Joshua in Tanzania

2007-12-21T18:55:00.000-08:00

2007-10-13T04:58:00.000-07:00

These past few weeks have been crazy. It is hard to accept that my time here is over.I have had mixed feelings about leaving. I am exicted to go home but at the same timeI want to take all my students, villagers and friends back home with me. When I arrivedat site I had no friends or family and thus over these past few years I have had to makethem. Now that I feel at home and life is good it's hard to let go. Nonetheless my lastday of working for the Peace Corps is Monday November 5,2007. That is also the same daythat I fly home. I am expecting to arrive back in KC on Tuesday November 6. I look forward to seeing all of you!

Normally when I walk around my village for whatever reason myvillagers like to give me the Spanish Inquisition and bombard me witha million questions. For example they like to ask where I am going,what am I going to do there, if I am going to the market they want toknow what I am going to buy, they also like to know what am I going toeat for lunch etc. Some of my villagers have been trying hard thesepast two years either to get me to marry them (if they are women) orto marry female members of their family (if they are males).Therefore I also get questions about whether or not I am seeinganyone, what type of girls I prefer etc. They have done this sincethe first day I arrived in the village and still do it to this day. Ihave always taken it as normal even though I know that such behavioris not acceptable in America. The other day I was walking with two ofmy fellow teachers in the village and some of the villagers started in on theirquestions. To my surprise both of these teachers became very annoyedby them doing this and proceeded to confront them on this behavior.Come to find out this is not acceptablebehavior and a Tanzanian would never even think of asking suchquestions (especially questions concerning my marital status) toanother Tanzanian. It's funny I would learn this after putting upwith it for two years.

I just recently returned from my final Peace Corp conference. It washeld in Arusha (the town nearest to mountain Kilimanjaro, theSerengeti, and Ngorogoro Crater so it is a major tourist center) at areally nice private Hotel (we had running water everyday (even HOTwater), electricity etc). The hotel was strategically built in a game reserve area that also had great views of Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Meru.The purpose of the conference was help us put closure on these two yearsand to prepare us to return back to the USA. As I result, we basicallyhad sessions in which we got to get all our stories out (what we love and will miss about TZ and what we hate and won't miss). I really got a lotout of the conference and felt a lot better about leaving afterwards.

While I was up in the Arusha area I also got a chance to spend some timein the city of Arusha. Due to the fact that it is a homebase for tourists coming to see Ngorogoro Crater, Serengeti or climb Mt. Kilimanjaro etc. it is a really a strange place. All of the Tazaniansthat I came into contact with were very suprised that I knew such goodKiswahili and wouldn't believe that I wasn't born in Tazania. However,despite their happiness with my language skills they still saw me as anmzungu (white person) with money and never wanted to give me the rightprice on things. Here we have to baragin for most of the things we buy(with the exception of restaurants although I have even gotten discountson food that was late or not acceptable). After living here for two years I know the prices of most everything and knew they were riping me off.It was a bit annoying.

As I come closer and closer to leaving my village I being to wonderwhat did Namabengo gain from my presence there. Due to variousfactors I don't think my students national exam scores (their collegeentrance exam) will significantly improve and I am okay with this. Ididn't build a library, mill, or water well for my community and thusI am not leaving behind any visual evidence of my presence. Thereforewhat was the purpose of putting a volunteer in a village likeNamabengo if I couldn't improve test scores or leave with withhopefully sustainable projects that will benefit the village for manyyears to come? The answer is friendship.
Before the first volunteer came to Namabengo, most of my villagers hadnever talked to a white person and only seen one a handful of times.Most of what they knew about Americans and white people they learnedfrom the radio. They though white people were mean, arrogant, richpeople who mainly visited Tazania to steal minerals and precious gems. Now if you asked them about white people they would smile and tellyou a completely different story. They would tell you that at onepoint in their lives four crazy white people came to live in theirvillage. They would say we are crazy because they can't understandwhy anyone from the land of machines and plenty (America and Europe)would ever want to live their homeland and come and live withstrangers in very harsh conditions for two years. They would be ableto tell you the names of each volunteer, the state in America wherethey come from, their daily habits, their favorite foods, their likesand dislikes and how they not only learned to speak perfect Kiswahilibut also learned Kendendule the local tribal language. I know thisbecause during my first month at site everyone I met had stories totell about the three volunteers that served before me.The impact that I had on my village is not one that can be measuredwith numbers and fancy formulas. Yet these sort of things arenormally the ones that Peace Corps must submit to Congress every yearin order to prove that Peace Corps is worth them spending less thanone percent of the foreign service budget on.Two years ago I knew very little about African culture or thedeveloping world. Living in Africa for two years has changed me in somany ways that I am not for sure I will realize in how many I havebeen changed until I return home. Now it's hard for me to constructsentences in English without inserting at least one Kiswahili word. Ican only go a few days before I start craving ugali (that maize mealstuff that I hated the first few months I was here). I maybe leavingTazania in a few weeks but I know that Tazania will forever be on mymind. Once I return I will wonder about whatever becomes of thosestudents, teachers and villagers that I will not be able to keep intouch with. I will also wonder if my school finally got a decentheadmaster that actually makes the teachers teach and doesn't allowthe students to buy their college entrance exams. I will also wonderabout how well my villagers crop yields were for that year.

2007-06-22T00:27:00.000-07:00

In March one of the bridges that my bus has to cross in order to get to my village was somehow destroyed. I didn't think much of it since last year the bridge broke and it was quickly repaired. This time it took them one month to repair the bridge and all they did to repair it was to replace theparts that had broken and then set the bridge back in place. One week afterthey fixed it a large dump truck carrying a huge load of cement barely crossed thebridge and then the bridge broke and the truck fell down into the river with it.Still to this day I don't know how the driver survived. I am not for sure whois responsible for this accident since the government has provided money for a durablebridge to be built since it is on a road that connects two major cities but due to corrpution a much cheaper bridge was built and then the remaining monies eatenby the ones in charge of the project.
Within a few days the villagers had found out about the incident and peoplestarted visiting the site of the accident and stealing cement, parts of the trucklike the tires, etc. Within a week nearly everything worth value on the truck wasstolen.
It took them 2 months to rebuild another bridge and were are blessed that they finally built a durable bridge that will last! During those two months I dreaded going to town since it meant that I would have to take one bus from myvillage down to the wreckage site and cross the river (don't worry the villagersbuilt a nice little bridge out of bamboo to cross on) and then catch anotherbus that was waiting on the other side. The problem was that due to lack of communication many times the bus on the other side was not there which meantwaiting an hour or two for it to come. One time I was coming back from town and after an hour they told us that there wouldbe no bus coming for us and we would have to walk. My village is only about2.5 miles from the bridge but it was still a journey since I had to carryall the things I bought in town back with me.
My life has pretty much been uneventful since I have been on "winter" breakthese past few weeks. I have decided not to travel anywhere and justspend time at my village since I have already seen everything I wantedto see here. This means most days I have spent just reading (already onmy fifth novel now) or visiting my villagers. In August the PC is putting us up in a ritz hotel next to Mount Meru. Mt. Meru is the smaller mountain located right next to Mt.Kilimanjaro. They also have a safari planned for us which they arepaying for. This is our gift from them for being a volunteer. Now it is official that my last day of being employed by PC will beMonday November 5,2007. This means that I will fly home shortly afterthat date.

2007-05-05T23:07:00.000-07:00

Different regions have different stories as to why they can’t to the precious gems and gold here. In my region the Germans established a lot of missions in my region during the colonial times. Therefore the people say that the missionaries purposely built their missions (and still do) over areas where they have surveyed there to be precious gems and gold there. The villagers at night sometimes hear noises coming from the missions and they figure that that is when the missionaries are mining the treasures. One hotel manager said that the missionaries often come back late at night to his hotel and it is obvious that they are returning from mining. The people here don’t mind that the missionaries are “stealing” the precious treasures because the missions give them good churches, good schools, hospitals etc.

For Easter Break I went to visit some volunteers in another region and the people there have a completely different story about the treasures. In one region they believe that there are fairies protecting the gems and gold and when the villagers try to mine them the fairies attack them and chase them away. Evidently the fairies don’t attack the white people and so they need our help to go out and mine the treasures for them. Another region believes that before the Germans left after they lost control of Tanzania they buried all of their treasures 15 miles down deep in the ground. The Germans hoped to return and dig it up again but since they never returned the treasures are still there. So now they need our help to help them use metal detectors and other technology to find the treasures for them. This story is one of the more believable ones the only problem is that their idea of metal detectors is way off target. They think that we have metal detectors that on the meter part the arrow will simply point to diamonds if they are present there or gold etc. and if nothing is there it will also indicate that. They also know about some special glasses that we can wear that allows us to see directly thru the soil and sediments and allows us to instantly locate that treasures.

I think that sometimes the people here are confused as to why in the world we would come here to do simple jobs like teach. They are sure there has to be more to the story. On more than one occasion, I have been out walking around villages near mine and people have asked me if I am looking for treasures. My response is always “of course if you know where they are I would love your help finding them.”

I also had a chance to visit the natural lake nearest to my site (Lake Nyasa or Lake Malawi) for my Easter Break. The trip was rough but I expected it to be and thus it didn’t bother me as much as it would have during my first year. It was only a 6 hour trip where I was packed in like sardines with suitcases, large bags of grains in a Land Rover and later a Minibus. We also transported gasoline (to fill up the car when it ran out) and dried sardines so there were points of the trip where I got a little nausea from the smells. The road isn’t paved yet so we went over rough roads that had huge potholes in them due to water erosion etc. To top it off the driver only brought one tape with him so we listened to the same tape over and over again. All of these irritations can spoil a trip but now they are usual to me and I don’t even think twice about them.

The lake is gorgeous with mountains surrounding it. Its width is so small that you can see a foggy Malawi in the distance. It is such a remote area that normally only Tanzanians visit it. While I was there I managed to come across some very interesting sites. One time we were walking to the beach and we came across this little kid carrying around 50 small dead birds on strings that were tied around his fingers. I asked him about these birds and he said he was selling them. As it turns out, the people in this reason eat these small birds since it is a cheap source of meat. Another time we came across an old blind man who was fishing. He had a bamboo stick with a piece of rope tied to the end except there was no bait at the end of the string. I am not for sure if people tie fish to the end of the string because they feel sorry for him or what.
In many of the areas that I visit the villagers always seem to have strange stories as to why I should be careful of the area. The people near my village always tell me never to be out late at night because that is when the simba (lions) are searching for food. It is true that the Selous Game Reserve is somehow near (2 hours way by bus) my village but I have never heard of anyone being attacked my lions. I also have never heard of anyone spotting lions. On this trip we were warned by many people to be careful of the crocodiles. They told us that we must be careful not to swim to far out into the lake because if we do we are sure to be attacked by the crocodiles. This advice didn’t make any sense to me no matter how I looked at it. The crocodiles normally hide in the flora surrounding the lake and are not good swimmers so wouldn’t it be better if we spotted a crocodile (when asked when was the last time they had seen them they replied oh last year which in the indirect communication that we use here translates as probably never) that we were further out into the lake since it would be impossible for them to swim to attack us.

2007-04-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

The biggest news from the village before I left for vacation was about how two of my freshman students stole a chicken (valued at $2.60) from a house down by the river (about a quarter a mile from the school).(Chickens here are not feed and fenced in like their brothers in other distant lands. They are wild and thus spend most of their daysearching the village for food.) They planned on killing the chicken and cooking it themselves down by the river where no one would see them. A villager spotted them with the chicken squawking in their book bag and later turned them in. Shortly after it happned the whole village was talking about it and how wrong it was of them to do it. It was surprising to me because worse crimes have been committed in the village but they are either denied or justified. Chicken theft always seems to be the one crime that makes the headlines and something is done about it. One villager once told me that we don't even need a real judge in our village because the main types of crimes that are committed are chicken theft. When I questioned them about wives getting beat they told me that husbands are supposed to beat their wives in order to keep them in line. The truth is that it is actually against the law.

These past few months I have made a lot of progress with my teaching. At the last seminar that I went to, they taught us to have our students give us a thumbs up when they are the understanding the material, a thumbs down when they are not understanding and to put their thumb to the middle when they are somehow understanding. Before I would always ask my students if they understand the material andthey would always tell me Ndyio (absolutely yes) since they are required to do so with other teachers and if they don't understand they might get punished. I don't have a problem with my 25 senior chemistry students because I always make them do problems on the board in my presence after we study a certain concept. This would be impossible to do with my 140 biology students. The thumb method works like magic! The problem now comes that most of my girls have not understood the material at all and the students that can't understand aren't able to tell me what exactly they don't understand. In order to resolve this problem, I have resorted to first teaching in special English first and then after a week asking them questions pertaining to last week's material. If they don't understand something I then review the lesson in Kiswahili. This method has helped a lot.

Now my students are so comfortable with me that they have started getting lippy and will tell me once I teach a small part of the lesson to teach in Kiswahili (which of course I won't do since they need to learn some English). On the other hand, the students that I have been tutoring are totally open with me and will answer all of the questions that I have about village life and Tanzania. They are topics I normally ask other teachers but they either don't know or are embarrassed to tell me. As a result, I have learned so much about what really goes on in my village. I recently met some Italian volunteers working here that don't know any English. As a result we ended up talking only in Kiswahili. One of the volunteers recently got married to an Italian volunteer who also doesn't know English that well and so their medium of communication is Kiswahili.

I have picked up a lot of Tanzanian habits since I have lived here solong but one of the habits that I never thought I would ever pick upis that of staring at white people when they come to my village ortown. A few days ago I was people watching in town and I spotted an mzungu (white person) that I didn't know. They were surrounded by only Tanzanians and it so seemed really strange to me. While I stared at them I wondered how their skin could be so white, why were they dressing they way they were, where were they going and what are they doing here. These are all the questions that I have gotten asked here and they are at times annoying but now I totally understand where they are coming from since there are just a handful of us down here and wedo look strange.

Another habit that I have picked up is the habit of having to eat ugali (the corn meal doughy stuff that I hated when I got here) at least a few times a week. Part of the reason is that the lunches that the school provides for us normally consist of ugali and beans. As a result, I will have the stuff at least 3 times a week. Tanzanians used to always say that they had to have ugali (and not rice) a few times a week but again I never understood them.

I will end on a happy note. A lot of hotels here that I stay at here have these posters with nice scenery on them but with some of the strangest quotes. I will leave you with three quotes that I have collected from such posters.

A plan is what we want to do and a budget is the reason why we can't.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in.

