A Day in the Markets of Orbomba, Tanzania

Persistent dispute exists on the value of international service projects and the portrayal of the people receiving service. My time in Tanzania focused on building a school in a heavily impoverished area, but resources greatly vary across the country. This was my personal experience of collecting food and water for the day, but it certainly is not a generalization of the nation or its people as a whole.

Upon returning from a morning walk and eating a big breakfast of Spanish eggs, toast, cereal, chai, and fruit, our group was given a task to simulate the difficulties of poverty. We broke into groups and were given 10,000 Tanzanian shillings per team, which at the time was 5 USD - the same amount the average family in the area lived on per week. The average family also consisted of seven people. With the cash, we were given an index card of our mock family’s scenario. My group's card was the least wealthy family and our index card required us to buy a jelly jar for water, soap, and food for the family.

The market pens not in use

Along with our instructions, we each paired up with one of our local guides to help the language barrier, as Maasai is spoken in the markets and none of us are familiar with the language. Mollel was our guide and he was very helpful. He taught us words such as punguza (less), subuni (soap),nahindi (maize), and more. In the simulation, we did the bargaining and price determining, as if we were the family we were representing. It was challenging to find products that didn't contain bugs (especially cornmeal). When we did find some that fit the criteria, it was usually expensive. With the money we were given, we managed to divide up our money in the following fashion:

• 1 jelly jar: 3000 shillings

• 1 package of soap: 1800 shillings

• A few kilos of cornmeal: 2500 shillings

• 2 avocados: 1000 shillings

• 12 bananas: 1500 shillings

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While this seems fairly good for five USD, this is not a feasible lifestyle for seven people over the span of a week. Some families are fortunate enough to have a second form of gathering food, such as their own crops and livestock, but not all are that fortunate. Some others are forced to give up food to send their child to school or so on.

The items we bought from real vendors were donated back to the camp staff and community around us to help with their needs. From this same market, we also bought a goat for our camp staff that would be ceremonially slaughtered in the proceeding days, as a gift.

This was the first of many lessons on this trip that taught me to be humble and understand my privilege. Having the food I need to have a healthy life (among many other things) is something I recognize and remain grateful for having after this experience.

I apologize for the lack of photos, but I didn’t take my camera as we weren’t in a touristy area and I wanted to respect the privacy of the people involved.