July 6, 2026

Life in a homestay is one of the most important parts of my Swahili immersion experience. And one of the most important members of my host family is my little "brother" (my host mom's nephew). He's almost two, and our Swahili conversation skills are about on par. Simple sentences, short commands, and counting to ten are about our speed. He loves to eat, and to dance in the rain. He does not like to sleep. We disagree on this point, but I think we'll work through it.

He's learning to feed himself with "big people" utensils right now, and it makes for constant surprises at the dinner table. We chatter about food, and wiping his face and hands, and finding his shoes, which always seem to be lost. This weekend, I introduced him to American pancakes. They were a hit, even though we ate them with avocados and peanut butter instead of maple syrup. This is Eastern Africa, after all.

Yet life in a homestay isn't always amusing or glamorous. Sometimes it's crowded (imagine three women trying to get dinner ready and prepare food for a toddler in a kitchen roughly six feet long by six feet wide). Sometimes it's noisy (thanks to said toddler's sleep regression). Sometimes someone else has put away your socks in their laundry, or moved your painstakingly hand-washed clothes into the shed because they were in the way on the clothesline. Sometimes you're hungry when no one is ready to cook or not hungry when dinner is served. And sometimes, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time and get caught in the crosshairs of family life. 

These minor challenges notwithstanding, MS-TCDC has an incredible home placement program in the Usa River community, and I am truly grateful to be paired with this family. From our shared love for hikes and trail runs (I logged almost 20 km with my host mom this weekend alone!) to our shared gluten allergies (yes, really!), I know that this placement was carefully considered. Living in a Swahili-speaking home is critically important to my language development, as it's the safest, lowest-stakes space to practice what I'm learning in the classroom. CLS students have 20 instructional hours every week, which means that each day we cover nearly as much as a typical college course would cover in a week. Constant repetition and use is crucial for embedding the immense influx of new vocabulary and grammar. 

I will always be grateful to my host family for patiently listening to my excruciating slow and awkward sentences, correcting my mispronounced words non-judgementally, and welcoming me into Tanzanian culture with so much grace and love. Though I'm here to learn Swahili, I suspect this is the beginning of a friendship that will last long after the eight-week program ends.

To join me on this journey, you can follow along with new posts in the Field Notes blog on this website or LinkedIn. I am in Tanzania on a Critical Language Scholarship for Summer 2026. My research is currently supported by the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence, a P.E.O. Scholar Award, and a Center for Collaborative Conservation Fellowship. I am actively fundraising for the next phase of my research, and welcome referrals to funders who are interested in supporting work on global challenges including human-wildlife conflict, poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation, and the impacts of a changing climate on all of these issues.