A Day with Dada Maggie

After church on Sunday, Barbara and I went with Dada Maggie, a woman who works at Loyola, to greet her at her home. She is building a beautiful house outside the city. The house where she and her family stay now is right on the river that was flooded (and always floods) during the rainy season. To get to her new home we took a dala dala (city bus), a smaller dala (like a eighteen passenger van), and finally an actual minivan. Something I didn’t realize is that there are hills just outside Dar, and her house is literally on the hillside. From there you can see the entire spread of Dar and its extending neighborhoods. The view was spectacular. The house was not yet finished. It was only the exposed brick, roof and window irons. The dirt in the surrounding yard was deep red and looked especially saturated against all the green that were orange trees, cashew plants, and a collection of other foliage. The sun faded in and out as thick clouds passed. It was noticeably quiet. Since kids were out of school they had been frequently knocking on our gate to play, so the relative silence was relaxing.

We spread out a mat on the floor and started the day with tea and chapati. Dada Maggie’s daughter had come with us as well. While she started the charcoal for cooking lunch, Dada Maggie lit a small fire outside to heat water for our tea. She picked lemon grass that was growing in the yard to put in the tea. They had brought chapati from home.

For lunch, we learned to prepare rice, beef and spinach. We made the rice with coconut. Since this is Tanzania, we started with an actual coconut, burst is open with a hammer that was around, and poured the milk into glasses so we could drink it. Then, with a device that is a small seat with a jagged metal spatula on the end, we took turns scraping out the coconut. When all the coconut had been scraped out, we added water to the shavings, and worked our hands through it to saturate the water. The strained water is what we added to the rice to cook. I have found that everything tastes better here, not only because the ingredients are fresh, but also because you have to work a lot harder to get the consumable product. The chunks of beef we cooked in tomatoes and onions and the spinach also with onions and garlic. It was a feast and we truly enjoyed, just the four of us, in her house on the hillside.

Greeting Dada Maggie has been my favorite visit so far. That hill side has become my new ‘happy place.’ Last week we went back to school. On Friday we celebrated Gonzaga Day, which included delicious food, student performances, a dance party, and lots of photo ops with my students. I was happy to enjoy the day with them. Seeing them relaxed and just being kids. Also these past three weeks, Erin and Alyson’s parents were visiting. They were so wonderful; relaxed and flexible guests which made their time here truly enjoyable. Hopefully this week will be a return to some sort of normalcy. Although I was happy for a month of rest, I am looking forward to getting back into a routine.