There is no greater love than that of food.

2007-03-02T21:59:00.000-08:00

My pictures from Zanzibar are now available for your viewing pleasure at the link below. Enjoy!

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=m8fpli2.auubzo1a&Uy=8o2pns&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0

2007-02-11T00:34:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the late blog. There are two internet places in the town nearest my village and one of them (the most reliable one) recently had their electricity turned off since they hadn’t paid there bill for a long time. The other internet place is always spotty. For these reasons I haven’t had internet in town for around 3 weeks. Hopefully it won’t be like this again but just giving a heads up.

I recently found out that unfortunately my school will not be receiving a new principal. Instead my old acting principal (who has no college degree or much experience in education) was approved to stay at my school and be our principal. I am still not sure how this came to be but I have learned that sometimes it’s easier to not ask the why question here (since it is rarely answered) and just accept the outcomes. I do know that the principal we were supposed to get was coming from a richer public school and was reluctant to come to my school.

My school recently had the bright idea to purchase a new television and satellite dish for the teacher’s lounge. They said that they are also going to purchase a new computer. They are making all these purchases despite the fact that I still have many students in my classes that don’t have desks or chairs to sit on, many of the chalk boards are difficult to write on and some of the classrooms now have dirt floors since the “cement” that once covered the bricks underneath has now eroded away from heavy use. Every term every freshman and sophomore is required to pay extra school fees so that new chairs and desks can be made. Last year only a handful of new chairs were constructed. I am not saying that their latest purchases were not good ones, I just think that their priorities are in the wrong place. Many times last year I would show up to school and there was no chalk to teach with. Many of my fellow teachers unfortunately used this as an excuse not to teach. I ended up just being my own so I wouldn’t have to deal with the issue but it’s pretty sad when even simple things like chalk are not even made priority purchases.

In November all of the principals in the country had a conference with the Ministry of Education to discuss problems that they were facing in their schools and ways to resolve them. The main topic that they ended up discussing, for most of the conference, was how they (principals) are not receiving a large enough salary and what can be done so they can get more money. This was disappointing to hear knowing that so many principals steal money from the school and use it to build bigger houses or start businesses. Also I am not for sure if their priorities are in the right order since I would have thought epidemic shortages of teachers, lack of textbooks and teacher’s resources etc would have been discussed.

My attempt at organic gardening has failed. Before I went on vacation in December, I started preparing the plots for planting corn by “deep digging.” This method I learned at a conference here and it requires no use of fertilizer but still gives you the benefits of using fertilizer. This would benefit my villagers immensely if they would adapt it since every year they spend a large portion of their incomes on fertilizer. Many of my neighbors and fellow villagers watched me (I am still living in a fish bowl world and every ordinary thing I do is still considered the coolest thing by my villagers despite the fact that I have lived in my village now for a little over a year) preparing my plots in a manner that they were unaccustomed to and questioned me to make sure that I knew what I was doing. I politely explained to them that I was trying a new method of planting corn to see if it really would work as well as Peace Corps told us it would. When I came back from my vacation, I found that my neighbors had planted corn for me in the usual way in the area were I had already prepared. Evidently they didn’t think my new method would work but didn’t want to tell me.

For my December break I decided to travel to the exotic island (pictures will be posted soon) 2 hours off the coast of TZ mainland: Zanzibar. The island is considered by main TZ Muslims to be like traveling to a Mecca since it is probably the closest they will get to making the pilgrimage given their economic situation. For this reason I decided to take one of my best students, who is Muslim, along with me on my trip. He really enjoyed the trip considering that before this trip he had only traveled 3 hours from his home.

Zanzibar is an exotic island that is inhabited by 90% Muslims. Historically, Zanzibar served as a major slave market in East Africa. The slaves that were sold from East Africa were sent to Asia (Middle East). When slavery was ended by the British in the late 1800’s many of these slaves were sent back to East Africa and for this reason very few blacks inhabit the Middle East today. The Middle Easterners were the main ones involved in the slave trading before the arrival of the British. When the British did end slavery, the Middle Easterners secretly moved their slave market to the top part of Zanzibar and continued to trade slaves for another ten years. One interesting thing that I learned was that wealthy Tazanians and other Africans also owned slaves.

One very surprising fact about Zanzibar, is that it was the birthplace of the lead singer of the band Queen, Freddie Mercury. When he was born his father was serving as a civil servant for the British Colonial Government on the island. Freddie only lived on the island for a few years before being shipped off to a boarding school in India. He refers to his Zanzibar background in the famous song Bohemian Rhapsody with “Bismillah will you let him go.” Bismillah is the Arabic word for “the word of God” and has become the rallying cry for Muslim groups pressing for Zanzibar to break away from Tanzania.

Even though Zanzibar is known as the spice island, since more than 30 spices are grown on it, poverty still persists. The beautiful beaches that inhabit the island are monopolized by high class western style resorts and restaurants. However directly behind these high class amenities lies villages that are poorer than mine. In the village that I had a chance to visit, the people were making their huts out of mud and sticks instead of dirt made bricks like in my village. I am not for sure if that many tourists ever visit it, or even know about it since it is hidden by a forestry area. All of the villagers were very surprised to see me there and all asked if I was lost.

While I was in the capital city for my vacation, I had a chance to visit the largest and one of the few universities here in Tanzania, the University of Dar Es Salaam. It was built by an a firm from Israel with funds provided by President Kennedy in the early 1960s. (It has been rumored that this was one of his attempts to decrease the interest for socialism by the Tazanian government at the time. Providing PC Volunteers has been rumored to be another). The campus is set on top of a large hill which has a great view of the nearby ocean. Its campus is comparable to an American community college in that its buildings were actually built with durable resources and furnished with modern windows, desks etc. This is rare here considering it is a public institution.

Shortly after the last school term ended back in December I had a chance to attend a Muslim funeral in honor of one of my freshman students that had died. Only men were allowed to attend the ceremony as the women did their mourning in another location. For five hours (this is not an exaggeration) we sat around on straw mats under a tree outside the Mosque (since I was one of the guests of honor, as usual, I was luckily provided with a chair to sit on) and scriptures and prayers were read in Arabic. Incense was continually burned in accordance to tradition. After that the student was carried in a box (later to be disgarded) by a line of people (passed down from person to person who would later reinsert themselves back in the line) to the burial site a half a mile away. According to the Muslim tradition the dead are not buried in fancy wood boxes (like the Christians here) but merely wrapped in a white sheet and inserted into the ground.

2007-01-11T05:47:00.000-08:00

So many things have happened in these past few months that I might
have to write more than one blog entry to fully explain everything.

In November my sophomores took their national exams (similar to
ACT/SAT here). Every time I give a test I always have at least ten
percent of my students that cheat. I thought that surely for the
National Exams (since they even hire security guards with guns to stand outside the classrooms where the tests are going on) no one would cheat and if they were
caught then their tests would be canceled. The ministry also sends in teachers from other schools to supervise the exams. As it turned out, the
night before one exam I saw a few of the teachers come to the school.
When I asked them what they were doing there, they said they were
coming to do lesson plans and write notes for their students that
weren't taking the national exams. These were teachers that hardly
ever teach so I was pretty skeptical. What they did is go to the place where the national exams were kept and got a copy so they could go write down the answers. The next day the same teachers that I saw night before gave some notes to the security guards and then later during the test certain students (that had probably paid the teachers before hand) asked to go out of the classroom to excuse themselves and then got the notes from the security guard.

A few weeks ago I found out that the ministry has assigned us a real principal. We currently only have an acting principal who has no degree just a lot of teaching experience and he is mainly the cause of most of the school’s problems. The new guy is coming from a nearby village and I have heard that he is really strict (in other words he likes teachers to teach and not just go to the staff room and wait for our late breakfast and then leave). I have also heard that he doesn’t put up with teachers sleeping with students or beatings for no reasons. He hasn’t arrived yet but he is required to come or else he will lose his job.

Concerning my classes...I was able to finish the syllabus in all of the classes that I teach. In one class, my junior’s chemistry, I was even able to cover two topics from the senior syllabus. It is amazing what happens here when you actually enter the class on a regular basis. On my last day when I informed my students that I had finished the entire syllabus everyone clapped and thanked me. I was one of the few teachers that actually finished the syllabus. One of my students asked me if I was going to come back and teach here in TZ in 20 years. When I asked him why would I return in 20 years he responded that around that time he will plans to have children that will need a good science teacher and would I consider coming back and teaching them. I was really suprised to hear this. Another student told me that his dream (similar to how in America a lot of people dream of opening a restaurant or business; a school here is one of the best businesses you can have) was to open up a high school and hire all mzugu (white) teachers because it would be the best school since all the teachers would actually teach their required classes and do extra activities with their students. I had explain to him that it would be an almost impossible task since PC only normally never puts more than one volunteer at a school and it would be very hard to attract whites to come from America or Europe to live here and teach for an extended period of time.

The last few months when I was supposed to be “teaching” I was basically given an early vacation. I went to school everyday as usual with my box of chalk and notes ready to teach even though most of the time I ended up just sitting in the staff room with the other teachers and pigaing stori (telling stories) and singing songs. During this time one of my classes were taking their national exams and so this caused my other class to do all the required work (chop the wood for the school kitchen, fetch water) which meant they rarely were in the classroom ready to learn. My school provides a late breakfast and lunch for all the teachers everyday so the teachers come for the free food and then leave after lunch. I had a reality check a couple of times because I am getting paid to come and socialize with people. I doubt I will ever have a job back in America that has so much flexibility.

All of the principals in the nation just recently all met to address problems in their schools (beatings, principals stealing school money, teachers sleeping with students etc). I was very unhappy to hear that they spent most of the time complaining about how the government doesn’t pay them enough money. A good number of them steal school funds and use it for their own needs (a bigger house, car etc) so I was really surprised to find this out.

My counterpart just recently had a baby girl. A lot of people in the village used to think that we were sleeping together, since they can’t figure out why else I normally spend so much time with her (friendships here are rarely with the opposite sex unless they are for sleeping together). As it turns out the baby came out whiter then normal (she has the same color of skin as me right now). African babies normally come out light and then get darker as they age but even my counterpart said that this baby was really white. Not many people have seen the baby since it was just born but I am not for sure what kinds of conclusions people are going to draw concerning me and my counterpart once they do.

I’ll give you one funny story to end on a lighter note. When I first arrived here in country I used to think about how much childhood here must suck since very few families have enough money to buy toys for their kids. Kids normally are really creative here and use stuff in their environment to make toys. Kids normally wrap a bunch of plastic bags together with rope and then have a ball. The other day I saw some of my neighbor kids running around with a flying baby bird tied to a string that they held in their hand. When I first saw them I thought it was one of those electric flying birds like you can buy in America but I couldn’t figure out where in the world they would have bought one here. So instead of the fake plastic toys they get the real thing here. During training one volunteer said that a few kids came up to him and tried to sell some real baby monkeys that they had captured and put in a plastic bag.

I am currently in the capital city right now visiting doctors and dentists. Today I had my physical and found out that I have only lost 5 pounds from the time I came to TZ so evidently I have gained back some of that weight that I lost before. I surprisingly also had a significantly lower blood pressure and pulse than before I came here.

A few weeks ago when I was in the capital city, I had a chance to do something that I never thought I would ever get a chance to do in my life. I visited the new MALL (built my South Africa) here in the capital! Yes you heard me right TANZANIA now has a freaking indoor, air-conditioned and all MALL! I was so excited I wanted to take a million pictures but due to the high security level I was unable to. It is only about a fourth of the size of Oak Park Mall but it’s still a freaking mall in TZ! They currently have a South African grocery store and South African version of Target (that doesn’t have nearly as much stuff) but hopefully more smaller stores will be added soon.

I also had a chance to visit the University of Dar es Salaam (the best and largest university here in TZ). It is a really nice campus (comparable to a junior college back home) on top of a hill overlooking the ocean. As it turns out the school was built by funds provided for by President John F. Kennedy. Evidently he was good friends with Mwalimu Nyrere (the first president of TZ after colonalism). I think it might have been more of an effort to combat socialism in TZ since Mwalimu tried to develop a socialist system here. I will have to write more about the socialism in TZ later.

I know you want to hear stories about my trip to Zanzibar...in a few words it was AMAZING...but I will have to write a blog entry about it later.

2006-11-04T06:09:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege to go to a celebration to commemorate the 45th anniversary of Peace Corps. This was such an important event the vice president of Tanzania was invited and expected to attend. (For some reason he did not attend.) Tanzania was the second country to request Peace Corps volunteers back in 1961. (Ghana was the first country to request volunteers). Around 20 volunteers from the first two groups of volunteers flew returned to reminisce and share their stories. Their first group of volunteers was made up of geologists, engineers and surveyors. They aided Tanzania in developing some of its first major interstate roads. The second group was made up of nurses that worked in understaffed hospitals in heavy populated areas. When the returned volunteers were asked what changes have taken place since they worked here they responded that there are more people, more houses, more schools and more roads but other than that little else had changed. The standard of living and way of life is very similar to the way it was 45 years ago. People are still making their houses out of mud bricks and straw, only a fraction of the population has a high school education and availability of water and food still plague the nation.
The lifestyle of the original volunteers and current volunteers has dramatically changed. The original volunteers were only living and working in major cities. As a result, their homes had such luxuries as electricity, running water, and a flush toilet. Current volunteers are only placed out in rural villages to live and work and very few of us have such luxuries. As a consequence of living out in the bush, I feel that we get a better idea about what life is like for the average Tanzanian and we come to understand the country and culture to a greater degree than the original volunteers. Most of our work deals with Tanzanians. Many of the original volunteers worked along side British and very few Tanzanians. The original volunteers maintained an American work load (12 hours days six days a week for nurses) whereas current volunteers maintain a Tanzanian work load (around 20 manpower hours a week but is subject to seasons, weather conditions, unscheduled holidays and “barazas” (meetings) etc.)
I was able to talk to a nurse who volunteered in the second group. She told me that when she was here women were only allowed to go to the hospital if they were dying. Even when they were allowed to come to the hospital they were treated on the second floor away from the first floor of the hospital where the men where treated. She recalled one night a women came to the hospital crawling up the stairs since she was so sick. When they checked her hemoglobin level it was 3 which means she should have been dead (normal hemoglobin is around 7). She knew that many babies were dying in the villages while she was here but there was little she could do about it since she was not allowed to work in the villages. This fact inspired her to become a midwife when she returned to the USA. Only a handful of medicines were available for use and needles had to be boiled, resharpened and reused. As a result, she learned the power of the body to heal itself if it is only given time, clean water and decent food. Her boss was a British woman and she felt that she was more concerned with the cleanliness and appearance of the hospital than with the care of the patients. On one occasion she draped sheets on a patient’s window (as curtains) since he was getting hot from the sun. Her boss demanded that the sheets be removed since they looked like Chinese laundry.
One of the most inspirational parts of the celebration was when some of the current PC staff members (Tanzanians) talked about how they had been taught by PCVs. They explained how much of an impact it had on their lives since they were able to learn more about American Culture from their teachers. Their teachers were also some of the first Americans they had ever met. The bond that they formed with these teachers would be one so strong that later on some of them contacted Peace Corps directly to find out what happened to their old teachers. Some of them were sad to find out that some of their teachers were shipped off to Vietnam shortly after returning to America and ended up dead. They complained that they wished Peace Corps would provide a way for them to get in touch with those teachers they were not able to reach. This would be difficult for PC to do but it made me realize how much of an impact we volunteers have on those around us. If we do nothing more than teach them about our culture (and that Americans are more than just sources of money) and learn about their culture, than, in their eyes, our time spent here was more than worthwhile.

