Being Mama Maika

“Mama Maika…Mama Maika…Mama Maika!” I snap out of my reverie and receive the large steaming cup of loshoro handed to me by my neighbour. As I sip the greyish mix of curdled milk mixed with fresh maize (definitely an acquired taste) and watch the sun go down, Maika is happily cuddled up to a young girl watching the cows graze in the field. I take the time to reflect on the past few months and the journey it has been to become Mama Maika.

When you choose the name of your firstborn child in Tanzania you have to be very careful as this name will replace yours as well. Gody and I counted on having at least a month in Australia to decide on names so only casually discussed our ideas before we left. Then once our baby was born along the way we suddenly found ourselves with one night to decide before his birth certificate had to be filled out the next morning! After a short discussion we quickly settled on Maika as it means there is nobody like God and certainly God was there with us during the eventful day Maika was born. Instead of Gody and Corinne we were now Mama and Baba Maika.

Our return to Tanzania from a blissful two months in Australia was fairly smooth, except for the fact that we had to borrow a 4WD from the missionary base to get to our house as it had been raining hard that morning and our dirt roads had turned to sticky mud. Settling in was easy for Maika and I was thankful for the resilience of small babies. It was a little harder for me as I had never missed Australia, my friends and family so much as now. Returning to an unfinished house with three guys living in it, minimal water, no electricity and a constant stream of visitors for the first week proved a challenge. It was also the middle of the rainy season which meant that most days I couldn’t get out of the house even if I wanted to.

It didn’t take too long though and after a while Maika and I settled into a routine. We replaced buckets with plastic chairs (breastfeeding while sitting on a bucket is NOT recommended!) and later on couches and a tiled floor replaced our dusty rough concrete one. The rain eased off and I was able to get out a little and visit my friends. I became adept at washing nappies by hand as Maika became used to being bundled into his front pack and taken either on foot or by our motorbike to different places. I learned to dress him in a beanie and socks when heading outside whatever the weather and he learned to put up with this. Recently I learned to tie him on my back and he learned to lie still while this is happening. There has been lots for me to learn about life as a Mama here and it has been a most humbling experience but I treasure the new understanding I am gaining of how life is for my Tanzanian Mama friends. So often we in the West think that we come to a third world country to teach people our ways of doing things and right now I am finding the roles reversed as my Tanzanian friends teach me their ways of doing things which fit in with life here.

Life is slower here and although daily tasks take much more time as everything is done by hand I am thankful for the time I have to visit with people such as my neighbour. It’s good to just sit back and watch the cows graze while the sun sets over the maize fields. Being Mama Maika is a privilege and I am grateful for the gorgeous son God gave us as well as the place in which He set us to raise him.

On another more humorously humbling note even though I am now confident at conversing with just about anyone in Swahili I still make some funny blunders. The other day it was raining lightly and while making conversation with the motorbike taxi driver I commented on the weather. “Kuna manyonyo huku” (It’s drizzling a little here) I thought I said but further down the road he corrected me “manyunyu”. On relating the story to Gody later on to find out where I went wrong he laughed hard as I’d actually told the driver there were breasts around! Oh the differences between an “o” and a “u” in a foreign language!