Cultural Differences

Being from Canada, I have noticed many cultural differences between there and here. Most of them are pretty small, but some can often be a bit jarring at times.

Most people in Tanzania (and I’m pretty sure all of East Africa) eat with their right hand only. It is considered an insult to eat with your left hand. Though I won’t go into exact details why (I know at least one of my family members will have a smile on his face about this), it has to do with what they use their left hand for. Shaking hands or waving to people with your left hand is apparently a bad thing too, though we have mistakenly done that many times and have not had any problems.

Greetings are an important part of life here. When we walk down the street, many people will greet us randomly. The thing is, though, that greetings can go on and on for a long time. Those of us in Morogoro have developed a quick reaction to most of the greetings that get thrown at us. Some of the Tanzanians we’ve met even seem to think it’s funny to throw as many at us as they can. We also get laughed at often for not knowing the correct greeting. Once, in retaliation, we tried it in English with many different greetings.

People here are also mostly laid back. There is not really a sense of urgency when it comes to getting something done, getting somewhere or just in general. Sometimes that attitude is nice and relaxing and at other times it can be very frustrating when we only have such a short time here.

To be honest, these are all gross generalizations. Obviously there are people who are extreme in the above cases and people who do not fit them at all. These are also only three things I noticed and I’m sure that given more time I could come up with a better picture.