Indirect Communication at Its Finest!

Today was a very interesting day for me and I could not wait to write about this experience. I am currently living in Bagamoyo where there are three other Peace Corps Trainees, not including myself. We live in a pretty conservative village, where those of us who are women have strict, protective mothers. Considering these things, we probably shouldn't have stayed in the village over, Mkanyagene until 6:30, but we did. In our village we don't have many amenities and we decided to take advantage of that after getting out of class at 5. We all knew getting home right before dark could go over well or not, but to what seemed our knowledge, our families were excited to see us that evening. Going to sleep thinking everything was fine, and my mama was pleased with me, I woke up the next morning, continuing on as if it was another normal morning. However, to my mama, she could not wait to tell my mwalimu (teacher) in the morning of my late arrival the previous night. Unknowingly to me, my mama expressed her frustrations with me with my teacher, and proceeded to wave me off to school, telling me to have a great day, acknowledging I would see her later. However, as soon as we began to walk to the dala dala stop to get to the next village, my mwalimu informs me of her frustrations. To say in the least I was shocked was an understatement. While it has been expressed to us in so many ways that Tanzanians are indirect, this was my first experience with such. Instead of saying anything to me, my mama went straight to my teacher. My first thought was instead of smile and talk to me like everything is normal, why not tell me? Then I realized the culture is completely different. However the next hurdle was this, and that of my own culture: when I return home after school, now that mama knows I know she is frustrated, will she smile and talk to me like it is all fine or will we talk about it? I was at conflict because in America we are blunt. If I'm not happy with you, I'll let you know and vice versa. I was unsure of how to receive my mamas response to me when I returned home. This time was she still frustrated or was she being genuine. I had no idea and after thinking this through all day, I asked my mwalimu. He told me because she knows he addressed it with me today that she would be fine. That the situation was finished. And from then I realized that while being indirect with other people won't be difficult for me because I can be passive, having people be indirect with me is going to be a lot more difficult than I thought. I am the type of person that wants/needs to know if there is a problem so that it can be solved.

Aside from this small difference however, my mama and more importantly my family is wonderful. On Saturday I will be taking my dada (sister) with me to teach a local primary school to perma-garden. I am excited to be able to pass the valuable lesson of gardening to youth who can hopefully pass it on to parents, friends, relatives, etc.