Mama Gladness is unequivocally the most fascinating person we’ve met in Africa. When we were introduced to “Mama” as she’s affectionately known, we readily assumed she was an important figure in this volunteer program. It really has taken us four weeks to get a deep appreciation for just exactly who Mama Gladness is.
Mama’s home says a lot about her. The front gate is unassuming, although the entry is inviting with neatly trimmed hedges that line the trail. The gate is made from banana wood and coconut thatch. The doors are bound together with a small linked chain, which seems only cursory. Just the other day, for instance, a cute little two-year old girl let us in after we banged on the iron pot that serves as the doorbell.
Inside the gate, Mama has a manicured garden. There’s a type of thatch parapet near the gate. It serves as a lookout spot for the night watchman, although you’d never guess that it was for security purposes. There are fruit trees in a nice neat row, trimmed grass, and the low hedge that’s planted to read “Karibu” as you walk into the courtyard. The first thing you notice in the courtyard is the gray-brick skeleton of a new building. At first glance it appears to be a ruin of some sort because it has no roof or windows. But by the time you walk past it, you’ve noticed that it is very much in the process of being built.
As we’ve learned in recent days, Mama has spent her whole life building things. She started with very little around her and slowly built a family and a business. Although her husband remains a mystery to us, we do know that she raised Lema and Siza on her own. When the children were young, Mama recognized a new niche in the tourism industry and began an NGO. She began by hosting cultural tours and inviting travelers to come, stay, and get involved in the local community. Mama named her NGO the “Green Foundation,” and speaks of it with great pride. “I had the idea, I got the lawyers, I wrote the constitution,” she explained to us. “I did this.”
The Green Foundation now supports volunteers who come to work in and around Tengeru and Arusha. Volunteers come from all over the world to help in the schools, at the hospitals, with the HIV/AIDS program, or in the coffee plantation. The amazing thing is that Mama Gladness literally hosts every volunteer like they are her personal guests. In addition to her home and the two volunteer houses in Tengeru, Mama also owns more than 70 acres of farmland which she uses to support the foundation and her family. She has also established herself in an important role as a regionally elected representative to the national board of energy and biofuels. She has quite a resume.
When we first met Mama Gladness, all we knew was that she was Lema’s mother and she cooked the meals for the mzungus at the volunteer house. We had no idea about her history of accomplishments. It really has taken us four weeks to pull these achievements out of her. The more we’ve learned, however, the more we’ve discovered that the real essence of Mama Gladness is her compassion and humility, and her biggest achievement is her family.
Last week we sat with Mama and told stories over steaming bowls of vanilla porridge. We learned a little more about her faith and her family. Emily had read in the news that some African cultures made it customary to take in orphans off the street. She asked Mama if it was common in Tengeru. Mama smiled and told us that people think she’s ‘crazy’ because welcoming orphans confuses inheritance rights to land and property, etc. But Mama told us, “I read this in the Bible.” She went on to describe how the Bible drives her philosophy of giving. For example, she explained that every time she takes a new cow she donates the first of its offspring to the church or a needy family. She also donates 10 bushels of maize to charities after every harvest. We never would have learned this from Mama if we hadn’t asked her directly, and we were glad we did.
Mama’s generosity humbled the two of us very quickly. Before coming to Mama’s on that particular day we went with Siza to the Tengeru market to buy some fruit. We gave Siza the equivalent of $1, and asked him to buy as many oranges as he could. Both of us expected him to get only 3 oranges, maybe 4 at the most. In just a few minutes, though, Siza had bagged 10 oranges, 2 avocados, and 3 cucumbers! We both really wanted to keep a few oranges for ourselves, but were happy to give the rest of the fruit to Mama. We even thought it was a nice gift. After Mama’s explanation of her devout selflessness, however, the two of us looked sheepishly down at the bag with the 7 oranges we’d carefully stashed away for ourselves. After we finished our porridge, we played silly games with Mama’s orphans, Mondo, Naemma, and Massioy under the coconut thatch.
To Volunteer or Not To Volunteer
At the end of last week, 14 girls from a community college in Seattle arrived to be the newest volunteers in Tengeru. Lema got them situated in Mama’s other volunteer house, in another section of the banana grove. On Sunday night, Lema organized a dinner party to bring the two volunteer groups together. Dinner didn’t last long, but the party carried on to a circle of chairs around a bonfire in the yard.
After brief introductions, Lema began an open discussion about “what it means to volunteer.” Lema’s local rafikis (friends) were curious why westerners, mostly Europeans and Americans, decide to come all the way to this part of the world to “volunteer.” According to Lema’s friends, “when there is public work that needs to be done, the locals agree when and how to do the project, and then do it.” Essentially volunteering stems from a necessity that pulls them away from other important chores. It is peculiar to them that mzungus “don’t have anything better to do” than come all the way from their country to “help.”
