Mama Anna's Gouda Cheese

I got off the stuffed dalla dalla at the sign to the Dik Dik hotel. Shortly, a man came up speaking to me in Swahili. Mercifully, another came up, informing me that this man was looking for the visitor to the Mulala Tourism Program. I nodded that I was indeed said person. Looking around, I saw only women wearing traditional kicoy wraps and other locals crowding this drop off point. I definitely stuck out like a visitor.
I looked into the place where the old land rover’s window should be. There was a clear view into the truck. It looked like an old army surplus vehicle. Its condition revealed the kind of work and conditions in which it has traveled its many miles. As I swung the latchless door open and climbed in, I sat down smiling on a piece of foam encased in a plastic grocery bag. Emmanuel, the 21 year old driver with thick curly eyelashes, a huge shy, smile and the most even, beautiful ebony complexion I have ever seen, pulled an industrial strength rubber band over the door handle, thereby ensuring it wouldn’t fall open as we bounced up the rutted road. I looked down at the plastic gallon container of gasoline that was feeding the engine with a direct tube line. It became my responsibility to hold the tube down into the gasoline to keep the engine going as we bounced up the road. Emmanuel jumped in the right side of the car, turned the key in the ignition which was held in place by metal wires securing it to what remained of the plastic dashboard. He then pushed in a screw which turned over the transmission, and with loud putt-puttering, we were off. We stalled about five times on the way up, and Emmanuel and his brothers spent the afternoon sucking gas through the pipe to try to fix the input.
Mama Anna has a small farm on the slopes of Mt. Meru in Northeast Tanzania. She has two cows, three calves, five sheep, two goats, and honeybees. She also grows coffee, finger millet, and maize. She lives in Mulala, a community of 5,000 people, and is one of six members of the Agape Women’s Group, an organization that together manufacturers cheese (gouda, cheddar, mozzarella, smoked or unsmoked, cream cheese, and cheese curd), as well as honey, jams, and banana wine. The goods labeled “Mama Anna’s Cheese Farm” are available in local supermarkets and by specialty order. It is all made by hand in a small room to one side of her house. There is a painted sign above the doorway: a drawing of a white house in a green setting, and the name Mama Anna. Inside, small wooden frames line one wall, each holding a certificate. One comes from a workshop on milk processing, sponsored by Land o’ Lakes, others certifying the excellent quality of the Agape Women’s Group products in various farmers shows around the country.
Since 1996, Mama Anna, Mama Abu, and the other women have accepted visitors into their homes. People come from all over the world, some alone, some as part of their safari package. They sample cheese, walk to a small viewpoint, have a lunch of rice, curry, chapatti, local tea and coffee. They drink uji, a local porridge made with home grown millet flour. Similar to oatmeal, I add sugar to mine. We suffer from fits of laughter as I try to communicate in broken Swahili and Mama Anna giggles that she cannot understand me. However, we hug and laugh and grind coffee with sticks that resemble small battering rams. We drink locally grown tea and press cheese into metal molds book-ended by wooden blocks. They are wrapped in cheese cloth. We carefully place them on top of each other and balance 15 kilo rocks on top. In this way, the cheese is pressed before it is placed in the aging room. Roasting coffee over the open fire, Mama Anna takes my picture on the digital camera. She cuts off the top of my head, but is laughs sillily at having managed to use this funny mechanism. Her dimples and round face remind me of so many children who scream with delight seeing themselves immortalized on this small screen. Mama Abu explains to me that with her eyes she cannot take pictures. Their brownness is softened by the blue gray ring of forming cataracts around the edges. As we make uji, they inform me that it is a good drink for women while they bleed, and surreptitiously ask me when women begin and end bleeding in Mamericani, America. The two women have recently gone through menopause, and are fascinated to know that the same thing happens in America. Later, laughing, they also inform me that the porridge we are making is good for young men. They shriek as they mime a penis between their legs, explaining through gestures that it works as an aphrodisiac. I am shocked momentarily, and then charmed and touched by the way these women connect with me, by the kind of laughter that women share all over the world and in every situation.
Sometimes you just meet people that make you want to come back. Even after only a few hours, it was difficult to leave Mama Anna’s round smiling face, her lovely children. Anjela taught me the names of all African animals in Swahili as we looked in an old identification guide. Apparently there is no Swahili name for squirrel. Through sharing moments, daily chores, grinding millet, pressing cheese, laughing as we try to communicate through broken Swahili and English, I made friends. This is what traveling is all about, less the big sites, and much more the small moments, the friendships made, the connections that mean after you leave you will imagine particular people and think about what time it is where they live and what they would be doing now. No matter where I go, I will continue to think of Mama Anna’s cheese farm on the slopes of Mt. Meru, smile, and hope against hope that today’s cheese is drying perfectly under the cheese cloth in the shaded aging room. I hope that she and Mama Abu and singing as they prepare the coffee, and laughing at whatever new visitors are there to partake in the joyful routine of their daily life.