One of the original volunteer nurses said that Tanzania is for Tanzanians. She meant that Tanzanians must solve the developmental problems that Tanzania faces. We as PCVs, can offer our manpower in order to assist them where they request our help but their problems are so complex that many times when we try to help them we do more damage than good. A few weeks ago, the Clinton Foundation donated new, state of the art laboratory diagnostic equipment to the public hospital in my closest town. Thinking they were still in America, they provided the hospital staff with only a week training on how to use the equipment. They didn’t realize that lab techs here (the ones that use the machines) have very little education compared to their counterparts in America who have college degrees in laboratory techniques. As a result, the hospital staff is using the machines and getting very few correct results but not seeing the results as incorrect since they see the machines as calculators and that can never be wrong.

While I was in the capital city for the celebration, I had a chance to meet my counterpart teacher’s boyfriend. He lives on a small island near the city center and it can only be reached by boat. From the island you can see the skyline of the city center but the life on the island itself is similar to that in the village. There are farm animals like chickens and goats running around and people are farming the land. He lives in a typical Tanzanian one-room home made out of mud bricks but has a really nice home theatre system. While I was eating the omelet with potatoes and cooked banana soup (typical Tanzanians dishes) that he prepared for me, he switched the tv to a channel that showed a symphony engulfed in one of Mozart’s great symphonies. He quickly become fascinated by the music (you might be surprised to know that most Tanzanians think very highly of western classical music) and so we started talking about the different instruments that make up the orchestra, the life of Mozart etc. At one point in our conversation, I realized that here I was on a small island, eating Tanzanian food in a small hut, surrounded by sounds of farm animals and listening to classical music. This realization caused me to have one of those indescribable (maybe surreal) feel good moments. This wasn’t the first time that I had experienced one of those moments and I know it would be the last. These moments normally are the result of two people of different cultures coming together and sharing the beauty that is in their culture. These are the types of things that make my time here worthwhile!

2006-10-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

Great News! Pictures of the interior of my trip to Zambia and of my house are posted at:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingReg.jsp?Uc=m8fpli2.29cd5vbi&Uy=mgabs1&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&UV=461848550251_934525772206

2006-10-01T00:28:00.000-07:00

Life in the village has been somewhat uneventful this past month. I started teaching again in August however I haven’t been able to teach a single period this past September and I was told not to expect to teach any more periods until January. Last week we had graduation and so everyday the students were preparing for that and thus unable to study. We have also been making bricks for some reason unknown to me. I think it might have been to show the parents when they came to graduation that we are planning to build something but no plans of any sort have been made. Everyday each student has been required to carry 20 bricks up from the river. They have now made hundreds of them. Things at school have been good. The ministry of education just recently assigned us 4 new teachers and believe it or not they actually TEACH! I had a personal conversation with each of them about not following the example of the other teachers at my school that barely teach two days every month. So far they have all been teaching as many periods as me which has really surprised me!
The brutal beatings that were common before the students set fire to a part of the school have somewhat stopped. Now students are just given work today after school like digging holes or carrying bricks. One of the teachers that really used to beat students to death is now actually afraid of the students and I rarely see him pick up a stick.
One weekend a few of the junior girls, that are boarding students, were tired of hard labor and so they decided that it would be a good idea to make the freshman girls do most of their chores and then beat them if they didn’t obey. There is no teacher on duty on the weekends so they were able get away with it. It seemed an ironic act to me since my students always complain about how much they hate getting whipped and then they go and do it to each other.
Two of the cooks at my school were recently laid off for a month for some unknown reason. They didn’t think they were going to be able to cook again at my school and so they went to the village witch doctor and asked him to curse my principal and give them some potion that would make him call them back to work. My principal found out about it and fired both of them for such disgraceful acts. I had always heard stories about witch doctors but I never knew that they really existed. I guess they would be similar to fortune tellers in America. The only difference is that here if someone visits them for any reason they are highly frowned upon. I think this is since they are highly condemned by both the Catholics and Muslims here. I don’t know if the action that my principal took was right since I don’t feel that what the cooks do in their private lives should affect their career lives but then again the cooks had to have known that it would come out what they did since there is very little privacy here.

2006-08-19T04:26:00.000-07:00

In less than a month I will have been living here in Tazania for an entire year! It is hard to believe I know. I found out a few months after I moved to my site that my boss and some of my trainers thought I would return to America within my first month at site (living alone in my village). I am still not for sure why they thought that but it seems I have made it. It is amazing for me to think back to how much I have changed since I arrived here last year. I will never forget taking the bus from Dar es Salaam (the capital city of TZ where our KLM plane landed) to Morogoro (where we trained for 3 months). On that 3 hours bus trip I remember how none of us volunteers said a word since we were in total shock of what we were seeing. We saw little signs of development but rather hundreds of people living in mud huts, people walking with no shoes, and people carrying water, bricks, or firewood on their heads. I never thought I would ever get used to this type of environment let alone adapt my lifestyle to live among these people. Now I don’t think twice about what I see here and it’s hard for me to imagine that I could have ever lived in a place that wasn’t similar to this environment. Actually I get reverse culture shock when I go back to Morogoro or Dar and these cities are only somewhat developed compared to any American city.

I have also changed physically. I have lost around 20 pounds (but according to the scale in the PC medical office I have actually gained weight since they altered the scale so we won’t freak out about how much weight we have lost), gotten used to having my haircut as short as possible with the clippers since it is hard to find someone here that knows how to cut mzungu’s (a white man’s hair) with scissors and speak Kiswhili fluently (my villagers are currently teaching me the tribal language Kendendeule and so I know some of that too). However, some things never change like people asking me what tribe I am from, how many tribes are in America, what kinds of crops does my family farm back home (it is hard for them to imagine that not everyone farms in America since 90% of the people here farm for a living), what foods do I eat back in America since I don’t eat meat or fish here (it is hard for them to imagine how many varieties of food we have in America since the diet here is basically ugali (dough like cornmeal), rice or spaghetti noodles (if you are rich enough to afford them like me) for carbohydrates and beans, meat, or cooked vegetables to go with the starch), why does my skin color change when I am out in the sun too long, when will I marry a TZ girl, and why don’t I want an African child. People also ask me to give them money to go to college, build a house, pay for their child to be delivered at a decent hospital, or for sugar or alcohol.

A lot of people have asked me what do I miss most about America. During the first few months of living here I used to miss all the varieties of food (especially cheese and Mexican food) and entertainment that are readily available in America. (I have had so many dreams about grocery stores that they are too numerous to count). Like I mentioned early I have since gotten used to the food and entertainment situation here and I thus don’t have dreams about grocery stores anymore. The main thing that I miss now, and have ever since I arrived, is my friends and family. I know that this is something I will never get over and thus have learned to deal with it. I am very grateful for all of you and thank you so much for continuing to write, email and call me. It means more to me than you will ever understand.

One of the things that I know that I will miss about TZ when I return next year to America is going to be the amount of respect that I get from the people here. Many people still treat whites here the way that they used to treat the white colonial leaders because they think we have the same expectations. For this reason, they won’t allow us to carry anything heavy, or do any task that will make our hands become rough and show signs of a laborer (they actually say peasants), and they always ask us to give our opinion in gatherings or meetings even if we don’t know anything about the topic. This isn’t the type of respect that I am talking about. This type of respect at times can get annoying. The type of respect that I am talking about is the type that people give us because they understand all of the sacrifices that we are making to be here and serve their community for two years. They demonstrate this by cooking me dinner and bringing it to my house, giving me a portion of their harvest and meeting my demands for food as best as they can. For example, this past week I told the lady that cleans my house, without even considering how she would take it, that I haven’t been able to buy bananas in the village for a long time. She took it that I wanted bananas and therefore the next day three different people showed up at my door with bags of bananas!

Another thing that I know I will miss when I return home is the bush “GPS position locating system” that exists here. There are very few white people living here in TZ and so the people here consider it their job to update us on where our brothers and sisters are (they consider all white people family even though they know we are not blood related since they consider other Tanzanians to be their family even though they are not blood related). One time I was just walking down the street in town minding my own business when a man came up to me and told me that my brother was in a restaurant nearby. I wasn’t looking for another white person but it was nice to know the location of my fellow PCV. I have also been able to ask people, even in the capital city of 2 million people, where other volunteers are and most of the time I have been able to locate them by this method. This is just one example to show that even though we don’t have a lot of fancy technology we are able to make up for it.

It is still hard for me to determine exactly how much of a benefit, if any benefit at all, Peace Corps is making in this country. What I know for sure is that Peace Corps is a great benefit to America for two reasons. First, it forces Americans from all walks of life, religions and regions in America to learn about other Americans and how to cooperate with them. One of the main reasons that we are able to live and work in countries so different from our own, is that we are able to meet with other volunteers in our group on occasion and share our frustrations and successes with them and they understand what we are talking about. (If we try and share these sort of things with the people here they have no clue what we are talking about and thus it makes us feel like we are on another planet). We really don’t care what state they are from or what religion they are etc. we are just happy to be able to talk to another American! In this way we have learned that we are more alike than we are different despite the many stereotypes that Americans have about each other. You wouldn’t believe how many questions I have gotten from other volunteers once I tell them I am from Kansas. They people think that only white people who own farms and have little education live in Kansas. Its not that they are ignorant, it is just that they don’t come across that many people from the Midwest (a large number of volunteers come from the east and west coasts) that often.
One of the interesting things to consider concerning this benefit is to consider that there are many returned volunteers are currently serving in our government and just recently there was a bill that proposed to allow people serving in the military to do two years of military service and then serve their last two years in the Peace Corps in order to fulfil their requirements. Representatives from both political parties came together (mostly returned volunteers) and opposed this bill.

The other benefit is that it encourages volunteers that have little or no interest in the fields that they are volunteering in here (for example education or public health) to continue working in the fields that they volunteered in when they return to the states. I have heard from many returned volunteers that find themselves teaching in America when they return when they would have never done so if they didn’t first get a taste for it here. As a result, it supplies America with a few more workers in the fields that are deficient in workers. Both of these benefits, which I consider to be very valuable, come at a cost that is less than 1% of America’s Foreign Service Budget.

2006-07-29T06:02:00.001-07:00

Not a lot of things have been going on lately here since School just started. My war with nature, however, continues. Last Saturday I woke up early in the morning to a big boom sound. As it turned out the termites had complete eaten away one of the boards that holds my ceiling up in my dining room and about a quarter of the ceiling fell down. My wonderful neighbor called the craftsmen and they fixed it that same day! I was very surprised since it seems like it takes so long for anything to get down around here. Since it hasn’t been raining the ants, for whatever reason, have decided to invade my house. I now have to wash my dishes immediately after I eat or hundreds of them will fester on them. They also like to get in my honey, sugar, butter and other foods! I know that they aren’t doing as much harm as the termites but they are still irritating.

Today, for the first time, I biked to the main town from my village. I am not for sure how many miles the total journey is but it took me nearly 2.5 hours. I have been hesitant to come to town by bike before since I know it was going to be quite a hassle climbing over all the of hills.

I have started teaching again and things are continuing to run smoothly. We were given 2 new teachers by the government (one English and one Kiswihili). So far they have both been teaching ALL of their required periods! Last semester, I was one of the few teachers that taught all my required periods. I talked to both teachers personally and told them that I hope they continue the good work and aren’t influenced by the other teachers that hardly ever enter the classroom.

This upcoming season I have decided to start a small garden. The soil around my house is very hard but all of my neighbors seem to have no problem growing anything. I plan on just planting simple things like tomates, a type of spinache called “Chinese spinach” (that grows really well here and I have come to really like), and cilantro. When I went to buy the Tanzanian hoe and a shovel the other day, a lot of people asked me if I was buying these tools for my workers or was I really going to farm too just like them. Everyone in my village was also surprised. Up to this point, my villagers have not allowed me to do much manual labor (they have been afraid that my hands will roughen up) so I am curious to see how far I will get with this garden.

2006-07-07T00:50:00.000-07:00

I am happy to say that things finally worked themselves out at my school. I found out that while I was in town relaxing from the school burning my principal called in our village priest, who is on the school board, and asked him to talk to the juniors and seniors and come up with a solution to everything that had been going on. I think this was the best thing my principal could have done. As it turns out, my students were able to express that they are tired of getting beat for every little thing especially when most of the teachers barely teach them and are not held accountable. My school has now decided to stop corporal punishment (beatings and cruel punishments) all together and have told the students that if they have a problem with a certain teacher they need to feel free to talk to the academic headmaster or school board members. The last week of school, before summer break, none of my teachers used corporal punishment on the students. I am happy with the way things turned out, especially since the village has gotten involved, but I am not for sure how long it will be before we start beating the students again.

A couple people have asked me about the popularity of the world cup and soccer here. I am happy to say that one great thing about Tanzania is that they are global citizens in that on any given day they can tell you about the major world news stories and world sports highlights. Despite the lack of electricity many people here are able to keep up with the world through their small inefficient radios. The people here love soccer and proudly pay attention to the European Soccer Leagues. It is very common to find dala-dalas (our buses) painted with symbols of European soccer teams or names of European players. I have also come across a few babies that were named after great soccer players like Beckham, who plays for Barcelona. Yes European football (soccer) is truly a worldwide sport and I believe that it is one that actually unites us in a surprising way.

