A Change of Scenery

Top priority after 1.5 years...

Well I am very happy to say that I have successfully returned home to the greatest place on earth, Tinley Park, and have officially begun my holiday vacation in America. Still, I wanted to give some updates on what I had been up to in Tanzania just before coming home.

Dating back to Thanksgiving, I have to say that it turned out to be one of the greatest and more memorable Thanksgivings I've ever had, mostly because of how smoothly it went despite having so few "typical" amenities. We were able to cook a turkey (to perfection, not by me of course) in an aluminum pot charcoal oven, along with stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and some amazing pies made from scratch - pumpkin, mango, chocolate pudding-pineapple, and apple. I continue to be blown away by the cooking prowess of many of the other people here. My endeavors were not as difficult or complicated, but were equally successful and appreciated by all. I ended up making a 10-liter bucket's worth of guacamole, which turned out to be a great secondary gravy, and the egg nog was a HUGE hit and went off without a hitch. I think I've influenced a few more people to make it a twice-a-year tradition like it is for me. With 20 people at a single Peace Corps house with no electricity, the fact that we were able to get all of the cooking done and actually eat by 7 o'clock may have been nothing short of a miracle. After eating, we all gathered around a 12-inch netbook computer screen and watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Mr. Turkey finished to perfection.

The "jiko" oven used to cook the turkey.

Thanksgiving gang, mostly residents of Njombe / Songea.

Truly classic-looking Thanksgiving pies - pumpkin, mango, apple.

Following Thanksgiving, I traveled to Morogoro to help with the in-service-training of the new class of Education volunteers. I led two sessions related to teaching Math in Tanzania, and I was part of the Hands-On-Science team that led activities all day on Saturday the 1st. We talked about ways to make science seem more exciting for students, and demonstrated this by doing an egg drop competition for the volunteers and their Tanzanian counterparts. We also made homemade gunpowder and stuffed it into a giant paper crane and then ignited it for an enticing fireworks introduction. So essentially our message was: if you can't break or blow something up, it's not science.

Testing out an egg drop contraption.

Cooking up a delicious batch of gunpowder.

Upon finishing my work at IST, I had about a week of time before needing to be in Dar for my flight home. Before he left, an old friend of mine in country told me about his site in a place called Lushoto, which is a small town in the mountains slightly farther North than Dar. I had my tent with me, and so I decided to go check out that area and see if I could do any hiking. From my guidebook, I learned about this place called the Irente Viewpoint, for which the book used some pretty intense descriptors such as: heart-pounding, breath-taking and gob-smacking. After seeing it myself, I have to say I agree with all of these, though I might also add on one more - scrumptulescent. It was really incredible, and I felt like there needed to be some Lord of the Rings background music just to stand and look out at the view. There is a very nice hotel right at the viewpoint, which was far outside of my budget range, but luckily they let people set up their own tents on their front lawn for cheap, and so I was able to wake up to the incredible sights seen below.

There were a lot of chameleons in the forests of Lushoto.

After my hike through Lushoto, I made my way to Tanga, a coastal town only a few hours away. There is a beautiful beach called Pangani that can be reached by a short 2-hour bus ride from town. I stayed there with a friend for 2 days and enjoyed the soft sandy beach, slightly warmer than desired but still refreshing Indian Ocean waters, and unbelievable views of the starry night sky. The temperature was very hot since this is the middle of the summer season, but with a nice fanned room it was nothing unbearable.

Finally, after leaving Pangani, I went on to Dar with a day of preparation before my 4:30 am flight on the 12th. On my last day before coming to America I decided it would be worthwhile to get into the proper mindset for the next 3 weeks and go to an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. 6 plates later my stomach was sufficiently stretched out to accommodate for all of my eating plans at home.

Now that I've had a couple days to be back and start catching up with friends and family, I can definitely see how seemlessly some things like driving came back to me, and yet everything I do seems to cause me to draw comparisons to my life in Tanzania. I'm sure I will be looking forward to returning in January, but for now it is nice to be completely unburdened and to actually understand everything that's being said around me! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone, and thank you for your continued interest in my blog and activities over the past year. Be sure to stay tuned next year for even more wild and wacky Tanzanian adventures!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Or more up-to-date, Happy Black Friday! My Thanksgiving here was a rather quiet one, spent at home with a not-so-impressive "feast" of rice and beans, but don't think I was any less thankful than usual to have it. Our Thanksgiving celebration will be on Saturday in Njombe. My scheduled contribution is (of course) a tub of guacamole, and also this year I'm going to give the egg nog another try. Basically this is an attempt at a retribution Thanksgiving, since I will be trying not to fail so badly on both of those things compared to last year. Helping me out this time around will be not having to lug the avocados half-way around the country and also the learned foresight of making sure i don't get sour milk for the egg nog. As far as the last several weeks have gone....

In the time since the Girl's Conference, the 5 girls from my school who attended the conference have hosted mini-conference lessons of their own for pretty much all of the other girls at Wilima, from Form I to Form III. A lot of the lessons were ones that they saw at the conference, but done in a slightly different way and sped up to cover more material in a short time. I was VERY impressed with their leadership and ability to keep control over a group of 40 or so students, especially those a couple years older than themselves. I literally did not even need to say a word during any of the lessons because they were very well prepared and confident about what they were teaching. I can't say enough about how proud I am of them and how dedicated they've been to spreading girls' empowerment at my school. I am sure they will be glad to continue lessons next year as well when we get new Form I students.

