“My host informs that when I installed wordpress it was not wordpress MU. Could this be the issue? “
No, that is not the issue. BP works in single WP.
But if you want to give your members their own blogs, then you have to go multisite, i.e. create a network.
You should also check out this article, before installing BuddyPress – https://codex.buddypress.org/getting-started/before-installing/