This past week the father of one of our school cooks past away and so I was able to go to my first Tz funeral. Since my village is primarily Catholic the service was similar to a funeral service in the states. One big difference is that first of all the family is responsible, once someone dies, to pay to have a carpenter make the casket, find someone to dig the burial plot, and then send out friends and neighbours to tell the village of the death. Another difference is that the whole village shuts down on the day of the funeral and nearly the whole village turns out show their respect. The casket is carried from the persons’ house to the church in the back of a pickup truck (with a couple of family members sitting back there to ensure it doesn’t fall out) and once it reaches the church the villagers will all line up at the end of the pews and take turns passing the casket on until it reaches the front of the church. The whole time during the service (and before and after) the family members are allowed to express their grief and even encouraged to do so. It is amazing to me how much of a role the village takes on when someone dies. Not only do most of them stay to witness the entire service including lowering the person into the grave but they also contribute enough money to the family so they are not burdened with the cost of the funeral.

I would have thought that my “movie star” status would be ignored at such a huge event like a funeral but boy was I wrong. The catechism kids had just finished their lesson when I got to the church and so they gladly (all 90 some of them) walked me into the church and helped me find my seat. When we walked to the burial site, I had a lot of people ask me who I was and what I was doing there. I was very surprised by their inquires since I figured everyone in the village knew about me by now. As it turns out, a lot of people from the 4 surrounding villages showed up for the funeral and they were the ones that were not familiar with me. I am still surprised that my popularity after nearly 7 months has not decreased in my village. Now I am not sure if it ever will.
Another volunteer equated our popularity to one that the Pope would get if he one day decided to visit. The only thing is that I think that the people would eventually get used to the Pope, and us, if he lived, and worked among them for an extended period of time. The other day I tried to escape all the attention and visit another village nearly an hour away on my bike but to my surprise a few of the children in the village greeted me by name!

For my summer vacation I happily travelled with another volunteer by first class train to visit one of the natural world wonders, Victoria Falls, in Zambia. Even though it took nearly two full days to get to Zambia, I can say that I had a very relaxing vacation. Despite the poverty here, it is possible to travel in style on a fairly new train and bus like you would in Europe or America. Zambia was surprising to me because nearly everyone in Zambia, even in the bush, speak perfect English. In Tz only the educated people speak it. I also saw many people reading novels and newspapers in English, which is very rare here.

We went to one traditional “African” restaurant for tourists while we were there. The restaurant still served the traditional African ugali (the playdough like dough made from corn flour) and rice dishes but they did many things that put the waiting staff in subservient positions. For example, every time the waitress came to our table she kneeled down on her knees and stayed that way until she left the table. I was very appalled by this and so I asked the waitress if this was a common African practice and she said that they all had to learn to do it when they got hired. It was very hard at first but now she is used to it.

2006-05-23T23:56:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, I have witnessed some very disturbing incidences since I have been here and I have avoided writing about them in order to keep my family from worrying anymore. The following incidents are somewhat disturbing but I feel they must be discussed.

Sunday night I was making a phone call around 9:30pm on the school football field, where I can get perfect reception, when I noticed a small fire near the school kitchen. I didn’t think anything of it until it got bigger. When I went to investigate what was going on, I noticed that most of the students were gathered around the fire and instead of putting it out, were spreading the fire so it would completely burn down the small school restaurant and area surrounding it. I then went to inform some of my fellow teachers about what was going on and they were very scared and advised me to not worry about the fire (since I would be in harms way if I returned to where the fire was) and go back home and go to sleep. I was very disturbed by their advice because the American in me wanted to call the fire dept (which doesn’t exist here in TZ) and have the fire put out or at least advise our village policeman what was going on (they told me that it was the teacher on duty’s responsibility). When I told one teacher he was surprised that I was so shaken up by the fire and what was going on because stuff like this is common here. I tried to explain to him that fires are a very serious thing in America and it is difficult for me to sleep when I know that a fire is spreading, (and not being put out) so near my house.

The next day I found out that a female student got in trouble for losing the soccer ball from the Saturday soccer game. In order to punish her 3 teachers came back to the school around 3pm (Sunday) and beat her for so long until she couldn’t stand up anymore. They then continued to beat her since she couldn’t stand up anymore. I think that she later passed out from this since the teachers had to resort to pouring cold water on her to get her to respond.

As it turns out, the school security guard was the one who stole the soccer ball and the teachers knew this they just wanted a reason to beat this girl that they didn’t like. The students were pissed off that they got accused and punished for stealing the soccer ball and so they stole the guard’s bicycle and went to his house and beat him up! (This might sound horrid but the guy was lucky that they didn’t kill him!) The teachers then beat some of the student’s for beating up the security guard and this made the students madder so they decided to burn the small school restaurant down.

I believe that what the students did was not only because of the soccer incident but because they have been beat very harshly all term, they were asked to pay more school fees for better food and the school has yet to provide it, the cooks have still not been paid after 3 months and most of the teachers don’t even teach their classes. On Monday I found out that in order to punish the students for the fire the teachers were going to beat the students! I know that if they take this action the repercussions are going to be worse than they were before and so I decided to notify my PC boss about what was going on and ask for some vacation time. He told me to take up to a week if I needed and relax in town. He later called my principal and chewed him out by telling him that if things don’t drastically improve at my school then they are going to relocate me. When I went to tell my principal that I was going to be going to town for a few days, he told me that he was very disturbed by all that happened since it turns out that the girl they beat was his niece! He also told me that what happened was a result of him not being strict with the teachers about beating the students and teaching their classes. This week the students were supposed to be taking their end of term exams but only a few of the teachers had even written their exams. He said that a few days ago an old woman (elders have a very high status in the village and here in general) came to him and told him that he needs to be very careful because the village is becoming very angry with him since he is not managing the school right. When I was waiting for the van that would take me to town, I heard many villagers talking about all that had happened. They surprisingly knew as much as I did about the mismanagement of the school. I am very certain that they will soon take action and demand that things at the school improve or else.
Some of my students also noticed that I was leaving and came to tell me that I had nothing to worry about and I shouldn’t be scared about everything that had happened.
I have been relaxing in town since Monday and will probably go back to the village Thursday.

On a lighter note, it is now harvest time in the village and I am able to buy many more foods than usual like squash, Chinese cabbage, cassava and oranges. However, I was surprised to find that they were selling elephant meat when I went to the market. It is illegal to hunt elephant here and if you are caught the punishment is very harsh. I also didn’t know that there was that many wild elephants near my village that they could hunt.
Someone also killed a 3ft long lizard near my house although they told me they did not kill it for food.

I am done teaching now until July and so I have decided to spend a week in Zambia and visit Victoria Falls, the most visited site in all of Africa. The American Embassy here has invited us all to the Embassy for a 4th of July celebration so I will be going to Dar es Salaam for that. Pictures of my travels and more pictures of my school, village etc will be forthcoming! Have a great summer!

2006-05-13T06:06:00.000-07:00

For Easter Break, I decided to travel down to the other southern part of Tanzania to visit with other volunteers. Every volunteer that lives in this region always tells horror stories about how hard it is to get back and forth from this region so I knew I was going to be in for an adventure. The total distance is only 240km or about 120 miles, which in America would only take 2 hours to get to, but it took me nearly 3 days to reach my destination. Since it was the rainy season the only form of transportation that was available to “safely” make it was a Land Rover. So I stuffed myself into a 1960s or 70s model Land Rover (that had no seatbelts, no side mirrors, the windows no longer roll down and had one door that wouldn’t open and another that wouldn’t stay shut) with about 17 others (not including the “conductor” that rode either on top of the spare tire attached to the back of the LR or on top of the LR with the luggage) and started my journey.
Since the road has not been paved in this region yet, it was raining, and this region is very mountainous we were only able to travel 50 kmph or about 25 miles per hour. The LR wasn’t in the best of shape and so every time we reached a hill all of us would have to get out so the LR could get up the hill. I stopped counting after 12 hills. On one occasion the LR kept dying every time it got up halfway up the hill and so they had to push it up the hill. Again, this doesn’t sound that hard if the road was paved but this is the rainy season which meant that the road was a complete muddy mush. Due to the road being in this condition, on many occasions I thought our LR was going to tip over, especially since we packed as much luggage as would fit on top of the LR, but our driver had experience with these kind of conditions so we didn’t.
The group of people that I was travelling with were all either used to these types of conditions or were understanding of the situation because there was never any fuss when we had to evacuate the vehicle. I found out that 3 of them were engineers that were going to work on the road.
When I finally got to the town where I had to stay the night and catch another LR the next day at around 8:30pm, I was greeted by a group of men fist fighting at the bus stand. I have seen many beatings here before so I wasn’t surprised. Normally the hotels near the bus station are some of the nicest ones and so I followed some of my fellow passengers to one and checked in for the night. It only cost $2 a night and I didn’t think anything of it since some of the other people that I was travelling with were also staying there but at around 12:30 am I got a knock on my door from the police who said they were looking for a robber. They wanted to see my passport and work permit. Luckily I had my old Passport and my PC id with me but I was unable to show them my Peace Corps Passport or work visa since their government was still approving them. They weren’t happy about this but they finally let me off when one of the other persons staying there lied and said that they knew me and I was a teacher there. When you stay at a hotel here you have to fill out all of this information about your tribe, your region, your passport number etc. so they knew exactly, to the skin color, who is staying in what hotel. I normally put American for tribe, and nationality etc. I later found out that this makes me an easy targets for poor policemen that commonly want money from whites. I am not for sure if this is true or not however, I didn’t see him knock on anyone else’s door at that hotel so it might be true.
The next day I was able to take a minibus for the next leg of the trip. We were making good time until we came upon a road that was nothing but sand. The minibus started smoking a lot but we were also stuck in the sand. They told us that another bus was coming to take all of us but after 5 hours I confronted them about what was all going on and they told us that no one was coming to take us. Later a huge industrial size truck (not a semi diesel) was able to pull us out of the sand and to the next town. They told us that the minibus would be able to go any further and so we would either have to get a ride on the truck that just pulled us out of the sand or stay the night in the little village and hope for something tomorrow. There were already people in the back of the truck and the 3 engineers that I was travelling with all happily got into the back of the truck so I figured I should follow suit. Peace Corps policy strictly forbids us from travelling in the back of open bed trucks unless in cases of extreme emergency. My fellow passengers from the minibus had already started begging me for money and I was not for sure if I would be able to find a place to sleep, so I considered it an emergency. Whenever I would see movies or news about illegal immigrants having to travel in the back of trucks I used to think how uncomfortable and dangerous that must be. It wasn’t as bad as I anticipated, although I have to say that standing in a moving truck for 8 hours when you are packed in with as many people and gunney sacks of full of produce that will fit, isn’t exactly the most comfortable way to travel. Due to my white status, I was given the most comfortable position to stand and hold on to the bars of the truck: a position in the very center of the bed of the truck. This was actually the safest position since it meant that I would fall on the other passengers or bags of produce before I would fall down. We all had to pay the same fare but some of the men thought it was fun to ride on the high siderails (ones that would support a canopy) of the truck.
At one point this old man, around 60-70 years old, flagged down the truck and asked for a ride. The man could barely walk (and I don’t know where he came from since there aren’t that many elderly still alive here) but he was anxious to climb aboard. Somehow we managed to make room for the old man to sit down although I think he would have been fine standing since he acted like this wasn’t the first time he had ridden a truck like this and it wouldn’t be the last.
It took us almost 8 hours to reach the next town where I would spend the night but the time seemed to fly by since I was the topic of conversation during most of those 8 hours. It seemed like everyone either had a question that they were dying to ask about America, or they were impressed that I knew so much Kiswhili and so they wanted me to speak more of it so they could be amused.

I am not for sure if you have looked at my pictures yet but some of them are of a national park my training group went to and you might be interested in knowing stories about that trip. Nothing quite as adventurous as my Easter Break happened on our trip but it was an enriching experience nonetheless. We went to a small game park that is only 2 hours from where we lived and studied during training called Mikumi National Park. The park, like most of them, is basically located in a crater so it is difficult for the animals to escape. The park was only about a fraction of the size of the Serengeti (also located in Tanzania) but we were able to see all of the major animals that inhabited the park except
Cheetahs. However, I must say that finding the animals is no easy task. You basically have to drive around for hours hunting for them and once you find them it is difficult to get close enough to them to take pictures. We were there for a total of two days but we only were able to see animals on our first day. I can definitely say that it is quite refreshing to be alone driving around a park on a dirt path with no signs of modern life and see exotic animals like lions, elephants, and giraffes in their natural habitats. Since I was able to see nearly all of the animals I wanted to see, and it is difficult to hunt them down I don’t think I will be visiting the expensive Seregenti while I am here.

A lot of things have happened at the village since my last blog. Last week we got cell phone coverage in my village! I don’t have it at my house but I only have to walk 10ft up to the school football field to get coverage. So feel free to call me and if you are unable to reach me just leave me a text message and I will text you back with a time when I will be available and in a good location to talk.

At school my teachers have found that the beatings aren’t teaching the students a good enough lesson so they are now making them kneel under the coldwater tap outside for long periods while they beat their tender skin. I have become quite numb to all the unusual punishments that they do to the students so nothing is surprising to me anymore.
My Peace Corps boss came to visit me at my site this past week to see how my teaching was going etc. I was very surprised when I told him they haven’t paid our cooks all year, they make students beat other students etc. and I don’t think he would have put me at my site if he would have anticipated all of this going on. (I will say that I am happy here and can’t imagine teaching anywhere else.) While we were having tea with the other teachers in the staff room one of the students got in trouble and so one of the teachers punished her by punching her in the face right in front of my boss! Like I said I am numb to all that they do to them but my boss was really affected by the whole thing.

There are a few things that it has taken me a long time to figure out about Tanzanian culture. Ever since I have arrived I have wondered about these small claylike rolls that they sell at the market. I have seen them at all the markets and they always seem to have them in red, tan, dark brown, and white colors. Every chance I have gotten I have asked what kind of spice they were to only get a responses like “they are for pregnant women”, “white people don’t use them”, or “oh, you wouldn’t like them.” Finally the other day one of my villagers was eating one of them and I asked her about it. She was embarrassed and she told me that she could get sick eating them since they contain worms when I asked her what it was. Finally after awhile she told me that she was eating “soil” or dirt! I was very surprised. I knew that some pregnant women in the states used to crave them but I never knew people to actually eat it. She said that she started eating it when she was younger and has liked it ever since.

