Sol House

As you can read in previous posts we have rented a house in Arusha for the older boys of CCF to stay in. Currently there are 10 youth living in this 2 room house. Although it is a little full they are very happy to have a stable place to live. Living in the house also means they must learn how to cook, clean etc. In Tanzania for a male to cook and clean is considered shameful so it is taking some time for the boys to adapt. The other day we were in town with some of the boys. Laurent phoned Aaron, who was still at the house, and asked him to start cooking Ugali. Cooking ugali is a fairly simple process. First you boil a maize (corn) porridge. After that you have to keep adding maize and keep stirring it vigorously until it turns nice and stiff. It can’t be too stiff but it also can’t be too sticky as it is eaten with one’s hands. We came to the house about an hour later and all Aaron had accomplished was putting water in a pan and putting the pan on the stove. The stove was not lit or anything. Aaron looked at us and said “well you wanted me to start it, and that’s what I did”... but it was apparent that Aaron had never been near a stove or pan in his life and that some intense training was needed. Laurent and the other residents were assigned to teach Aaron to cook. Each day it some-one else has cooking duty; so far things have been going extremely well in the Sol house.

-Tom

Language Update:

Mambo means how’s it going? There are many replies to this but one of the popular ones in Maji ya Chai is Mazuka which means Ghost in English. Imagine us saying in English “Hows it going?” and replying to each other “Ghost”