Our host, Mama Macha, is such a cool person, a strong woman with such interesting life experiences and endless stories and lessons to share for whoever takes the time to listen. She loves to talk about everything under the sun in addition to hearing our takes on things or the issues our age is dealing with or trends or memories or hobbies, all of it! We listened for hours during our week with her, our gracious host, and learned a lot about different aspects of Tanzanian culture. For starters, something as simple as pointing out that the Tanzanian eating culture is basically snack-free because you are always cooking for the next meal, working on the farm, or the cooking to make the snack is too time consuming, so all their calories are consumed at the table. According to Mama Macha, women in the Tanzanian culture do all of the work while men reserve themselves for the “heavy stuff,” such as building houses and butchering animals (women do not go near the butchering). “The 'heavy stuff'?” we asked. “Yeah, but ask a guy to carry a bucket of water on his head up the hill from the chimcham.... you will go thirsty,” she replied. Shimeji taught us that in Mori (which is the area of the mountain in which we were staying), there is lots of iron ore in the dirt (one of only three places in the world with dirt like that) which makes it stick really well and a good material for building houses, but there isn't enough to mine it.
One of the topics we (Mama Macha and us students) talked a lot about was family structure and traditions in Tanzania, as she shared stories of her and her husband, who she met in the States but was from Mori. Marriages are considered an agreement between two families, traditionally with the husband's family paying an amount of money or goods to the bride's family. Following the marriage, the bride "belongs" to the husband's family, for lack of better terminology. The bride price, however, is actually an investment in the fruits of the bride's womb, meaning that that kids not only also belong to the husband's family once they are born but that the family will always care for and support the children throughout their lives. Besides the fact that polygamy is legal (there are three options of marriage status on the official certificate: monogamous, polygamous, or potentially polygamous, the latter of which many men try unsuccessfully to convince their wives to agree to), divorces are rare in Tanzania because the wife does not want to be cut off from that support system. Mama Macha, however, was her husband's only wife, a decision she made sure was made from day 1 of their life together! :)
*Picture of Mama Macha and me at Mount Kilimanjaro National Park.
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