Some Animals of Tanzania

On our way between Dar and Korogwe, all the way back in Pre-Service Training, we saw these monkeys by the side of the road. It was the first indication that the wildlife was different here. We also saw views of trees and mountains that made us think, “This is so similar to The Lion King.” After being stuck in a compound, we were finally seeing the beautiful side of Tanzania.

During site visit week, the Southern Highlands crew was excited to go through Mikumi and see the wildlife there. Unfortunately on the way down, our bus was delayed and we went through the park in the dark. Then all of a sudden, the bus braked quickly to a stop. As we looked out the window in front, we saw a couple of giraffes crossing the road. It was the first time I had seen the animal in the wild. On the way back, we went through the park in the daylight and saw so many animals, but the bus went by so fast that it was hard to get good pictures of them.

One thing that I have learned here is that baby goats are some of the cutest animals. Goat meat is some of the most common meat around. I don’t eat it since I don’t eat red meat but I did attend a goat roast in honor of another volunteer. That was not one of these goats. These were just around my village where I often see young boys herding them.

Lastly here is my sleeping cat. She is the cutest thing around.

 

A Day Off

School has just started back up, but I thought I would share what I might typically do on a day off, whether it be a weekend, a holiday, or a quiet day at site during school vacation.

6:00 Kitipaka licks my face, nuzzles against me. The light is just creeping through the window. She wants me to know that the day is starting while I just want to lie in bed for a little while longer.

6:30 Get out of bed as the cat’s attention increases. I add food to her bowl. Open the door so she can start her daily explorations. After using the choo and putting my solar chargers out, I go back to the warmth of my large blanket. It’s still cool outside.

7:30 After my daily browsing of Facebook and Twitter, make motions to start breakfast. Rather than my usual oatmeal, I make chapati maji and scrambled eggs. The cat keeps me busy as I try to make sure she doesn’t eat the batter.

8:30 With everything ready – the fruit cut up, the tea brewed, the food hot on the plate – I sit down with my Nook and eat my breakfast while reading. If I’m not careful, I might end up reading a book for the rest of the day like I did with Gone Girl this past week.

10:30 I finish up a chapter and the cat finally gets out of my lap so that I can clean up. I’ll start with the dishes, the many that got dirty in the process of breakfast and the ones piled up from the day before. Once those are done, I move on to my laundry. I do both of these in basins and I try not to use too much water. 10 liters is normal for these tasks. Once the clothes are drying on the line, I sweep my house. I do this at least once per day, even on busy ones, because dirt always gets everywhere. But on days when I do my laundry, I take the leftover soapy water and use it to mop my floors.

1:00 Rest. I may go back to my book or write in my journal or work on lesson plans or just cuddle with my sleepy Kitipaka. I might get motivated to do a small workout. Most often it’s throwing a disc at targets.

4:00 Head to the village to pick up some provisions. By this time, the mamas are out selling veggies. I might pick some up from them for dinner or an avocado for my cat and me to share. It’s good to get out at least once.

5:00 Comfort my cat while the rain starts pouring down. I’ve gotten my laundry off of the line by now.

6:00 Start the process of dinner. If there’s no rain, I will use my charcoal stove. Otherwise, I cook it all on my gas stove.

7:30 It’s about completely dark by now. Dinner is done and I make sure the cat has come back inside. I give her some of my dinner to encourage her. I set up something to watch while I eat. I’ve watched all of Avatar, no more than 3 episodes at a time.

8:30 Transition to bed. Finish whatever I’m watching. Browse a bit on my phone, maybe read a chapter of a different book on my phone. I’m currently reading 3 books at once, on 3 different devices.

That’s that. I’ve been here in Tanzania for 6 months. A half a year in a foreign country. I have yet to reach the “I am always bored” stage. I think I’m doing just fine.

