Culture Shock

            During the first week of my time in the Alagwa village, another lady and I spent three days with a local family in their mud-brick, tin-roof, three-room home. As we walked into their “front yard,” which was enclosed by a crudely made fence of thin tree trunks laying horizontally and connecting to vertical posts, we were greeted by the wretched smell of feces and dirtiness. The smell’s culprit was the penned in cows (yawa), donkey (dokwey), and goats (ara) that were no more than 10 or 15 feet from the entrance to the house (do’oh). A wrinkly-faced lady with missing teeth greeted us along with her teenage daughter and two of her grandchildren who live with her. After we greeted them, they tried to talk more to us in their tribal language. We just smiled and shrugged our shoulders. They became our host family.

            During those three days, we began to learn about the Alagwa way of life. We would wake up with the sun, eat a sweet potato and drink chai. Then, we would hoe in their closest field, which was right outside their fence. We would then take buckets and dirty dishes to the river, wash the dishes, fill the buckets with water, and take them back…on our heads. Next was lunch, which consisted of their staple dish called Ugali (Kiswahili) or Fa’ah (Alagweesa). This dish consists of ground corn or bolsoro (green plant), cooked and stirred in boiling water. When it’s done, it has a sort of play-dough consistency. A bowl of Fa’ah is placed in the center as everyone sits on stools around it. You take a chunk of the fa’ah and dip it into one of the side dishes, which can range from ground up leaves cooked in onions and tomatoes (tastes like spinach), sour milk, beans, goat broth, or other things. The main side dish that they love the most is best described as a green slime.            

            These three days were the hardest for me. After a while of eating the same gross food twice a day, I got sick to my stomach with the thought of eating at all. Thank the Lord for the mango I was able to have on the third day! I felt like it was the best food I’d ever tasted. It was also hard to bear the way they treated their animals, especially their dogs and puppies. The puppies were so cute and cuddly, but they were not considered pets and they were regularly hit with sticks, causing them to yelp pitifully. Also, communication was a huge barrier and, by the end of each day, I was exhausted from trying to communicate and listen to their foreign words. This period was the peak of my culture shock, as I experienced new surroundings, language, food, and ways of doing things.