At church this morning Beth arranged for us to make a house visit to mama Gile’s home. She told us about it several days ago so we had time to mentally prepare, and try to learn some useful Swahili exchanges. I didn’t really think about it too much though. In reality, no matter how time I could have spent studying wouldn’t have allowed me to carry on a flowing conversation anyway. And our hostess, whoever she would be, would know full well that us wazungus wouldn’t be fluent in Swahili.
As I said, today we found out we were to go to mama gile’s house. Side note: in Kiswahili, Mama means Mrs, Miss, woman, mom, etc. I originally understood it to simply mean mother. Anyway, Felister, one of the Tumaini girls, accompanied us. She was supposed to be moral support mostly, and translate some on the side. Mama Gile invited us into a building that we at first thought was her home, but later we discovered it wasn’t. In fact, we still aren’t sure who’s house it was, or if it was a home.
Once inside she had some chairs brought in for us and after we greeted some more, she sent Feli to buy us sodas. We proceeded to drink soda, try to use the Swahili we knew, search our notes for helpful hints, and study our phrase books for vocabulary. She was such a gracious host, welcoming, and understanding of our language struggles. Our phrase books even interested her so that she spent more than a few minutes reading one of them. Karen has the most knowledge of Swahili so she understood, and said, the most. On rare occasions we were able to persuade Feli to translate for us or Mama Gile, but she was a little reticent to do so.
Time passed and another Tumaini girl arrived – in order that Mama Gile might braid her hair. Halfway through that the Mama Gile’s mother, and the Pastor’s wife arrived. Then two more ladies. Then, one with a baby girl. The sitatuion reads: 9 adult women, two teenage girls, and two babies sitting in a room approximately 4 feet by 5 feet. The ladies wouldn’t even let us give up our chairs for them, though they were our elders, because we were honored guests.
After some more time, the party moved to outside the building and 3 or 4 more women came. Several are Mamas here at Tumaini and one is the town nurse. She spoke excellent English which turned out to be wonderful since she told us some things that our little moral support helper had failed to translate for us. We discovered that Mama Gile’s mother had been sick and so these women from the church came to visit. Also, rice and spiced chai had been prepared for the occasion. The ladies sang a song, prayed, shared some testimonies, and prayed and sang again – all in Kiswahili of course. Then Mama Gile’s daughter brought water to rinse our hands, and more of her children delivered wali (rice) and chai. There was a communal dish of wali for the women, but as honored guests we were given individual bowls full of rice. We worked hard to finish our whole bowls to show our appreciation! It was also the best version of spiced chai that I’ve had here yet.
We visited a while longer, translation, Joslini, Kareni, and Betani sit and listen to Tanzanian women speak in Swahili while enjoying the beautiful weather and marveling at the difference in infant care. (The baby girl happily crawled in the dirt, wet her pants and the dirt, put leaves and rocks in her mouth and was given a wire from the ground to play with. Well, she also was given milk and wali. Then we bade our gracious hostess good night, thanking profusely for the near 4 hours of hospitality, and walked back across the street to home. As we arrived at our steps so did Beth, on her way to discover if we needed rescuing.
I am thankful for God’s love shown to me in new contexts and through new people. I am thankful for the sisters in Christ that I got to witness fellowshipping today, and join with in some small part. I am challenged by their hospitality and warm welcome. I am faced with a new culture, in which the same Gospel of Jesus is at work.
Curios of the Curious 