Cultural Differences in Bananas and Chance Encounters in the Street

Our whole group is finally here. We've been very busy at work conducting interviews and we are ahead of schedule in terms of the number of overall interviews that we hope to accomplish. We are all intrigued by the cultural differences here. For instance, there are 4 kinds of bananas in Moshi. The groups' favorite are the big yellow bananas (which look just like American bananas, but they need to be cooked before you eat them). It is common to see Mamas carrying huge platters of bananas on their heads through the streets of Moshi. The genuine friendliness of all the people is also very surprising. Everyone says hello and most people are more than willing to help us with directions or with the language. The girls and I often talk about how open the people here are in comparison to the people in the United States. We've decided that the people in the U.S. aren't unfriendly, but that that culture is more individual-based. In contrast, the culture of Moshi is much more community-based, which could account for their sunny attitudes toward strangers.

The main struggle this week has been lack of internet access. The internet in our house has been working on and off (mostly off), so we have had to adjust in terms of sharing transcripts with one another and communicating with our families. In order to overcome this, we have taken trips to the internet café and contacted numerous people in hopes of fixing our internet. Another struggle

was one that Whitney and I encountered. We had ventured into town to buy supplies when we were approached by two young men who were trying to sell us scarves. This is a typical occurrence in Moshi, so we politely declined and kept walking. However, the two men proceeded to follow us throughout town for the next two hours. They pestered us to buy their wares and would not take no for an answer. They even waited outside our café while we ate. Luckily they eventually lost interest and left us alone. From this experience, we learned the importance of traveling in groups and were reminded that we should always be aware of our surroundings.