A Day in the Life

So, I am pretty far into my experience here in Morogoro and I thought I would share what my typical day looked like for all you people back home (who have probably started scraping the frost from your windows in the morning on your way to school and work).

I usually wake up at 5:30-6:00 to sounds of the local roosters and the bright sun that shines through my window. I start every day by greeting Dada Diana as she feeds the ducks, prepares our tea (homemade black tea with freshly picked/crushed lemon grass) and washes the dust from the entire house. I like to take my time in the morning, sometimes taking my tea (and my malaria pill) outside to enjoy the morning sun and watch the clouds dissipate from the peaks of the mountains. I “enjoy” the standard breakfast of a freshly baked bun and Blue Band (it’s a margarine like spread, a couple ingredients away from plastic, subtitled “medium fat spread” on the container) with my second cup of tea and then get ready to head to work.

Sometimes when we are really lucky, instead of bread and butter, we get fresh fruit (papaya, finessi (jackfruit) and banana). To the left you will see our homemade tea with lemongrass and my anti-malarial.

Julie and Duncan rise a little later and sometimes I tend to walk to work alone, enjoying my time to enjoy the sights along the way. I find people are a lot more friendly if I walk by myself, as they are a lot less shy to say “Mambo?” or “Habari za asibuhi?” to one lone white person than a group of three English speaking mzungus. I walk past the chickens in the brush of the forest with their chicks tossing fallen leaves aside to forage for food and sometimes meet the odd cow or goat along the way. I have my favourite duka (store) that I like to stop at for a “Maji Kili Kubwa” (big bottle of Kilimanjaro water) and sometimes a fresh and ripe “Chungwa” (orange). The store clerk usually sees me coming down the road and greets me from a distance as “Hey Mista Beni” (most Swahili words end in vowels and so people tend to add an a, e, or i to the end of my name, it’s charming). He tries his best to say the few words he knows in English and I use my limited Swahili to find out how his morning is going. From there it’s a short walk down the dusty red road to my office.

When I get to work I am greeted by our boisterous grounds keeper, Babu Boko (Grandpa Boko). After unlocking the gate with a great skeleton key, it is very necessary to walk through the three rooms and open all of our windows to let the little morning breeze carry away the stale hot air from the night. Depending on the programming for any given day, sometimes if we don’t have training or programming, this is when I will take my quiet time alone in the office with our shared internet stick and only fully working computer to answer emails from back home and update my blog. Julie and Duncan usually join me in the office shortly after and we start our work day.

YCI's office in Kilakala, Morogoro

Julie and I in our office probably the first week in TZ. Still new at things. Notice how short the door frames are. Now imagine how often I hit my head passing from one room to the next.

Unless we are hosting a training session or have meetings in town, we usually use the mornings as planning time, taking advantage of the lack of activity. From there we might have to run errands in town, which range from getting photocopies made, to buying water/snacks for training sessions, or connecting with local groups to discuss our projects. A trip to town is a 20 minute daladala ride, 300tsh each way and if you are planning to head into town you make sure you are able to run a bunch of errands because it is a journey to get to town, get around town, and return back to the office.

Duncan and I hard at work planning, in our quaint office built for three.

The daladala "stand" downtown Morogoro Town.

 We try to go home for lunch as much as we can but with our projects we usually only make it home twice a week. When we don’t go home for lunch, we usually go for “Wali na maharage na mboga” (rice, beans, and greens), my favourite. There is small house around the corner from our office called the Lome Tea Room. The girls there really know how to cook beans and rice and they are super friendly to us when we need to eat (usually in a hurry).

A couple days a week we travel to Chamwino to facilitate the WASH clubs with the three primary schools and our peer educators. This means we are finished in the office by 12:30pm, we go and grab a bite to eat and start our journey to Chamwino. Chamwino is two daladalas away from where we work and the daladalas that drive out to Chamwino are in worse condition than those we regularly take to and from town. If we are taking a lot of supplies to WASH clubs we can grab a cab; let the bartering begin. Taxis here do not run meters and you have to agree on a fare before you start driving. Automatically, most taxi drivers see us and set the fare extremely, outrageously high. I fire back an amount in Swahili and instantly their facial expression changes to “oh, maybe I can’t take advantage of these mzungus.” We argue and barter until a fair fare is settled, then we head out to the “peri-urban” community of Chamwino.

Julie, Joynec, Me and Frankie in the back of a taxi on our way back from Chamwino.

When we don’t have WASH clubs, we facilitate training sessions at our office or hold group meetings for both our girls’ club and drama group. Programming usually occurs in the afternoon/evening; closing our office at around 5:30-6:00pm. Our walk home usually includes conversation reflecting on the day’s activities and admiration and awe over the view of the mountains. For some reason, they never get old. On the walk to work, we walk away from the view but the walk home, as the sun sets is stunning and marvelous. 

This is Christian, one of the neighbourhood children from around our office. They often sneak in our gates and try to see what the mzungus are doing. Christian likes to play in our dirt pile and he showed up with this John Deere shirt the other day. Too cute.

Julie and Duncan on our walk home from work.

We call out “Hodi” from the other side of our gate or we call dada to come and let us in. As we walk to the house from the gate we try our best to converse with dada as she escorts us back up to the house, greeting my duck friends along the way (we have 9 now and yes I have named them all). By this time Mama is home from work and Nasreen is home from school. After greeting everyone and debriefing on our day, we all head off for some needed quiet time, which always includes a shower (cold but needed). As you sweat during the day you skin becomes a magnetic for the red dust that floats in the air when a car or truck flies past you. We all come home looking like we have just received a Jersey Shore spray tan.

Once clean and refreshed, I visit with mama, read my book, play with the ducks, help Nasreen with her homework or try to check some e-mail before sitting down to dinner at about 7:30pm. Between Mama and Dada, we are spoiled when dinner comes. Although dinner is simply a starch, a main dish and a piece of fruit, they somehow blow our taste buds away with their different seasonings and spices. Nasreen usually picks me a fresh hot pepper for my dinner, and laughs when I tear up in the heat of the pepper. 

I forgot to wash my hands after cracking my "pilipili" (hot pepper) open at dinner and I touched my eye. Nasreen thought it was the best thing in the world but it was probably one of the most painful things I have experienced.

Julie and Duncan tease me that I am like an old man because after dinner I usually get ready for bed, crashing at around 9:00-9:30pm. Getting up early and not stopping all day is draining and I enjoy getting my 6-8 hours of well deserved/needed sleep. I usually journal/blog or think about home a little bit as I fall asleep to a few favourite playlists on my ipod (one in particular is very nostalgic and leaves me with a smile on my face as my eyes close for another day away from home).

Blogging before bed under my mosquito net of course.