Aside from that, I've recently gotten involved in a hands-on science teaching group of Peace Corps Volunteers called Shika na Mikono ("Hold with Your Hands"). The group was started by other volunteers a few years ago with the intent of spreading knowledge of how to teach different science topics or perform labs using very cheap and easily available materials. I find it very interesting because it strongly relies on finding creative ways to teach students somewhat more difficult material, while sparking their interest in science subjects by letting them physically participate in the lesson. Because the last group of Education volunteers is now leaving the country, the old group members are passing on the duties to our new group - me and 2 others from the class I came into country with. So we had a meeting a couple weeks ago to talk about new ideas and goals for the group for the coming years.

There is a really nice manual that has been published for use by PC Volunteers, and so we are hoping to make updates to that and also add on more simple lesson plan ideas for hands-on teaching. The manual is made all in LaTeX, a document-writing program that I was (somewhat forcibly, but not regrettably) made pretty familiar with at Notre Dame, so luckily I am able to draw back on some of those skills now. The other big thing is that the Ministry of Education is planning these new teacher trainings for next year in terms of showing them how to actually teach using experimental lessons rather than just writing on the board every day. So we may be able to attend those trainings and put our two cents in on how to do all of those things, but also on a small budget. I'm really excited to start planning a Math and Science Conference next year, which will probably involve using some of the same kinds of ideas.

I'm officially done teaching for the year now, since the Form II students have finished their national exams and have left school. So the school is now half-capacity and winding down towards the final exams for the remaining students at the end of November. I have had a bit more freetime the last couple of weeks, though beginning the week after Thanksgiving is the IST training for the new group of volunteers in Morogoro, and I will be going to lead lessons for the math group, and then also a few sessions with the Shika group.

I will be spedning Thanksgiving (weekend that is) at the house of the married couple in Njombe, Jon and sara. It sounds like most of the people in the region will be coming - 15 or so - so it will be a lot of fun. We will actually be having turkey, even though they are so hard to come by in this country. Of course if it catches on fire in our make-shift cooking pot oven, we may have to all go looking for the nearest Denny's in Njombe.

After Thanksgiving and IST, I will probably be looking for some small filler travelling for a week or so, because on Wednesday, 12/12/12.......I'll be coming home for Christmas!! Wooooo!! I decided a while ago that it would be great to go home for the holidays, and so I booked my tickets for Dec 12th - Jan 4th. So let me know if you will be around Chicago in that time, because I will probably be able to take a few small breaks from gorging on food to actually see some people. So excited to be home and see everyone!!

Wasichana Wanaweza!!

Last week we held a Girl's Conference in the town of Peramiho, which is about a half hour bus ride from Songea. At the conference were 5 Form 1 girls from my school, Wilima, and also girls from 5 other schools that other volunteers either teach at or live near. Only our school and one other had girls from Secondary schools; the others were primary level but all within a few years in age. The conference started on Monday and went through Thursday night, and then we all returned to our respective homes on Friday. It was held at a big conference center in Peramiho. Pretty much the entire town of Peramiho has been built by various Missions and the whole town is well kept and has very nice buildings.

There were 7 volunteers in total from the Songea region, and most brought with a counterpart to help teach lessons and give advice to the girls. I brought with me one of my neighbors, since there are no female teachers at my school. Her name is Mama Edu and she turned out to be the perfect choice for me to bring. She gave some pretty heated rants to the girls about the way women are treated in this country and how that affects her. It's not much of a secret that generally speaking, at least in the village setting, women do a highly disproportionate amount of work compared to men in Tanzania. Cooking, cleaning, farming, carrying firewood, taking care of children, and choting water are all on the job description, and then it's also customary for them to always serve men first for food. A lot of men don't work and end up just sitting around the house most of the day drinking pombe (a locally made alcoholic bamboo juice) and talking with other people. Since most students don't pass their exams or do well enough to continue on to A-Level studies, they mostly end up going back home to work on the farm with their parents, and so many girls end up living this kind of heavy work-low payoff life until they are very old. The theme of the conference was "Wasichana Wanaweza" which basically means "Girls Can."

We had a lot of different teaching sessions and activities to send different messages of empowerment to the girls and also mixed in a good amount health education. One was teaching about the food pyramid, since your typical Tanzanian diet consists often of nothing more than ugali (a corn-based staple food of white mush with little nutritional value) and beans. Tanzania is such a fertile country all over and it easy in a lot of places to grow all kinds of fruits and vegetables, so there should not be nearly as many malnourished people as there are. We also taught them about the solar disenfecting, or SODIS, method of treating water. If you fill up a water bottle and leave it out in the sun for 6 hours or more, it kills a lot of the harmful bacteria and makes the water safe to drink. It's a good alternative to boiling water, which uses a lot of wood, charcoal, or kerosene that can be expensive.

Another session was on gender roles. The girls were given cards with different words on them like "doctor" or "cooking" and then they had to make an instant reaction and either go the "Men" or "Women" side of the room based on who they associated that word with. We also had a guest speaker, a female doctor from the Peramiho hospital, come to give a talk on HIV/AIDS, and with her was a man who is living with HIV, and he also gave a talk about his experience and advice for the girls.