The other thing I have learned is the reason why I have gotten requests for sperm donations. As it turns out, the people with the highest status in TZ culture among the Africans are ones with the whitest skin. Thus if you have a child that is not very dark but a tanish dark color he will have a higher status. I have found out from other volunteers that evidently, this trend used to dominate African American culture too and still does to some extent to this day.

I have had to have some repairs done to my house, that I could have easily done myself, but my school pays for any repairs so I decided to let them repair the problems. My door since it is nailed to a weak frame had started to sag on one side and thus wouldn’t close properly. In my opinion, the whole frame needs to be replaced to fix it. The repairman that they sent to my house, however, had other plans. He brought a saw and sawed the frame to fit the sagging door. The door closes fine now. I also had a clogged sink since dirt tends to accumulate in the pipes after years of use. The solutions this time was not to simply replace the pipes but clean them out with a dishcloth and reuse them! I would have been glad to pay for new pipes if I would have known they were going to do that!

A few of my teachers asked me about the Civil Rights movement in America a few weeks ago. I explained to them that the Africans that were in America were not given the best of jobs, education etc. and so they protested to get equal rights and facilities like the whites. No matter how hard I tried to explain to them about it they still couldn’t understand why in the world they were causing such a ruckus. How could anyone complain if you get free education up to high school, free use of textbooks during your schooling, (they have to pay very expensive school fees here every year after primary school and the school doesn’t buy textbooks the students are required to if they want them) and you actually have an opportunity to have a job other than farming (here although many people have a college education it is still very difficult to find a job).

2006-05-06T01:51:00.000-07:00

My Pictures have finally arrived and you can view them at the following link:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=m8fpli2.59p2zuve&Uy=qhu59o&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0

I hope that you enjoy them. Now that I know that it is safe to send them home I will have to take some more of my school etc. I don't have a lot of time left at the internet cafe, but I promise to post a very detailed blog entry next week, but I wanted to share a store about these photos.
They have 30 minute photo developing places in the town closest to me so it is no problem getting my film developed. The problem always comes when I go to pick up my photos. The first time I went to pick them up I entered the photo shop to see that the customers and workers of the photo shop were all having a great time looking at my photos! (So much for privacy!) Then they started asking me about the photos that I had taken. The guy that developed my photos was so impressed that I had graduated (some of my college graduation photos were on a roll I had developed) from college that he asked me if he could use some of my cap and gown pictures as a demo for the store to show the different sizes of photos that they offer! I was very shocked by the event when it happend (it happend during my first month here) but now I don't think anything of it. I have just come to accept that I have to wait a little bit longer for my photos as the customers look at them and I have to be sure to count them to make sure that no one is keeping one for a souvneir.

2006-04-06T01:05:00.000-07:00

Last week the Peace Corps required all of us to get a vaccination for
the avian flu. There actually isn't a real vaccine for that specific
flu yet so they just ended up giving us the newest American flu shot.
I thought that would be the only effect that this strange illness had
on me but as it turns out once one person is infected with the illness
in Tanzania then all 140 of us volunteers will be medically evacuated
back home to the USA. It is true that chickens run wild in my village
and in most areas where PCVs serve but I really don't think they pose
as big of a threat as PC is making it out to be. Anyways, there is a
very good chance of us getting sent home so most of us are in denial
about the whole situation and planning how or if we can stay here and
finish our terms if we get med vaced.

Back in the village things are normal. I gave my first chemistry test
2 weeks ago to have all 30 of my students cheat on it including the 3
smartest ones that I give free tutoring to. I was very unhappy to
find one of my smartest students copying the information directly from
his notebook when I walked around the room to see if they were done
with the test. Normally around half of my students cheat on my tests
but I never thought an entire class would. I later discussed what
happened with my fellow teachers to find out that most of them cheated
their way thru high school too! I also talked to my fellow PCVs to
find out that it is common in their schools too. One year so many of
the students cheated on their national exams that the ministry of
education canceled all of their scores for the entire country for that
year. I wouldn't make a big deal out of it since I knew a few
students when I was in HS that cheated but they get used to it at a
young age and then continue it in their professional careers and it
hurts the whole society. For example, at a school close to mine,
where a fellow PCV teaches, the Japanese govt gave the principal of
the school a substantial amount of money to build a girls dormitory
for the school and the TZ govt promised to provided beds for the dorm
once it was built. A few years later the dorm has been started to be
built however, the principal of the school stole half of the money and
was promoted and now works at another school. The principal was also
not paying his teachers regularly and instead pocketing the money for
himself and building a huge house for his family. The Japanese
recently visited the school to see what was going on. They were very
disappointed and I doubt they will ever undertake such projects here
again. This stuff happens in the USA I am sure but the problem is
that it happens all the time here. As a result, money and donated
goods only sometimes reach their intended audience. I have also
discovered how many help organizations are really businesses. That is
a another blog entry!
As a punishment I am making my chemistry students write a 1500 word essay on what their future career plans are and how cheating will help them. I am letting them write it in Kiswahili so it shouldn't be hard for them. I am also giving them a Tazanian punishment which means for two hours, different days of course, they will have to cut the grass around the school with their dull cutters!
I have seen or heard about everything at my school: female and male teachers rapeing students, teachers beating students for no reason other than to let off steam, and other cruel things but last week I was very suprised to see that now they are making the students beat one another! We have had a problem, like most schools do, when it comes to lining up for lunch and other meals. The students are only fed a tasteless dough like substance, ugali, along with tasteless beans but they are so hungry they fight each other to get their food! So now to keep them in line they let one sophmore student beat them if they don't wait for their food patiently in a line! I asked my pricinpal about this and he said that they are tired of beating the students, which is hard for me to believe, and they also don't want to miss their lunch in order to keep them in order. I once told my students that they should designate one student in each class to do their homework, carry their books for them etc and if those few students don't do their work they should beat that student and make them do it so they don't all get beat. They were not fond of it at all but they don't seem to mind that they are no beating each other now.

2006-03-01T23:12:00.000-08:00

I have now been teaching for a whole month and I can now say that I am somewhat used to the school system here. I realized after I wrote my last blog entry that it might not make since if you don’t have a clue about the education system here which took me most of my training to understand. Therefore I will try and explain things as I go about their education system.

I found out that the average age of my “juniors” is 21 which helped me better understand the problem that I mentioned earlier with them. I haven’t had any more problems with my students in that manner again and I am very happy for that. I think I made the mistake of telling some of my villagers my age before and some of my students found out from them. I now just tell my students if they ask, or anyone asks, that I am old enough to teach and they respect me for that. I have also showed some of my fellow teachers and villagers pictures of my family and postcards from home and they all can’t imagine why in the world I would leave such a “paradise” to come and live here for 2 years! They would all give anything to be able to even visit such a beautiful place as KC! I always explain to them that we have problems too they just deal with things other than obtaining food and water.

This past week someone had the bright idea to put all of the smart juniors in one class (they are currently divided into 2 “streams” or classes) and put all the other students that have problems with math, English etc in the other class. I might be a good idea in America but not here. The reason they did this is so that the math and science teachers could ignore the “stupid” class since they aren’t going to go on to university anyhow and just focus on teaching the “smart” class. My fellow teachers only teach 16 periods (of 40 mins) a week to begin with and some of them have only taught a few periods this whole month! I also might add that students miss many periods since they are made to work on the farm or mill, are being punished, or are made to do other chores. The result was one stupid class with 16 students and a smart class with the other 80 students all piled on one another. By law we are supposed to divide the juniors into 3 “streams” or classes but that would be too much work to teach that many periods so they put the students in two classes. Two of my brightest students came to me and explain everything that was going on. I quickly went to my vice principal to figure out what was going on and protest what was taking place and my “white” or mzunugu status actually made a difference! I went to teach my next period and then only after 5 minutes of teaching my principal interrupted me to inform me that it was a stupid idea to do this to the students and they would put them back they way they were before! I was so surprised that they acted to quickly!

After the above event took place and further pondering about my work here I came to the realization that if I can finish the required national syllabus and do nothing more than not skip periods like so many of my others do than I would have made a difference in the lives of my 200 students. I have been teaching all of my required periods and even offering to tutor them for FREE (which is unheard of here) or help them when they have questions after school and I think it has made them realize that I am serious about my job and about them passing the national exams that they have to pass in order to continue their studies. I can not say that I blame my fellow teachers for skipping their periods and not wanting to teach since they sometimes go months without pay but in taking these actions they are putting the student’s education at risk. Call it career gratification or whatever but it feels good to go to work everyday knowing that at least 200 students will understand science more than they would before. Before the PC sent teachers to this school they had NO physics, biology or chemistry teachers and as a result they didn’t send any students on to further studies. Six years later, they have hired only one physics teacher and a teacher that can teach chemistry or biology. This past year 10 students will go on to further studies. I still haven’t figured out what possible futures are possible for my students in this country but I know that they at least deserve an opportunity to make a difference in the world around them and they can’t do this without a decent education. I am happy to be part of their learning adventure!

2006-02-17T22:07:00.000-08:00

I am sorry that I have not written anything in a long time. School has offical started and so I have been busy teaching! We opened the school around the third week in January but most of my classes were only half full of students since a lot of my students can't pay their school fees until around the second week of February. For this reason it wouldn't make sense for me to start teaching in January since I would only be teaching half of the students. I am teaching the equivalent of sophmore and junior biology along with junior chemistry. My sophmores are still not used to me and so they just copy down the stuff I write on the board and don't ask any questions or respond when I ask them open ended questions. I am sure this will change once their English improves and they get used to me. I have been having a small problem with my juniors respecting me since some of them are older than me. They only have respect for me since I am an mzungu (white person) and not because I am their teacher. One day I went to class and most of them refused to write anything that I wrote on the board down and wanted to talk the entire period. I ended up telling my academic headmaster about it and I am not for sure if the beat all of them or gave them extra work or what but the next day they showed up in the lab for my office hours and told me they wanted to learn. The entire period they did all of their work and didn't talk like they did before.
I normally play with the neighborhood children when I walk through town and so most of the kids like me. There is this one kid, however, that thinks he is my son. He is around 3 years old. Whenever he sees me he has to hold my hand and walk me to my destination. On Friday I guess he saw me enter one of my classes and so he came to the door of the classroom. One of my fellow teachers saw him and let him into the class. I am not for sure if he understood anything I taught about nuerons and the nervous system but he sat down in the middle row and had his pencil in hand ready to take notes! It was the cutest thing!
Life for me other than that has pretty much been uneventful. I am now fully adapted to life here and know that I will be able to be happy here for the next 2 years!

2006-01-20T22:57:00.000-08:00

This past week has been one of the best weeks for me since I have been here! One day this week I woke up and I felt like I have lived here forever. The villagers have also started greeting me before I do them but I think I feel happy now that my culture shock to the village is now over! Peace Corps finally delivered my bike so now I have some freedom back. I also hired some help to clean and do the various chores around the house. I really don’t need help now that I am used to the heavy chore load but she worked for the previous volunteer whom I replaced and she really needs the work. She has agreed to come 3 times a week at a salary of $8 a month! I found out that I will be teaching the equivalent of sophomore and junior Biology along with junior chemistry. This might seem like a lot but it only amounts to 20 periods of teaching or 13.5 hours of teaching a week. The average teacher’s load here is only 16 periods! Along with this low work load I get my own freaking office! My students haven’t showed up yet since nobody, except the boarding students, are able to pay their school fees until Feb. This past week I was anxious to start teaching and so they let me teach this introductory English course to the Freshman. The first day none of the students would ask questions or anything. They were really scared of me. I kept telling them over and over that I wasn’t going to hit them like their other teachers do but I still think they were intimidated by me. The second day I taught them was much better one of my students even gave me a mango that he picked from the tree in front of our church. I guess the kids here give their teachers mangos instead of apples like in the USA.

My house cleaning lady showed me how to bake and so I baked some brownies this week which were decent since the only kind of chocolate powder that we can get here is the one with sugar. I purchased an authentic Chinese kerosene stove so my cooking situation is much better! The rainy season is now here so we have been getting rain almost every single day. I guess this was just what the flowers and grass needed since now the grass is as green as it can be and many of the flowers are blooming. I have to say that I live in one of the most beautiful parts of TZ! Speaking of flowers, one of the girls that used to clean a previous PC vol came to visit me a few weeks ago. She was really nice and baked me fresh bread! One day when I went to visit her house I discovered these really pretty iris like flowers that I had never seen here before. She told me that she would give me some bulbs so I could plant them however, the next morning I woke up to find that she had transplanted about 5 of them to my front yard. She had to leave to take a bus to school the next day which means that she probably planted them in the night! My fellow villagers do nice stuff all the time for me but this is definitely at the top of the list!

The rat (I wasn’t for sure if it was a rat or mouse before but now I know after seeing it that it was a rat!) that had been pestering me is now dead! He returned and was living in my charcoal stove. I hardly ever use the thing since it takes so long but I had to use it to cook and so I discovered him then. He ended up jumping through some of the hot coals when I was checking to see if my brownies were done. Luckily two of the neighbor kids were anxious to see what I was baking outside so once he jumped out the chased after him and killed him with a machete. I bought 4 big traps last week so if anymore come back I’m ready!

I can tell that I have been living here for a long time since the things that make me happy are very simply things. For example, being able to fill up all of the buckets in my house with water that sometimes comes from the tap every other day, finding out that they sell eggs in my village or being able to buy bananas or any kind of fruit in my village! This past week I actually had the privilege of meeting a banana man! I can normally buy bananas every other day since the people don’t feel like walking all the way down to the fields and pick them everyday however last week I went 4 days without being able to buy any! I ended up going to the market and complaining about it to the guy that sells only green peppers to find out that he had (and supposedly always has) this huge trash bag size plastic bag full of FRESH GREEN bananas at his house! I could believe my eyes when he showed me the thing! My eyes lit up like they would at xmas time! Give the fact that my villagers sell their crops at strange times I do take a lot of pride in knowing that 90% of the food that I buy is grown in my own village! That means fresh milk, eggs, baked bread, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, bananas etc!

