swahili. The Iraqw tribe came to Tanzania 2,000 years ago from Ethiopia, meaning this culture is rich in ancestral roots and values.

Daniel emphasized the Iraqw’s deep relationship with natural resources. This culture recognizes its ancient reliance on the land in the form of agriculture, erecting homes, providing medicine, and both meat and hides from animals. While we have been here in Tanzania, I have heard from multiple sources that the Iraqw are known for being leaders in conservation practices such as in local reforestation. I find it so fascinating to see a culture where its ideals actually make them better preservationists of the natural world rather than the other way around.

To explain many aspects of the culture, Daniel used the traditional bridal skirt made of goat hide. Brides no longer wear this garment on their wedding day, but the meaning behind the intricate beading on the skirt remains alive today. I added a picture of one of these skirts below so you can use it to reference what I am talking about! I find these skirts to be very beautiful ascetically and for the symbology behind the meaning of marriage and family in this culture. First, the trees along the bottom are there to wish the couple’s family to grow strong like a tree. The mountains on either side are there to say that mountains never move and meet, but people do. It is also there to demonstrate that marriage is like climbing a mountain; it will have many ups and downs. Clearly, their relationship to the natural world is incorporated into many aspects of tradition. The gold suns, which look like flowers enclosed in a circle, is a tribute to their god, which is represented by the sun. The circle is representative of the circle of life.

At this point, Daniel shared that their god is a woman because they are much more forgiving and merciful than men. I found it slightly amusing that this culture identifies this feminine attribute. The Iraqw will frequently make livestock sacrifices to their god if they fear they are being punished for moral misconduct by receiving agricultural hardships. They will request to be “cleansed” and then hope she relieves them of their troubles.

The red, white, and black stripes on the top represent the unity of “black, white, and red” people. Now, these racial distinctions are not the same ones we use in the United States. Instead, among Africans and different tribes, they classify each other based on different tones of their dark colored skin. In fact, he commented that Barack Obama is white and that Michele is red. Did you hear that, according to him, Obama’s skin tone is white!? After hearing this, how silly is it that we even bother to attach such aggressive hostilities with the color of someone’s skin because in reality, not everybody in the world even defines them the same way! I realize that back home this is such a topic of debate with recent events leading to the black lives matter movement. Especially after this experience, I would like to give my two cents. Black lives matter, white lives matter...ALL LIVES MATTER, no matter how you want to define it by color or whatever. There is no point to even discern by color because after all, they are just measly little adjectives that we use to describe things such as the paint we are about to put on the walls of our house. We have come to associate far too much meaning behind these words and that is what separates us in the end. Yes, racism is wrong and yes people of one color of race did wrong to another color in history. But for as long as we choose to separate by colors, we will be separate people. I hope one day we can all just be American, just like the Africans can be African and identify among their various tribes in harmony. Iraqw culture can see the importance of unity as the green line on the bottom represents that each group of people, from whatever color of people or tribe they may be from, must all walk the same land. Thus, the true beauty behind the wedding skirt is not necessarily the meaning of true love, but rather the meaning of true unity between two people, two families, two tribes, into one society.

Daniel is a 71-year-old man with one amazing memory. During his lecture he loved to share with us all of his knowledge about American society. He would know all the states we were from, even naming off their exact areas! He recited American presidential history and mentioned America’s various roles in African independence. What I found odd was his decision to praise America for the good deeds it has done and completely omitting America’s devastating effects on the independence of thousands of African’s lives through all our years of slavery. Although surprised, I was happy to hear of somebody else’s positive view on American society and history, choosing to focus on what has been done right rather than wrong. Maybe this is another lesson we can take from his book.

After the lecture he took us over to another side of is property to show us one of his “houses”. Now this wasn’t any old house, but rather a literal underground house that he had built on his property in the 90s just so he could show his kids what he grew up in. I’m not sure which is cooler: the fact that he just built this house just to show his kids or that he actually lived in one of these houses. Apparently, there was a point in time when most Iraqw people lived in these structures in order to protect their families and livestock from attacks from the Maasai, and so Daniel lived in one of these for the first 20 years of his life. I could not even imagine living in such a dark, cramped place for that many years. Regardless, the structure itself was a remarkable sight and standing behind it you wouldn’t even have a clue there was a house underneath you! Also, the house is so strong that a few weeks ago an elephant was standing right on top of it and left behind a few tracks! After showing us this house, Daniel handed us a bunch of traditional spears and let us get in touch with our inner warriors as we took turns literally throwing weapons into a field for about an hour. Yes, I spent designated class time playing with sharp objects and throwing them as far as I could….

Anyways, thank you for reading my post! I apologize for being about a week or so behind in my blogging! We have been in crunch time mode getting our last assignments done to wrap up classes and begin directed research in a few weeks. I will be posting again soon about some of my experiences talking with local officials on how they conserve natural resources at local levels, my professors’ research on resolving human-elephant conflicts, and about my community service at the Rhotia Valley Tented Lodge Children’s Home. Stay tuned!