Do You Have a Kitchen?
Some Final Thoughts on Tanzania
Last month, lots of people were getting ready to leave Msalato Theological College, including some teaching staff and students.
All students are packing up to leave college on Monday June 26 for the end of year (academic that is) and get home as quickly as possible. The majority of students return July 28 for the beginning of the new academic year. For those who graduated on Sunday, June 25 their immediate future is unclear.
Students already ordained wait anxiously for word from their Bishops on where they will be sent. Appointments in the Anglican Church in Tanzania and other places in Africa are made by the Bishop about the middle of each year.
Each year the list comes out, and clergy are eager, but not always favourably to hear where they are to serve the church. Some students fear they will be placed in a remote village with no power – and thus no TV, no running water, no public transport, and no shops.
A computer center with internet access is a recent addition to Msalato Theological College, and for some students the thought of no access to the net is simply depressing.
For the single students they have the added concern of how they will survive, especially in a culture where women shop, cook, clean, get water, gather fuel, and grow the vegetables: All of which is extremely labour intensive and time consuming.
For single male students the deadly question is, “Do you have a kitchen?”
In Tanzania, this is the way of asking, “Do you have a wife?” Social role and status is defined in traditional African culture and in parish life. A single male clergy in a village can be decidedly unattractive, to the congregation to say the least, and, terrifying at the most for the cleric for a variety of reasons.
Being single and being appointed to a village means the student will need some chairs, and a table (one chair costs between one and two months income), dishes and bowls to cook and serve food, and clothes, (plus a bicycle would be really handy). So the question becomes, “how will the priest do his job and keep house?”
Of course, there is the challenge of getting you stuff to the village. There are no package stores to buy boxes, so even boxing you stuff is problematic, let alone getting it on the bus (dala dala), and then to the village. Having a “kitchen” is handy.
And, of course, every mother in the village will see the single cleric as the ticket to get their single daughter out of the village, and begin to ascend the social hierarchy of the church. In African culture, being the wife of a pastor carries a lot of social clout, and is a highly favoured position.
So if he doesn’t have kitchen when a priest goes to a village, then the odds are, he will have one when he leaves.
Last month, lots of people were getting ready to leave Msalato Theological College, including some teaching staff and students.
All students are packing up to leave college on Monday June 26 for the end of year (academic that is) and get home as quickly as possible. The majority of students return July 28 for the beginning of the new academic year. For those who graduated on Sunday, June 25 their immediate future is unclear.
Students already ordained wait anxiously for word from their Bishops on where they will be sent. Appointments in the Anglican Church in Tanzania and other places in Africa are made by the Bishop about the middle of each year.
Each year the list comes out, and clergy are eager, but not always favourably to hear where they are to serve the church. Some students fear they will be placed in a remote village with no power – and thus no TV, no running water, no public transport, and no shops.
A computer center with internet access is a recent addition to Msalato Theological College, and for some students the thought of no access to the net is simply depressing.
For the single students they have the added concern of how they will survive, especially in a culture where women shop, cook, clean, get water, gather fuel, and grow the vegetables: All of which is extremely labour intensive and time consuming.
For single male students the deadly question is, “Do you have a kitchen?”
In Tanzania, this is the way of asking, “Do you have a wife?” Social role and status is defined in traditional African culture and in parish life. A single male clergy in a village can be decidedly unattractive, to the congregation to say the least, and, terrifying at the most for the cleric for a variety of reasons.
Being single and being appointed to a village means the student will need some chairs, and a table (one chair costs between one and two months income), dishes and bowls to cook and serve food, and clothes, (plus a bicycle would be really handy). So the question becomes, “how will the priest do his job and keep house?”
Of course, there is the challenge of getting you stuff to the village. There are no package stores to buy boxes, so even boxing you stuff is problematic, let alone getting it on the bus (dala dala), and then to the village. Having a “kitchen” is handy.
And, of course, every mother in the village will see the single cleric as the ticket to get their single daughter out of the village, and begin to ascend the social hierarchy of the church. In African culture, being the wife of a pastor carries a lot of social clout, and is a highly favoured position.
So if he doesn’t have kitchen when a priest goes to a village, then the odds are, he will have one when he leaves.
posted by Fr. Paul at 10:06 AM
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