Tile, Tile Everywhere, and Not a Piece to Walk On

A Brief Floor History
Those of you who have seen our house may remember that for a while the kitchen just had a plywood surface for flooring. We spent some time debating between linoleum (easier) and tile (harder, but increases the selling value of the house more) and finally decided on tile. The room adjacent to the kitchen usually holds our wood-burning stove (of course we had to move it to put down new flooring), so we wanted something fire-resistant for in there also. In all, we decided to tile the kitchen, wood stove room, and laundry room (coming off the wood stove room): 300 square feet in all.

The Prep. Work
The wood stove room had old, ugly red linoleum on the floor, so my first job (while Tony was finishing all the drywall in the laundry room) was to scrape up all the beastly red stuff and get the floor relatively neat. This actually only took two days, so I was happy. Then Tony laid down backer board ("The Ultimate Cement Board" is printed on it, so it must be good, right?) and screwed it all down everywhere we wanted to lay tile. I helped with a few of the boards - the screws are a nice green color. :-)

Tiling
Now some pictures. Tony started in the kitchen by the doorway leading into the living room. He mixed up the mortar and started laying 'em down with the help of an experienced friend from church. We started on Thursday night.


The above pic. was taken by standing in the kitchen, facing the living room.



Now the photographer is standing in the living room looking at the first long row of tiles, reaching all the way into the wood stove room. This became our baseline row from which we moved out towards the walls. We finished our baseline row by the end of Thursday.



Here's the finished area around the doorway into the living room. The tiles with bits of masking tape on them were the first ones we laid down, so we knew we could walk on those earlier than the others. Tony stayed up late on Friday night finishing the kitchen area.



We did a lot of tip-toe racing through the kitchen on only tape-marked tiles.

Here's after a Saturday's worth of work: a large percentage of the wood stove room was done by Saturday evening.

This is the vent right behind where the wood stove usually sits; it was a bit difficult because they almost had to cut a hole in the middle of the tile - a hairy situation with the tools available to us. But they (Tony and a friend again) managed somehow - I was doing laundry so I didn't see the whole process.

Here you're standing in the kitchen looking into the wood stove room on Sunday evening. It looks done, but there's a bit left to do in the corner you can't see to your left.



Here's the corner. The plan in to finish this and the small (30 sq. ft) laundry room this evening (Monday), and then start the grout pretty soon. Praise God for knee pads!

Village Trip

One of the most exciting parts of this orientation course for Rachel and I was the Village Trip. This involved driving for about three hours, taking a ferry, and walking a little way to the home of a Tanzanian family who had agreed to show us their lifestyle. They spoke no English, so we brought along a friend and interpreter from the office. First, we drove through the city and got onto the ferry. Here's a cool sailboat passing in front of us.




Then we drove on dirt and sand roads while our guide looked for "a mango tree" to indicate the turn off.





After we parked, we walked for a little bit, passing cattle on the way. The cows were under the previously mentioned mango tree.




Our host family's house.





The women were weaving palm branches when we arrived. We sat on large mats that were all woven by hand. You will see them throughout these pictures.



The main project we were to accomplish was the preparation of a Tanzanian feast prepared exactly how people in the village would do it. This included harvesting, cleaning, preparing, and cooking the food. The one thing we cheated on was to bring dead meat, instead of having to kill it ourselves. The husband of the family took us on a walk to his brother's coconut trees. He then proceeded to climb up and get us a few coconuts for dinner, which the men took turns husking. Culturally, harvesting and shucking coconuts is man's work.

Next, we started cooking. I helped set up the two fire pits in the front yard. A local pastor had also come with several couples from the church to help make the meal; the group brought charcoal, then several of us helped chop wood and get a fire going.

Rachel got to help cut up the meat. Don't worry, we boiled it for hours.

The family had several cashew trees on their property, but the nuts won't be ready until September to November.

A common food in Tanzania is greens. Basically, if the vegetable has leaves, they are edible. These in the picture are sweet potato greens. We also had pumpkin greens.

Preparing the greens.

Here is Rachel cooking over the fire. Ingredients: Corn oil, Onions, Tomatoes, Sweet Potato Greens, Ground Nuts, and Salt.

Collecting water. This is the water we used for cooking and cleaning.

We cooked lots of rice. We had to pick out the rocks and a few bugs. When all the food you use is freshly harvested with almost no processing, it is amazing all the extra steps to preparing a meal.

These are the men doing the culturally appropriate dinner prep.

This is the 60 Liter pan we used to cook rice. Tanzanians eat an amazing amount of rice each day. We used about 12 gallons of water to cook the rice.

After about 30 minutes, we piled all the coals on top of the pan to cook the top half of the rice.

Ugali is something that Tanzanians eat with every meal. It is basically just corn meal and water. The corn meal is added to the boiling water until it is very thick. When we saw these big paddles at the store, I thought they were oars, but actually they are for stirring ugali.

This is the whole feast laid out on palm branches. It only took 7 hours to prepare, but it was worth it.

Well, I guess I will end this post. Rachel laughs every time I add more pictures. Maybe I'll put a few more in the next post.

Tanzanian Church and Food

The second Sunday we were in Tanzania we attended a Swahili church service. We especially enjoyed the worship time, although unfortunately we neglected to take pictures. We didn't understand much of the sermon, but a Tanzanian friend who spoke English was able to direct us to the scripture passages being read throughout the service. Afterwards, Tony and I were invited to the house of a Tanzanian family for lunch. We walked about 2km in the hot, hot sun to get to the family's home; on the way, we took many short cuts through people's yards and outdoor shops as our host explained that property is viewed as communal in Tanzania, so it is in no way rude or imposing to walk through other people's yards in your own neighborhood. When we got to their house, a wonderful meal was already being prepared by some of the family's relatives; we ate rice spiced with cinnamon, bananas cooked in a tomato sauce, a cabbage dish similar to cole slaw, and meat cooked in a tomato sauce - it was all delicious. The conversation after lunch was equally enjoyable; we discussed the differences between America and Tanzania on the subjects of food, government, education, family, and marriage. Our host was shocked to discover that Tony hadn't paid my family anything in order to marry me! A Tanzanian groom pays a dowry for his future wife, the amount of which his uncle will generally settle with the bride's family beforehand.
To make up for the lack of pictures, I'm answering a question some friends posted here earlier. They asked us what the most usual thing we ate in Tanzania was. To answer that question, let me tell you a story.... One evening, we were all sitting around waiting for dinner to be ready; one of the course participants ran down to the dining area to see how the food preparation was progressing and came back up to where we were sitting with a mischievous grin and a comment. "Bring your camera to dinner," he said. Heather Pubols grabbed her camera and took the following picture of our meal.

Fish isn't necessarily unusual, but a few of our fellow class members didn't like the idea of staring their dinner in the face.