Host Families

“Hodi Hodi” (Knock knock)

"Karibu” (You are welcome/come in) 

“Sisi ni familia yako Watanzania. Karibu nyumbani.” (We are your Tanzanian family. Welcome to our home!)

On our second day in Tanzania we arrived in Iringa (where we will stay for the next 3 weeks) and headed to a delicious dinner at a local restaurant. After dinner we were taken to Kihesa, the neighborhood where our homestay families live. I think it is safe to say we were all feeling a mixture of excitement and nervousness. We were excited to finally be in Iringa and to meet our Tanzanian families! We were nervous because this experience, like so many others, was full of opportunities for us to stretch ourselves and open our minds to new ways of doing things and become a bit more comfortable with things that might normally be not so comfortable.

Even with all of this excitement and nervousness, as a program leader and someone who has been to Tanzania multiple times before, I knew this was only the beginning of what would be a life changing experience for us all!

Now that we’ve been in our homestays for a few days we can all agree that the homestay families are super nice! They also speak a LOT of English. But it feels really weird to not help out around the house (we’ve tried and many of them won’t let us). Also - the bucket showers are actually not that bad!

A few quotes from students on their homestays so far: 

“Their families aren’t that different from ours [American families]. Yes the food is different, the culture is different, but it’s still similar in many ways. They love each other so much and each family member is independent of each other in some ways, but they come together at important times” - Ashley

“The host families are there to help us. They take care of us. They try to include us in everything” – Syeda

“It’s challenging getting used to such different things - bucket showers, squats toilets, the different food, different language and the cultural and language miscommunications that happen often - but it's been a great experience so far!" - John

 “They show their hospitality through food and they always serve us the best food. My host mom is really eager to teach us anything and everything and she was really surprised when I already knew how to use the squat toilet, take a bucket shower and eat with my hands.” – Johnneisha