I had two sessions that I led. The first was a lesson on Role Models- what the term means and how to identify/choose positive role models in our lives. Of course the example I used was Michael Jordan, so I made a big poster of him (a better drawing than my old Frank Thomas posters I must add - he did not look like a thumb) and listed reasons why he is my role model. Then I gave the girls poster paper and markers and told them to draw someone who is a role model for them. I guess my initial rough Swahili explanation was somewhat confusing because the first girl I saw working on hers starting writing "Michael Jordan" at the top of her poster, and I had to explain again that they were supposed to use someone that THEY looked up to, though maybe she was just so impressed with MJ that she decided he was a worthy role model for her as well.

The other session I did was a Hands-On-Science workshop kind of thing. So many kids in general, but especially girls, come into secondary school hating math and science, usually because they never had an actual teacher in primary school. So what I wanted to do was have different science demo's that were kind of exciting and showed them that science is more than just memorizing formulas, which is all that most of them do in class. We had 4 stations that they rotated through in small groups. One was a simple circuit with a battery and a Christmas light bulb, which was left open and needed to be completed with different materials like a pen, aluminum, nail, paper, test tube, balloon, etc. and they had to predict first and then try to see if the light would turn on. Another was a lever demo, which was just a ruler balance with cups on either end to add bottle caps into to see how many it took on each side to balance. Then they had to move the ruler so one side was larger than the other and try again to see how it changed.

The next was using a water gun to shoot targets at different heights to try and get an idea about how trajectories work and how to point the water gun to get the most distance and height. And the last station was rubbing a balloon or plastic pen or ruler on your head and seeing how it attracted small pieces of paper with static electricity. Most of the girls have shaved heads, so I think they needed to borrow a head to rub from some of the volunteers. All in all I was super excited with how it went because they all seemed to enjoy the activities and looked really interested.

For the end of the conference, we had each group of girls prepare a song/dance and a skit related to the messages of the lessons. My students put on a really good play that of course I only got a limited understanding of, but based on the other Tanzanians' reactions, was downright hilarious. I was incredibly proud of all my students because they kind of took leadership roles since they were some of the oldest students at the conference. They asked a lot of good questions and seemed to really believe in the things they were being taught. I'm really excited now for the rest of the school year to have them lead sessions like the ones they saw, but use them to teach other students at my school and possibly even some of the primary schools nearby. It also made me a lot more comfortable with teaching life skills lessons and was great to get other ideas on how to teach them. I definitely think teaching life skills will become a much bigger part of my teaching at school after having done this girls conference.

We were already talking about now trying to do a Boys Conference sometime during the next school year which starts in January, possibly at the same place in Peramiho. Another idea that I have had and really want to do next year is to hold a conference like this, but instead of being a Boys or Girls Conference, have it be like a Math and Science Seminar, where the best math and science students from different schools can come and have some quality nerd-out time. It would be really cool for them to be able to see what is actually happening with science in the world today and where the real applications of what they're learning are. I can possibly even show them some footage of our robot quarterback, Sleepy Jim, that we made as a senior design project for our robot football game at Notre Dame.

Meanwhile, back at school.....

The week of the Girls Conference was also the week of National Exams for the Form IV students. They will be finishing up for a few days this coming week also, but then will be headed home. I'll continue teaching the Form II's until their exams in early November, but then will be finished with my regular teaching schedule. I plan to work more with the Form III's and giving them a head start in some math topics that they will learn next year, and also hopefully keeping up these life skills lessons on a regular basis.

The solar power project is moving along well. We had the grants coordinator from the Ambassodor's Grant Dept. come to visit our school a couple weeks back. She happens to be the wife of one of the head Peace Corps people for Tanzania. We haven't started to install anything yet, so her visit was really just to see the school and talk about whatever changes are going on in the solar project. The headmaster has now decided to do the project in 2 phases since the original cost estimate was lower than what it is now, and the school will have to wait until next year's budget to make the rest of the contributions. So first we will install lights in the classrooms, and then a few months from now will use the rest of the grant money to install a second system that will be able to power the big photocopy machine and also the laptop computers. I continue to be happy with the relatively little amount of work that I have to put into the project, which shows they are able to do it themselves, and maybe even write another grant after I leave!

Other than that, I've been dedicating the diminishing free time I have almost exclusively to puzzling. In a 6-day span I did (with some help) about 2.75 puzzles, and already have a couple more and one sent from home to work on when I get back to my house. My hope is to turn my house into a replica of the Wilks' garage, and just have the walls covered with completed puzzle posters. In unrelated news, I don't have any nerd tendencies whatsoever.

I continue to love and miss you all, and don't forget to check out all the pictures from the Girls Conference on facebook!

August / September Roundup

School was closed for the better part of August because of the national census, which gave me a few weeks to do some travelling.

NICK VISIT

Though he could only be here for about 6 days, Nick's visit to Tanzania featured, I believe, a pretty good sampling of the country's sights, early history, both spectrums of its widely separated social and economic classes, and inevitably some of its larger annoyances, namely with travelling. We started the trip in Dar, getting to see some different parts of the town and the beaches, and later went to see The Dark Knight Rises in (supposedly) the biggest movie theatre in East Africa - mostly just an indulgence for me to remember what a movie theatre looks like. Then the next day we stood on a typically overloaded bus for 2 hours going to Bagamoyo.

