Miaka Hamsini (50 Years)

Friday (Dec. 9) marked the 50th anniversary of Tanzania's independence. This is quite the year for we PCVs because it's also the 50th year for PC Tanzania. Apparently there was a giant celebration in Dar on Saturday with all of the living previous presidents. Congrats to Tanzania! The newspapers pointed to corruption and poverty as being the biggest problems still facing the country today. I don't know too much about the political system here yet, but from what I've heard the current party in power (CCM) has pretty much remained in power since independence. I heard that in the last election there was a record number of votes for alternative parties, so hopefully the peoples' voices can be heard if they are looking for a change.

Like I mentioned last time, we got to meet with a Peace Corps volunteer who served in Tanzania back in 1961, so he was part of the first ever group of Peace Corps. The guy we met was named Tom, and his partner from the same group (named Jerry, coincidentally enough) was supposed to come but couldn't make it. Still it was great to talk with him. He studied civil engineering in school and actually served before his senior year of college. In TZ he was working in Morogoro, making the road that goes to Dar, which has to be one of the most frequently traveled roads in the country today. We watched an NBC video from the 60's that was made of the first class of PCVs. It was kind of funny seeing the training that they went through - it was more of a boot camp than anything else. They did obstacle courses and intense physical training as well as language and culture study. I think it would be cool if we still had some of that today, but things have definitely changed a lot over 50 years. A lot of the rural areas of the country we saw in the video though really didn't look different at all from some of the places I've been. There definitely are plenty of places that are still as poor as they were 50 years ago.

Also last week we got to meet with our new Country Director, Elizabeth, or EB as she likes to be called. She told us about her time in Tanzania (she lived with a group of the famous Maasai tribe around the central part of the country for a few years) and as a Country Director in Uganda. She is very nice and still remembers alot of Kiswahili. Andrea is now gone to Nepal, and was very sad to leave us. She blamed us though for her leaving because she said the Peace Corps Director was very impressed when he came to visit us back in June, and that encouraged him to have her start the new Nepal program.

The rest of training went well - we got a lot of good resources for starting different student clubs at our schools, for education about HIV/AIDS, malaria, and general life skills. I also got a lot of good computer teaching tools like typing practice games and geography puzzles that will be very helpful for my teachers and students back at school. I also got some pointers from another volunteer on new origami things to make with my post-it notes, though the cranes are still my favorite by far. And of course our IST Prom was a huge success. The theme was "socks on hands" (don't ask...) and we had our own 90's music dance party at Dragonaire's, which many locals ended up joining. A few of us had been growing out our beards for IST, and Justin and I decided to get creative with ours. I'll leave it to you all to see the pictures for yourself, but someone suggested that I looked like a long-lost third Mario brother (named Guisseppe, of course), which I was happy to accept. But I couldn't really live with that for more than one day, so now it's back to square one. Maybe we will see who can grow theirs until Mid-service conference next Fall...

After IST I got to spend some time with my host family in Morogoro. They are all doing well, and I told my one host sister that her letter to America was received by Christine and that she would get one back soon, and she was so excited. I'm sure it was in very good English too, all of those kids speak amazingly well for their age. But my baba invited me to go with him to visit his family in Moshi, so we took a trip there for a couple days, and oh man, was it beautiful. They live right at one of the main gates to Kilimanjaro National Park, so you can see the mountain from their yard! We went to the park to look around, and it was great. He also has a lot of friends who are hiking guides, and they offered for me to come back next year and that I could use them to hike the mountain, without getting ripped off like most tourists. So I'm really excited about that and extremely lucky to have such an awesome baba!

It will be nice to have some quiet time back at my site after doing a lot of traveling. Christmas will be fun though, since I'm sure it will be a big group of us getting together. Hope everyone is doing well with their Christmas shopping and enjoying the snow if you have it. I've found some pretty hilarious Christmas decorations at random stores here that should go well with our Charlie Brown tree. My goal now is to translate The Night Before Christmas to read on Christmas Eve. Look for it coming soon and welcome to read both versions yourself if you'd like a little Tanzanian zest added to your holiday celebrations.

Back to the Drawing Board (or Flip-Chart Paper)

It's now been over 3 months since we got to our sites, which means it is time for our In-Service Training, or IST. It's been going on all this week and will continue half of next week too. So we are back at Morogoro where we did our first 10 weeks of training. It's strange to be back in town and to see everyone again, it's kind of like we never even left. And awesome to all be reunited and talk about our sites and everything. It does also mean going back to the very long days of training sessions, but many of them are more relevant I think, since we now actually know what it's like at our schools and can apply what we're learning to our own communities. Also our counterparts are here with us, which makes it alot more useful. We had to pick a person to be a counterpart who we thought would be a good person to help us transition into our schools and also be able to help with whatever secondary projects we want to do. Mine is another math teacher at my school named Kassian, and he is awesome. He is one of the few people I've met who I would say always seems to say things that make sense, and he was also the counterpart for the volunteer before me, so he knows alot about American Volunteers.

The training has been going well so far. We've learned more about how to write grants, talked about teaching techniques we've been using, and also had a session discussing corporal punishment with the counterparts, which was very interesting. It is legal here to implement, with certain limitations, though unfortunately at alot of schools those limits aren't really enforced. Teachers are allowed to hit students, typically with a long, thin bamboo stick, but it is only supposed to be for severe cases, and it shouldn't be more than 4 times, and they are supposed to keep records of every time they do it, along with a bunch of other things. My school actually does seem to honor the part about not giving out more than 4 at a time, but I've heard of other schools that really get carried away with it.  The thing is, most teachers remember getting hit when they were growing up and in school, and so it is the natural tendency to continue it themselves. Some think it is the only way to really get the students to stop misbehaving (even though it doesn't...), and then there are a few who just seem to get enjoyment out of the power it gives them over the students. Like I said, I actually think it is relatively tame at my school compared to others, but it should not be happening at all, I think. So that was a good thing to discuss with the counterparts.