 

Early Service Training

At five months in country, I have been in pre-service training, early service training, and have taught at site. It has almost been half a year since I last looked out an airplane window and said goodbye to the Atlantic Ocean. While I have spent more than two months getting used to my site, mostly interacting with the local people, the past three weeks have been a big change from village life. I took an eleven hour bus ride to Morogoro where I met up with my fellow Ed class members who I had not seen since swearing in. We have had sessions on the more bureaucratic tasks that we have to do as volunteers. We also all participated in World AIDS Day by going to local schools here and doing activities with students to educate them on HIV. And AIDS. For the second week, we had to invite a counterpart. Having a local teacher work alongside the volunteer is one of the unique aspects of Peace Corps. We are supposed to do all of our projects with the counterpart. I chose my fellow physics teacher. Many of the other volunteers did not have the luxury of choosing a teacher from the same subject since a lack of teachers is one of the reason we were sent to the schools. This past week I participated in an optional training for student friendly schools. It involved learning ways to make the learning environment positive and safe for students. I invited a different counterpart for this training. Hopefully going forward we can implement the action plan that we came up with.
Even with being busy in sessions, I still managed to find time for doing fun things like going on a hike to a waterfall, eating safi food, swimming in a pool, playing card and dice games, and getting clothes made. It has been nice catching up with my fellow volunteers and meeting ones who have been here for longer.

Breathe

As of today I can just breathe for the next week. The election is over and done. I have finished and submitted my Community Entry Passport. I am through teaching and have already graded all the exams. All that is left is to invigilate some of the remaining exams and catch up on my novel for Nanowrimo. Then it will be time to go to Early Service Training. This past week marked four months that I have been in country. It is almost too crazy to believe. When I have not been planning my lessons or teaching, I have been interviewing or just plain talking with people in the village. Occasionally I still feel like a deer in the headlights when it comes to them speaking fast Swahili with me, but I am adjusting. When I was doing more formal interviews for my CEP, I had one of my fellow teachers come with me to help translate. I have learned so much about the village through doing this. Now that the document is complete, I need to make up more excuses to go down the hill and into the village other than to buy necessities.

The rainy season has started. The good news is that there are plenty of mangos and avocados. The bad news is that there is hard, deafening rain fairly often which can flood my house by coming under the door. Whoops. I just have to be thankful that the roof over my head keeps the worst of it out. My cat does not like the rain, so I cuddle with her so she remains calm, which is not necessarily bad. She has been such a comfort for me too. We keep each other sane. I don’t know how she will be able to cope without me for three weeks while I am at training. She’ll be fine. She just needs to breathe. And eat.

Conversations

Location: Staff Room
Fellow Teacher: I hear Trump is going to win.
Me: Hapana!
FT: What will you do if he does win?
Me: I will be sad but I will accept it.

In just a few days is the election. Even here in Tanzania, there is constant news of each new scandal and poll results. My fellow teachers ask me about it fairly often. One teacher in particular likes to joke with me about it. He mentions all these reasons why Clinton should not be in office or why Trump is good, but I know he is playing with me. It’s interesting following the election from so far away. I mailed in my ballot about a month ago. My vote is cast and does not actually need to be in the election office until the 14th so it will only be counted in case of a recount. For now I can only wait with the rest of Tanzania for this all to be over.

Location: Just Outside Village
FT: This is an artificial tree.
Me: It looks real enough.
FT: But it was planted by man.

Apparently here in Tanzania, a tree is only truly a tree if it’s growth was completely natural, if it grew without the help of humans. My fellow teacher asked if there were artificial trees in the America and at first I responded that sure, some people have plastic trees in their homes or offices. That’s when he explained to me about what an artificial tree was here. I then explained that we do not see it that way in America, that in our cities and even in our countryside, so many of the trees have been planted. It’s to give an illusion of nature after we cut down so many of the trees that were originally there. That is not as much of a problem here.

Location: Staff Room (again)
FT: What football team do you like? Manchester? Chelsea?…
Me: Uhhhhh….. Arsenal!
FT: Kweli?

