Day 44: The Other (Grand)Father

          Ever seen the movie Coraline?  Or read the book?  In it the main character (a blue-haired girl named Coraline) finds a secret door in the living room that leads to another world.  It's an exact duplicate of her own (house, land, even her parents), but everything is much nicer.  Her Other Mother is much nicer, and her Other Father a lot cooler than the real ones.
          Well today I discovered that I too have an Other (Grand)Father.  Don't worry though, he hasn't asked me to sew buttons over my eyes (yet, anyways...).
          So today I went to Sakila to visit my great-uncle David (he's the brother of my baby), and his son Anieli (who is a Jehovah's Witness).  It was a very long drive, made even longer by the fact that we kind of left all our money at home.  We got all the way to Usa River (that's "Oo-sah", not USA.  I still think it's funny though...), about 20 km (13 miles) away, before I realized what we'd done.  Sadly, this isn't the first time this has happened...  So we left Baba in Usa, went home, got the money, went back, picked up Baba, bought tea leaves and sugar, and drove to Babu David's (I forgot to mention, but whenever one visits someone else, it's polite to bring some sugar and tea leaves.  As I did mention, whenever you stop somewhere, the householder always offers you food.  So bringing tea and sugar is like taking care of the drinks end of the meal.  We haven't done this everywhere we visited, just when we visited someone very important)
          Oh hey, you're probably wondering why, if he's my great-uncle, I call David my Other Babu.  That's because in Tanzania, they don't just use the titles "Aunt" or "Uncle".  Take for instance, the brother's of my baba.  These are called either Baba Mkubwa (greater father, for someone older than my baba) or Baba Mdogo (lesser father, for someone younger than my baba).  The sisters of my father, though, are just Shangazi (Aunt).  The same titles are used for Shangazi's on my mama's side (the brother's all just being Mjomba).  Where was I going with this?  Oh, yeah!  So, David, being the younger brother of my babu on my baba's side, he's also my babu.  But he wouldn't be if he was the brother of my babu on my mama's side.  Got it?  No?  Good!
          Babu David lives with Efrieli, where he has his own small room.  He is very old.  In fact, he's the only one of his generation (family line wise) left, besides my bibi (my baba's mama), on my baba's side of the family.  Babu David can't walk, but he's still very sharp and remembers lots of very old things.  Baba was supposed to ask him some questions (fact about past events and stories), but with all the other people there we never got around to it.  We, or rather baba, talked with babu David for a while (he said that I needed to learn Kiswahili, and I promised that I was).  After eating dinner (Babu David was carried out of his room to come eat with us), we went to Mjomba Anieli's (David's son) house, just a little ways down the hill.
          Mjomba Anieli built this home himself in 1979, the same year my "younger" sister Anande was born (wait a minute, I probably shouldn't have told the world how so very old my sister is...  Oh well, she's in the US, and I'm in Tanzania, I'm sure she'll forget about it by the time I go home...).  Visiting Mjomba Anieli was Dekirwa, a man Baba had taught the Bible to a long time ago.  Baba, of course, was very happyt to see him, and they spent a long time catching up.  By the time we went to leave, the sun was sinking down below the horizon.  Now in the US, twilight lasts for quite a while.  In Tanzania it lasts for a couple of minutes.  By the time we got into the car and got it turned around, the sun was down, and night was settling in.  Now we got to test Cousin Ino's (Innocent, he drives us most places...) driving skills.  First was getting out of the drive way.  The turn off to Babu David's was down hill.  It wasn't super steep, but it was all dirt, which made up for any lack of incline.  We finally had to get help from people to push us up the hill and back onto the road.
          If you want to go anywhere in Tanzania, make sure you have four wheel drive (and lots of clearance).


E’ya! - Tate


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