Little News Little Culture (11/12/2005)

First I should address the cultural issue of touching. It has been pounded into us that Tanzanians view men and women relationships differently. We have been told that the Tanzanians don't really believe can be just friends. Therefore between men and women it is not culturally acceptable to hug in public, holding hands is viewed as way of showing off a relationship and in general touching should be avoided. The only two exceptions I know of are 1) handshakes when greeting 2) dancing/party. Because of this training there is approximately zero physical contact between guys and girls, however it was not until I was being tapped that I really noticed this void. As I mentioned above dances/parties are one of the few exceptions to the rules and during Eide my host sister took me to party/dance. A lot of the music is American but some of it is Bongo Flava. Bongo flava is the Tanzanian music that sounds kind of like a reggae, it is pretty good and during these songs people often circle up and do a dance that is similar to the train dance. A really popular song is African Queen. I got out of my shell and had a great time dancing. The next day we played a game of ultimate frisbee. It was a lot of fun to chase the disc around but I made the mistake of diving for a couple of disks. Not only was I scraped up but my clothes were significantly harder to wash. Which brings my to my next point that now that I am washing my clothes by hand I am much more conscientious about not getting my clothes dirty. This week we learned about NGO's and about how to assess the community's needs before selecting a secondary project. We learned the importance of getting the community to drive the project. Then today we had a competency exam. It was not a surprise to find that I was not good at reporting a crime in Kiswahili but it was rather embarrassing to find I had no clue what was being asked. The high point was being able to bargain in Kiswahili and getting my change back. Baadaye, Thomas