Apr 11, 03:00 PM
Life in Mlalo
Arrived by bus last evening in Dar es Salaam, and the sprawling city feels like it must be more than an eight hour ride from little Mlalo, in the Usambara mountains, where we’ve spent the last week. We’ve been out of Internet contact for that time, and feeling, as much as is possible in a such a short stay and for people from such a different world, like part of the community. It was really an amazing experience that touched us profoundly.
Mlalo village spreads up from the valley of the Umba River, and it’s in this valley that the few small shops are concentrated to create what you might call the downtown area. There are “butcheries,” hair “saloons,” (sic.), a few small hotels with food to sell and rooms to rent, stationery sellers, and a few bars. Nearly all are squat shacks made of plywood and sheet metal; they’re painted white or in bright colors. Wednesdays and Saturdays are market days, which means fruits and vegetables spread on old grain bags on the ground, sold by women, and some men, packed tightly together and holding umbrellas to shield against the rain or sun. We bought ten big pears for 100 shillings, less than a dime. Other goods included dried fish and mounds of used American clothing.
The local language, spoken in addition to Kiswahili, is Sambara, and one of the most common words you hear while walking along is “emgoesh.” (I’ve no idea if that’s how it’s really spelled, and Google is failing me, but that’s what it sounds like.) We were told that it’s the word for, “man,” and that it’s considered respectful to repeat it before or after nearly every phrase in the course of a short greeting between men. “Man, hello! How are you, man? Good, man. ‘bye, man.”
The town is about half Lutheran, the rest being mostly Muslim, with Muslim men often being distinguishable by their fez hats. Relations between the two faiths appear to be quite good, and the “emgoesh” greetings, along with commerce, flow freely across the religious divide.
The road that runs through the mountains from the larger town of Lushoto is not paved for most of the way, but is passable except during or immediately after heavy rain. All the other roads, if you can call them that, have been in no way constructed, but simply formed by repeated use. The thin African topsoil is in places worn entirely away to reveal the ancient granite heart of the continent, and, after a rain, that makes for impossibly slippery motoring, even with four-wheel drive.
This matters little to most of Mlalo’s inhabitants; within the village, they walk everywhere they need to go. Some live near the tops of the 2,000 meter peaks, making for about an hour’s walk to the village center near the river, even if one walks quickly, as people in Mlalo, used to the mountainous terrain, tend to do. Heads, of course, are used for carrying nearly everything, and often a large basket acts as a shelf for an umbrella lying horizontally across the top in case of rain. One day during a heavy rain, we also saw several people holding banana leaves over their heads as they walked along through the mud, holding their flip-flop sandals in their free hands.
The vegetation is everywhere a thick and dazzling green, though we were told that this was not the case when the rains failed to come last September and October. There are tall trees which must be very old, and surrounding each house there are small fields of banana trees, beans, corn, and other vegetables. These fields are about the same size as a large suburban garden in America, maybe 1,500 square feet total, and for many they are the only source of income.
The houses themselves average maybe ten feet by twenty feet and are constructed of red mud bricks baked in wood fire. Some of them have been coated with a white material (I’m guessing it’s some kind of plaster); others are left with the brick exposed. Chickens run everywhere, in and out of houses and across unfenced and often unmarked property lines into the neighbors’ yards. Most families have a few cows, kept in small pens directly next to or adjoining the house. We were told that some buildings housed pigs, but we never actually saw any of these animals except on our plates.
The cows mooed loudly and roosters crowed at dawn and throughout the day, but the most common sound was of children laughing, playing, and calling out to us as we walked by to climb the awesome Seguruma peak, or visit the local secondary school, or the dispensary (clinic), or one of the parishes of the Lutheran church that was our host for the week.
“Karibu, Mzungu!” the children would call. This translates as, “Welcome, white person!”
I couldn’t decide how to feel about the humble homes in which these children were growing up. Dirt floors, only recently getting electricity, having to boil one’s drinking water over a fire, sometimes (I think) directly in the poorly ventilated house—these are certainly signs of poverty. But the climate in the mountains is so agreeable, and mosquitoes and other bugs so rare, that I’m not sure that such accommodations are terribly unhealthy. (In other parts of Tanzania and Africa, where housing is similar or worse, I suspect the same could not be said.)
My confusion over how to feel about the housing of Mlalo was furthered by the fact that the people lived with such dignity; Jerri and I agreed that they were possibly the most sincere, kind, and friendly people we’d ever met. Despite what we saw of their housing and though we knew that the average income was probably not much more than a dollar per day, it was not correct to think of them as “poor people.”
In our dusty travelers’ togs, Jerri and I, even after we’d had time to get cleaned up, never looked as neat as the members of Mlalo Lutheran Parish. To meet us, hear greetings from my Dad’s church in Pennsylvania (a partner church to theirs), and ask questions about life in America, the men wore clean and pressed dress pants and shirts while the women, primarily, wore skirts and tops of brightly colored wraps called khangas. When Jerri apologized for our casual attire, the people of a small, remote sub-village called Kugutana immediately brought for her two beautiful red khangas to put on over her clothes.
In these and other ways—such as the beautiful songs of the four different church choirs, and the seriousness with which they practiced; or the endless hospitality and warmth shown to us; or the song about eating a little mango and being thus forced into an involuntary dance of joy that the kindergarten students sang for us—there was an undeniable richness of spirit.
And yet there were aspects of their lives with which the people of Mlalo were deeply unsatisfied and that they were working to change. The government does not provide education after primary school, for example, and school fees are beyond the means of most of the villagers of Mlalo. The number of smart, ambitious young people we met who would not have access to even a high school education was very upsetting.
Healthcare is also a problem in Mlalo, as a single “dispensary,” I guess we would call it a clinic in America, must provide healthcare for people for 20 kilometers around. One doctor, one nurse, a pharmacy store staff person, and a lab tech who has sterilized his instruments in water boiled over a kerosene stove for the last three years before electricity is wired up some time in the next month—this crew of four sees 40-50 patients a day for whatever ails them. Serious cases are sent to a district hospital much farther away.
The dispensary, like most effective social services in the area, the only secondary school, and, when it opens next September, the only university in the mountains, is run by the Lutheran church. As Rev. Msafiri Mbilu, our wonderful host, told us, and as we’ve heard from people around Tanzania and Kenya, the government doesn’t do much with the tax money it collects except to enrich 100 or so people in positions of power. We were very happy to contribute $500 from my Dad’s church to help with construction of a second building that will expand the capacity of the dispensary. The building was about half done, built so far with money donated by Mlalo’s people but facing a delay after last year’s drought reduced their capacity to give, and this money should make a big difference.
We also made a contribution of our own, and I’m going to be putting together a Web site for the Mlalo Lutheran parish to help them raise money for their social service work—and because there has to be a picture on the Internet of Mr. Shekalowa, the 94-year old choir director who squealed with delight when we shook his hand and when I showed him his picture in the digital display on the back of our camera.
Delightful to hear news from Mlalo. I spent a year teaching there in 1995 at Mlalo Day Secondary (Lwandai isn’t the only secondary school!). I’m pleased to hear that electricity is arriving at last…
— Rob Gooch Feb 6, 09:43 PM #
Thanks Mark for writting about Mlalo. I happened to be working at Lwandai secondary school when you visited Mlalo. The sad news is that Mr Shekolowa 94 passed away a few months after you left Mlalo.
I am coordinating a 3 week seminar with about 6 american volunteer teachers from america one of them from Penn
Bye
— JOHN KAVISHE Jun 25, 10:09 PM #