Bagamoyo used to be the major port city in East Africa during the height of the slave trade, but eventually the business captial moved to Dar and Bagamoyo has been in a steady decline ever since. Now it mostly serves as a historical and tourist site. We saw the Kaole Ruins which included remnants of mosques dating back as far as the 1500's, and also a Catholic church (very rare in that part of the country) that was built around 1900 and has some very nice murals inside. Next to the church was a museum that basically gave the history of Bagamoyo from its origins, through the part it played in the slave trade, then came under German control up to World War II and given up as a British colonial town until Tanzania's independence in 1961. What's interesting is the name of the town used to be something similar that meant basically a place of hope, but got changed during the period of slave trade to what it is now, Bagamoyo, which means "Lay down your heart," meaning that pretty much everyone who came there in those days would never return to where they came from.

After coming back to Dar, we headed on South to Iringa, where we met up with another volunteer and his friend for a joint safari in Ruaha National Park, the one I had visited with Christine a while ago. We used the same guide as the first time, and funnily (or not) enough, got a flat tire at the exact same spot that we did then. So we got into the park right at sundown, which was beautiful of course. We had the whole next day to see pretty much all of the major animals, including a few male lions all resting together. We stayed in the little metal huts inside the park and at one point during the night, all of the guards were yelling at us not to come out because there was an elephant just hanging out sitting right outside our door. Naturally we went out anyways and jumped on for an evening ride. Then on the way back we got another flat tire (well, actually the same one that they had "repaired" inside the park), so by this point we were all pit crew pros.

After Ruaha, we had to go right back to Dar for Nick's flight home. One more flat tire on the cab ride to the airport just for completeness, and then Nick was off, leaving all of his newfound "friendies" behind (who coincidentally seemed to include every taxi driver that we walked past in the country). But he did leave me with plenty of mementos from home, including a giant bear-sized container of animal crackers. You know me too well...

MSC

The week after Nick's visit was our Mid-Service Conference or MSC, also in Dar. It was great to see everyone from our class again, and it really was like a family reunion since we were all staying in the same hotel for the most part. We had a few training sessions on sharing ideas and experiences from site now that we've been there for over a year, and then a doctor's and dentist's appointment, but overall the week was very laid back. We were able to check out a couple of Dar's nicer beaches, one of which had a pirate ship to play on. By far my favorite part of the week was finding a real basketball court where they hold youth league practices every evening. I went there one night to check it out with a couple other volunteers and we got to play full court 5-on-5 scrimmage games with the guys there. And they were so good, much better than any other Tanzanians I've seen play before. It was so nice to have that since I've really been missing playing real basketball on a nice court. I actually found out about the place from a coach I ran into at this kid's camp that I just stumbled upon earlier in the week, but was apparently hosted by two NBA players - Hashim Thabeet (I think the only Tanzanian basketball player in the NBA) and Luol Deng from the Bulls. Unfortunately I had just missed them when I found the place, but it was still lucky to find out about that other court.

SONGEA FEST

Capping off the week of MSC was our adventure to the largest annual Peace Corps get-together event, Songea Fest, held in my hometown Songea, which is normally about a 15 hour bus ride from Dar. Because our whole class was together already, and most of them wanted to go to Songea, we more or less rented out a big bus to take us all down there in style, and were able to put on our own movies and music for the whole ride.

At Songea Fest were a ton of volunteers and even more delicious food. The major event was a huge BBQ featuring pork burgers with cheese, ice cream, plenty of sides, and of course, a giant tub of guacamole that used somewhere around 75 avocados. It was a much bigger success than my last attempt of such proportions last Thanksgiving, since the avocados were actually ripe this time around. And not a drop remained at the end.

Sunday morning there was the typical 3-on-3 basketball tournament. It was actually a good turnout with 6 decent teams. Myself and another person from my same team in Njombe Jam won our second straight PC basketball championship, though without an exciting 6-2 comeback this time.

The final event was the talent show, for which me and 5 other guys from Songea dressed up in shiny orange (how'd you guess?) robes of sorts, and, sporting the finest in fake moustache fashion (thank you random care package gifts) put on a pretty good performance to the Backstreet Boys' "I Want it That Way." So I suppose be on the lookout for embarassing pictures to come on that one.

SOLAR POWER

The end of break meant a return to school for me and, roughly 10 percent of the students...? I suppose it's just a natural trend for schools in this country, especially boarding schools, for students to gradually filter in over the first week or so back. It meant I didn't really have my normal teaching schedule, but did give time to talk with my Headmaster and others more about our Solar Power grant. We've now gotten the money from the US Embassy and are currently looking for a reliable retailer of the materials and a good technician to install them. There is another school near Njombe that has a system similar to what we want ours to be, so we may very well use the same contacts that they did. We should have enough money to get solar panels to power our new copy machine, which doesn't run well off of the generator, and to light at least half of the classrooms. Though it sounds like the Headmaster wants to keep the generator running for the classes in the evenings and use the solar as a backup for when the generator breaks down. I think its a good idea, and also to use solar for the copier, since it is pretty much useless right now, and it would be so great to actually be able to have print-outs for my classes next year. Finding the right retailer is probably the most important part of the project, since there are so many fake and poorly made materials up for sale here. Once we decide on one for sure, the installation should go relatively quickly.

