Ninakupiga picha?

Translation: Can I take a picture of you? I've been saying this a lot lately... like with these kids in the village of Matemwe...

I've been living with the Sheha (mayor) of Stone Town and I asked him the other day about his job. There's actually 4 shehas of Stone Town, and he's responsible for the civil duties of his quarter of the city. He's in charge of things like birth certificates, wedding certificates, death certificates, land ownership settlements, and dealing with police reports sometimes. My family is almost completely made up of women, including my mama (Salma), my sisters Ghaya (pronounced Raya, who's 19) and Saada (16), and my aunts Safia and Fatma. There's also my 6-year-old brother Abdallah, (who I want to bring home with me because he's so much fun), 2 housemaids, Zahalulah (who's 18) and Tuarizie, who cook and clean, and the aunt and two neices are there all the time, even though they don't live there. Also, the nephew and the guy who runs their shop come over for dinner too, so the house is almost always full of people, and most of them are women under 30. Since its Ramadan (the Muslim holy month), they all fast during the day and have a meal at 6:30 (when the sun sets), called futari. We eat dates first, because the Quran says that if you break the fast with dates, you'll stay full longer afterwards. We eat without silverware, and its rude to eat with your left hand (in Muslim culture, that was traditionally the hand that you use to clean yourself up after going to the bathroom), so your right hand gets nice and messy. They all stay up and socialize or watch TV (mostly Indian/Bollywood shows or a Muslim prayer broadcast) until midnight, when they eat their second meal, called daku. Most families eat this meal later than midnight, more like 2 or 3 in the morning, before going to sleep. Its really interesting to live in a Muslim home. The gender roles are very different here, as women, we definitely don't have the freedom that we're used to from the US. If I talk to a guy my age for too long, he'll get the impression that I'm interested, and I've actually received marriage proposals that way. And the women generally don't like to talk to people outside of their circle of family and friends, so its hard to talk to women my age outside my family.

I'm out of time right now, but here's some more pictures from the past week! I miss you all!!

Around Stone Town

Baby sea turtles in Nungwi!!

My jellyfish sting... only one of the 5 places I got stung