Global Solidarity starts July 14th and I wanted to give people a bit of a contrast of what we normally buy and what we will buy for next week.

I had a lot of people tell me they thought the challenge would be really easy for me because I would actually be in Southern Africa. Guess again my friends!


This is our grocery shopping from last weekend for the four of us in the house. We go to the South African chain Shoprite to stock up on some more western style foods about every two weeks. Mainly we focus on picking up dairy products, canned goods, and treats (Chocolate, pesto, Pringles, Cereal, olives etc.). Our vegetables, fruits, most of our dried goods like rice, flour and beans and our bread we pick up from local markets and stores.

So this is what our weekly budget looks like:
$30/person – supermarket groceries (we shop bi-monthly so that's the average weekly cost)
$10/person- rice, vegetables, fruits and beans from the markets
$1/person – bread
$8/person – power
$5/person – drinking water
$10/person – lunch/breakfast/water out at work
$2.50/person – transit to work

Total Per Week: $66.50 (Not including any weekend excursions, shopping or entertainment)
Total Per Week on Food: $51.00 or $7.30/day

So we are looking to reduce our spending on food to $1.25 a day. The strategies will include no food from the supermarket, reducing the sorts of fruits and vegetables we buy to the cheapest ones, and bringing our breakfast and lunch from home. I'll be posting the shopping purchases for that week on Sunday so stay tuned!

Also my Torontonian counterpart @AliaK_ will be guest blogging for the week as well.

If you are interested in sponsoring me and my team for the Global Solidarity Challenge please check out our fundraising page.

July 7th is a labour day style holiday in Tanzania. This year it fell on a Sunday but the whole week before there was an exhibition in Dar es Salaam. We took the Friday afternoon off to attend.

We were advised for the day to wear casual and comfortable clothes for walking around in. We often aren't sure what the dress-code is for events. Most of the locals appeared a bit more dressed up than we did but it was very hot and we did a lot of walking around.
Just inside the entrance, Spiderman decided to make an appearance. He was pamphletting for something (how far the mighty have fallen). I have to say that I wouldn't want to wear that costume all day in the heat and humidity!

And behind Spiderman was an Eiffel tower. There were a lot of cross-cultural references happening in this space. Can't really explain this but I love it.









Here is Evah, one of the two co-workers who took us to the exhibition. She has helped us navigate setting up our house so it was nice to be able to go out and just do something fun with her.









One of the main attractions we were promised was animals, so first on the to-do list was a visit to the animal enclosure. It was mid-day and most of the animals were hiding in the shade but we saw few of them (however the cages make for poor photos so I won't post them all).







I am posting the pictures of the turtles for my sister who loves reptiles. I don't have pictures of snakes for you Sarah because there is only so far I will go on your behalf.








Here is everyone looking a little hot and sweaty but not too worse for wear. We are standing in front of a display grass hut. There was also a weird wood-covered Land Cruiser which did not seem to exactly fit with the rest of the "traditional" Africa display.
After animal viewing there was shopping. The two local girls were intent on buying kitchenwares but we wanted to look at local crafts. I may have bought a few gifts for people....









After all the wandering and shopping we had done we needed to recover. Nothing like some soda and chips to refresh us before our bus ride home!
Every trip is different and every place is too. There are times when being in Dar es Salaam is startlingly different from being in Lusaka and there are other times when things are so familiar it makes me smile.

The Transit

I thought I was a veteran mini-bus rider having negotiated the bus system of Lusaka on a daily basis. But the complexity of the system in Dar is astounding. In Lusaka, all the buses came in and out of the city centre along different routes, which meant I could be fairly certain if I boarded a bus on my road that it was the right one.

Here it sometimes seems like you can get a bus to anywhere from anywhere (not entirely true but close). Every bus stop has several different coloured buses heading to different parts of the city. There are several bus lines that can take us to work but only two we can board to go home. We have to listen carefully in the morning to the conductors calling out the stops to make sure we get on the right bus.

On the more familiar side of things, we pay whenever the conductor gets around to collecting the money (which is sometimes as we get off the bus). We have to call out to get the bus stop otherwise they sometimes will just drive past the stop if the bus is full. Also the buses don't like to move until they are full. And their definition of full means packed like a can of sardines with people and bags of goods.

The City

Lusaka is a city but Dar es Salaam is a CITY. The density of Dar when we first got here blew me away. There are so many high-rises, stores, cars, motorbikes, carts and people. I was used to the relatively quiet neighbourhoods of Lusaka. Now I'm living near the city centre of Dar es Salaam. At first I really missed the green spaces of Lusaka where there were trees lining all the roads and more houses with yards and gardens than high rises. But I'm adjusting to the new view and in Dar es Salaam there are the beaches. After all, you don't need so many trees lining the roads in the city when you are a hop, skip and a jump from huge stretches of beach now do you?

The People

One of the biggest challenges for me in Tanzania is Swahili. Zambia's official language was English so while there were lots people who mainly spoke local languages, English was the lingua franca. Here, I've got my Swahili phrase book with me at all times and I'm also taking online language training. There are many times when we are really hard pressed to find anyone who speaks English.

Despite the language barrier, people are incredibly kind and helpful. From the building guards who always eventually figure out what we are trying to find and escort us there, to the woman in the market who gave us a free bag of tomatoes to welcome us to the neighbourhood, to our co-workers who are helping us to traverse our new environment. So many people go out of their way to help us navigate our way through their community. They take the business of welcoming you to their country, city, neighbourhood or store very seriously. Something to try and pay forward when I am back home.

At first it all seemed very different, but slowly I've had more and more moments where there are more familiar things than different. And the differences that remain are becoming interesting things to think about rather than overwhelming. Here's to almost hitting the one month mark! 