MATH CONFERENCE

Right after getting back to site, I was notified of a national math conference in Arusha this week by one of the Peace Corps staff, and he asked if I could go since I had said earlier that I was interested in going to trainings like this. I gladly accepted and so that is where I am now, in Arusha, way up north near Mount Kilimanjaro. The conference lasts all week and they will be having different discussions on teaching methods and materials relevant to teaching in rural secondary schools in this country. There are probably around 200 or so math teachers from all over the country, including me and 2 others from Peace Corps, so it's a pretty cool opportunity to see how the Ministry of Education views the issues related to teaching math in Tanzania. The conference came at a good time, since my students have a week full of mid-term tests this week. Though when I get back, I will only have 2 weeks of prep time for my Form IV students before their National Exams. I can only hope that they studied over their break, because that sure isn't alot of time to review the 4 years of material they're responsible for in all their subjects! But I still have many that I feel confident about in math, so hopefully they can even exceed my expectations!

That's about all for now. Stay tuned for the next update and keep sending yours my way!

Some of the...tests, grants, and libraries

I suppose it's about time for a good old-fashioned Tanzania update, sans exciting adventures with visitors...for now at least.

Things have been more or less back to "normal" at school after our mini break ended early July. The students have taken two sets of Mock or practice national exams and we've gotten the results back. Overall an improvement in math from last year, though that is surpassing a prettly low bar. Of course after actually finishing the syllabus I have high hopes to see even better scores for the real deal in October/November.

A big thing these days is that we found out our school was awarded the grant we applied for to get solar power! We were among 8 schools/centers around the country that got one of these grants from the US Embassy, so it is a great success for Wilima. I'm particularly happy since I didn't really do much of anything for it, aside from download and email the application. So it's a good sign that my school has apparently developed skills to do things like this for itself. We are waiting to get the money deposited into the school account, and then will start looking for quality solar dealers and a good technician to install everything. The grant should be enough to get a solar system that can at least light the classrooms at night, and possibly also staff houses and a few laptop computers during the day. It will be a big help, since the generator has been having many issues lately and is very expensive to use and maintain.

The other exciting thing at school lately has been that we are now finally actually opening the library. Some of the students asked about it for studying for their exams, and that was my excuse to keep bugging the academic master about getting it opened. They had apparently lost the keys for the locks, but that's nothing a hammer couldn't fix! (finally a time when cheaply made goods here have worked to my advantage) So I've got a few good students as my minions / monitors and we spent a good amount of time organizing all the books and old exam papers that we have. I've made a few posters and diagrams to hang on the walls, and I would like to get a library card system going if possible. That way maybe it will encourage the serious students who are capable of not losing their cards to use the space for studying. The only problem right now is that, while we do have a lot of books (mostly math), none are for the Tanzanian syllabus, and the students have a lot of difficulty finding the topics they are studying in other books. I may look into possible ways of trying to get money for some Tanzanian textbooks soon, since it doesn't seem to be in the school budget.

Many schools are closing this week, but (I guess because mine is private?) we are staying open for two more weeks. It's fine for me because I didn't have any plans until then anyways, when Nick is coming to visit for a week. For now, it seems like we may try to do a safari and visit my school, which unfortunately may take up all the time for just a week's visit. But I am extremely excited to have another guest coming so soon!

The last week of August is our Mid-Service Conference in Dar, which is basically a glorified set of doctor's appointments, but still a great chance to see and catch up with everyone from my training class, most of whom I haven't seen since last year. The new group of Education volunteers is still in training and will be going to their sites in a couple weeks. There is one coming to Songea who I already got to meet while they were on their "shadow" week. None coming to Njombe though, which is disappointing since a good number of volunteers are leaving now. But I will probably get to meet more of them this weekend before they head back to Morogoro.

We had a fun weekend recently where a bunch of Njombe people went to spend the weekend at our 81-year old volunteer's house. John Clay Weekend, as it has been dubbed, included plently of board game playing, cooking delicious Mexican food, and some good old grandpa story time. He really is like a grandpa to pretty much everyone else here since all of us in Njombe are around the 23-28 age range. We even got a surprise welcome to a staff party of sorts at his school, where we were pretty sure they were getting ready to eat us, after fattening us up with snacks, locally grown juices, and a meal that must have had at least 10 courses. So it was an awesome time and certainly worth repeating.

One last bit of Tanzanian entertainment news: One of my best friends from my training group who went back to America in January, Eric Kehoe, has already recorded and put out a solo album since he has been back home. I have been able to download it here and I think it's awesome. I encourage anyone who's interested to download his album give it a listen: http://erickehoe.bandcamp.com/album/eric-kehoe  He's living in Grand Rapids, Michigan now and apparently has a couple shows coming up too, if those of you who live around there would like to check it out. You can tell him Steven Anthony Bohomo the Three sent you and call him Bwana Harage and I'm sure he would be very excited. So there's my plug, and here are his shows: http://erickehoe.net/shows

Until next time.... please keep those updates of yours coming too!

Stanzania - The Village

After staying in Njombe for a night, Christine and I finally continued on to see my school. It is a 2 hour trip from Njombe to a village called Lilondo, and then a "bumpy" (to say the least) 8 km ride up into the hills to Wilima Secondary School. Apparently our travelling must have been going too easily for Tanzanian standards because we had a particularly annoying time getting a bus to Lilondo. But after plenty of arguing and fighting, we finally were able to get seats on one of the medium-sized coaster buses Monday afternoon.

More than anything else, I think it was just nice to have time to ourselves and relax at my house. After being on the move every day up to then, we were both happy to just relax and not do anything. We did a walking tour of the school campus and were able to meet with most of the teachers, which was nice. Half of the students were home on break, and the other half were taking tests all week, so unfortunately we could not spend too much time with them.