In the meantime, another very important part of IST is a new tradition that was started by last year's group of volunteers, which is the IST prom. There is a really nice restaurant called Dragonaire's right by our training center, and they said we could have it there again this year, so that will be later on tonight. Of course the hope is that it will all be a joke - we drew names out of a shoe for prom dates and the theme is to do all 90's music, so it should be a great hit. And naturally another great opportunity to use my oragne suit, so keep an eye out for more good pictures soon!

Tomorrow we have the day off, and there are some really cool visitors who will be stopping by to talk to us. Apparently some of the volunteers from the first ever education class of PC Tanzania (50 years ago I believe) are back in the country and are coming to our training center to see us, which is awesome! One of them was even the first African American Peace Corps Volunteer ever! We have gotten so lucky, with meeting the Director Aaron Williams during training and now this. It will be really interesting to hear how Peace Corps has changed over the last 50 years. Also on Monday we will meet our new Country Director and say goodbye to Andrea, who is leaving to start up a new Peace Corps program in Nepal.

In other news, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Ours was actually not too far off from what it's like back home - we had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and other Thanksgiving classics like mac and cheese and guacamole. I was in charge of the guac and, since they were so cheap, brought 50 with me to the dinner. We ended up mixing it in a 20 liter bucket, which it filled about half way with guacamole - it was a sight to behold. I decided to use it as the gravy and pour it over everything on my plate. There's a tradition to bring back home!

Looking forward to Christmas, even though it doesn't feel like it should be coming at all. I would appreciate any care packages of snow that anyone might be able to send to get me more in the spirit. But I'm trying to play the same 10 Christmas songs as constantly as possible to imitate listening to the radio stations back home. I'm not completely sure where I'll be for actual Christmas, but hopefully able to get together with other volunteers. I will definitely try to share some international Christmas culture with the locals, though - namely playing Dominic the Donkey for them.

Always missing everyone at home, especially around the holidays, but thank you so much to everyone who has been sending letters and other things. I got an amazing package a few weeks ago that pretty much made my life, so for those who were a part of that, THANK YOU! I do have christmas presents to send home, but I'm not sure yet if it will cost hundreds of dollars just to send a package home, so please don't be offended if it is late (a little late, or 2 years late...) but they will make it eventually!

Swahili guacamole recipe:

maparachichi (avocados)
nyanya (tomatoes)
vitunguu (onions)
limau (lemon)
chumvi (salt)

Halloween Njema!

Happy Halloween everyone! I haven’t had much success trying to explain the concept to people here. Somehow the notion of dressing up like weird-o’s, knocking on people’s doors and getting candy misses something in translation. But at least they’re kind enough not to laugh in my face about it. I’m celebrating today by watching the Simpsons Halloween specials that I have on my computer. We did have a Halloween party in town this weekend, which was a lot of fun. I love that all the big towns are essentially giant thrift stores. I found a pretty amazing (albeit very small sized) burgundy suit, so I couldn’t resist the temptation to go as Ron Burgundy, even though it was my costume last year as well. Though technically because of the beard, I was the “Milk was a bad choice” version, so there was a distinction. And the milk carton was indeed part of the costume. Hope everyone’s enjoying the holiday back home!

I’ve begun teaching computers in the evenings with the few laptops that the school has. They need electricity since the batteries are pretty crummy, so it’s usually from 7 to about 830. Trying to do Mondays and Tuesdays with the older students and Wednesdays and Thursdays with the teachers. Hopefully a good number of the teachers can get competent enough to continue teaching students after I leave. Some of them are actually pretty good already and have computers of their own.  Then there are others who don’t know how to turn them on, so it’s a wide range of abilities. I’m trying to leave it up to them in terms of choosing what to learn. Word and Excel are the most commonly used, and web browsers, even though there is no internet for them to use here. Soon I’d like to have some of the students maybe write emails that I can send to some of Sarah’s students in San Fran. We are doing a snail-mail correspondence thing too, but that could give them more practice with their typing and English skills. Or if anyone else wants to start exchanging emails with Tanzanian students, let me know! They all seem very excited about communicating with Americans.

We had our monthly tests last week for October. Every month there is either a monthly test, midterm, or annual test. These ones are shorter though (about an hour long). I made mine on Accounts, which is the subject I’ve been teaching since starting. It was the first real good feedback I’ve gotten on how well the students are understanding me. Of my two classes, one seems to be catching on a lot quicker, so I know that I need to have slightly different paces for each class. Overall they were better scores than my first test, so that was encouraging. I’m going to have to miss the end of the school year to go to my IST Peace Corps training at the end of November, so I’m also trying to prepare notes for the topics that I won’t be able to teach them.

Starting to get warmer here, my site is still cooler since it is up in the mountains, but definitely still hot in the afternoons. It’s only going to get warmer though, especially back in Morogoro where our training is. I’m dreaming of a sweaty Christmas… I heard there has already been some major snow around the East coast. Ridiculous. I will miss snow for sure, but not as much as I saw last winter, and not the whole digging the car out every morning business. The rains that were here a few weeks ago were apparently short-lived. It has been pretty dry for a while now, but the real rainy season will start up within a month or so I believe.

I just found out today that we will be getting a new Country Director for Peace Corps Tanzania in December. The current CD, Andrea, is taking a new Peace Corps position, though can’t say what it is quite yet (must be pretty important). From what I got to know of her in the few months I’ve been here, she has been extremely nice, and I’ve heard very good things from the other volunteers, so I’m sure she will be greatly missed. But the new woman has apparently done a lot of service in Tanzania and several other countries around Africa, and was actually the Country Director in Uganda for 5 years, so I’m sure she is a good replacement.

