Business Skills

The Maasai are excellent at marketing. We drove through the town right outside the entrance to Lake Manyara National Park yesterday where the only passersby are tourists and the streets were covered with kangas (fabric pieces) printed with Obama’s face. Genius. What American drives through the streets of Tanzania, sees Obama’s face on a piece of traditional artwork and doesn’t stop to by it? Only one without a sense of humor. Also, on our way back we passed a go-kart track that used dune buggies on Maasai farmland. The only drivers were mzungus (white people) and I’m sure they thought they got away with a steal of a deal, but the Maasais running it were making a huge profit. I suppose these business skills are partially a survival mechanism in an evolving world, but I’m impressed nonetheless.

Classes start tomorrow. I am SO excited. I’m ready to learn some Swahili and finally be able to communicate beyond “jambo”, “hapana” and “asante” (“hello, no, thank you”, respectively). Also, I am curious to see the teaching style that will be used by the Tanzanian instructors. We have talked amongst ourselves about the very circular conversation styles of Tanzanians. Rarely will you get a direct answer to a question. If you ask a direct question, the response will generally be in the form of a story without a clear point. Apparently, it is considered insulting or degrading for an adult to tell another adult what the point of their statement or story is. Only a child needs to be given an explanation. This could make for an interesting classroom setting. At least we’ll all be in the same boat, though.

We went to a Maasai boma today as part of orientation. This is unbelievable: the man of this family has 270 kids. Over 20 wives. Including his grandchildren and great-grandchildren there were 350 people living on this homestead. It is the largest homestead in the world, according to our program director. So large, in fact, that the government actually built a school for all of the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. A government-funded school for one family. Crazy.