I will leave you with one cultural story. As a part of my peace corps training I had to visit at least one help organization that was currently working in TZ that the peace corps would set up. I went with a group of about 15 other volunteers and 2 TZ teachers to visit this brick making organization that gives jobs to elders and handicapped people that otherwise can’t work. The PC gave us this whole list of survey/marketing questions that we were supposed to ask them about their accounting procedures, if there were in areas they needed some help in making their job easier etc. The business didn’t have a sign telling us where it was so we had to ask when we got to sight that we thought was it. Immediately after we opened the back door of the Landrover to ask them about 3 workers show up and ask for money! After telling them that we didn’t have any since we were volunteers for about 10 minutes they told us that we were at the right place. Their site is about ½ mile by a ½ mile and is full of bricks and huge holes dug out where the brick dirt used to be. (Don’t worry I took pictures!) For the next 3 hours we sat down with the workers and their boss and asked them the detailed questions from the list the PC gave us. One of the only response we could get from them was yes we make bricks. Do you like your work? Yes we make bricks. Do you find your work to be hard especially when you have to carry 10 bricks on your head at a time? Yes we make bricks. What would you be doing if you weren’t making bricks? We would find another place to make bricks. Who is in charge of the bank account and the selling and marketing of your bricks? Yes we make bricks. This went on for 3 hours! The next day we had to go back for round two and they actually started to tell us about their business on that day. The reason they were unable to give us any information at first is since it is not polite in TZ culture to be so direct with someone about such personal topics! When some one asks you for money it’s not polite to simply tell them no you must tell them you don’t have any or you are a volunteer. This has been very confusing for me since TZ are never indirect when it comes to asking for money, food, kerosene, or for a sperm donor and they hate it when I am indirect with them about my age, religion, etc.

2006-01-02T23:07:00.000-08:00

I am finally really settling into my village. I really feel at home there now. I am now able to cook food that actually has flavor and therefore I am happy for that. Last week I was able to make some spaghetti and tomato sauce from scratch. It tasted so good that I was almost in tears since it was one of the first things that I had made that actually had a good taste to it. Now that I have the cooking problem resolved something else comes along. We haven’t had water in the well or tap for 5 days now. It rained a lot this past weekend but I guess it takes a while for the well to fill up. I had saved up buckets of water from the time when we had water last so all was well but I am starting to run out. My neighbors have started going down to the river to bathe and fetch water and have suggested that I do it too. Hopefully we will have water soon so I don ‘t have to do that.

I finally chased away the baby rat that was living with me. I found him in my living room and tried to get the neighbor’s cat to chase him out but the cat was just as scared of the rat as I was. After I let the cat go back home I couldn’t find the rat anymore so I figured she ate him or he left. The next night when I was going to the bathroom I saw something small run in front of me but didn’t think anything of it. The next day I found the little critter in my kitchen. After I chased him out the front door he waited by the front door for me to open it again so he could come back in! The neighbor kids later that day brought me some fruit and they saw him waiting there at my door and started screaming so the rat finally got scared enough and ran away!
I have lots of “visitors” ( lizards, scorpion like things etc ) like that but only the rats scare me. One of the tricks that I learned from this goat that was in my backyard is to stomp your foot really good and that will hopefully scare the critters away. The goat was doing it because it was mad that it was tied up but this trick has worked wonders for me!

I had a really awesome Christmas! Some of the other volunteers in my region came into town so there was about 7 of us total. My fellow volunteer that lives in Songea has a chef and so he had us over for Christmas dinner. His chef made all this really good food! For New Year’s I stayed in my village since I was invited to a wedding. The weddings here are quite an event that I will have to explain later. I will say that I was very surprised that at the wedding party since once the new year came everyone bowed their hands and the priest said a prayer then our policeman shot off his gun. This is the same police officer that is always inviting me to the pombe room (where they keep the local homemade brew).

Those are all the stories I have for now. I don’t know how much I will be able to write in my blog but I am going to shoot for at least once a month. School should be starting soon so I am looking forward to that. I hope all is well with you! =) Thanks for all of the emails and Christmas cards! I received all of my Christmas cards the day before Christmas so I was really happy about that!

2005-12-14T23:25:00.000-08:00

My first day in Namabengo.
I finally arrived at my site last Monday. It is only an hour dala dala ride from Songea town, which is a town almost as big as Morogoro, but the road to my town isn’t paved at all so it’s quite a ride. The dala dala also doesn’t have a schedule and always will just wait until it fills up the van in order to leave so one time I had to wait 3 hours for it to leave. It was about half full when I got on and I thought that they would leave shortly but they had to fill it up until there was no more room whatsoever. This means filling the floor of the van up with sacks of rice and beans and crates of coke bottles so it is almost impossible to have a comfortable ride.

The southern part of TZ known as the southern highlands is such a beautiful place. When I lived in Morogoro I woke up and saw a huge mountain outside my house, now when I wake up I see dozens of rolling green hills with spots of little trees all over. Ready to welcome me to my new home was a group of about 15 kids. The volunteer before me had told my entire village about me so all of the kids new my name and most of the adults know my name too. The kids normally come to my house almost everyday but it is usually only like 5 at a time. The volunteer before me received this huge box of balls from her church and she says she didn’t have time to teach the villagers how to play so she told them that I would teach them! So for the first few days, and still to this day, kids will come up to me in town or come to my house and request a ball to play with. This was really irritating at first but now I am used to it. I would just hand out the balls so they would leave me alone until I have time to teach them to play but once the word gets out that you are handing anything out here more people will ask for it.
I have water every other day and I don’t have electricity now but I will have it for 3 hours at night during the school year. There is a nice new pump well within 100m of my house so it is as not as I thought it would be. The problem is that my village doesn’t want me to carry water at all. Every time I even think of going to the well to pump water my neighbor will come over and offer me some of his water. If I refuse then he will send of one his kids to fetch water for me. If I do finally succeed in sneaking out of my house without being spotted then once I get to the well the people there will stop pumping their water and fill my bucket up and then most likely carry it all the way back to my house. My village really feels privileged to have me there and the want me to be happy so they won’t allow me to do any work of any kind if they can help it. Another volunteer told me that his village had to have a meeting that lasted for 10 hours about how they cannot allow him to fetch his own water! He said that finally the compromise that they came up with is that he is allowed to only walk down with the students that will get his water but he cannot pump the water or carry the bucket back up. Welcome to Tanzania! I also haven’t had to carry my groceries home from the market that many times since my villagers will do it for me.
The hardest thing for me this past week has been cooking. My market in my village is indoor and looks like a million dollars but the only foods that I can buy in my village are tomatoes, onions, fish, potoatoes, rice and beans. I can however get everything in Songea town so I guess I will end up going to town to do grocery shopping at least once a week. I had cooked with my host family before so I was somewhat familiar with cooking on a charcoal stove and kerosene stove but I had forgotten that it takes 1 or 2 hours to cook rice and 2 or 3 hours to cook beans! I think my neighbors understand that it can be difficult for someone to cook for themselves at first and so my neighbor will offer me fish or fruits almost everyday. The first few days my neighbors made me sweet tea and chapati (which are these tortilla like things).
There was a funeral my first day and so as I was walking home from the market all of the village was walking in the other direction to go to the funeral. I am pretty sure that I met most my villagers when I was walking back.
My level of Kiswahili has really surprised my villagers and the second day I found out the local tribal language greetings and it really blows them away when I use those.
There have been times when I will tell someone a tribal greeting and then they won’t be able to respond because they will be laughing so hard.
I found out that the Ministry of Agriculture for Tanzania is from my village and had somewhat of an influence on getting a PCV placed there. Tanzania, like most PC countries, always demand more volunteers than the PC could ever supply so the PC can really pick some great sites for us. I was told that I will be the last volunteer in this village since they have had a few volunteers leave early and since my school has had some major problems like going bankrupt in the past. So it is going to be a fun 2 years!

2005-12-04T15:34:00.000-08:00

I will finally be moving into my house and to my site TOMORROW! I don't have that much time to write about all of the wonderful adventures that have taken place in the past few weeks but know that I am EXTREMELY happy to be done with training! I bought a cell phone today. The country code for Tanzania is 255 and my number is 787-519-913. The only thing is that I only have coverage when I come into town. I don't have coverage at my house or school but that could change.
My new address is:

Mr. Edwin Joshua Crosier
c/o Namabengo Secondary School
PO Box 264
Songea Ruvuma region
TANZANIA
East Africa

This is the addy that I will be using for then next two years and although it is the school's the last volunteer had a key to it and I suspect that I will have one too!
Sorry this is so short. I will have lots more to say about my new site and African life in general the next time I come into town!
Karibu!

2005-11-23T06:35:00.000-08:00

The NGO also had internet service and a swimming pool so it was heaven all over again! The kicker to all of this is that they use renewable energy (biomass and windmills) so they are independent of the unreliable electricity etc

2005-11-23T06:32:00.000-08:00

I am at the end of training now so there is a lot going on and it has been harder to get internet access. I found out on Monday that I will be living in the deep south of Tanzania near Songea. It is the most fertile part of Tanzania and therefore this is where they grow all of their stuff. It is such a fertile place that Starbucks has coffee plantations near my site. Today I had the chance to meet with my counterpart teacher. We currently do not have a principal but they will hire one within the next month. I also found out that I will be replacing a volunteer so I won’t have to buy that much stuff to furnish my 2 bedroom house. I will be the 4 volunteer teacher in this site so I will most likely be the last volunteers since the PC policy is to only put 3 or 4 volunteers at the same site.
I had a great trip to both Dar es Salaam and Dodoma. I have to say that getting on the bus to go to these places was quite an event. You have to buy your ticket when you get to the bus station so once you even think of walking near the big bus station what seems like millions of guys that sell the bus tickets swarm around you and try and get you to buy their ticket with their bus company. It is truly an overwhelming experience! In a way it is similar to what happends when I celebrity is interviewed by the media except for there are way more people. There are also lots of guys and little kids offering to carry your bags for you (so they can charge you) and there are of course everyone selling stuff.
On the bus ride I was able to see a lot more of Tanzania. I am really accustomed to the what I would have called poverty here but it was still interesting to see so many 5 foot high mud huts. Most of the houses in Morogoro are made of stone and rocklike mixtures but the outlying areas are filled with farmers that barely make 50 cents a day and so they live in mud huts with straw roofs. I am really glad that I saw this part of TZ now that I am used to pretty much everything because it would have really bothered me before.
Since I have been away from major cities for such a long time Dar es Salaam blew me away. The skyscrapers, air condition, PAVED streets, swimming pools, small shopping malls and paved sidewalks is really something! There is also this huge beautiful cathedral there right near the ocean. I also had a chance to go to a really big supermarket which had lots of shampoo, liquors, etc. It would only be a fraction of the size of a supermarket in the USA but it is HUGE for here and they had pretty much everything I could ever want. There was also a casino in the small mall we went to and it had a waterfall! I guess am I really amazed by even the simpliest things now. Dar es Salaam is truly heaven! I can’t remember seeing so many PAVED streets!
The funny thing about Dar is that it is heavily populated with Indians and Arabs. They all speak fluent Kiswahili so it was really funny to hear them speak it. I guess Tanzanians think I am just as funny when I speak Kis. Another thing that was strange about Dar is that I was able to see different colored of cars! Most of the daladalas and buses, and cars are all white, I am thinking know to repel the hot sun.
My visit to the American Embassy was another level of heaven to me! They have basically shipped in all American décor and furniture and it is all new since they had to build another one after the last one was bombed. We were able to take to the vice ambassador since the ambassador was busy. He was really interested to talk with us and tell us more about working for the foreign service after our PC service since there is a large number of PCV that work for it. He actually taught English in Iran. Tomorrow we are going back to Dar to have Thanksgiving dinner at the ambassdor’s house so I will hopefully be able to meet the Ambassador. Other than the American embassy the only other thing that Dar has that is American is a Subway restaurant!
After my Dar visit I went with 2 other volunteers to shadow a health/education volunteer in a village called Chamwino near Dodoma (the official capital of TZ). She is an awesome person and really down to earth. We were all really amazed that she was so well adapted to such a simply life! She said that it’s not that hard its just “bona fide camping.” When her parents came to visit her she said that her mom kept asking her if she wanted to come home. She had electriticy and the biggest house in here village but the water only dripped for a few hours in the morning. She had an electric range and a toaster like oven and she let us cook American food! The first night we made tortillas, salsa, and beans from scratch. It took a long time to make but it was sooooooo good to have some food that wasn’t fried or wasn’t STARCH! This might not make that much sense but the other villagers thought that we (3 boy volunteers) were all sleeping with our shadow volunteer since they can’t imagine that anyone could sleep in the same room and not do it. Welcome to Africa! For this reason we got strange looks when we walked with her around her village. It is funny because she has had lots of boy guests and every time the think that she is sleeping with her! Go figure! Her village is so remote that we had to ride on the back of these bike “taxis” in order to get to her place. The PC was supposed to give us safety helmets to wear but they for got. Thank God!
Dodoma is known for its beggars and boy did we see a lot of them there! When we first took a taxi into town 5 of them were already outside of our taxi waiting for us. Everywhere we would go we saw them and they would ask us for money. They are really good beggars too since they don’t believe when we tell them that we don’t have any money (the white lie the PC tells us to say so we don’t have to deal with it). They will just stand there for 5 minutes until they either get tired or we move. When I shared the whole beggars ordeal with my host family my Baba (dad) said that Dodoma is known for beggars and even if you find a beggar in another part of TZ and you ask them where they are from most likely they will tell you they are from Dodoma. One of the major reasons is because Dodoma is basically a desert and their harvest is very low. They do grow peanuts very well there but not that much else. For this reason if their crop fails, and our shadow volunteer said it happends a lot, then they beg from each other. But I can’t see that they are that successful since 90% of them are farmers.
While I was in Dodoma the shadower took us to this awesome NGO (non govt org).
It is called Missionary of the Precious Blood and is a Canadian help org. They drill wells for villages that raise the money. The have this huge compound with every plant and farm animal imagineable. They had mango trees, vineyards (yeah the make their own wine), coffee trees (they make their own coffee too), turkeys, chickens, etc. The night that we were there we had (all except me) fresh steak from the cow that the killed that morning.

2005-11-08T17:49:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was the end of Ramdan celebration so we had a 3 day weekend which was great. My family made tons of food and killed another chicken although everyone still only got one small piece of the chicken. I expected that everyone would be able to have as much as they wanted but I guess since I have such a big family it’s not economical. The holiday is basically as big as xmas for muslims since it occurs about once a year. It is also an interesting holiday since it depends on the change of the moon.
For this reason we were not sure when the holiday would be until the day before.

Just when I thought I was receiving the most possible attention from my community something happends that tells me they can do more. A few days ago I was peacefully walking to school and I hear someone running up behind me. It turned out to be one of the students from the classes that I am not teaching but goes to my school. She offered to carry my bags and when I refused said that she would be punished if she didn’t carry them for me so I had to let her. She then walked beside me asking me questions until we got to school.