Football (soccer) is incredibly popular here. Having a field is practically a requirement of every school, or at least every village. Few are perfect, some at an angle or bumpy or not the right size, but they serve the purpose of people being able to run around and kick a ball, or makeshift one, through goal posts. A few weeks ago, my school played the school where the closest volunteer lives. We watched first the girls play and then the boys. It was a surprise to see the girls play since it is usually reserved for boys while the girls play netball, a game similar to basketball. Indeed they did play netball afterwards which meant they got more time playing than the boys. Anyway, I don’t really follow the Premier League at all, but I do follow Arsenal on Facebook for some reason. I went on to mention that the game that I loved to watch was baseball, but they weren’t as interested.

Location: Village
Villager: What do you eat in America?
Me: Rice, pasta, potatoes, tomatoes, chicken…
V: What about ugali?
Me: We don’t have that in America.

For the most part the food here is the same as food you can get in America. At least all the ingredients are the same. Except for ugali. Tanzanians have it with almost all of their meals. Their translation for it is stiff porridge, but it is basically just cornmeal stirred in boiling water until it is hard. They use it to eat food with their hands. Since it is so common here, everyone is surprised when I say that we don’t have it. Sometimes they think that means we also don’t have corn, but of course we do.

Location: Home
Kitipaka: Meow
Me: Meow
My cat has grown bigger since I got her. Sometimes I worry she is getting bigger the wrong way. She eats daga, little dried fish sold at the market, and she has recently become addicted to avocado. She cries if I don’t have any for her and will search out my hiding spot for them. Tanzanians don’t usually keep pets so some think it’s weird that I keep my cat.

In which I get a cat

Happy three months inTanzania! It’s hard to believe how much time has passed. Since site visit week, we were all sworn in as volunteers on September 21st, which is also the international Day of Peace. How fitting to become a Peace Corps volunteer on that day. Many of us dressed up in new hand-made clothes from a local cloth called kitenge. Our cultural presentation included an original song written and composed and arranged by fellow volunteers. It detailed the embarrassing things that have happened us in country. The title is “Wote Hatujambo,” which means we all don’t have any problems, we will all be ok. The next morning, I boarded a bus with my headmistress to start my long journey as a volunteer. I am finishing up my third week at site. The adjustment has seemed quick. The first weekend, I mostly relaxed at my headmistress’s house in Mbeya and picked up some supplies. Then the first week I jumped right into teaching. There have been times that it has been difficult to teach and not know if the students understand me, but I never let this frustrate me. There only a few weeks left in the school year so I just have to focus on getting all the material covered for the Form 1 class. I just finished writing the final exam for them. Next I will type it up and maybe type up all the other ones. I was asked if I can type fast and I said that I can. Earlier I made an Excel spreadsheet to record all the scores and averages them and gives a grade and gives each student a rank. I have more computer skills, which is understandable. I grew up with a computer in my house. My classes required the use of computers throughout my schooling. My village just got electricity a month ago, the week after my site visit. There is a large technological gap. My house doesn’t electricity, though there is a pole just a few meters away. Since my house gets dark around 7:00 and I I don’t have lights, just a solar light that I charge every day, I am usually in bed by 8:30 or 9:00. I have gotten used to sleeping with the sun.
I have explored the area a little, mostly with the guidance of one of the other teachers. He has introduced me to important people in the village and shown me other villages, making sure I’m not just sitting in my house during all of my free time. Of course I do have a reason to be home as I’m not the only one living there. My headmistress gave me a cat. She loves attention and whines if I’m not petting her or my mind is elsewhere. I’m glad to have her companionship. I’ve also seen other volunteers since being at site. There are a few who are not very far away and I can always go into Mbeya to see other volunteers. Overall I have a good and rewarding time here