For Christine's birthday, we celebrated pretty much the only way that I know how to celebrate at my house - cooking and eating a ton of food. Pancakes and fruit salad for breakfast (and lunch), and then burritos (chipatis, rice, beans), chips and guac, and mango salsa for dinner. I had been able to find a Funfetti cake mix in town, so we tried to make it using the charcoal stove oven method, which basically involves putting a pot on top of a few thin rocks inside a bigger pot, and then baking over the charcoal jiko. I have had success doing this in the past, but this time I just didn't have the touch I suppose, and the cake turned out a little, well, let's just say it was obvious that it was baked in a Tanzanian make-shift oven. But luckily you can't screw up the taste of a Funfetti cake, so it was still good. We went and shared it with the mama who usually cooks for me, Mama Edu, and my counterpart and his family.

After leaving my school on the 5th, we went to Songea to stay for the night, and stayed with my friend Veronica who lives right in town. From there, it was easy to catch the early 6am bus the next day to Morogoro, as we began our return trip up north. It worked out very well staying in Morogoro for a night, because it turned out a lot of other Peace Corps volunteers were there for a training, so we were all able to hang out, and Christine was able to meet some of my best friends from my training class.

The next morning we walked to my host family's house to visit and have breakfast. They were so incredibly happy to meet Christine and to see us both. I hadn't even seen any of them since early December, so I also enjoyed being able to see them all. Baba was travelling to Moshi, but everyone else was there, including my host sister Eunice, who Christine actually was writing a couple penpal letters with last year. So I know it meant alot for her to finally meet Christine in person.

Finally, we capped off our epic travelling adventure with a little good luck, getting good seats on the bus to Dar, and getting in with just enough time to get to the airport a couple hours before Christine's 5pm flight. All in all, I think the trip was a very good introduction to the many different faces of Tanzania - from the big-city atmosphere and relentless "Mzungu!"-yelling cab drivers of Dar es Salaam, to the touristy yet entertaining attractions of Zanzibar amidst the beutiful tropical scenery and interesting historical background, to the classic African Land Rover safari adventures and unbeatable wildlife viewing of Ruaha National Park, to the quiet, simple, and albeit bug-infested life of the village among welcoming Tanzanian neighbors, all the while feeling the difficulty and frustrations of seemingly simple tasks such as getting a bus to travel, buying and transporting food items, cooking, and doing laundry in a third world country, and also getting a more in-depth peek into the community and lifestyles of Peace Corps volunteers in this country. I am so incredibly grateful that Christine was able to come visit me here, and I hope that her trip has helped her, and anyone who reads this blog, to get a better idea of what Tanzania is like.

Stanzania - Ruaha Safari

[From Saturday, June 30]

Friday Christine and I did a safari in Ruaha National Park, just outside of the town Iringa in central Tanzania. Ruaha is a great park to visit because they have a large variety of animals to see and it is much less touristy and crowded (and cheaper) than Serengeti and Ngorongoro since it is farther from the big cities up north. It is also the second largest game park in Tanzania and has the large Ruaha River running through it which made for some amazing scenery. We used a private guide to drive us around, which was really awesome because we got to ride in a classic Land Rover car with a lifted roof to take pictures.

We saw many of the typical safari animals right away - impalas / antelopes, zebras, giraffes, elephants, hippos, crocs, and even two lions who were just by themselves outside of the pack. Soon afterward, we saw a huge pride of at least 15 lions together under a tree, resting after what appeared to be a recent successful hunt. Next to them was a mostly-devoured buffalo carcass that foxes and vultures were starting to call dibs on. It was pretty amazing to see, and a little scary too, as we drove up to within 10 feet or so of where the lions were laying. Luckily we could see they were no longer hungry... and neither were we after getting a good whiff of the buffalo.

Other animals inside the park that we saw included the waterbuck, which looks similar to a deer but with white stripes across its back and huge ears, babboons, a smaller breed of monkey called a tumbili, a couple hyeenas, warthogs, though not nearly Pumba-sized, and many colorful birds.

We stayed at the government bandas (small huts) inside the park as a cheaper and easier alternative to the many resorts and camps both inside and outside. They were nice enough, though it did get very cold at night since they weren't really insulated. It was cool staying there because the animals would literally walk right up to where people stay throughout the day and even more of them come around at night. We woke up to the sounds of elephants and hippos in the near distance.

We were taking our stuffed white-ish panda around with us and taking pictures of him with the other animals, and then we stopped near another car of people and saw that they were doing the same thing with a stuffed elephant of their own. Good to know we weren't the only crazy people in the park.

The only major animals we missed out on seeing were leopards and cheetahs, which are both apparently very rare in Ruaha and usually can't be found. But we still got to see much more than I did on my first safari in Mikumi last year during our training. My camera died towards the end of the day, so you'll have to check out Christine's pictures when she gets back as well.

After getting back to Iringa this morning, we did some shopping and exploring around a more typical and less overwhelming Tanzanian town. There are many Maasai natives that live not very far from here, and a large Maasai market where they sell their hand-made crafts, wood carvings and paintings. Tomorrow we are getting on an early bus to Njombe, finally my neck of the woods. We will spend the night at the Chani Hotel, my favorite guest house in all of Tanzania, and then make the (now) short, 2-hour trip to my school on Monday. I can't wait for Christine to get to meet my students, and to celebrate her first Tanzanian birthday!