The new group of volunteers described what volunteering meant to them, and we quickly got the impression that for them that their definition was dripping with altruism. We feel that the reality is, however, that you cannot escape at least some egocentric reason for “volunteering” in Africa. Rob contributed to the discussion that “people are people everywhere and if volunteering is as altruistic as we want it to be, then we all should have stayed home, donated the money we spent on traveling, and helped the people down the street from where we live. It’s true we came to Africa to give of ourselves. But we also came all this way to step outside our comfort zone, to learn things we couldn’t learn down the street, and to see and do things we couldn’t do elsewhere. That, to us, is volunteering.”
Emily more eloquently unraveled the misconception about volunteering. She described a fundamental difference in the sense of community between Tanzanian and “mzungu” cultures. Tanzania’s sense of family, regardless of whether it is inherent or imposed, makes ‘volunteering’ a common part of everyday life. It’s so common, in fact, that it has essentially become transparent. We mzungus on the other hand, tend to absorb ourselves in our own business and our own families, usually at the expense of the larger community. Thus “volunteering” becomes something separate, something different, or something scheduled.
Jumapili
We scheduled to help out Memu in the afternoon on Sunday, or “Jumapili.” Memu is Mama Gladness’s youngest sister. Memu invited us to see her home last week. She lives in a tiny brick building and her front steps are four feet away from the cow pen where she keeps her three heifers. We were surprised that when she opened the door to her house that the room inside was literally piled to the ceiling with bushel bags of unprocessed corn! “Whoooaa” we said, and Memu laughed. In Memu’s limited English she described the harvesting process that takes place after all the shucking, like what we did last Tuesday. She said it was her job to clean it all. Although we had no idea what that meant, we volunteered to help her out and scheduled it for Sunday afternoon.
Before school dismissed for the weekend last Friday, our 6th grade teacher, Mama Foya, invited the two of us to her house for Sunday lunch. Mama Foya is one of our favorite people in Tengeru, so it was easy to accept the invitation. On Sunday we met her at Mavinuni School and followed her on a short walk down the hill to her house. We hopped over a swollen irrigation ditch and walked through her front gate into her yard. A sweet combination of spices, maybe cloves, snuck out of the house. We were both hungry.
Mama Foya introduced us to her husband and her four young children and we sat just inside the front door where her living room doubled as the formal dining area. Foya brought in pot after pot of steaming food, and set them in front of us on the rosewood coffee table. She prepared steamed rice, vegetables, chapatti, avocado, banana, and best of all, chunks of beef in a thick sauce, evidently the source of that delicious smell. Rob was particularly thrilled to see the beef, which was only the second time he’d had meat since coming to Africa.
Mama Foya’s husband teaches math and science at the local secondary school. During lunch our conversation centered on the challenges of the Tanzanian education system, particularly those he faces in his classroom. It was very interesting to hear his opinions. It was evident, however, that perhaps the greatest challenge was that, as in all secondary schools in the country, he was required to teach every lesson in English. Though his English skills were just strong enough to host a lunch party, it must be extraordinarily difficult for him to explain complex concepts to students who aren’t even as proficient in English as he is. He confessed that teaching math was easiest.
For dessert we had oranges and tall glass bottles of Coke. There was a small TV in the corner of the room with a fuzzy channel coming through the rabbit-ear antennas. Rob noticed a commercial reference the Olympics and asked Foya if she’d heard anything about the games. She changed the channel to the closing ceremonies, which was coincidentally taking place live in Beijing. Our attention was glued to the screen.
If you didn’t get a chance to see the closing ceremonies, it was an elaborate show of thousands of Chinese people, dressed in glowing costumes, twirling and dancing to choreographed music. It would’ve made for a great Pink Floyd music video. Mama Foya and her whole family were completely bewildered by the Chinese dancers. So were we, quite frankly. Foya’s children were even giggling and laughing when the cameras zoomed in close on the silly costumes. It was poignant that we could bridge our dramatic cultural differences to have wonderful lunch with a Tanzanian family, and at the same time we were all still a little weirded-out by the Chinese.
On our way home from Mama Foya’s, we stopped by Memu’s house like we had planned. We cleaned two bushels of corn which took about an hour. It might have taken less time if we didn’t have to fend off the pesky chickens. We found that cleaning corn by hand is rather labor intensive, and even harder if you’re allergic to the dust like Rob is. We poured each bag out onto a large sieve and pushed through the kernels to get rid of the chaff and bits of cob. Memu was very grateful.
Kujamba Juice
Last week we were exposed to every aspect of harvesting “mahindi,” or corn. We realized, though, that we’d done just about everything there is to do to the local corn, except eat it.