And now here’s some fun Halloween Kiswahili vocab:

Ghost: pepo

Witch: mchawi

Candy: pipi (Longstocking)

Pumpkin: boga

Bat: popo*

*interesting side note- there is a legitimate legend in Tanzania of a giant bat/person/thing (I guess it makes sense to call him batman) who goes around sexually assaulting men, and the only way to keep him away is to pass on the story about him to someone else. So here’s to me dodging that bullet!

10-13 Update

Sorry it’s been awhile since the last blog post. I guess it happens with everything-at first everything is new and different and needs to be talked about, but eventually you get into deeper and deeper grooves and there’s less new things to say…But luckily that’s not the case here yet!

The rain has definitely begun. I heard the rainy season isn’t supposed to be until late November, so this must be strange. Hopefully it doesn’t continue all the way til then. Though it will make all the hills around me more green and awesome to look at. But it’s also dangerous for the farmers because the bean crops haven’t been harvested yet and apparently they can’t take too much water. There’s a lot of bean fields right by the school, but it sounds like they’re doing ok for now. It is pretty cool to sit out on my porch while it’s raining, very peaceful.

I’ve been continuing what I’m sure will be a 2-year-long attempt to “clean” my house / renovate with cool new things. I started painting my porch (the day before it started raining, of course) and will probably do the inside at some point, bright pink as you would have guessed. The other day I was scrubbing down my choo (bathroom) and there were a bunch of little black things in one corner. I thought it was just dirt or something, but after mopping them up found out that they were in fact dead flies. I only wish the crazy woman from Dairy Palace could have been here then…”Well actually, yes, those are dead flies in the corner, thank you for noticing.”

Teaching is going pretty well. I’m teaching Accounts now, which is a relatively new topic to the syllabus but gets on the national exams every year, so it’s good to have that as a motivator for the students. It’s interesting because a lot of them are very good at doing calculations and using formulas, but trying to turn some real-life scenario into math just boggles their minds. If I say, “I have 50 bottle caps and then sell 20 of them…” most of them want to multiply the numbers for some reason. I thinks it’s just the way they were taught growing up that the connection hasn’t really been made to see math in everyday things. Maybe that’s part of the reason they don’t like it so much.

Tomorrow is a Tanzanian holiday, Julius Nyerere Day, to honor the day he died in 1999. He was the first President of Tanzania, when they gained their independence in 1961. He’s pretty much the most well-respected historical figure here, I would say, and I can see why. I have a book at my house of a bunch of his old speeches and he really was a great leader, and helped the country gain its independence peacefully. I encourage anyone to learn a little more about him and celebrate the holiday with me and the rest of Tanzania!

So no school tomorrow, but I think one of the nearby Secondary schools is going to come here to play football. I didn’t realize they have many inter-school matches, but it should be fun, especially if it keeps raining. Maybe I can even get in on the game-I’ve been meaning to humiliate myself more often.

It’s amazing what awesome finds you can have, strolling around random clothes markets. I was in town last weekend and bought a brand new authentic Reggie Wayne Super Bowl jersey for about 8 dollars US. It’s too bad people are bigger eBay wizzes here, or they could make bank on things like that for sure by selling to the US, though I’m sure most have no idea what things are really valuable in the states. I’m still on the lookout for an old donated shirt from the losers of some championship that got printed up in case they won- I hear they always ship those to Africa. Nothing would make me happier than to buy a Patriots perfect season shirt to bring back home and mock all of the die-hard fans.

I’ve been doing more experimenting with cooking, also. This week I made…wait for it….deep-fried guacamole nuggets. In my defense, the idea was encouraged by a friend, and also in my defense, they were delicious. And like every other food I can imagine, they go well with guacamole. I also made this upside-down pineapple cake, which is in the Peace Corps cookbook they gave us. Oh man, so tasty. As you can tell, I’ve been on a very strict diet.

That’s about all the new stuff I can think of now. We have our in-service training (IST) back in Morogoro the week after Thanksgiving, which is frighteningly closer than I feel it should be. Looking forward to seeing everyone from training again there.

Keep passing on the news from home! I’m assuming it’s turned into Bizzarro World, based solely on the fact that I heard the Lions are undefeated.

And the sage Swahili proverb of the week…

“Mke ni nguo, mgomba kupalilia.”

“A wife is clothes, a banana tree is weeding.”

Who says things get lost translation?

A Few Weeks In...

Things have been going smoothly the first few weeks at site. It’s nice to start getting into a groove, though I haven’t really had a typical routine since the school had the Form 4 graduation last week, now midterm exams, and next week will be break. I only taught one day, and it was just a review for the midterm. I made the exam for my Form 3 math class, without really knowing what format or material to use since I just got here. But I have a book of all old NECTA exam problems (the big and really only important test for all 4 years of school), so I just pulled ones out of there and used the same format and all. After seeing some of the other teachers’ tests now, I realized that it is extremely long and will probably be very difficult. But I think it will still be good experience for them to get used to what the NECTA will be like. I think most of the time school exams are a lot easier than the national exams, and then the students are caught off-guard when they take them.

Most kids in Tanzania don’t like math and think it is too difficult even before really trying. There was a mock NECTA exam earlier in the year at my school and of 120 Form 2 students, 18 passed the math section (you only need a 21% to pass), so there’s plenty of improvement that can be made! Of course there are some who are exceptions. We had a little review session the other night with some of the kids who like math, one of which has apparently earned the title of “King of Mathematics.” I must say he is worthy. It was really nice and refreshing to see the students that really want to learn. Sometimes in a classroom of 60 students, maybe half of which can understand half of what you’re saying in English, it can be a bit discouraging. But I know I can’t teach to have them all master the material or we wouldn’t get through anything.