Stanzania - Zanzibar

Monday morning Christine and I took the ferry from Dar to Zanzibar. It was very little extra to upgrade to the air-conditioned first-class section, so we rode in style, eating chocolate and watching the new Karate Kid movie. Arriving on the Zanzibar beaches was gorgeous, and we couldn't believe how big the island was. Of course we were constantly heckled by taxi drivers as we made our way on land, which was a little overwhelming, even for what I'm used to. I'm sure it must have been especially crazy for Christine. But we made our way to our hotel, which was very close by.

The people at the hotel were incredibly helpful, and gave us tips on everything we wanted to do on Zanzibar. We arrived around 1:00pm and found out that we still had time that afternoon to take a private boat out to Prison Island. The island was small, only about 250 yards at its widest point, and never actually was turned into a prison, though that was the original intention for it many years ago. Many of the original buildings have been preserved and now it is strictly a tourist site. We were first led around the island and stopped a ways off the coast to go snorkling around the coral reef. It was so cool to see the many types of coral, sea aneonomies, all different rainbow colored fish, starfish, those black, sharp, thorny guys, and plenty of other things that I don't know how to accurately describe. It took us both a bit to get a hang of the snorkling, but it was such a blast!

Then we got on the island, which had kind of a guided tour path around the buidings with some historical info, and there was even a fresh-water swimming pool for guests with the water coming from an underground pipe from zanzibar. We ran into a herd of peacocks for our first wild-animal sightings of the trip. By far the most interesting though was the tortoises, the oldest of which was apparently 189 years old! They were all kept in one area and ranged all the way to just 10 years old. Of course they filled the stereotype of moving incredibly slooow - I only saw one riding around on a skateboard, but he wasn't even wearing an orange bandana.

 

In the evening, we went to this place called Forodhani Gardens for dinner. It is a huge lantern-lit garden where people set up tables and sell (supposedly) fresh seafood or make other local specialties such as soups, mini pizzas, and sugar cane juice. The variety of seafood was incredible - among those I remember them saying are, tuna, baracuda, kingfish, lobster, crab, red herring...but there were plenty of others too. Everything had so much more flavor than I've ever tasted in Tanzanian food.

The next day we did the Spice Tour, which was a widely recommended must-do, even though it is rather touristy. I have to agree with the recommendations, though, it was a great full-day trip. There were 2 small vans for our group (the kind that I'm used to cramming 40 or so people into), and our first stop was to one of the local spice farms on Zanzibar, where we got a guided tour and got to see how various fruits and spices grow naturally. Some of the spices included nutmeg, vanilla beans, ginger, cinnamon bark, lemon grass, and some plant with orange seeds that the Maasai tribe apparently use for facial paints. We also had a demonstration on how to climb a coconut tree while singing the native Tanzanian "welcoming visitors" song, all the while being handed expertly made grass-woven bracelets, necklaces, ties, and even the coveted "King of Spices" crown.

After the actual spice tour, we stopped to see the old Persian baths briefly, and they gave us an excellent lunch of pilau (seasoned rice), curry, and chipatis, which were all cooked with the different spices we had just seen. We then drove a ways to a place called Bububu, where we went down into the entrance of a cave was used for hiding slaves during the time of slave trading. Zanzibar was a major port for slave trades, harboring and sending many East African slaves to various nearby countries around the southern coast of Asia. Arab immigrants and Zanzibar natives worked cooperatively to continue transporting slaves to and from Zanzibar, even after it was banned in the 1800s, by hiding them in caves like this during the night and boarding them onto small dhow boats in the daytime. We could see the many tunnels that went to different parts of the island from within the cave.

Nearby the cave was a short trail to an amazing and very isolated beach on Zanzibar's eastern coast. The water was perfect, not very warm like the Indian Ocean waters I'd been to in southern Tanzania. We stayed and swam for an hour or so and then got dropped off back at the hotel. Quite a full trip!

For dinner I wanted Christine to try possibly my favorite Tanzanian dish - chipsi mayai, which is essentially a french fry omelet, and therefore delicious. But apparently it isn't very common on Zanzibar. We passed this swanky restaurant that was right on the coast and wanted to eat there just so we could watch the sunset, and I asked them if they could make us chipsi mayai but they said no - i guess it wasn't a classy enough meal for that kind of place. The restaurant was called Mercury's, which we soon found out was named after Queen singer Freddie Mercury, who apparently was born on Zanzibar - who knew! Anyways, they clearly put his name to shame by not serving chipsi mayai.

Today we finally got whammied by the rain, which was on and off for most of the morning. We were planning to do a hike in Jozani forest, where there are very rare species of monkeys, three foot rats...? and other cool animals, but didn't have time in the end, so we walked around the fruit market for a while and then got on the afternoon ferry back to Dar. Tomorrow we take an early bus to Iringa, 7 ish hours, where we will leave from the following day for a safari in Ruaha National Park. We are both very excited and can't wait to see what kinds of animals show up to greet us. So more great pictures are on the way!

Stanzania - Arriving in Dar

The day has finally arrived and Christine has made it safely to Tanzania!! (After a day and a half of looooong plane rides, she was happy to finally be able to stand up) I went to go pick her up at the Nyerere International Airport in Dar, where I hadn't been since my night-time arrival just over a year ago now. It seemed a lot smaller and less imposing to me this time around, but I was still getting flash backs to how crazy and overwhelming everything seemed that day and how I'm sure it also was for her. When she came through the doors, I saw she had made a friend on the flight, Jenna (see above) who realized on the plane that her connecting flight to another city in Tanzania was in fact not for 2:30pm today, but tomorrow, and basically had nowhere to go in Dar for a day. So we all went back to the hotel which had plenty of rooms and then hit the town.

