Our Homestay

As many of you already know, we are spending the first 10ish weeks living with a host family in Tanzania. Our family has a baba (father), mama (mother), bibi (grandmother), 3 dadas (sisters, aged 6, 4.5, and ~3 weeks), and one shangazi (aunt on the father’s side). The bibi is just here to help with the new born, the rest are residents. In Tanzania, they don’t talk about pregnancies until the day of the baby’s birth. It is also a taboo for the mother to leave the house during the first 3 months after birth. This is why our bibi has come to visit and help with the chores.
Now to the living conditions. I think our conditions are slightly above average for the typical Tanzanian PCT. Our house is ~95% complete. We have 3 bedrooms, a living room/dining room, a pantry, a kitchen/cooking room, an attached chicken coup and 3 choos (toilets).One choo is inside for “public” bathing and night time use. Another choo is conneted to the master bedroom. The final one is outside and the one assigned to primary “duty”. The house has a very nice flat concrete floor. There is a ceiling in most of the house, except our room and the kitchen.
Our indoor choos appear to have pipes in the walls, but water here functions on a very elaborate bucket system. You’ve got the big bucket (55 gallon drum) to hold the water for the week. Then there are several smaller 5 gallon buckets: a few buckets for laundry, a few for bathing, a few for cleaning food in the kitchen, a couple for moving water back and forth to the kitchen, and finally a special clean one for the water than has been boiled and cooled to drink.
Electricity is a similar situation. Our house is clearly wired with UK style plugs and light bulb sockets, but we do not have electricity. We have 1 semi-permanent light connected to a battery and a solar panel that hangs on its wire by a staple right next to the permanent fixture. This light has enough power to run for about 3-4 hours a night, if the day was sunny enough to fully charge the battery. The family had 2 portable solar lights. When the Peace Corps gave us each another light, we nearly doubled the lighting capacity in the house. All of the lights are fairly efficient LEDs. I cannot imagine how limited their life was 20 years ago before either solar or LEDs were available.
When you first stroll through the countryside, you will notice many “abandoned” looking houses. These houses might just be a foundation, maybe standing exposed brick walls overgrown with weeds, perhaps even finished plaster walls or part of a tin roof. But strangely, they all look very new. They are in fact not abandoned at all. Financing is very difficult and expensive here, even for middle class in Tanzania. Our baba mentioned he could only get a loan with +20% interest that needed to be paid back in 5 or 6 years. He has a steady job that can support a family. He said it was near impossible for anyone working less than 3 years to get a loan of any type. So instead of financing, they invests into their own homes polepole (bit by bit, or slowly). They save for 2-3 years, then buy a foundation. Another 2-3 years might get you the walls, etc. The extreme limited access to credit greatly cripples the economy here, but I will save other aspects for later post.
Until next time, Kwa heri!
Jason