Stories from Tanzania

She’s a Masai woman who speaks only her local dialect and doesn’t know her own age. She looks like 120 years old, but considering that her nephews is maybe 7 and here women are all already mums by the time they turn 20, she must be much younger than what I think. She’s having difficulties walking or even standing, She needs her stick and she lays a hand on the wall of her house to balance herself. But she offers seats to everybody and takes a little footstool for herself. She’s probably still sitting on it right now, because I really can’t see how she could possibly get up from that position. This grandmother is raising her little orphan nephew, she sends him to school and teaches him life. This grandma is my hero of the day.

This young lady is a mum. If she lived in Europe she would also be a model. A very serious model, but a model nonetheless. But in her village she’s only a mum. A stunning mum.

How many children can be simultaneously entertained with bubbles?

I tried to hide… I apologies once more to the teacher who spent 20 minutes to manage to sit them all tidy again. But that was it, the lesson finished because a camera appeared and it’s well known that when a camera is around everybody’s attention is stolen away forever.

This child invites his friends to his place because the white people are visiting. This child and his friends pray with the white people but they find it hard to hard to keep from laughing because the white people speak a funny language.

Look! Look! A camera!
We want a picture!
Me first! Me first!
What do you mean “smile”…? Why?

Highway Moshi-Arusha.
Note for myself: never complain about my western highway ever again.

Happiness divorced a violent man. She has a small terrain that her father gave her and she can plant beans that will later on sell on the streets. Happiness is renting a little house for 7.50$ per month, because in her terrain there’s a wooden hut that gets flooded during the rainy season. The hut has to be properly rebuilt with bricks before moving in, but Happiness doesn’t have that money. Not yet. In the dry season, maybe.

It’s so hard to leave you after a good day together! We had fun, thank you for playing with us!

A Masai family in front of their clay and cow dung house. It’s around 3 pm, I’ve been walking for like 15-20 minutes to reach this group of houses risking to collapse due to serious heatstroke and dehydration and I’m getting ready to enter this small house with other too-many people. It’s round with a low roof and two windows as big as a cat door. I take out my lifesaver fan, sure it will not be enough: I’m ready to face Death on the other side of the doorstep, I can feel her waiting for me, grinning. I brace myself and take a step. And suddenly… chill air in the house! How I love Masai cows….

Hunting scene: a trio of wild hungry big kitties are taking their time to strike down their pray. SPOILER: Pray out of the picture frame. It was a big buffalo and he managed to escape

Look how I strike a pose!
Young Masai laughing at me.