Kazkazi, Maboga, and Our Growing Fundi Collection

In Tanzania, December to March marks the season of the north winds, the “kazkazi” or north monsoon. But after a December in which we had a couple of very big storms (see earlier entry about our flood), January brought little if any rain at all. People were getting nervous about the growing season, and then February rolled around, and it’s like someone finally turned the faucet on. Sunny quiet mornings now give way to gusty, stormy afternoons, with the day’s rain lasting maybe only ten minutes but bringing with it an inch or two of water. The dirt roads flood and turn to mud soup, and then the sun comes out and bakes them hard again, in preparation for the next day’s storms. A couple of nights we’ve had earth-shaking thunderstorms and one afternoon’s storms included a lightening strike within half a mile of our house.

And with the rain, everything is suddenly green and springing into life. The word from up on the plateau is that the people have finally been able to plant their mahindi (maize), potentially averting the food shortages some people were warning about. (One volunteer had a neighbor tell him that as far as villagers were concerned, it simply had to rain because otherwise they would have no food.) Well, the rain has finally come, and the season seems prepared to go out on a bang.

For us, the critical staple appears to be not maize, but rather pumpkin, a enormous plant of which is thankfully growing wild our backyard. We’ve trellised some vines along the back walls and now up onto the water tower. In addition to the actual pumpkins, we’re eating “maboga,” or pumpkin leaves, with dinner nightly. (You pick only the small ones, cut them up, and sauté them with onions, tomatoes, and garlic. They’re delicious – kind of nutty in flavor.) Altogether, we have eaten one whole pumpkin (generating a dinner’s worth of boiled pumpkin and three pumpkin breads), and given two others away as gifts. This all from something we didn’t even plant.


Maboga – On the Loose.



Almost ready – the local pumpkins don't ever turn orange like back in the States, maybe just a little tan when there ready.


Maboga leaves, ready for cooking.


This miracle pumpkin is even the backbone of our nascent garden – providing much of the organic material for the sandy, clayey soil we initially found. We added chopped-up leaves directly into the soil, a day or two before planting, and composted larger piles of leaves for new soil. It’s been growing so much, if anything the pumpkin has benefited from all the trimming.

Though to be honest, the plant has had a little “supplemental” irrigation. Recently, Mtwara’s municipal water supply has been, well, sufficient, to say the least. The only faucet in the house that has yet to be replaced in our time here is finally busting at the seems, thanks to probably 1000 psi worth of water at times. So it was no surprise when I came home from work last Friday to find a small stream running past the back door, which I then traced to a break in the water pipe for our house, square in the heart of the pumpkin patch.

We got the phone number of a local plumber (i.e., “fundi ya bomba,” or literally, “craftsman of the pipes”), but by the time Jamal came on Saturday morning to fix it, I reckon the plant had drunk near a thousand gallons of water. I thought all the water might drown it, but it’s thirst appears to have no limits. It’s now making a break for the roof, after overtaking the water tank.

It was not the first time we’ve had a similar problem, and Jamal had actually been to our house before we moved in, when the water tank was installed. He joins the growing list of our fundis – one for every specialized repair job we need.

I have a fundi for our bikes – a man over by the town soko who works achingly, slow but keeps our bikes in good working order. Most bike fundis specialize in only one trade – repairing “puncha,” or tire punctures. They sit under the Christmas trees along the main road into Mtwara, like one every half mile or so, and can patch a tube in less than five minutes flat. For a 300 shilling, they’re a lifesaver in a pinch. But they can’t fix your breaks, nor might you really want them to try. So I found a fundi for that.

We also have our furniture fundi, Mr. Salumu, who has made, glass windows for our house, a couch, a coffee table, and two beautiful bedside bureaus. This man earned our undying devotion when he and his two helpers spent an entire day installing our windows, staying till eight in the evening, after having to shave down each of the frames by hand (it being my fault the measurements were off). More recently, he kind of botched two picture frames we asked him to build (badly warped), but I still plan to eventually have him build us some bookshelves for the Peace Corps book collection that we’ve temporarily inherited.



The windows Bwana Salumu built for our house – from back in October, when Kali was still a kitten.

We also known of an electrical fundi who lives near us, the cell phone number of a small appliance fundi (recommended by the Indian duka owner in town), and I’ve even scoped out a refrigerator fundi at the market, in contemplation of eventually needing his services on our second-hand unit. Even the young girls of our neighboring family are technically fundi, with the little sewing business they run on their front porch (though Merritt says they might not yet qualify as “craftsmen”).

So fundi are everywhere, and we have a list of ours. Salaried positions are not unheard of here in the town, but they’re still the rare exception – most people are in business for themselves, one way or another.

I recently completed some analysis on a new village community banking program that was established in the villages in the marine park, and people use loans for all sorts of basic businesses, from drying cassava to selling fish to starting up roadside food stands (called a mamalishe). Roughly a fifth of the one hundred and twenty women who borrowed money through the program reported using the money to start a business cooking the local type of doughnuts, called mandazi. But their businesses were generally profitable and few were unable to repay their loans.

Even people with salaried positions with the government, like my boss at the park or the acting principle of Merritt’s school, also own shambas (farms) outside of town, where they grow cassava or cashews for a little supplemental income for their family. (These men, after all, could be supporting a truly extended family, dispersed around the nation.) It’s a place where the majority of paid labor comes in the form of personal services, and the rest of the time, your work probably qualifies as subsistence labor (everyone after all, even the volunteers, have a bustani, or garden).

Some Tanzanians will tell you that the country’s labor system is partly what makes life so difficult for the people. You live from one season to the next, and those who do have salaries, are the cash cows to their extended family. I don’t know enough to weigh in on the economic aspects of it, but I will say that the system is unique at least for the personal connections and social interdependency it builds. As we’re discovering, sometimes the key to dealing with life’s little problems is simply known the right fundi.

February 20 marks six months at site, so we’re about a quarter through our service. As Merritt recently commented, life is entering a state of normality – though it’s a distinctly Tanzanian life.