Pineapples Remind Me of the Place I Call My Home

It might be both a good and a bad thing to attach meaning to things. I was just eating pineapples for dinner and was reminded of the place I call my home. How in the evenings my father would bring a pineapple or two and I would groan (when he’s not around, of course) after being told I had to cut it into pieces so everyone could enjoy it.

Most pineapples in Germany don’t taste as good as pineapples taste back home. Also, some pineapples back home don’t taste as good either. So, when a pineapple I’m having is a bit less sweet than it is supposed to be, I feel cheated. I feel like the meaning I’ve attached to it, home, is a lie and not as sweet as I think it is. Sadly, this is the reality.

Most of the time I enjoy while in Tanzania involves things that don’t require me to interact with anyone. I enjoy walking along Kivukoni Drive in the evening and just looking at the Dar es Salaam harbor or riding a Mwendokasi bus back to the city after a long day and seeing myself being swallowed by tall buildings. To me, that feeling is almost the same as when I eat some very tasty chicken Biryani.

But there is a sourness to home. Something that can be seen by everyone and almost similar to a pineapple that is a little bit too sour to be enjoyable, as my father would put it when he realizes that he bought ‘the wrong one’. While being mindful of the community you live in is a good thing, shaming and beating up a woman just because she wore a skirt 2 or 3 inches above her knees is not. The worst thing is that this doesn’t happen to tourists or people who just seem wealthy, because “they were probably brought up THAT way”. These are people who have seen the pineapple-maybe when it was being bought, but aren’t part of the “family” so they weren’t there at the house to eat it.

And yes, you’re not forced to eat a pineapple just because you’re part of the family, but you don’t really have a choice on what fruit to eat if that’s the fruit your father chose to bring home that day.

Tanzania is my home, but (many people who live there and I) are not comfortable with the unwritten “customs and traditions” and “morals” that some people throw at others each time something that isn’t the norm is done. It’s an unpleasant situation, much like eating a bowl of sour pineapples.