Every few hundred meters on the bigger roads around here, there’s inevitably an old woman sitting in a chair by the side of the road. She leans over a small stove and slowly cooks ears of corn, and sells them for 150 shillings ($.12). There’s one particular woman who sits under a ratty umbrella by the side of the road on the way from Mama Gladness’s house and the tree nursery. After working with Siza at the nursery one afternoon we stopped by to try her corn.
The corn was surprisingly delicious. It was not fully “popped,” and it was more carefully cooked than grilled corn. Each kernel expands just a little and the outside is barely charred. The result is a tasty cob of chewy popcorn kernels. We were instantly hooked. For the rest of the week we made it a point to stop by “Mama Mahindi,” as we nicknamed her, for a treat on the way home from the nursery.
Unfortunately, we discovered later that a negative side-effect of Mama Mahindi’s smoked corn is that it makes Rob a little . . . farty.
Thursday was our last day of teaching at Mavinuni School. All the teachers gathered in the teachers’ room for the usual mid-morning break for chai. Emily was talking with Mama Foya, Martha, Asienga, and some others while another woman was handing out tea and biscuits. Emily was describing all the different types of foods we’ve eaten in Africa. Rob chimed in with the Swahili word for “fart,” which Siza had conveniently taught him the day before. “Yeah,” Rob said with hand and arm signals, “Mahindi makes me kujamba!”
The reaction from all of the teachers was explosive! Everyone burst into laughter and Mama Foya reared back wildly and spilled her chai all over a stack of notebooks! The teachers laughed almost to the point of tears, pointing and staring at Rob and his “kujambas.” It’s a good thing that farts are funny pretty much everywhere.
That little episode carried the day. Around lunchtime the teachers pulled some chairs outside and sat in a circle to soak up the sunshine and talk. During a discussion of how to snap fingers the Tanzanian way, everyone was eager to show their skills to Emily. The best performance by far came from Asienga whose snap was clearly the loudest. Mama Foya leaned over to Emily and said, “It’s because she eats cement!” Immediately, Emily pointed at Asienga and yelled “CEMENT FINGERS!” and the name stuck. Then Emily tried her hand at snapping and she quickly earned the less-than-stellar nickname “Cotton Fingers.”
Thursday was the best day of school for the two of us. We returned the final exams to the 6th grade, and most all the students passed. During the chai-break we had the most fun laughing at Rob, and that continued on to the lunch break outside. The conversations in that circle of chairs ranged from snapping fingers, to having babies, to the inequality of educational standards. Rob even tried to pantomime an explanation of the war in Iraq to the headmaster, which may or may not have come across clearly. It was an all-around great afternoon.
Ndafu
After school on Thursday, we were hoping to go back to Lake Duluti with Siza and then start packing our bags. During lunch we overheard the other volunteers talking about a dinner party at Mama Gladness’s house, which was news to us. On our way to the nursery, we decided to stop by Mama’s to see what her plans were.
We never made it to the nursery. Siza was already at Mama’s, busily moving chairs and tables into position in the courtyard. Mama was cooking in the barn and everyone was preparing one thing or another. Mama was surprised to see us and laughed when she gave us the standard barrage of hugs and kisses. “The important people do not come early!” she exclaimed. “The queen and king of the party do not work!”
Siza invited us to the backside of the barn where we arrived just in time to see two men working on a freshly slaughtered goat, hanging from a tree. “Habari!” Siza yelled, and one of his Maasai friends turned and smiled as he pulled the goat’s innards out of the carcass in one sinewy bag. “It is a gift for you!” Siza told us, referring to the goat and not the bag of innards, thankfully. We were astounded.
The rest of the afternoon went to preparing the goat party. The two of us helped set-up for about an hour before going back to the volunteer house to get out of our work clothes. Mama invited all the new volunteers and her neighbors and family from around the village to share in the celebration. They made an incredible feast with rice, spinach, chapatti, fried bananas, soup, and of course the delicious goat.
Siza and Amos brought the goat out on a small table and danced with it in front of everybody in the “traditional way.” Mama and the others clapped and chanted a traditional song. They set the goat in the center of the main table and then said a few words. Amos went on to describe how the roasted goat or “Ndafu” got its Swahili name. It came from mzungu missionaries who tasted the meat and frequently said, “Wonderful,” which to Swahili ears sounded like “One – ndafu.” The name stuck, and so did the wonderfulness.
The goat party was an incredible honor for the two of us. It was an amazing gesture from amazing people. We were both surprised that after only four short weeks we could feel as though we’ve been accepted as members of their family. It was yet another example of Mama Gladness’s boundless generosity. For us, the party felt like a second wedding and is something we will remember always.
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