It gets cold at night in the mountains where the Matengo people live, near Lake Nyasa in southwestern Tanzania. When Joseph Mbele and his brother and sister came home after a day of work in the fields, they headed for the warmth of the jiko.

A fire crackled insdide the jiko, a small, brick building next to the Mbele's family main house in the village of Lituru. The one-room jiko served as their kitchen, dining room, and favorite place to entertain guests. On the hearth, Joseph's mother stirred a pot of ugali, the thick corn porridge that is the mainstay of every Matengo dinner. Sometimes she added fish or meat to the ugali, but even if she didn't, there was always plenty to eat, Joseph remembers. The children and their parents sat on low stools, talking and laughing, with bowls of ugali in their laps.

The funniest stories Mzee Mbele told were original ones about his adventures in nearby cities. Several times a year, he walked from Lituru to the larger city of Mbinga, seventeen miles away. Invariably, he returned with satiric observations about city life.

"He liked to make fun of the squalid little houses there, confined to their little spaces," Joseph says. "For us in the country, it seemed a strange way to live. I remember the people laughing when he told about the tiny helpings of food people used to give him in the city. They thought it was a big joke! We always had plenty to eat. You could eat ugali until you collapsed. Well, he was such a good storyteller that the moment visitors showed up at our house, they were trapped."

Joseph, who was the oldest child, spent his childhood days walking to the family's plots of farmland, carrying his little brother on his back. Twelve children were eventually born into the Mbele family, but four of them died before reaching the age of six.

Joseph's job was to baby-sit the younger boy, and together they ran through the fields, waving their arms to scare birds away from the wheat, maize, potatoes, and beans that their mother was tending. She dug small, round pits in rows across the steep slopes of the farm, practicing a farming method the Matengo people developed during the 150 years they have lived on the mountains near Lake Nyasa. Called ngoro in their Bantu language, the method requires the farmer to make pits about a yard in diameter and a foot deep, mix the loosened soil with cut grass, and then plant seeds in the light, composted result. Digging pits along the hillsides helps stabilize the soil, and mixing in grass and old plants enriches it.

When Joseph had time to play, he made toys out of wood, or he trapped birds. "Catching a bird in one of my traps was such a thrill I can't even describe it," he says. "We would take them home, roast them and eat them with ugali." Joseph went to school in his village through the fourth grade. Then he went to a Catholic boarding school 110 miles away from home and later transferred to a government high school. For college, he enrolled at the state university at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. When he graduated, he was asked to stay on and teach literature to African students.

Perhaps he felt he was preaching to the choir, because in 1989, he accepted a position at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, where he could help American students "open up and learn about other cultures. This is so important for peace in the world," he says. Mbele also takes his stories on the road and talks with young people and adults in other states. He frequently guides student groups to Africa.

When he finishes teaching in Minnesota, he intends to return to Tanzania. "I would like your readers to know this," he says. "I do not fit the stereotype of everyone dying to be an American."

He stays in touch with his family by making phone calls, writing letters, and sending email. He tells the family what he is doing, but he says he does not want his grandmother to find out that he sometimes eats a hamburger and fries for dinner. "She would say I'm going to starve to death," says Mbele. "She would tell me to come home, come back to Tanzania and eat real food!"