Two weeks!

Two weeks are gone and I’m still having trouble describing what exactly is going on at the moment, but here I’m gonna try my best:

Everyday life is starting and I myself am starting to find a rota. Everyday life for me seems pretty amazing right now as it mainly consists of hanging out in a youth center with either kids of my age or below and playing football in the afternoon. At 10 a.m. I start my day by giving a „keyboardi“ lesson to one of the kids in the center and it’s been going great so far as the pupil is very enthusiastic and keeps practicing for hours even after practice. (If only I had done that for the Leaving Certificate, jokes.) This hour of teaching follows two times one hour of English lessons which haven’t been working out as well as the keyboard lessons, as I haven’t figured out how to teach a language to somebody whose language I don’t know, but we’re slowly getting there.

This goes like that till about 3. pm. and follows Football. Yes, everyday. From half past four till half past seven I’m heading down to the, what you wouldn’t call a football ground in Germany, and play with about 25 other people from the age of around 12-25 which is amazing.

(Teachers vs. Students match; Coach of the team lying on the floor, My co-workers Oliver (6. from right top) and Aisha (4. from right top) as well as my flat mate Leonie (4. from left top))

The first day I was presented as „Coach Corny“ (Everybody laughed when this was said, because corny are also the people called who sell Ice-Cream on the street), which was Ironic as I’d say 90% of the people playing there could teach me something everyday for the next year. After that it goes home. That is how it is going to go on for the next year, but even though it might sound like it might get boring, it doesn’t:

One reason why that isn’t the case is for example because of the people around me. At my workplace there is always a very cheerful atmosphere, like for example when I brought my camera for the first time. One example of what kind of pictures ended up on my camera is here:

This is posed

Another reason is the atmosphere on the street. In Daressalam you wouldn’t be able to just walk around the streets minding your own business. To understand that you have to keep in mind that a white person walking around the small streets around where I live, is as rare as the Sub-Warden smiling (For the Irish) or seeing my father on the Reeperbahn (For the Germans). This leads to a lot of people either looking at you or most of them greeting you as well with „Mampo“, „Vipi“, „Hujambo“, „Habari Yako“ or another one of the other millions of different Greetings in Swahili. In Germany you’d just keep walking but here you should really greet back, as it’d be very impolite to not do so. Also don’t forget that people that you should have respect to, generally older people, have to be greeted differently, and so on… This makes life different from day to day as you meet more and more people, but it also has a down side as you wouldn’t be able to just zone out. What annoys me the most is probably the casual „Mzungu“ from the side, which blankly means „White guy“. This is commonly used by people just yelling after you „Mzungu, Mzungu“, trying to get your attention. Other noticeable things:

• Commonly used vehicle of transportation is the „Daladala“, a bus with about 10 seats, filled with 30 people and sometimes loud Tanzanian Hip-Hop music playing. Great fun. (Actually!)
• Food consists of generally one of the three meals: Rice with beans, Ugali with beans (Google it), or Chipsi (Pretty much french fries, often eaten as an omelette with french fries in it)
• It’s winter and its 29°C (84°F)
• Going out is expensive, one beer costs 2000 Tanzanian Shilling, which is one Euro. That buys you a whole meal.
• Tanzanians can’t really say „L“, this leads to things like Frashcard, to rearn and so on…

Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it and feel free to leave some feedback 🙂

Co-worker Aisha (middle) and predecessor Paula (right)

The KCC Kindergarten, project of my flatmate, which we visited and did a beach excursion with.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes, especially for this lovely cake by Leonie 🙂