Site Visit in Mbeya

This past week I visited my site. I’ll be living in Mbeya region which is part of the Southern Highlands. My school is Isuto Secondary School, a coed public school. I have beautiful views of hills around me and the weather is nice. Mbeya town will be my banking town and it is a pretty cool place. I ate delicious Indian food and even got a smoothie at a hip coffee shop. As amazing as this all is, the trip from training to site took a few days. The adventure taught me about the Tanzanian transport system. There were 27 total of us going to theSouthern Highlands so we all took the same bus down. I think we took up more than half the bus. When it finally arrived. It was two hours late so we just hung out at the gas station that it was supposed to stop at. Then we had to figure out how to pile everything in the compartments. And much of our luggage ended up in the aisles and on our laps. It was a crowded journey to Iringa. Plus the bus made frequent stops to pick people up and drop others off. Buses have a lot less formal stop schedule here than in the US. Our path took us through a national park where in the dark of the night we had to stop for some giraffes to cross the road. When we finally made it to Iringa, we were hungry and tired. Some went straight to sleep while others followed our PCV hosts to food and drinks. I then had to get up somewhat early the next morning with the other 8 Mbeya and 2 Rukwa people to get another bus to Mbeya. This journey was not as long, but we had to go over dirt roads a long stretches were under construction. It was not the most pleasant bus ride. I met my host for the week as soon as I stepped off the bus. We then had a long walk to where the PCVs there had reserved rooms for us. I went local and carried my bag of books on my head up the hill. Again we were tired and hungry but at least it wasn’t late at night. First we had drinks and small bites at a nearby hotel and from a decent enough pastry shop and then we walked down to a Tandoori chicken place. Everything was delicious. The next morning I had chapati and chai for breakfast. I hung out with my site mates in a coffee shop before we started our journey towards our villages. It turns out I will be somewhat close to several volunteers. My host and another health volunteer are about an hour and a half walk from me. Then there are two other volunteers who are a quick, or slow, ride away. It’s good to know I won’t be totally isolated. I spent the night with my host. We chilled mostly. School was on break so I couldn’t observe her teaching a class. The next afternoon we walked to my site, but I left much of my heavy stuff. It was hot out and we were sweaty when we arrived. I’m at a new site so they were still working on some things, like putting the choo door on and a lock on my bedroom door. The courtyard was a bit of a mess but it should be cleaned up when I come back. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my bed was already made with sheets and a blanket and that I had three full buckets of water. I explored the area a bit and met some of the staff members before getting to know my headmistress in her house. She cooked me two meals with her grandchildren. In the morning I introduced myself to some of the students and also some of the village officials. Later that day I learned that the Southern Highlands had to be back in Iringa a day early. I was planning on spending another day in Mbeya town, but plans had to change. That night I spent at another volunteers’ house. We made pasta and watched a movie. The next day we started our 4 day journey back to Korogwe: site to Mbeya to Iringa to Morogoro to Korogwe. Some of the buses provided entertainment in the form of music videos, poorly acted Tanzanian shows or even the occasional treat of an American movie. Restroom or food stops were few though any time we pulled into a standi, we would be crowded at the windows by vendors trying to sell us soda or cookies. When we went back through the national park in daylight, we saw in addition to giraffes, gazelles, zebras, wildebeests, water buffalo, warthogs… All of us Americans had our eyes glued to the windows while the local Tanzanians didn’t react at all. Overall I would say that bus riding experience here is more exciting than riding buses in the US, in both good and bad ways. Thankfully, we all got to where we needed to be and with all of our belongings. It was a fun week and I look forward to returning.

