Dinner with Ray's Family

February 4, 2019

Dinner with Ray’s Family

Ray is our taxi driver. He and his family have become personal friends of John and Janet. On Monday, his mother invited us over for dinner.  It was a privilege to be invited into the home of a Tanzanian. It doesn’t happen very often.

Upon arrival, we were introduced to “Mama Ray.”  Since Ray is the oldest of her 9 children, she was introduced by his name. She speaks a little English so we chatted for awhile.  Then others came in and introduced themselves.  We again met Ray’s wife, Honorina, and a couple of his brothers. Later on, his aunt arrived and we chatted with her.  Ray’s daughter, Anitah was also there.  She is his youngest—10 years old—and quite the charmer.  (Ray also has 2 other children, Priscilla who is 17 and Good Luck who is 14.  They are away at school.) Another child was there but he was younger than Anitah and seemed quite shy.

Honorina, shy boy, Anitah

In the conversation, we got to talking about clothes and fashion and my ktenge. Mama Ray showed us her best African dresses. These fashions look absolutely stunning on African women….not so much on us Wazungu. Take a look here.

After the fashion show, Mama Ray brought out some really nice Ktenge cloth which she wrapped around the three of us and which we admired. Then, somehow we came to realize that she was giving us this cloth so we could make clothes out if it too.  WOW!  This is a huge gift. It’s enough fabric to make about 2-3 dresses. Anyway, here we are sitting on the couch with the cloth.

As we sat and talked, the women brought out pots and plates of food.  Then we dished up. 

One thing I hadn’t had yet was chipate which is kind of like a large thick crepe and incredibly delicious. I wanted a “to-go box” but, of course, that wasn’t going to happen.  Here’s what I had to eat. (Notice my cute little feet at the bottom of the photo.)

I really enjoyed talking to Ray's family.  One of his brothers is a high school teacher.  He teaches Swahili.  He said that there are 50-60 students in a class and 3-4 students must share a book.  It's a public school so it's government funded-- in theory. He said that the teachers teach in English but I suspect that, although all of high school is supposed to be in English, the teachers themselves may not know enough of the language to teach in it.  Ray's brother had pretty good English.  His Aunt also teaches...I think she teaches Science.

Note: All of Ray's family has high education except for Ray.  As the first born, he had to go to work and didn't get the chance to have a solid career plan.

Eventually, it was time to leave.  We thanked everyone and shook hands and thanked everyone again. It was a pretty awesome evening.