Sub-Saharan Hospitality

I always tell my friends that I have family everywhere—all over the US and the globe. Aunties, uncles, and cousins up the wazoo, I always say. And when I tell my friends this, the next question tends to be, “Mom’s side or Dad’s?” This is where things get tricky. I’ve been raised to understand that everyone close to your family is family. Growing up we called everyone “Aunty” or “Uncle” as terms of respect and endearment. My Malasian baby sitters were known as “Aunty Gwen,” and “Aunty Shameeta,” my mom’s besties were “Aunty Elaine Turner” and “Aunty Elaine Bartos” (the last names added as needed), “Uncle Chris,” and his wife, “Aunty Chimpeng,” and so on. Now, I knew of course, that many of these people were, in fact, not actually related to us—I may have been young, but I knew that I probably wasn’t actually related to my mom’s Malasian students—but for many of the Cameroonian “Aunties” and “Uncles,” it would be many years before I understood we shared no kinship ties.

It was probably around high school that I realized this is not a particularly normal tradition. I had one group of friends who insisted I mention, “Real Uncle,” or “Not-Real Uncle,” etc., when talking about family. To this day I often give my mom and dad a hard time for having blurred family lines, and make them give me a complete lineage breakdown of any new “Aunty” or “Uncle” that we meet.

As I spend more time here, I’m realizing that this loose—or I suppose you could say, strong—sense of an all-inclusive family is a very African thing. On the streets of Tanzania we all call one another kaka (brother) or dada (sister), from the taxi driver picking us up at our hotel to the little girl selling corn on the side of the road. It’s a very kind tradition and I’m quickly getting used to it.

Now, in the vain of me having family everywhere, my second day in Dar I stayed with Aunty Martha. How do I know Martha? She is the sister of the wife (Vicky) of one of my parents’ PhD students (Baraka) from Rolla. Having heard from my parents that I was coming to Tanzania, Vicky quickly contacted her family and asked them to host me while I was there, which they quickly and happily agreed to do. That’s another thing I realized wasn’t quite normal to many of my friends in the States. Africans will move mountains to welcome one another with even the slightest of connections. It’s incredible, it’s generous, it’s awesome. It’s something that my parents do and something that I know I will do in the future.

As soon as I arrived at Martha’s house I was chided for not having called her sooner and for spending a night in a hotel (which is something family never does). She immediately gave me the remote control, showed me where my room was, made sure I was fed very well, introduced me to her two (super cute!) children, and told me that when I returned to Dar I needed to call her as soon as I arrived.

I also have an (Not-Real) Uncle I’ll be staying with for a few days when we get back to Arusha in a few weeks.

Now, that’s what I call Sub-Saharan hospitality