It’s interesting because there are a lot of older students here than I had at my internship school. Some students, if they don’t do as well as they’d like on the exams, will repeat Forms 3 and 4 to try and score higher. So some of my students are as old or older than me!

Last Friday was the Form 4 graduation (they graduate early to prepare for exams in October, the rest have class until Dec). It was a really big ceremony, a bunch of parents came in from all over the country. The students made and performed all their own songs and dances and comedy skits, it was much more fun than I remember my high school graduation being. Afterward there was a dance in the big dining hall building. There are a few things that apparently are just immune to cultural differences, and high school dances are one of them. Brought back memories…although I have to say there are some fancy dance moves that I’ve never seen in America. And I was once again disappointed at the lack of disco music on the playlist.

I’ve been cleaning up and fixing up my house quite a bit. Tried to fashion a closet out of string and a mosquito net, but it came crashing down before long. I did make a nice tool rack on the back of my kitchen door, and still plan to try and build some furniture at some point. I’m paying a neighbor to cook rice and beans for me everyday, but also have an impressive streak going of consecutive days having made guacamole – maybe there’s a Guinness record to be broken. I haven’t gotten tired of eating the same food all the time yet. Credit that to my secret ingredient- chili sauce- that makes everything 10x better. I don’t know what they do differently to it here, but they certainly got that one right.

I also just bought some seeds to try and grow tomatoes and cabbage in the little fenced garden next to my house. Someone used it at some point in the past, but not recently, so I’m gonna try and revive it. You have to plan it right though usually because there are rainy and dry seasons which dictate how well things grow. We’re in the dry season now (today I felt a slight drizzle for the first time since coming) but I think it will be ending soon. I can’t wait, plus then all the hills around me will be that much more green and beautiful! They just did a controlled burn of the corn fields behind my house yesterday, and the wind blew all the ash into my courtyard so it looked like a volcano had just erupted.

It’s still strange to think about spending 2 years here at site, but I know the time will fly by, especially when I start teaching full-time. I’m really glad we have a very good staff of teachers at the school, they are all easy to get along with and seem like they care about their jobs a lot. We’ll see how they react when I show up to teach in my orange suit…then I’ll know if they can be my friends.

It Finally Begins...

Well, it finally happened; I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! This has been a pretty crazy week. It was really tough saying goodbye to my host family. They took me out for a really nice dinner on our last night to a place that had excellent pizza and a playground that I of course made full use of with my 8 yr old and 2 yr old siblings. I gave them a few gifts, including a DVD slideshow with a bunch of the pictures we took together over the last few days, and they really enjoyed that. I’m going to miss them a lot, but we are already planning our visit to Moshe together when I come back to visit them in Morogoro in a few months.

We went back to Dar for 4 days after leaving Moro. It was nice to get to see more of the city, since we didn’t really have time right when we flew in. We did a walk around with a current PCV and she showed us where the nearest Subway was. Oddly enough there isn’t even a McDonald’s in Dar but there are a few Subways. It was exactly like a US one, with an English menu and all. Actually it was pretty weird to be in there ordering such familiar food in Tanzania. We also saw some of the really nice hotels (none of which we’ll ever stay in) and found an actual bookstore which was cool. I got a few more Kiswahili children’s books because I think they’re really fun to read.

Wednesday was our swearing in ceremony at the ambassador’s house. Oh man was it ever swanky. I was smart and planned ahead for the occasion by getting a shiny orange short-sleeve suit jacket (very common here – the short sleeves, not the shiny orange color) made in Morogoro before coming, to match the shiny orange pants I had bought several weeks before. It was extremely hot, but I was happy with how it turned out.  Our whole group put on a little comedy skit, that didn’t really go over with the locals since not too many people here understand American sarcasm, but we all entertained ourselves at least. And Hannah and I gave our speech, which was cool. They televised a lot of it apparently on one of the national TV stations, and the picture of our group swearing in was on Page 3 of the papers the next day, so we were celebrities for a little while. It was funny on the bus on the way to site, one of the people I was travelling with was in the picture, and everyone kept pointing and whispering to each other when they saw him.

Saying goodbye to everyone on Thursday morning was difficult, especially since we had to leave at 4:30 in the morning and I didn’t sleep the night before. And if there’s one place you do not want to be at that time, tired, hungry, and sad, it’s the Dar bus stand. Possibly the most hectic place in the country, though I didn’t lose any luggage. But there are a good number of new and old volunteers that aren’t too far from me, so I’m sure I’ll be seeing many of them often enough.

The bus ride to site was about 12 or 13 hours. But the final hour or so of the trip was absolutely gorgeous. Tons of big forest preserves, which you don’t really see elsewhere in the country too much, and just tons and tons of green hills and mountains all over (actually pretty brown now since it's the dry season). I went with one of the other trainees to his school, since its only about 10km from mine. Both his and mine are a ways off the main road, uphill, so you can see all the hills as you drive up, it’s incredible. Finally got to my house at around 8:30 at night. I got to meet the PCV I’m replacing, Jack, and he’s great. We should have no problems living together for a couple months.

The house is really nice, and pretty big. It has 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, and living room in the main area, but then there is a courtyard that connects it to another part with the bathroom and jiko (cooking room) and bathing room and such. There’s also a patio in front with the most spectacular view of the hills. And a great place to watch the sun rise and set. I really can’t explain how much I love the views, and pictures can’t really do it justice. I thought there were a lot of stars in Morogoro, but here it’s the clearest sky I’ve ever seen. Somedays I may have to just set up my tent and sleep outside. It’s pretty cold now, though it sounds like it’s getting warmer than it was. I like that though, just like good camping weather. There is running water, though it isn’t very clean, and they use a generator on the school grounds from 7 to 10 at night for electricity, which goes to my house too, so I have no problems charging things at nights.