 So the other week we got a lesson on how to cook local food. Much to the amusement of our office, we said we wanted to photograph it all. This food is going to be a staple food during the Global Solidarity challenge so you'll get to see how well we learned our lessons




Step 1: All our groceries (and our spoon) we purchased from the local market and carried back to our apartment.







Step 2: The first thing we made were beans. We'd cooked some up the other day but our teacher was very unimpressed by our method so he showed us how to make them properly.









Step 3: Onions, Tomatoes and Carrots formed the flavour at the base of all the different vegetables we cooked. We sautéed these all up in a little cooking oil before adding the beans or veg.










Step 4: Then the already cooked plain beans were added to the vegetables.










Step 5: Cooking Ugali. First we needed to bring water to boil (we're being cautious with the water so even though we boiled it we used bottled water.) 









Step 6: We add the white maize flour to the boiling water (only 1 scoop).












Step 7: This sort of thin paste than has to boil gently for about 20 minutes.











Step 8: After it's boiled awhile, you add more of the maize flour until you start to get a thick dough (I think we added about 4 more spoons full).








Step 9: So it looks like this...











Step 10: And then it has to be stirred and smooshed (that's the technical term) until its smooth. We had to take turns because its so thick that you're arms hurt from stirring it. Yet another household task that is a good workout.








Step 11: So we learned that Ugali isn't that different from spagetti... it also sticks to the wall when its done.











Step 12: Last thing to prepare was our green vegetables - Mchinchi (which I'm probably spelling wrong). We also put carrots, onion and tomatoes in to flavour them.










Step 13: A little salt for flavour....


Step 14: Here I am carefully sautéing the vegetables. As you can tell it took all my concentration.














Step 15: Oh and we also made African egglant (Called Nyenye Chungu in Tanzania)... we just boiled them and then added them to the beans.











Step 16: Success! We don't actually have a dining table to we make do with our coffee table










Step 17: And here it is all cooked! No cutlery required. Just take a small amount of ugali in your hand, form it into a ball and use it to scoop up the rest of your food.

Greeting people is considered very important in Tanzania culture. So the first thing we learnt in Swahili was how to greet someone.... and then the next day we were taught another phrase... and then the next day another one... and it keeps going. Just when you think you've got them all down, someone comes by and greets you in a new way. It wouldn't surprise me if by the end of the internship I knew a greeting for each day I had been here.

So I thought I'd share some of the ones we learnt so far (anyone who actually knows Swahili please excuse my creative spelling).

Greeting Meaning Appropriate Response Meaning
Habari (Habari gani) How are you? Nzuri  Good
Habari + (work, weekend, bus ride, or anything else you want to ask about) This one constantly confuses us because you never know what someone is tacking on to the end of it So we just say "Nzuri" “
Jambo Hello Jambo (same)
Mambo (not sure on the spelling on this one) How are you? Poa or Safi Fine or okay
Shikamoo Also how are you but more respectful... We were told to use it with people older than us Nzuri

Za asubuhi Good Morning Salaama Peaceful
Memkadja

 How did you get up? which you only use with people you know Salaama...this one apparently you don't ever use nzuri for (not sure why that is but you don't) Peaceful
Asubuhi Njema
Mchana Mwema
Jioni Njema
Usiku Mwema		 Good Morning
Good Afternoon
Good Evening
Good Night		 (usually you just say this back to people) and you can add na pia (and you) or you say Asante


Also everyone says “Karibu” or "Welcome" almost every time you enter anywhere. This includes the guards at our building which welcome us every night and our office mates who welcome us everyday.
We are reaching the end of week two of working here in Dar es Salaam.  I wouldn't exactly say that we have completely sorted everything out yet but we are definitely getting our morning routine down.  Here is what our trip looks like:

We take a bus (daladala) from near our home everyday. The buses are a bit of an adventure, but hey, we've never waited for longer than 5 minutes for one (take that TTC!). I took this picture of the traffic out the window.

We get off near a busy market place. In the morning it's not too crazy but by the time we go home it will be packed with vendors. It usually takes us about 1/2 hour to get there, but that can change depending on how creative the bus driver is with the route.

We often grab breakfast on our way to work from one of the street vendors.  All our purchasing has to be done in Swahili because most of the vendors don't speak English.


This is my typical breakfast. It involves spiced chai, chapati and vitombua, which are sweet fried buns made with rice flour.  We get it hot off the street and eat it as we read the local paper.


Here is my fellow intern Susannah.  My desk looks pretty much the same as hers. Right now mine is stacked with papers for a grant application on Gender-Based Violence that's waiting to go to the printers.

 Here we are with one of our co-workers Samora. He is the senior volunteer at Equality for Growth. He is going to feature very prominently in my next post because he came over to teach us how to cook Ugali (or nshima for those of us who previously spent time in Zambia) and we took lots of pictures.

I'll try and get more photos of our trip soon so you can see the community we are living around.



It's the first week and we've all been very eager to make connections and build relationships with the new people we've met and work with. Moving to Tanzania is such a big change that a week can seem like forever. We all want to be grounded in our new place and feel connected to where we are. And we want it to happen right now!

The hardest things to deal with at the moment is that we aren't grounded, have few connections, and nothing is familiar. For awhile we just have to sit with that unsettled feeling and recognize that this is always the way things are in the beginning.

It's also hard to remember that relationships with people can't be forced or pushed. We want to fit in at our work and our neighbourhood but just like starting any new job or moving to any new neighbourhood, fitting in and being trusted takes time. We may know that we are planning to stay here for awhile and want to be part of the community but most people we encounter think we are just tourists. There are a number of hotels in our area so most people assume we are staying at one of them. However, we are making some progress with our guards and a few other shop keepers in the neighbourhood so there is always progress.

Only time will help us overcome here hurdles. So here's to week two!