Host Families; An exposure to the Inner American Life

By Joyce Magoti

LAST weekend was one of the best moments for Tanzanian journalists who are in Maine for a USAID-Tanzania funded exchange program-a visit to host families.

This I have to confess was one of my greatest days in my life since I touched the American soil, when I went to spend two nights with American people in their home sharing experiences of life and getting an opportunity to know their inner living.

Me and my colleague, Levina Kato were hosted by one family and they welcomed us warmly and we lived with them the two days as one family joyfully.

Our hosts Kristine and Bruce Red was very lucky to find out that we are going to live with them all weekend then ask their friends Betty and Greg Jamison to have dinner with us.

 

Cris told us that she always come to Africa in Ghana where she was the among of people who help orphanage center their, for the moment I get the point that our hosts are helpful and kind all the time of their life.

 

     

The sooner we reached their compound, they started to include us in their life as we went down to the kitchen to prepare dinner because it was around seven and dinner was served to us together with a number of invited neighborhood families.




Dinner  time was a very important avenue for our hosts to learn a lot of issues about Tanzania and we exchanged skills and information with them.

I learned that most American people like to know much about Africa although they are badly fed with only negative news such as hunger, famine, diseases and corruption from the international and local press.

We spent time telling them some good news about Africa and Tanzania in particular and most of them were impressed and vowed to visit this country anytime.

After a fairly good sleep the next day took off with a tour of The Acadia National Reserve where we saw the natural beauty of Maine and we also later on the day visited the famous Bar Harbor Beach, sand beach, Thunder stones and Acadia hills where we enjoyed the rest of the afternoon.

I found the Acadia Beach well kept and preserved and the city around the area reminded me of Tanzania's Zanzibar stone town which attracts a number of tourists.

We spent the last day of our session on shopping and talking top our hosts before they took us back to the campus.

Through this program I learned a lot about Maine and the US in general especially on their perception of issues like health care, international relations and further more how much they love their country.

I think Tanzanians should know much about American live as our two countries also improve their relationship, so I will upon landing back home share this experience with my people at home.