I found out this past week that my family doesn’t have that many clocks in the house and that is why they are always asking me what time it is. My brother woke up late one morning and came running into my room to ask what time it was. I was puzzled because I didn’t know that he didn’t have a watch. I found out that the sun wakes he up everyday and on that particular day it was cloudy and so he didn’t get up on time.

This past week I was riding on a dala dala and then I found out that you can bring your animals on them too. This one guy put his 2 goats behind the backseat where there is only like one foot of width. When he went to get the goats off the minivan one of them got caught between the bumper so it was quite a sight. I had always heard of people carrying chickens on the buses in Mexico but I never saw anything like that there. Here it is quite obvious that you can transport your animals on public transportation.

I had a language test last week and I found out that I am now at the intermediate middle level which is where the PC wants us to be at at the end! I was really excited with the news although I don’t know if I am that fluent. I do know, however, that there are 4 words for rice. There is a word for the rice before it is harvested, a word for when it is harvested, a word for when it is cooked and a word for when you add spices too it. They are mchele, wali, piliau (respectivedly) and I can’t remember the other one. They only have two words for good but many for bad. Interesting.

I will be leaving for my volunteer shadow visit and visit to Dar es Salaam this weekend so I am not for sure if I will get around to writing. Badaye!

2005-10-30T11:28:00.000-08:00

One of the other things that is different about the schools here is that they students do have so much more respect for the teachers. One way that they demonstrate this is to stand up and say Good Morning Sir whenever I enter the classroom. They won’t sit down until I tell them too in Swahili. It is still funny to me that they do it but I am slowly getting used to it.
The attention that I have been getting for being an American however, has gotten really old. In some ways I am used to it but in others I am not. I am basically like a celebrity wherever I go in that people always greet me first, they always feed me first, everyone always says hi to me on the street, people always tell me how grateful they are that I am here, kids will sing songs and dance for me, people give up their seats on the dala dala, etc. My family also still gives me their utmost attention. My younger brothers never want me to be alone and so will watch me study. My younger brother has asked to sleep in my same bed (since he normally sleeps with is brother) but I think that would be way to much. There is not that much privacy in the Mexican or Hispanic cultures but sometimes I feel like it is a lot worse here. So if anyone wants to get the feeling about how it feels to be a celebrity come to Africa and you will get your chance. I can so relate to celebrities saying they can’t go anywhere with out being noticed now!
We killed another chicken this week. Last time they killed it at the neighbors but this time they killed it out by the front porch. Thank god I didn’t have to watch it and I was busying cooking atole so I didn’t have to hear it. I told them that in America people have meat for almost every meal but they still don’t believe me. We only have meat to eat about once or twice a week and each person only gets like a half of cup of meat. For example, when we had chicken everyone only got a little leg. The chickens are smaller here too, since they are natural, so people really don’t eat that much meat.
I found out that one of the students at my school speaks a little bit of Spanish and wants me to teach him more. I am not for sure how the kid found out that I knew Spanish but he just randomly came in my Swahili lang class one day and asked my teacher when I would be able to talk with him etc. I was really surprised!
One day this week my brother got out of school at the same time I did and so he gave me a ride on his bike. At first I didn’t want to ride on the back of his bike since I didn’t think it was comfortable but he kept asking me since he didn’t want to have to ride so slow while I walked home. I have seen many people ride on the bikes before like that. I have even seen 3 people ride on one bike (one on the back and one on the front bar!). It was more comfortable than I thought but everyone that saw me riding started laughing and yelling even more than they usually do! I know that there are not that many white people that ride on bikes like that so I guess they have to take advantage of the opportunity when they get the chance!
Ramdan finally ends this upcoming week so we get off on either Thurday or Friday to participate in the celebration. I will have to tell you about it next week. I am not for sure if you heard but one of the VP candidates died (Tanzanian) so they are postponing the elections until December. One of my Father’s sisters died too so most of my family has been in Dar es Salaam these past few days. My grandpa that was staying with us finally got all healed up and went back to his village this week. It was sad to see him go. He was really a funny grandpa. However we now have another aunt staying with us and I think another cousin. The fun never ends!

2005-10-30T10:00:00.000-08:00

This week was another fast one but so many things happened. I am not for sure if I will be able to write about them all. This week was my second week teaching so I am starting to really get used to doing it. I have two Form II classes (which would be the equivalent to Freshman). One of the classes is really active and interested in what I have to teach and the other has half of the class that likes to learn and the other half doesn’t. This week I totally went off of the syllabus since it is so freaking vague. I taught the kids about blood and a little bit about how the nervous system works. I was only able to get thru about a fourth of my planned lesson since they kids had so many questions that related to what I was teaching. They asked me why blood was red, and how come the brain knows so quickly when we cut or finger etc. I have always heard teachers talk about the joy that they get from seeing kids eyes light up when they are interested in something or amazed by science. This week I had the great opportunity to see it first hand with many of my students. It is really amazing! The thing is that most of the teachers at my school do not have a degree in the subject the are teaching or a degree at all for that matter. They also are only paid every other year and then they have to do stupid stuff like proctor exams that they don’t get paid for. For this reason the teachers just barely teach what they have to teach so they can get paid (and because they don’t know that much more). Actually this next week will be my last week teaching and all of the teachers have decided that they are going to cut school short and stop teaching a month early. So they will stop teaching after we stop teaching their classes. I can understand how they feel but it sucks for the students that just barely learn the stuff they need for their national exams and nothing more. The relationship that the teachers here have with the students is very different than it is in the USA. They teachers still beat the students and so this really freightens the kids and I think makes it harder for them to learn. The first few days I taught I tried to learn all of the kids names and when I mispronounced one of them I would tell the kids sorry and ask them how to pronounce it. They took it as a criticism in that I was a teacher and better than them and did I the “master” teacher make a mistake. The students would most times not respond to my question and another student would have to pronounce the name for me. I think my students are a little bit more comfortable with me since we have shared stories and stuff.
This week for like 2 or 3 days we didn’t have running water or electricity. I guess I wouldn’t be a problem if I would have been used to not having it from the start but it really sucked because we would have it in the morning but when I got home we wouldn’t have it. I made ATOLE for my family this week. For those of you that are not familiar with it it is a Mexican drink that my family has ever year for xmas. It is made of oatmeal juice, milk and cinnamon. I had to make it when we didn’t have water, electricity and after a hard hot day of teaching so I was really worried about how it would turn out. My family was also a bit doubtful since they had never seen oatmeal before and I had to buy more refined sugar then they are used to and use it. I was blessed that it really turned out well! My family really liked it a lot and wanted me to make it again the next day but I told them I would make it later. I am going to try and make some guacalmole or something else for them.
I bought some MANGOS this week at the market. I have been waiting for them to be in season ever since I got here. They were only 10 cents a piece and they were so fresh! My mom said that they get cheaper and sweeter when the season for them officially arrives!
I think I have avoided describing the DalaDalas that I use all the time so I will explain them more now. Tanzania being a poorer country than the USA only has the opportunity to buy used cars from Japan and England etc since the people can’t afford new ones. They also only get the white models that are not popular. The government doesn’t provide any form of public transport so private individuals (I think) buy these old run down Toyota mini vans and take people around in them like buses. They have a little bit more head room since it is possible to stand up in them. I have seen them get as many as 30 people in them at a time! We normally are able to pack at least 20 in them! So if you can imagine 30 people crammed into one of these old beat up Japanese minivans then you can imagine the Dala Dala. They are only seats for about 10 or 15 people so the rest of the people are standing! They only cost 15 cents so they are well worth the price. We don’t have to travel long distances either to get to the city (only like 15 mins) so it’s not as bad as it sounds. Somebody has actually taken a picture of them!
http://www.kagera.org/photo/daladala.jpg
http://www.tampere.fi/ir/mwanza/raportit/072005/mwanza05.jpg
The only thing that sucks about them now is that if you sent all the way in the back then when you have to get off you have to climb over most of the bus to get off. LOL! They also try and get as many people in them as possible so they will stop to pick up more people even if they have 30 people already! When we first got here I didn’t think it was possible to fit that many people on them but I soon learned! This weekend we rode in one just to get down this long hill from the place that we come into town to train at. In order to save gas they didn’t even start the car but just left it in neutral to coast all the way down the hill! The dala dala we rode in that time was an old ambulance and it was missing all of the windows, and would just have these random wires hanging all over the place. I have gotten so used to them but they really are so hysterical to write about and I used to really crack a laugh when they first made us scramble in them when I first got there.

2005-10-25T15:29:00.000-07:00

The network went out this past Saturday while I was at the internet café. That is why I have been late writing this.

This week went by really fast. Each week seems to go by faster and faster. This week we found out that we will be having Thanksgiving Dinner at the American Embassy in Dar es Salaam. I also found out that one of the teachers at the school that I am training at was Fulbright Scholar. I have been telling my host brothers that they should take advantage of that program or ones like it and then I meet someone that has already had the privilege.
The class that we have our language class in is a classroom that only has the cement bricks up and nothing else. For some time we will have kids that are done with one of their classes stand outside where the windows should be and listen for hours to our class. One day my teacher had them come in and we practiced talking with them. Another time he let them come in and ask us random questions. It really amazes me at how thirsty these kids are for knowledge! One time they beat us to class and had all of these science questions for us since they know that we are science teachers.
I finally got my haircut this week. My mama mentioned it and it has been a month so I decided to get it cut. It only cost 40 cents. I was expecting on at least paying $1 for it. They basically just buzzed all of my hair off. I don’t think there are places that I can go to get it cut with scissors since no one gets and education to cut hair here. I will just have to get used to the short style. My family really liked it after I got it cut.
They are up to 4 pieces of bread and sometimes these African sweet cakes and fruit for breakfast. This is way too much food for me so I have just been leaving most of the food there so my sister who cooks my food can hopefully get the hint.
They are almost done with the gas station in front of our house. It is weird because the gas station is building a mosque right next to it. Like I said earlier about 50% of the people here are Muslim. I have talked to some Tanzanians and I guess that is common for gas stations to do that.
At the place where we have training there are always all of these monkeys just randomly swinging from the trees there. The place is basically a part of the major mountain range that is here. Last week when I was walking to lunch I was able to see this really cute baby monkey and its mom really up close. There are actually a lot of animals that are just running around randomly. We get to see a lot of lizards and strange insects.
A few days ago I had the privilege of seeing them butcher a chicken. There are a few butchers but the meat is so expensive for them that they normally do it themselves. My brother, who killed it, couldn’t figure out why I was so grossed out by it.
Last week there was a chicken that climbed thru this one intentional hole in our fence. I tried to chase it off but my mom soon yelled at me that it was our chicken! I guess he leaves for most of the day to play with his friends or something and comes home at night.
They still use corporal punishment at the schools here so the other day I was able to see some students outside their class kneeling. They were there for a long time. Another time this teacher got really mad at like half of the class and beat each of them really hard. They normally do the beatings out in the courtyard that we have at the school. I guess that is something I am just going to have to get used to although the PC will not allow us to take part it in so I am glad about that!
I helped one of my host brothers with his physics homework since he couldn’t figure out how to do this problem. I asked to see his notes and the teacher really didn’t give them a good example as to how to do the problem. I found out from my brother that if the teachers don’t know how to do the problem the just make it up and act like they do so they don’t look stupid in front of the class. He was really happy that I knew how to do the problem. I threw away the paper that I worked the problem on after he left my room but the next day he wanted the paper. He ended up taking the torn up pieces of paper and putting them back together so he could show his friends how to do the problem.
Celtel, one of the cell phone companies here, is giving away this really nice Tanzanian Mansion set on 9 acres. I asked my teacher how much it would be for this house that would be for someone really rich and he said it would be 18 million shillings (or $18,000). He said that a basic house with electricity and plumbing here is $5,000 and a house as big as mine would be $10,000.
One of the volunteers said that last week almost everyday these girls students at here school would pay this other student to take pictures of them with the volunteer. She said that was fun the first few times but now it’s getting out of hand. It’s not hard for me to believe since we get so much attention here!
It finally rained a few nights ago at night. It woke me up since we have a tin roof but I was so happy that I didn’t mind. My Baba said the rainy season is coming and that I will be sick of rain when it gets here. It is just so dusty here and windy all the time. The day after it rained it was really windy but the dust wasn’t able to move!!
We watch a lot of English TV since we get this BBC sort of channel. One of the programs that we almost always watch is this Latin American Soap Opera called La Recheza that they dubbed over in English. My Baba really likes it and I have found out that a lot of the people here do. I wish they had sub titles and didn’t dub it so I could hear the Spanish! They also like a lot of the Nigerian movies here. Africa in this cool way is in its own country since they all share music and movies with each other. The Tanzanian national anthem, which I will have to post on here sometime, starts off with a blessing for the tribes and countries that makes up Africa and then later in the song talks about Tanzania. I was really impressed when I read the lyrics to it.
Last week we did a community mapping project with some kids at our school. It is the same project that I will have to do at my site so I can target what problems they have with their area and what resources they need etc. With this study we found that all of the students love to go to school and church! I was really surprised to find this out since so many kids back home resent school so much. I guess here if they don’t go to school they would have to do more work at home. The main things they wanted were their road to be paved and better access to a library since the nearest one is in town. I had a chance to go to the library in town this week since we got out really early from school. It is about half the size of my high school library. Most of the books that they had were donated from the World Book Fund and so they were really ancient.

