Josephine's Knee - originally published on March 15, 2007

Josephine is our 30-something housekeeper. I’ve wanted to write about her for some time now, but couldn’t find the words.

J plays netball, a sport played only by women in Tanzania, akin to volleyball (as far as I understand, although I haven’t watched it). She is also a star gospel singer who’s recorded an album and sings often at area churches. Every time her cell phone rings, it plays a riff from her most famous tune – it’s a lighthearted, cheery one.

J is the guardian of our house, having worked and lived here for over 10 years. In rural Illinois, of course, I don't have a housekeeper, but here she accomplishes all kinds of handy tasks: she changes our sheets, washes the floors, dusts around, orders water, buys household supplies (but not food) and provides essential cultural information. She’s been an enigma for many a director, who have trouble understanding her rhythm. Some have not appreciated her living here; accustomed to privacy, they find her a disturbance and therefore ask her not to spend the night here. Then she makes the 1 1/2 hour commute home each night, or stays with a friend on campus. We thought this was a bit selfish to ask her to do this since we are only two people living in a 4-bdroom house. There have been some minor frustrations at this situation, which I think, largely result from cross-cultural misunderstandings about work expectations. The strangest was when J had to leave for a week when an older sister passed away. As the second eldest sister, J had to travel far to the region of Mbeya, near Zambia, to take care of the funeral arrangements. During her absence, she had her younger sister, Itika, replace her. Since we usually pay J to do our laundry, we thought it appropriate this week to pay Itika instead. But when J returned, she was quite adamant that she should be paid instead of Itika. It took us nearly a day to unravel the cultural logic of her request (she’s the sister who takes care of everyone else, so if she doles out work to her younger sister, then SHE is the one who must be paid). I finally understood her thinking, but found out later that it is not necessarily shared by other Tanzanians.

Last night, J damaged her knee while playing netball. A different sister rushed in during our Wednesday night student dinner to tell us the news, and get some of J’s things to take with her to the hospital. I spied her in the ambulance as it pulled out of the driveway; the pain was wretched, and she came home late last night with a cast on her leg.

This morning she called me in to her room to say that two sisters were coming to do the chores this morning under her supervision, and that one would stay here for a few weeks while Josephine recuperates. Just now they are bustling around the kitchen, boiling water for tea, cleaning up our breakfast dishes (one of her regular assignments, I was told at the start), and washing some rags outside in the courtyard. I know that J’s income is the most considerable in the family. I bet that the sisters depend on it to such an extent that the minute she falls they must come pick her back up again. What is a mere twisted knee in the face of sister power?

Maasailand, beef and boycotts

Even though it's not spring here (no, it’s the rainy season), for spring break the student groupo here headed to the north of Tanzania—on the border of Kenya – on a cultural field trip after our classes ended. We feared our trip would suffer from the weather, but the rain started late—bad for crops but good for us. It’s daunting to describe all our experiences (and this might explain why it’s taken me so long to blog about it); it all went so fast and we learned so much—with each day we spent time with a new ethnic group: the Pare, the Chagga and the Masai. Tanzania is unique from its neighbors because the country has more than 120 ethnic groups. In a Maasai traditional village or boma at the foot of sacred Mount Longido , we listened to a storyteller-guide tell us about Maasai life. The pastoral Maasai, it is said, are one of the only groups who stick to tradition in spite of the pressure to modernize. Even those Maasai who seem to have abandoned their ways, hawking beautiful bead jewelry in Dar markets, lead their cows to graze across highways dressed in the Shuka. We stepped inside one of their dwellings to hear how men are the community leaders, often leaving the village for days at a time to take care of cattle. Women are responsible for house construction and maintenance. We saw few adult men around, and so concluded that they were often absent, in the fields. Usually, tours include a taste of Maasai beef bought in the market, but Rift Valley Fever—transmitted through eating uncooked beef, put a kibosh on that. This disease hasn’t been to traumatic, but it gave us the opportunity to praise vegetarianism to our students!

Not long after returning to Dar, a student boycott of classes started, causing the government to ask all UDSM undergraduates to leave campus without taking their final exams. I can still hear the uproar on campus, the singing of protest songs, and the marching of their feet down paths. I can still the sticks held by some more radical students who guarded classes to make sure other students weren’t breaking the strike. By May 4, students are supposed to submit a letter requesting re-entrance, so they can take their final exams starting May 14. Campus is empty, only foreign students left, hanging out in empty dorms. We ramble around campus and run into a few acquaintances from time to time.