More about training

In one week I will find out where my site will be, the place I will live for the next two years. It’s crazy to think about. I’ve been here about a month and a half and in less than a month I will be done with training. Last week we had a written exam and the spoken LPI. Next week we will have another written exam and a simulation. After that I probably won’t have any more formal instruction in Kiswahili other than self-study. I will be left to pick up any more from the people I will work with and the people in my community. So far I’ve learned to express several tenses and constructions. But I still don’t understand what my host mama says to me when we cook dinner. I hear a jumble of words, one or two of which I actually recognize. I might think I know, but when I respond she tries to correct my line of thinking. My French classes were never this intense.
This past week was my last full week in internship teaching. I’ve been teaching form 1 students about work, energy, and power. It’s been challenging but I’m learning. The school I’m at is a private school. The students have comparatively good English abilities compared to students at the other nearby schools. Nonetheless they still don’t understand everything. Think back to high school and taking a foreign language. How much did you really know? Now would you have been able to take all of your classes in that language? That’s the situation of Tanzanian secondary school students. As teachers we have to speak in “Special English” so that our students can understand us. At the end of the day I’m still not sure if they truly got the concept. They can recite a definition but if I ask for another explanation they give me blank stares. I try to make sure lessons aren’t just me writing on the blackboard. With physics there are so many demonstrations that you can show the class. Seeing something happen is easier to get than words out of the mouth or in white chalk. I loved my high school physics classes because of all the labs we did. We learned from observing and not listening to a lecture. For a lesson in power, I had the students in four teams pull a full nalgene up by a rope that was looped over the doorway. Essentially the quickest group was the most powerful. Everyone had fun and hopefully I imparted on the students what power is.
The bulk of training is done and I can’t believe it. Soon I’ll be figuring out how to survive on my own in this country.

In Tanzania

I can’t believe that I have been in Tanzania for a month. I am almost comfortable here like it’s my home. Indeed I will call this country home for the next two years. The journey started with a middle of the night bus ride from our hotel in Philly to JFK. I said goodbye to the New York skyline that I had gotten used to for the past four years as we drove by in the dark. We had to hang out at the airport for the longest time as the South African airline’s desk would not open for several hours. As with many airport experiences we waited in many lines before finally getting on the plane. The flight itself was about 14 hours. I watched Zootopia and all I could think of was what we had talked about in staging. Much of it was dealing with cultural sensitivity as part of the Let Girls Learn program. I watched other movies and slept sporadically in between them and the meals. I appreciated looking out the window and seeing Africa for the first time in my life. We had another several hour flight that took us to Dar Es Salam. At immigration and customs we were greeted by the staff who will work with us. They took us in large vans/small buses to Kurasini where we would be staying for the next week. There we learned intro Swahili and also primers on how things work in the PCTZ. The week was filled with getting to know everyone and lots of food. We were fed essentially five meals a day or watermelon, rice, beans, and cabbage with other foods mixed in too. After learning our training groups, we piled into a large bus. The long ride to Korogwe allowed us to see African scenery and wildlife, the first time for the vast majority of us. It felt surreal to see sights I had only encountered in encyclopedias or documentaries. But I also saw how different life is here. I will probably get into that later. At the teachers college in Korogwe, we split up according to our villages and piled into yet another vehicle that took us down dirt roads to practically the front doorstep of our new home stays. In my room at my host family’s house is where I am now writing this entry.

Since being here we spend most days in our training groups at the local schools learning Kiswahili and doing internship teaching. Other days we are all at the teachers college learning more about PCTZ. Our only day off is Sunday when we are able to wash our clothes the Tanzanian way and learn how to do other chores around the house. It’s been fun so far.

Start of something new

I have just finished my first day of staging, so technically my first day of being in the Peace Corps. Knowing that so many people back home want to hear from me during the next two years, I thought that writing a blog would be the easiest way for everyone to get information from me and find out about what I am up to. This post will go up while I am still in the US, but once I am in country, I have been warned that there may not be the best internet connection. This may the last you hear from me for a week.

A little over a year ago, I started looking at the Peace Corps website, seeing what projects were happening or what jobs were listed. When I noticed that some of the shipping out dates of the postings I was interested in would be the summer after I graduated college, I thought that I had to apply. Since then – before, during, and after the application process – I have spoken with so many RPCVs about their experience and have been inspired by what they told me. The more I pondered the decision, the more I wanted to go. My initial reaction to being accepted was excitement. My family, after being supportive of me applying, was briefly a little weary, but they came around. The medical clearance process was for the most part smooth even if there were a few hiccups. Between graduation and now, I have been all over the place, physically and mentally, as I have been preparing to go. I hope to go more into detail in later posts, but I just wanted to set this up and get word out to the internet world that I will be starting something new.