When was the last time you...

Today I was in the Library with Lauren as she was cataloging some new donated books. I was looking through the books to see what had been donated and I came across a book titled: When was the last time you…? And subtitled: Playful inspirations and invitations. Out of curiosity I opened it and was immediately struck by the irony of this book being donated to a library here in Mtwara. I ended up reading out loud through most of the little book to Lauren, laughing most of the time. I realized after finishing that if I were back in the U.S I wouldn’t have given the book a second look, but reading it here and thinking about it in this cultural context I found it very funny. Therefore I thought that I could share some of the questions from this book and explain why many of them don’t make sense here in Mtwara.

To begin with, there were a whole category of questions that didn’t make sense because the things they refer to simply don’t exist here. For example:

When was the last time you… 

Played miniature golf?

Went to the circus?

Made a snow man?

Well, there is snow on top of Kilimanjaro.

Jumped over a fire hydrant?

Snickered in an elevator until you got everyone else laughing?

I am sure there is an elevator somewhere in Tanzania, but probably not for a few hundred miles from here.

Danced out to the curb while taking the garbage and recycling out?

There is no trash service here or curbs for that matter. Most people burn anything that they can’t use, so you often see random fires on the side of the road. Tanzanians are however very good at reusing things. For example, you see many toys that are made out of things that we would normally throw away, such as toy cars made with plastic bottle caps for wheels.

There were also many questions that simply don’t work culturally here, so I thought that sharing these may help to show some of the cultural differences here. One of my favorites was:

Took a long walk with your partner, strolling hand in hand?

This made me laugh quite hard. Couples here do not hold hands in public. In fact any form of public affection between a man and a woman is usually considered inappropriate here. On the other hand, friends of the same gender will often hold hands. That goes for women or men. It is quite funny coming from our cultural background to see two of the boys at school walking to class holding hands. This is even stranger when it happens to you. I experienced this firsthand the other day other day when I was coming back from class, and I met a man who was coming out of the office. He was there to fill out forms for his daughter to be enrolled in the school next year. I greeted him and shook his hand, but I quickly realized that this wasn’t going to be a short western style handshake, or the short Tanzania handshake (which is slightly different and would have to be shown not told). I had seen handshakes that turned into hand holding before, but this was my first personal experience, so I felt a little awkward. Anyway, after shaking his hand we just continued to hold hands for the rest of the few minutes of casual conversation. I had no feel for how long to hold his hand, so I actually let go twice only to have my hand grabbed again. I will have to work on my cultural awareness for hand holding time.

Another good question was:

Had a party where all the food was “finger food” including Jell-O

Disregarding the fact that Jell-O doesn’t exist here, this is still a funny question in a society that already traditionally eats everything with their hands.

Played with a kitten or a puppy?

This would be a strange question to ask in a culture that doesn’t really have the concept of pets. There are many animals here, but that is mostly livestock with some dogs and a few cats. However, dogs are there to be guard dogs and cats are there to catch mice. Some of the foreign aid workers here do keep pet cats, a fact that Tanzanians seem to find funny, especially since these cats are fed human food, since cat food isn't available. They seem to see feeding the cat as wasteful, and that a cat should be useful and catch its own food.

I thank whoever out there donated this book, although I don't think our students will have much use for it. For me it was a silly little example of all the things that we take for granted as being important to the world.  

-Justin