Today I sat in Jack’s classrooms while he taught and introduced myself to the students and teachers. I’m going to start out teaching Form 3 math, but will probably add physics at some point, and also a small computer class of sorts in the evenings when there is electricity. The school just got about 7 laptops to use. There’s about 500 students, so obviously not everyone can use them, but most likely it will be the A-level (form 5 and 6) students who will. The school just started its A-level program a couple years ago, so there are much fewer of them.

It’s a boarding school, so most teachers and students live in dormatories on the school grounds. There’s also a soccer field, and basketball hoops. There seem to be some very smart students in Form 3, some of them are older and are either repeating the classes to do better on the national exams or have gone back after not completing the first time. I will probably start teaching on my own next week or soon after, so I can’t wait to see how it goes.

It is all very exciting right now, though there was a little bit of that “welcome to Africa” feeling when we finally were going to our sites. Training was great, but it wasn’t at all like what I was expecting before I came, and now we’re finally starting what we came here to do. I can see it may become a little overwhelming, just trying to adjust and integrate into the school and community, especially after replacing someone else, but one thing that’s helping a lot is being able to speak the language relatively well. Some people go to sites where they don’t even speak Kiswahili at all, just tribal languages, but luckily mine is not like that so I can use everything I’ve learned up to now. I still love learning the language, but definitely will need to try and teach in English, since the students must learn it.

Soon I should be getting a new, permanent mailing address for my site, so I will post that as soon as I can. Thank you so much to everyone who has sent letters so far, it’s always a great surprise! Can’t wait to tell you all more about site as time goes on. I can tell this is going to be a great location for me.

***Update*** (kinda like those episodes of Unsolved Mysteries for anyone who used to watch that)
I actually wrote this post several days ago, but could just now get it uploaded. Check for some new pics of the house and last few weeks of training. Also, I updated my current mailing address.

The first few days at site have been very good. All of the other teachers are very friendly. The next two days the school has off for Eid, but I will probably begin teaching next week. Right now I'm trying to clean up, reorganize the house to my liking. It makes me think back to when I would stay up all night thinking how to rearrange the furniture in my room, except now I have a full house to work with! I might even try to repaint the inside if I have time. There's also a large supply of scrap wood on the school grounds, so I'm hoping to be able to build some furniture as well, though there's plenty here already for the amount of things I have.

I'm also apparently living in Chicago, Tanzania, because I've already seen several people wearing White Sox attire. The driver of the school car has a Sox hat, and one of my neighbor's kids was wearing a Konerko shirt the other day! I don't think they really know the significance (or what baseball is) but I feel very ashamed that I didn't even bring any of my Sox stuff with, and now I'm being outdone in my own village! I guess maybe I can just paint the Sox logos all over my walls.

Site Announcement and Shadow Week

I just got back from my week-long shadow trip to Iringa, which is about a 5 hour bus ride south of where we’re staying in Morogoro. But before I talk about that, I can also finally say where I’ll be living and teaching for the next two years. The closest major town is called Songea, though my site is halfway between Songea and Njombe, the next closest town. It’s waaay south in the country, actually not too far from the border with Mozambique and pretty close to Lake Malawi also. I don’t know a ton about the area, but it’s called the “southern highlands” and apparently there are a lot of beautiful hills around there that resemble something like the Irish countryside. It will also be a bit cooler which I am excited about. I'm soo excited!

I mentioned this earlier I believe, but a lot of the trainees from our class will be in a different situation this year (myself included it turns out) where we will be living with the volunteers we’re replacing for a couple months, before they finish their service. So I’ll be replacing another math teacher and will live with him until mid-late ish October I believe. I know I’ll be teaching Form 3 Math, just like in my internship teaching, and may possibly add other levels or subjects as time goes on. My school has around 300 students, most of which are boarders, so it's a pretty small school. And it’s coed, which is the only thing I really asked for in my placement interview.

I’m really excited about going to site, especially after this week of shadowing. It was awesome to just have a less structured routine and to see daily life for a current volunteer. The woman I shadowed is an environment volunteer, so her life is much much different from what mine will be, but that made it really cool to see for a week’s time. Her village is about a 40 minute walk up a hill from the tarmac road. It was interesting because I guess before coming I had kind of a stereotypical image of what an “African village” looked like, with clay walls, straw roof, water pump for the whole village and all that, and this place kind of fit that stereotype perfectly. All of the places we’ve been so far have been more developed for sure, so we hadn’t gotten to see that true village setting.

We had an awesome time, it was me and one other shadower, and then the PCV we stayed with, though there was another group relatively close by that we did some things with as well. We went to the primary school in the village to introduce ourselves and answer questions about America. Also, we got to shuck corn with the students, while goofing around with them and singing each other’s national anthems. They loved it. Got to meet a lot of the other people in her village too (there aren’t too many) and went to a meeting for their cow project. The two PCV’s in that area are trying to bring cows to the villages in order to improve their diets and generate some income. HIV is a really big problem in that area, and most of the villagers are just subsistence farmers who grow corn, so they end up eating nothing but ugali every day. It’s really sad because there were tons of orphans in the village because of that.

Our shadowee was also a master cook, so we ate like kings all week and learned how to make many tasty dishes, like cinnamon rolls, deep dish pizza (close enough), banana pancakes, cookies, a pineapple cake of sorts, and other things. Learned how to master the art of baking with a charcoal stove. They give us a Peace Corps cook book before we go to site apparently, and it looked pretty fantastic. I'll have to try to come up with my own recipes too!

 There was also an amazing view of the sunset each night since she was a ways up the hill. In Iringa town we did this hike the first day up to the top of a giant rock and you could see the entire town. Iringa apparently is also the dairy capital of Tanzania because in town we got ice cream, yogurt, and milkshakes. And we got to meet up with quite a few other PCV’s passing through the town, and I met a few who I’ll be living nearby at site.

