Tuombe: Praying before eating

Growing up, my family prayed before meals at which we were all sitting down together.  It didn't have to be a formal affair to merit a prayer, but it was a 'real' meal.  Like, we didn't usually pray before lunch, which was a bit more haphazard with us all eating different random leftovers or making our own sandwiches and sitting at the kitchen bar instead of the table.

Tanzanians are serious about the concept of praying before eating.  The other day (sorry, no picture - the picture above is a of a different day when we were eating with Tanzanian friends.  But I wanted to have a picture of some sort, because I know there are folks out there who don't read blog posts unless they come with a picture...) we went to the home of some friends for a quick visit and were given sodas to drink.  As was very typical, our hosts asked us what kind of soda we wanted, and then gave some money to their son to run to the nearest shop and buy them.  They didn't have enough money to spend frivolously for everyone to have a soda, so it was just me and Andrew with drinks in front of us.  The teenage daughter opened our bottles and poured some into glasses she had brought out for us.  Then, as we have grown to expect, she said, "Tuombe" (Swahili for "Let's pray".)  She then quietly speed-muttered her prayer of blessing, and closed with the mandatory "in the name of Jesus, amen."

In the States, I don't think if we had guests and gave them sodas, we'd pray over their drinks.  However, when people in the States do pray over food, the prayer is usually spoken in a normal voice.  I know part of the issue is just my Swahili, but it seems like 75% of the food-prayers I hear are said at an extremely rapid rate in a quiet voice.  Another interesting note is that 98% of the time, it's the woman of the house or an eldest daughter who says the prayer.  I think that in the States, it is often the man of the house who prays over the food when there are guests present.  Way back in 2006, when I was staying with a Tanzanian family for several days as part of my language-learning course, the women of the house prayed over the food in the kitchen just after they finished cooking it, and then took it into the dining room for the family to eat.  I don't know if it was because they felt it was more important for the food to be prayed over than for the consumers to hear the prayer or what, but that theory could fit with the speed-mumbling, too.  Maybe it's thought that God knows and understands, and he's the one who is being spoken to, not the other people, after all.