2005-10-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

This past week was really a fun one. One night I went with Mama on our normal night banana buying walks and this girl yelled Mznungu (traveler) at me. I am almost immune to all of the attention that I get now so I didn’t think anything of it. Then out of nowhere Mama yells ANAITWA JOSHUA (his name is Joshua). It was SO funny since I didn’t expect it at all. Then when we were at the market the lady asked about me and used the munzungu word again and Mama had to correct her! LOL. GO MAMA!
This past week for lunch one day they brought us to town to practice the resturant vocab we learned and we go to EAT OUT! The food was pretty much the same like we normally eat but it was really a treat to come to town. I also had ice cream for the first time in what seems like forever. The ice cream wasn’t the best quality but it really reminded me a lot of home and it was different than the sugar donuts we have all the time so I got that warm fuzzy feeling. It was weird because I have never gotten it from eating ice cream before. What a treat! One the way to town we had to take this Tanzanian type bus (I will have to write more about these later because they are truly unique) and all of the people that were on there that had seats all let us have their seats and stood the rest of the way so we could sit down. We get spoiled like that a lot more than I would have ever expected.
My host brother Enoshi thought it would be fun to catch these small little birds and scare them with me. He brought one in the house when I was studying and was holding it by its legs and making it flap its wings as he held it closer to me. I haven’t been scared of anything in such a long time but it really freaked me out! He also showed me where he cut this one’s bird’s wings. One of my fellow volunteers said that the other day at the school they are at this one student was selling a monkey that he had caught. He had it in a plastic bag. They told the school but I doubt they will do anything. People don’t see animals as pets here at all. Basically if it doesn’t have any economic value to them then see no point in keeping them.
My family has been taking of the fact that I know Spanish lately. My Mama now knows all of the foods in Spanish and the kids know how to say Tu simpre estas jugando con migo (you are always playing with me). I told them that one time and the just went nuts so I have coached them on how to say it. The other night we watched this Brazilian Sopa Opera in Portuguese on the TV during dinner. It was really neat. The also said the word MALARIA in the right way and it made me realize that it was a Spanish word that means BAD RIVER!
My Kiswahili is progressing! One night this week one of my host sisters’ just started laughing for know reason and I thought that she was laughing at me so I asked her in Kiswahili if she was playing with me. I think I caught her and the rest of the family off guard because it made her and the rest of the family burst into laughter. It funny because people will just randomly laugh when we say common greetings to them because they are not used to Mznungus learning their language. For example the other night I asked my Babu (Grandpa) if he wanted another beer and it did it in perfect Kiswahili. Again he was not expecting it and so he just burst out into laughter. It basically doesn’t take much for me to amuse my family. We seem to be always laughing!
The little baby Julianna has still been crying when I pick her up and stuff. I think that I might be the first white person she has ever seen in her life! This week my Mama told me to take her with me to the market at night when I went. So I did and right after we got a little ways from the house she stopped! I was so amazed! My brother went to the market with me because I don’t think it looks good for a white person to be carrying a black baby out in public. She has actually been sick with what we think is Malaria. My Baba (dad) and Mama had to take her to the hospital this week. It is common for them to get it. They only run into problems with it if they don’t get the antibiotics early or at all.

2005-10-08T05:08:00.000-07:00

Habari za leo? Za shule? Za ashubi? (How is today, school and morning)
I haven’t said anything about my host family yet and since they are a huge part of my life I figured I would at least introduce you to them today. The thing is that I have so much I would like to write but I don’t have enough time or energy.
My Baba is slightly older. In his 50s I think. The house that I live at his second wife’s house and she is younger like in her late 20s or 30s. My teacher said that it is very common for an older man to be with a younger wife here. My Baba (father) also has another house and he said that he will take me to visit it later. I still don’t understand the whole culture concerning family but I take it that he is what we would call divorced from his first wife. He has a total of 8 kids but I am not for sure if all of the kids that live with us are his since it is very common for the rich member of the family to house kids from various family members. There are currently 5 kids (Katiba who is 16, Kejeli who is 10, Enoshi who is 13, Julieanna who is 1 year I think, and Monica the house girl who is 18 or older). Babu (grandpa) is also living with us now. He just recently had an operation the week I came so I thought that he was living with us because of that but now I think he might live with the family permanently but I’m not for sure. We also have traveling family members that live with us for weeks at a time and then go back home or back to school. For example, Wilfred lived with us this week and he goes to a boarding school just down the street. He is 18 and really smart. He told me he wants to study theology but I don’t think he will end up a priest since he might just be telling the school that so he can go there. Tanzanians have many ways of saying and getting things they want indirectly but it is perfectly okay since everyone does it.

We live in a very nice home. It is surround on all four sides with a huge wall and fence on top. The house is fairly new. We also have a security guard that comes at night although the area isn’t that bad. Baba is an accountant for one of the universities here so he knows a lot of the higher up people. One of his family members also is a head of the parks department here so he said that we will have to visit some of them some time. Since we do have a fenced in compound a few of our neighbors keep their cars inside our compound. Our house faces toward the large mountain range so every morning I get to see the beautiful mountains! The house has 2 African style bathrooms (2 pit latrines), a shower room (with a real European shower but I haven’t used it since I want to get used to the bucket baths), 4 total bedrooms, one large living room, a backroom with another bed and the kitchen. My house is very large compared to some of my fellow volunteers. I also have running water and electricity which only a few other volunteer’s families have. I was surprised to learn that since most of the houses in my area have electricity. I have my own bedroom with a huge bed. The other family members obvious have to share bedrooms.

The kids are a lot of fun to spend time with and they are always wanting to know what I am up to and doing. The one that I spend the most time with is Katiba. He is responsible for most of the housework that goes on even though all of the kids have to clean etc. He is also responsible for the food shopping at night. I normally go food shopping with him at night which is fun. There are no street lights or really lights of any kind other than from laterns so we have to take the flashlight to go to the nearby market. It was really strange the first time we did it but now it’s fun and I look forward to going. He is a practicing Muslim (the rest of my family is Cathlolic) and right now is Ramadan so he has been going to the mosque a lot and he can’t eat or drink anything during the day light hours. I have really learned a lot of Islam from him. I would say that about 50% of the people in this town are Muslims since there are so many mosques everywhere and you always see people on the streets with veils or the guys with the Muslim caps.

My breakfast and dinner are provided by my family everyday, but I have lunch at school. I will have to explain that later. Every morning I have a really nice breakfast. It consists of 3 pieces of bread, an African like omelette, and hot water. I should have chai (tea) but I don’t like it so they just make me hot water. They give me honey to put on my bread but they put sugar in it to make it sweeter (go figure) so I don’t always have it. They put sugar in everything. If you do have chai and they serve it for you they will put like 3 spoonfuls of sugar in it after you have put 2! They basically js like to have sugar water.
The sugar is just pure from the cane (not refined) so it is healthier but they still put in in literally EVERYTHING! Three pieces of bread may seem like a lot and it is along with the omelette. It started out being 2 pieces of bread but in the Tanzanian culture they put way more food on your plate on purpose to make sure that you have gotten enough. This is very similar to Mexicans putting lots of food on your plate. I would eat the 2 pieces of bread and clean my plate so I think they thought I wasn’t getting enough to eat and so they put 3. I feel bad not eating all of the food on my plate (although at dinner I have to leave about a cup of food left otherwise they will pile more on) so I eat all of my breakfast even though the omelets is enough. People keep telling me that I must live in a rich family because they only normally have bread for breakfast.

The house girl (who does most of the cooking and cleaning) Monica wakes up really early before I get up at 6am to cook my breakfast. She is really happy to do so. One time I had to go to school early and forgot to tell here so I went to school without eating and when I came home my Mama, Baba, brothers and here all told me how sorry they were that I had to go to school without breakfast and that if need be they will buy me food to eat or they will get up earlier!

2005-10-02T06:19:00.000-07:00

Morogoro is a huge town to me since people seem to never work and are always out walking or doing something! It reminds me a lot of Madrid or the bigger places in Europe. It is very similar to the other places I have lived outside of the US in that it is surrounded by mountains on all 4 sides and is in the valley! Natural AC! =) It is normally really windy (I wonder why they don’t tap it with windpower) and the other day it was so windy that it was blowing our papers and stuff in the classroom all over the place. I asked my teacher if he could turn down the AC and he really got a kick out of it!
The wind also blows the dust in my eyes all the time so I have gotten used to walking with my eyes half open.

I forgot to mention that when we first got at our hostel our Tanzanian teachers were there waiting for us. They did this AWESOME dance and song for us but they wouldn’t let us take pictures or anything. They also had COLD sodas and water (maji) waiting for us. It is really hard to find cold drink since they don’t like to keep their frigs cold and then when something is really cold the want to warm it up by putting hot water in it! I tell ya! I don’t think they really like their stuff cold.
My teachers are from there like I said. They have also worked with PC for more than 15 years and really enjoy their jobs. They are VERY energetic, passionate, and entusiatstic even at at 7 or 8am in the morning! It is actually really hard for me to call them teachers since I don’t feel like that they are since we are always with them and they are so awesome! Right now we are in small groups of 4 students and one teacher for our Kiswahili cram classes so we get ALL one on one attention!
I don’t have a lot more time to write but I want to let you know that MY HOST FAMILY IS AWESOME! There are 5+ kids and they are very well off. They can easily take up an entire blog entry so I will have to tell you about them later. If you were to ask me if I was happy I would have to stop and think about what happiness is again!! LOL. I have been really busy with my training, HANDWASHING my clothes, etc and it is not something that I normally think about like I would in the USA. Know that everything and then some is well! Salama.

2005-10-02T06:08:00.000-07:00

It is harder than I thought it would be to communicate here but it hasn’t been as bad as a I thought it would be. Yesterday all of the networks in the internet cafes were down so I was unable to use it. Today the one by our house (I found out there is one!!!!) was not working. I haven’t walked to town yet from where my host family is staying so I decided that since I was a bit there I should see how long it takes. My teacher told me it was about 2 hours but it only ended up being 40 mins. However, It was in the hot sun and on dirt sidewalk. I am glad that I found this place and it is OPEN because we don’t really have that much time to come to town or do much other than training.

I am with an awesome group of 37 volunteers. Most of us are from the east and west coasts but there are a few of us from the Midwest (Kansas and Illinois). I am amazed at how similar all of us are. We are all science people obviously, but we also all seem to like to run, workout, journal, recycle, read, etc. The flight to Dar was a total of 22 hours but it went by really fast since the we rode on a new KLM plane that had this new video game like monitors that let you watch on demand movies, music games etc all for free. I don’t think they have that many of these planes since the Air France people were serving us too just for that one flight. It was a bit confusing about the days changing. When I got to Amsterdamn I was able to sleep for 3 hours in the chapel they have there. They also had leather lounge chairs to sleep on but they were full. It was funny because there were these muslims there vocally praying while we were sleeping. The Peace Corps has been very good to us in many respects. They gave us more than enough money to eat out in Georgetown (DC) and they pay for meals here and there. The PC loves to give us shots to protect us so I have gotten a lot of them lately. I lost count after 5 but I have gotten Yellow Fever and 2 Rabies. I am grateful that I have been in such good health these past two weeks! I didn’t have any of the “normal” travelers’ illnesses that I normally get when I travel and that has surprised me! I have been really careful about what kind of food I eat etc. The PC is also very concerned about our safety. We have to tell them everywhere we are going and if we travel etc. Know that I am safe and accounted for because they have an Emergency Action Plan. Basically if they find that we are missing they notify Washington and the family and then send the marines out to look for us. I feel like I have a parent again that is watching over me! I found out that one of the most famous PC volunteers is Bob Vila. He actually built houses in Panama. I also found out that the PC only uses 1% of the US Foreign service budget even though one of the popular generals of the military says that we should have more volunteers! There are also 20 countries that currently want us to serve there but we are unable since our man power is too low. I also learned that the PC will only place a volunteer in a place where only 2 or 3 other volunteers have served because the village quickly develops expectations for their incoming volunteers. If one volunteers builds a house or volleyball net then they want the next volunteer to do something better. This puts us volunteers in a tough spot.

I had a time stand still moment at the DC Dulles aiport when we were waiting to leave for Amsterdamn. They have all of the flags of the world hanging in the airport and they just so happened to have SPAIN’s right by our gate! It was a really awesome sign to me!

The training is really intense but the use all Tanzanian teachers (I will have to talk about them later…they are a blog entry in and of themselves!) and have a returned volunteer that trains with us to answer any questions we have.
For the first week of training we all stayed together in this really super nice NEW hasn’t even openend Catholic hostel. They were still adding the wall around it! Now we are all in our own host families. The hostel was only $10 a night all inclusive and the food that the nuns cooked was AMAZING! I haven’t had any dish other than ugali (which is this bread like stuff that isn’t supposed to have any taste) that I didn’t really like!

One time when a group of us volunteers were running in the early morning (6am) this little kid ran all the way across his yard to the road yelling how are you? How are you? The kids are always the ones that get super excited when they see white people or mznungos as they call us. Every where I go people stare and stare and stare some more. It used to really suck at first but I am now used to it. A few of them say mzungo but there has been a memorable amount of them that have welcomed us to their country or smiled when we walked by. White people are really rare here especially in a town the size of 200,000. One time we went to the market as a group and this lady said what is going on with all these white people here today. My teachers normally translate what the people tell us when we are walking but like I said so much of it has been positive.

2005-09-17T07:19:00.000-07:00

Links to other PCV blogs:
I am not for sure how to add a links section onto this blogspot so this will have to do.

http://pctanzania.blogspot.com/
(Aaron is in my training group)

http://www.taittanzania.blogspot.com/
(Tanzania PCV that started training this summer)

http://jenintanzania.blogspot.com/
(Jen has a really awesome blog with lots of stories and pictures. She started serving this past summer too.)

http://africankevin.blogspot.com/
(Kevin has a really interesting blog. He is serving in Zambia and has been there for more than a year)

2005-09-16T06:59:00.000-07:00

Information about sending packages...
You may use the following address to send letters or packages at any time during my service:

Peace Corps Director
P.O. Box 9123
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Below is some valueable information that I have taken from a book that a previous PCV wrrote. "There are a few things you cn do to help hasten and secure thepassage and delivery of your mail. Have anyone sending you a card package scribble religious symbols and biblical quotes all over the outside of the box. This sounds silly, but it works. Though many of the countries in which the Peace Corps serves are largely animist in religion, superstitution runs high and even corrupt postal workers are wary of intercepting religious parcels. Along every step of the way, your mail will be subject to the whims of postal officals, customs officers, and delivery personnel who often take the liberty of rummaging through care packages in search of goodies from the U.S. If you mail is embellished with religious symbols, the odds of keeping it intact are improved. You may even want to ask the sender to write "Sister" or "Brother" before your name, the heighten the effect.
Another trick is to have your mail addressed to you in red ink. I've been told red ink is somewhat sacrosant in many third world societies and is reserved for only the most official of letters and correspondances. Though I'm unsure about this explaination's validity I can vouch for the trick's effectiveness, having seen serveral packages addressed in red ink delivered safely and expeditiously."

2005-09-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

Greetings! or Jambo (my first of many Kiswahili words)
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog! I am going to try and write something at least once a month to keep everyone updated. I am also going to try and email at least once a month but I am not for sure if that will be possible.
I want to thank my family and friends for all of your love and support. Know that I love each one of you more than I could ever express in words! Over the past month I have been extremely suprised and blessed by all of the cards, gifts, phone calls and visits from you guys! It really means a lot to me!
I know that some of you have no clue why I would ever want to live in Tanzania or even in another country for two years. My wish is that you will discover why through the stories and experiences that I share with you.
I look forward to writing and keep in touch!
With love,
Joshua