Children of the Mto wa Mbu Village
I’m working through the thousands of photos that Jack and I took in Tanzania. The first two groups are of some of the people we met. The people were by far the best part of the trip (although baby zebras were a close second). We learned so much and met so many nice people.
The first set of photos are from a day we spent in a town called Mto wa Mbu, or Mosquito Village, which is near Lake Manyara. We walked around the village with a fantastic guide who knew absolutely everyone. With Abraham, we visited people’s gardens, their kitchens and livestock and learned a lot about day-to-day life. It’s estimated that there are 126 different tribes in Tanzania and that there are members of each tribe living in Mto wa Mbu. We’ve done a lot of traveling and had many different guides. Abraham was one of the top two or three. We loved the time we spent with him and hope we see him again.
Two of the best parts of our walk were when we spent some time in a “pub,” sharing some banana beer, a specialty of the Chaga tribe. The beer is low alcohol (about 2%) so the kids shared some too. Traditionally, it’s poured in a large gourd and then passed around the group. Another great part of our time in the town was when the kids got an art lesson. They painted Maasai warriors in a traditional style, using a palette knife.
But the best thing about Mto wa Mbu was LUNCH. In the courtyard of a local family’s home, we had a buffet of many different local foods. The kids LOVED the goat meat and different kinds of bananas as well as chapati bread. I really liked “ugali” which is basically polenta, “mchicha” which is a lot like spinach greens and my favorite, “makande” which is a bean-and-corn stew. Kevin really like a pork and banana stew. Also, all through Tanzania we had avocados, the best avocados I’ve ever eaten. They were picked fresh, totally ripe, right from the tree. I could have eaten the whole platter.
As we were talking at lunch, we learned that school children will often step into a field and cut off a piece of sugarcane to snack on. Jack, Owen and Fiona thought that sounded great, so our hostess took her machete and stepped off into a field and came back with a platter of fresh sugarcane pieces for our dessert.
As we were walking around the village, we passed some schoolgirls. According to Abraham, they looked at Jack and Owen and one said, “There are our husbands. I get the one in the green shirt (Owen).” The other said, “I get the one in the baseball hat (Jack).”
Photos from our day in Mto wa Mbu are here.
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