So yea, now that I’m back in Moro, we’re be here until Sunday morning, doing things for site prep and taking our final language tests and such. Then we go to Dar for 4 days or so, and our swearing in ceremony will be August 24th. It should be a lot of fun, it's a big party with all the PC Tanzania staff and also all the heads of the schools we'll be going to. I guess each year they have the volunteers do a sort of talent show with singing and dancing and whatnot, and also make a speech in both Kiswahili and English. Another girl and I were picked to do the speech, so we'll see how that goes. And then the next day we go to our sites, they don't waste any time. I’m so excited, just can’t believe training is already almost over. Can’t wait to see my village and school!

Training Update

Hi all! I just realized today marks the start of week 8 out of 10 of our training - crazy how fast it's gone by and yet it still seems like we've been here so long. But I'm very excited because in 2 days we find out our permanent sites! My host baba has a lot of family that lives in Moshe, near Kilimanjaro, and he keeps telling me he really wants me to teach there. I try to tell him I don't really have too much say in it, but maybe he has some pull within Peace Corps...we'll see. I'm sure I'll be happy wherever I go.

But on Sunday we leave for our week-long shadow sessions. I'll be going to Iringa, which is about a 5-7 hour bus ride from Morogoro I think, so not too far. Some people have a 12+ hr trip ahead of them. I heard it's much colder there (40's or so at night?). Also the volunteer I'm staying with is an environment volunteer, not education, and they tend to live in more remote parts of the country. I talked to her on the phone and she said she is definitely living out in the bush, no electricity or running water for sure, and the closest secondary school is a 2 hr hike from her house. It's gonna be great to be able to see that side of Tanzanian life, at least for a week! I think we'll get a chance to try our hand at teaching at least one day, too.  Oh, and apparently my host volunteer is an amazing cook. She is notorious among other volunteers for making some mean cinnamon rolls. She asked me if there was any food I was missing from home that she could make, and I said I'm from Chicago so if there's anything I'm missing it's deep dish pizza, but that's probably out of the question. But she said she thinks she can make it. I'm definitely stealing the recipe if it works out.

I made burritos for my host family the other day, with chipati, rice, beans, and guacamole. It turned out well, but the chipati didn't quite have the durability I was hoping for, good thing people here are used to eating most messy things with their hands. But they loved the guacamole. I tried to tell them you can eat it with literally anything. And they thought it was funny when I said another name for burritos was taco's, because apparently "tako" means butt in kiswahili. Oh, cultural exchanges...

Tomorrow's my last day of teaching at my school here in Morogoro. We prepared a short speech in Kiswahili to say in front of all the students and teachers to thank them for having us, and they will have a little send-off party for us.

In other exciting news, one of my Kiswahili teachers, Makasi, just had a new baby girl today (his wife, that is). They had been expecting it for a while now, so one of the other trainees in my group, Athena, said if it was a girl he should name it after her. And Makasi said he would, and apparently did, though I'm pretty sure we all thought he was joking. She was really excited. I'm willing to guess they are the only two Athena's in Tanzania.

That's about it for now. Just really excited to find out where I'll be living for the next two years! Thanks to everyone who's been keeping in touch, it's always great to hear from you.

Mikumi Safari!

This past weekend was our safari trip to Mikumi National Park. It was awesome! I finally got to add some pictures so be sure to check them out. We saw a lot of elephants, giraffes, zebra, antelope, hip-hop-hippotami, wildebeest, buffalo, and two lions. We actually only spotted the lions because of the big giraffe carcass in the field that they were protecting, but we got to go right up to within like 30 feet or so of them. It was great, much cooler than any zoo I've ever been to, that's for sure.

Pretty much our whole group went, so we took two buses there. It was only like a 2 hr drive from Morogoro. We stayed at a hotel just outside the park, so it was nice to all be able to hang out past 7 pm which is when it usually gets dark and people have to head home. And you can see from the pictures, there was a pretty fantastic sunset that night which looked incredible from within the park. Definitely felt like we were in Africa.

Other than that, teaching has still been going well. I find that I'm never really able to get through everything I planned to the day before, but it's definitely better to go slower and be sure the students understand than to stick to the schedule suggested by the syllabus, at least I think so. Definitely something I can work on though so I can manage class time better at my permanent site. I try to incorporate group work and games as much as possible to keep the students interested, though they usually are anyways, since they are math/science focused, rather than arts. But still some days just seem to go over better than others. They're very well conditioned to memorizing and using equations, but if I ask them what the answer means, I usually get a lot of blank stares. A few are very smart though, it's tough, at least for me, to gauge a good speed for the whole class to keep everyone interested and not lose too many at the same time. The best thing to do is to be patient, and also well-prepared for each class though I think. I'm definitely learning plenty myself everyday.

Last week we had our mid-term tests, both written and oral, for our Kiswahili learning. It's crazy that we're more than half way through training! Next week is our last week of internship teaching, then we go to shadow and live with a volunteer for week, all over the country. We find out where we're going on Friday, and I think two people go to each site. Then we come back to Morogoro for a week and a half and it's time for swearing in! It really is going fast. I can't wait to find out where my permanent site is though. Rumor has it they have already picked our sites but are waiting a couple weeks to tell us in case things change with the schools or whatever.

I got to hang out with my host family baba yesterday, pretty much for the first time, since he's always very busy, and he was telling me that he has a lot of family in Moshe, which is near Kilimanjaro. He wants to take me on a trip there to visit before I leave, and even offered that I could stay there if I ever go to climb Kili! I told him I really like hiking and such, and he said it was very beautiful around there, and lots of waterfalls, so I'm really excited. Hopefully I can go soon!

That's about all I have time to update on for now. But check out my new pictures and send me email updates on how everyone's doing back home if you get a chance. Baadaye!

