These white people not know to cut the pumpkin

Today started off like every day in Tanzania, where we woke up feeling a bit ill, and not wanting to go too far from the choo (toilet). Although not that unusual, it was especially bad because Regina, one of my research assistants, had invited us to her house to meet her parents and see their farm. We both decided that we weren’t feeling up to it, and would tell her we couldn’t go. She doesn’t have a phone, so we had to wait until she came to our house to pick us up. When she got here, she was wearing a new dress and new shoes. She was so excited we didn’t have the heart to bail on her, so we grabbed some TP and the camera and headed on our way.

Regina had told us her house was about a half an hour walk from Haydom, so we thought this would be a fun little morning trip. When we started on our way, she looked at my watch, and seeing that it was 11:15, said that we would be there by noon. Ryan and I both sighed, not wanting to walk too far with questionable bowels, but set off on our hike. We walked ….and walked….and walked….past the secondary school that we drove to for the study, past one of the villages we interviewed in to get a comparison to Haydom, past 2 rivers, and finally arrived at her parents house at 12:45.

When we got there, her mother, father and countless siblings (she is the second oldest of 12, her youngest brother is 5 months old, 2 months younger than Regina’s own baby) greeted us with open arms. They had prepared a pumpkin, one of the staple foods in the area, and wanted to teach us how to cook pumpkin ugali (kind of like polenta). Ryan and I have decided that Tanzanians generally think we are semi-retarded. Their logic goes that since we don’t know how to cook ugali, the most basic and easy food here, that we must not know how to cook anything else either. Regina started the lesson by showing us how to cut up the pumpkin into chunks. When I offered to help her, she gave me a look that said, “I’m not sure you can manage this without major injury” and handed me a knife. I’ll admit I wasn’t that adept at squatting and cutting up a hard pumpkin placed on a tarp on the ground. In my defense, the knife she handed me was truly the world’s dullest knife, where you couldn’t really tell which side of it was the sharpened one. The family that we live with lets the local herd of toddlers play with sharper knives (more on that later). Everyone thought it was hilarious to watch the mzungu mangle the pumpkin, prompting her mother to observe, “These white people not know to cut the pumpkin! Hahaha!”. Gee, thanks.

While the pumpkin was cooking, Regina’s father took us on a tour of the farm. We saw where the goats sleep (in the room adjacent to where the people sleep), the cow pen (a circle of acacia limbs), and how to feed chickens (yell “kuku kuku kuku” and toss corn at them). Regina said that they are able to grow all the food her family needs as well as all the feed for the animals, and never have to buy anything. Albeit, they only eat maize, eggs, beans, greens and milk most of the time.

After the pumpkin cooked and mixed with maize flour and a dash of oil it was ready to eat. Basically, you roll a ball of ugali dough, then dip it in whatever sauce comes with it. Today it was melted animal fat. Ryan and I tried one dip, both gagged a little, and then stuck to the plain ugali. As far as ugali goes, pumpkin ugali is pretty good – meaning that we wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole in the states, but after walking for an hour and a half on an empty stomach it was edible, which is more than can be said for regular ugali. They also gave us fresh milk for lunch. This sounds wonderful and quaint, but if you’ve never tried fresh milk, there’s a reason we don’t drink it in the states. It’s sour, and has chucks on curdled fat floating on top. Unfortunately, a storm was rolling in, and we had an hour and a half walk ahead of us. As we were left, Regina’s parents gave us some fresh eggs and told us “karibu tena” (welcome again!). We hurried back as quickly as possible to Haydom, and straight to Samjo, our favorite restaurant for some meat and rice, and to get the taste of curdled milk out of our mouths.
-Betsy