Tanzania Chainsaw Massacre

For those of you who were wondering, no they don’t celebrate Halloween in Tanzania. To be honest, we passed through October 31 without even really remembering it was Halloween. There were no little children dressed in costumes at my door. No buckets of candy. No scary movies. No pumpkins on front porches. But lucky for me, the wazungu do celebrate Halloween! We were a few days late on our festivities, but they were still fun. So I thought I would give you a little recap of my Tanzanian Halloween.

We all gathered together at our friends’ house for some dinner. The background music was entitled Halloween Rock. We did our best to set the mood for Tanzanian Halloween. To further set the mood, I decided a costume would be appropriate. So I wrapped my Kanga around my neck and created my own amazing cape. I became Swahili Girl! While wearing the cape, I have the supernatural ability to speak Swahili. (It’s definitely what I’ve always dreamed of).


After dinner, the real excitement began. We had our very own watermelon carving. (Watermelon…. Pumpkin….they’re close enough). We had been talking about this Carving Contest for a few months now. It has become an annual event in Dar es Salaam. And since we live in Africa, we are entertained by even the smallest and craziest of things. Since this event was the talk of the team for a few months, there was a lot of pressure to perform well. Marissa and I weren’t too excited about the contest, but we decided to be good sports and go along with the fun. We worked as a team on our melon creation. As most of you would expect, it didn’t take long for me to get into the competition. Marissa is just about as competitive as I am… so we had our game faces on. We huddled in the corner to secretly plot our melon creation. All of the whispers and giggles had the other competitors baffled. They were definitely not expecting what they got that night. But when Marissa and I get going, it’s dangerous!

Words don’t quite do justice to the creation, so you can refer to the pictures. We entitled it “Tanzania Chainsaw Massacre.”


Our teammates were shocked that our minds would even come up with such a horrific event. Watermelons killing watermelons… who would have thought? They were actually quite impressed by our creation. As you can see in the pictures, our other competitors went for a less frightening melon display. The judges, being the sweet people that they are, decided to give different categories for each pumpkin so that everyone could be a winner. There was the cutest, the most geometric, and the most thematic. But our friend Brad wasn’t satisfied with these categories. He demanded there be a winner. So Marissa and I declared ourselves winners and everyone agreed. There was definitely no competition.


After we marveled at our wonderful creations, we did what only any normal person would do. We smashed them. We threw our melons up against a concrete wall and left all the carnage on the side of the road. Crazy wazungu!



So that was my Tanzanian Halloween. I have no doubt that Marissa and I will carry the pride of winning our first Melon Carving Contest for the rest of our lives. And when they begin to talk about next year’s carving, we will be sure to remind them of our Tanzania Chainsaw Massacre. How could they forget?