First Days of Teaching

Monday I started my internship teaching at the Secondary School near my host family’s house. I’ll be teaching there for about 4 weeks I think, and then move on to shadow a current volunteer somewhere else. For now, I’m teaching Form III Math, which I guess is roughly equivalent to Freshmen in High School in the States. The education system here is broken up into Primary School, which has Standards I-VII, then Secondary School, which is split into 4 yrs of O (ordinary) Level (Form I-IV) and 2 yrs of A (advanced) Level (Form V-VI). At the end of O Level, all students take a national exam to see if they can go on to A Level, though most don’t pass. Those that do go on usually eventually go to University or Teacher’s Colleges to become teachers.

It’s interesting, because a lot of students that don’t pass the exam to go on to A Level end up becoming teachers in primary schools, and a lot that don’t finish their A level studies become teachers for O level. This is partly because there have been so many schools built in Tanzania over the last 5 or 10 years (I’m pretty sure they’ve more than doubled), and so there’s a huge need for new teachers. The challenge now is not only getting enough teachers, but training them in the new “interactive teaching” approach that the government is pushing with the new syllabi, rather than the old methods of sheer memorization that tend to be the norm.

Looking through the syllabus I’ve been given, it was tough to imagine at first how it could take so long to go over what seem like not too many difficult topics. But there are so many handicaps on the students, even here in Morogoro which is a pretty well developed area compared to some other parts of Tanzania.  Even at my school, Kingalu, a lot of the classes have 70 ish students (though I’m lucky and mine only has 30-40), none of the students have books, and many don’t even have workbooks to write in, there’s no time to do homework for extra practice since all the kids have chores and even if they have electricity the power is out half the time at nights, and a lot of the teachers just plain don’t show up a lot of days. Really, it’s amazing that they can learn anything. But it ends up being that what they do retain is just what they can memorize from what the teachers write on the board. A lot of times the teachers will fill up the entire blackboard top to bottom, and the students will just sit and copy in silence for the whole period.

 It’s really awesome though how enthusiastic they get when you let them get involved in the lesson. I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure my group is the advanced class because they catch on really quickly to most of what I’ve been teaching, compared to what the other PC teachers have said.

For my first day, I was told that I should be prepared to teach about sequences and series, so I made up a lesson plan and had it all ready to go. But when I asked my class what they had gone over before I came, they said things from several chapters back in the syllabus, and even when I asked them questions about those topics, I just got a bunch of blank stares. So I got really nervous for a minute and had no idea what I was going to teach, but I noticed one of the earlier topics was one that I had made one of my 10 minute mini lesson plans for last week, and decided I would just give that a shot. It was basically introducing the concept of functions. It was inspired by Mr. Mayday’s “Function Machine” analogy for anyone who remembers that, though I didn’t think the whole machine concept would be as relatable, so I spun it into a “cooking ugali” metaphor (ugali is cooked corn flour and water that’s pretty much a staple for cheap eating). Anyways, I thought it went really well and the kids seemed to understand what I was saying, though I don’t think many could speak or understand English too well.

But today I got kind of called out by the previous teacher for not sticking to the syllabus, even though they clearly hadn’t grasped the old topics very well. But I’m only here for a few weeks, so it’s not like I could have expected to get them caught up or anything anyways, so I didn’t mind, hamna shida. Except that she told me this literally as I was about to go to the classroom to teach a completely different lesson. So maybe one of these days I’ll actually teach what I’ve planned for the day before. Today’s class went well too though, since I had sort of planned for the sequences topic initially.

I teach double periods (80 minutes) on Mon, Tues, and Weds, then a single period on Thursdays. I’ve really been getting into using creative props and making games for the kids to play and such. I just have to get a feel for how quickly they pick up on things to see how fast I should be moving with the material. It’s a lot of fun though, I can’t wait to see what my permanent school is like.

I’m trying to write more letters back home, but unfortunately I never accomplished one of my goals from before leaving, which was to compile a big address book of everyone from home. So please anyone send me an email with your home address if you’d like me to send a letter. Or just send me one so I have the return address!

Habari from Tanzania!

Hey everybody!

So I haven't had as much access to internet (or rather the time for it) as I was hoping, but I'll try to update as much as possible about my first 3 weeks in Tanzania! Actually I tried to post here a couple weeks ago at an internet cafe but the computer froze for the last 20 minutes, and i lost everything I had written. So hopefully this one actually works!

I hope everyone at home is doing well, things have been wonderful here. Honestly it still hasn't really sunk in that I'll be here for over 2 years, probably since we've been so busy since getting here. I wish i could share everything that I've seen, but I'll try to get all the important stuff in.

We flew into Dar es Salaam that first Wednesday, and apparently there was a lunar eclipse the same night. One of the PC trainers said he got a text from another volunteer about it just as our plane was touching down. So we considered it to be a sign of good luck. I was extremely jetlagged  and don't remember much else about the first night except it was very humid and getting through customs at the airport was shockingly easy. And only one person's bag got lost!

We stayed at a really nice training center in Dar for 4 days, but weren't allowed to go outside the walls unattended. Probably a good thing though I realized after seeing how crazy the drivers are here. Pedestrians definitely are at the bottom of the food chain. I did get to go walk around a bit with another PCV chaperone, a few of us went to the barber nearby, which was a pretty cool / only somewhat awkward experience.

From Dar we took a 4 hr bus ride to Morogoro, which is where the rest of our 10 week training is. We stopped for lunch and then shipped straight off to our host families. We have 39 trainees total, and are split into 4 or 5 person CBT (community based training) groups all around Morogoro. The people in the CBT groups all live in homestays that are pretty close together, and a couple of the CBTs are within walking distance from each other, but most are really far apart.

