Hey everyone!
Last Sunday Josie (the wonderful lady I live with) and I went
to visit Baba Grace who is one of the guards for our compound. He has just had
his 8th child and we were very excited to visit. We didn’t know
exactly where he lived except it was near the church. I had never been to that
church so was relying on Josie! It was quite fun going along and not actually
knowing exactly where we were going. We had a lovely visit just sitting in
their living room and cuddling this adorable tiny baby! I’ve held a fair few
babies since coming here but it never loses its excitement and the wonder that surrounds a new life coming into the world.
The only hard thing about the visit was making conversation!
I asked the standard questions about the family, children’s names and ages etc
and then worried what else we would talk about! I kept thinking of things to
say but then the trouble was I didn’t know it in Swahili! I ended up just
asking random questions and filling the silence...even managed to make a few
jokes and get some laughs!
Joise and I were then asked my Baba Esther to visit his
house after church yesterday. Josie knows him from when she was out here before
and I buy lettuce from him! He is such a lovely guy and was so excited that we
would go to his house! I was too until I realised it meant getting to the
cathedral for 8 am! Leaving the house at just gone 7 on a Sunday morning is
just wrong! We had to allow so much time because we got a dalla dalla and
sometimes you can spend a lot of time stationary or going backwards, especially
on a Sunday when it is harder to get customers. It was just typical that today the dalla dalla
was quite fast and we were 20 minutes early! The choirs were just fantastic and one in particular sent shivers down me.
Usually they use speakers and it is ridiculously loud but one group of school
boys started singing softly as they went up the front and it was beautiful. It
was so natural and sounded absolutely incredible. After the service we hopped
on another dalla dalla and then had a bit of a walk in the midday heat to Baba
Esther’s house. When we arrived his wife had prepared chai and there was a pot
of potatoes waiting for us. It’s always a bit of a worry what we will end up
eating when visiting someone so i was quite happy to see just plain potatoes
and not some unidentifiable meat! Although they do like to keep refilling your
plate here and I lost count of how many potatoes I got through! They were ok to
start with but after a while i just wanted some ketchup or something to dip
them in! We had the standard conversation about their children and a few other
things and then looked through a huge pile of photos that they wanted to show
us! Baba Esther walked us back to the road and waited until we were on a dalla
dalla. On the walk to the road we passed a rather large and nice looking house
in comparison to the ones around it. I made a comment about it being nice and
Baba Esther said 'yes it is bigger and does look nicer than mine but in my house
we do have LOVE and LAUGHTER and HAPPINESS. A big nice house without love,
laughter and happiness is not a good house.' It was incredible to hear him say
this. He is blessed to know and appreciate the value of family and happiness. Baba
Esther and his whole family were so happy to have us in their home and I was so
glad that my worrying about what we would eat, how long we would be there and
what we would talk about hadn’t stopped me from having a really lovely time. It made me think that in the UK we can
sometimes put off having people around as we worry what they will think of our
house or our cooking or we worry that we will be stuck for conversation. I’m
not saying we should serve our guests a plate full of potatoes and sit in
silence but maybe the Tanzanians can teach us a thing or two.
It is less than a month now until my return to the UK. Time
is flying by!
No comments:
Post a Comment