The first 2 weeks in Morogoro, we all met at one training center so that we could do different group activities, but now we are pretty much just with our CBT groups everyday. Once or twice a week we all meet together, which will be nice for a change of pace, though I like my group a lot.

Training so far has been very helpful, but the days are long for sure. I've been getting up with the roosters / call of the prayer around 530 everyday, with enough time for my bucket bath and homework before class starts at 8. We used to go til 430 or so everyday, but since moving to our small groups, we've compromised to 330 ish since everyone is pretty tired by then. It is really nice to go to bed at 9 everday though. The sun goes down at 7, and there isn't a whole lot to do after that / they don't really want us wandering around after dark, so it's easy to be in bed early.

Learning the language has been one of my favorite parts of training so far. Kiswahili is actually really intuitive to learn, and it's always fun to try (and fail usually) to use new vocab or whatever at the market or with my family. It usually ends up with me getting laughed at and not knowing why but not really minding either. Hamna Shida! - that's the Tanzanian version of Hakuna Matata, which apparently is actually Kenyan Swahili, and the Tanzanians don't really like to speak Kenyan Swahili.

We've also been doing microteaching practice, where we prepare 10 minute mini - lessons and teach in front of our small groups. It's really good for me, since Ive never taught before, but Im really anxious to actually teach in from of a class of TZ kids. We'll start that next week, I can't wait! Today a couple of us walked past our school during lunch and introduced ourselves. I said I would be teaching math and the kids gave a round of applause haha. I guess maybe they don't like their current teacher too much, or don't have one?

My host family is extremely nice, like everyone else for the most part. Greetings are a really big part of the culture here, so pretty much everyone I run into on the streets is very nice and loves it when I greet them in Kiswahili. The little kids like to shout "Mzungu!" which is the slang, slightly derogatory term for white person, or tourist, but I it doesn't really bother me, at least not yet.

Before we all left for our host families, I wasn't really nervous like a lot of others were, just really excited. I feel like I was one of the few who was actually kind of looking forward to really simple living conditions, I don't know why. I was trying not to have any expectations or assumptions, but I was definitely surprised when I first got to my house. My host baba (father) apparently owns a bunch of bars in Morogoro and is a super-successful businessman, and my mama is a buisnesswoman too, so they're really well off. My house is actually much nicer than anywhere I've ever lived in the States, and pretty much everyone in the family speaks really good English.  Initially I was a little disappointed, because I thought I might be missing out on some experiences or might not be prepared for the life I'll have at my permanent site. I still felt dumb though, because I was probably the only one who wouldn't have been really excited to have such a nice place. But I figured this is probably the best situation for me. I probably wouldn't have gotten as much out of it if I had gotten what I was expecting. My challenge will just be being proactive enough to still learn everything I need for when I leave.

After I met my whole family, though, I had no complaints at all about my situation. They're so great. It's me, my mama and baba, two dadas (sisters) Unisi, 13, Vanessa, 5; a 2 yr old kaka (brother) Kevin, and a family of house-workers who live there too and are basically all part of the family, though not related. They all speak in Swahili to try and help me learn, and loved the Chicago picture book and pictures from home that I brought. I've helped to cook a couple times and did my laundry by hands once, which were much more exhausting than I would have thought, but just that much more satisfying when I've finished! They always make me feel right at home, I'm really lucky to have them host me. I taught my kaka Kevin how to high-5 and now he screams and jumps up and down everytime he does it.

Maybe my favorite thing so far has been when I'm walking back to my house at night, and I see the backdrop of the mountains in the distance, and how clear the sky is with so many stars. I'll post pictures as soon as I can, but it really is an amazing sight to see everyday and wake up to. This past Sunday we went for a day hike in the mtns to this waterfall, about a 2 hr hike each way. It was so nice and refreshing once we got there to go for a swim. Makes me even more anxious to do Kilimanjaro!

Last week we had a really rare and awesome opportunity, because there was a big 50th anniversary Peace Corps party in Dar, since Tanzania was one of the original Peace Corps countries when it started 50 years ago. The Director of Peace Corps, Aaron Williams, was in country and wanted to stop by our training to say hi and have lunch. He talked a bit about his service and what he's done since and took some Q and A. And he actually sat right next to me at lunch, so I got to find out a little more about him. He's such a nice guy, and was really interested in all of us and why we decided to join the PC and everything. And I found out he grew up on the South Side of Chicago, and his sister actually lives in Tinley Park!! Small world moment for sure! I of course informed him that it was the best place in America to raise your kids, but he said his wife's kids were all grown up by now. And we got him to promise to make an appearance, at least by computer, at our swearing-in ceremony in August, so that will be really cool.

Everyone keeps telling us that we're the most diverse class of volunteers ever in Tanzania, in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, teaching experience, etc. We're also a very unique class because this is the first year they're having English teachers, and also the first year that the education volunteers have started in June. Usually it's in September, so there will actually be a 3 month overlap period when we go to site, and a lot of us will actually be living with another PCV during that time if we're going to a site where we'll be replacing someone.

I'm running out of my computer time, but I just want to let you all know that I did get a cell phone recently, so I now have access to the outside world! It's pretty expensive for me to call from here, but the advice I've gotten is that Skype is the cheapest option from the States if anyone wants to call here. I'll put my phone number and updated mailing address and all in the "Contact Me" tab on this blog. So give a call if you can, or feel free to send letters. I sent a couple like a week and a half ago, so we'll see how long it takes. I know the time difference is 8 hrs from Central Time (real time), so if you do plan on calling, please try to make it relatively early or I may wake up my host family by talking!

I know I've written alot, but I feel like there's still so much more I could say. But I'll keep all the interesting stories to send in letters or tell when I'm back. I hope everyone had an awesome 4th of July, and Happy Birthday Christine! I celebrated by taking out my iPod for the first time and listening to some CCR. America.

All the best to everyone back home, always thinking of you and miss you all!