Dar is so big, even I still don't know my way around it all that well, but I took Christine and Jenna to all the places a Peace Corps Volunteer would be expected to take his or her guests: the Holiday Inn Hotel, Subway, the Casino, the place where you can get pizza, the place where you can get real ice cream....sorry guys but this is what a Tanzanian vacation feels like to me after a year of being so far from all these things. We went up to the rooftop patio at the Holiday Inn, which had a really nice view of the city and the ocean nearby (see picture). Eventually we made our way to the water and got some fresh fruit along the way, and I finally was able to prove how big the avocados are here. They also got their crash course in Swahili essentials training: pipi = candy, lala fofofo = sleep like a log, the "banana" in "asante sana, squash banana" from Lion King acutally means "to squash together"... just the important stuff.

Later on, we met up with some other random PC Volunteers who are in town. It turns out another guy I know has family coming in for the same time and may even be in the same Safari National Park when we are, so we may run into them again next week. Then it was back to hotel room, which has good enough internet for real Skype, so we talked to Mom and Dad back home. I was happy to have stolen one of them to add on my end of the line this time.

I can't wait for the amazing two weeks that lie ahead. We are going on the ferry to Zanzibar Island tomorrow morning and will stay there for 2-3 days. I will hopefully learn alot more about the (early) history of Zanzibar and have plenty to share because it is a really interesting place. Things we may do include: a spice tour of all the natural rare spices that are found on the island, seeing and possibly snorkling with 250-year old tortoises, walking through forest trails packed with an uncommon species of monkeys, and maybe even just enjoying the beautiful white sand beaches all around the coast. I'll be trying to keep a running update of things as long as the good internet will be available, so keep checking back for the latest news!

TANZANIAN BRACKETOLOGY 101

WELL IT'S BEEN QUITE SOME TIME SINCE I'VE BEEN ABLE TO UPDATE THIS BLOG OF MINE, BUT LET ME BLAME THAT ON A COMBINATION OF INSUFFICIENT INTERNET OPPORTUNITIES AND MY OWN LAZINESS AS OPPOSED TO A LACK OF INTERESTING, HILARIOUS, CONFUSING, ANNOYING, MISERABLE, SATISFYING AND EUPHORIC EXPERIENCES SINCE MY LAST INSTALLMENT. RATHER THAN PAINSTAKINGLY RECOUNTING ALL THIS IN NARRATIVE FORM, I'VE CHOSEN TO USE THE OFTEN-PREFERRED (AT LEAST BY ME) BRACKET METHOD. HERE ARE THE CONTENDERS:

NJOMBE JAM / BEST BASKETBALL GAME EVER. CUE THE EUPHORIC EXPERIENCE REFERRED TO ABOVE. SO NJOMBE JAM WAS BASICALLY A BIG GATHERING OF PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEERS OVER EASTER WEEKEND, AT THE END OF THE MIDTERM BREAK WEEK. WE TEAMED UP BASED ON OUR HOME REGIONS IN TANZANIA AND DID DIFFERENT EVENTS, KIND OF LIKE AN OLYMPICS. ANYWAYS THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE WHOLE THING WAS A 3-ON-3 BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT (ON A COURT THAT WAS SLIGHTLY PREFERABLE TO THE SURFACE OF THE MOON). WE WERE DOWN 6-2 IN A GAME TO 7 POINTS IN THE FINAL AND CAME BACK TO WIN IN OVERTIME, 10-8. UNFORTUNATELY THE SPORTSCENTER CREW WE HIRED COULDN'T MAKE IT IN TIME TO DOCUMENT THE AMAZING COMEBACK, SO YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO TRUST ME THAT IT WAS AS EXCITING AS I'VE MADE IT SOUND...

LAKE MALAWI HIKE #1 - MIKONDE. CUE THE AFOREMENTIONED MISERY. MYSELF AND TWO OTHERS DID THIS HIKE FROM NEAR NJOMBE TO LAKE MALAWI OVER THE MIDTERM BREAK. THE HIKE, WHICH APPARENTLY USUALLY TAKES 7 HOURS OR SO, TOOK US CLOSER TO 13 IN ONE DAY. IT RAINED PRETTY MUCH NON-STOP FOR OUR TRIP, WHICH BASICALLY MADE IT THE WORLD'S BIGGEST SLIP-AND-SLIDE GOING DOWN THE FACE OF A MOUNTAIN. IF IT HAD BEEN CLEARER, WE WOULD HAVE HAD AN AMAZING VIEW THOUGH, AS YOU REACH THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN BEFORE GOING DOWN THE OTHER SIDE, YOU CAN SEE CLEAR ACROSS THE LAKE TO THE MALAWI SIDE. THEN IT'S SOMETHING LIKE A 4,000 METER DROP STRAIGHT DOWN TO THE LAKE. DEFINITELY THE TOUGHEST HIKE I'VE EVER DONE. IT WAS REALLY NICE, ASIDE FROM THE RAIN.

MATHLETES LEAGUE. IN AN ATTEMPT TO FURTHER PROMOTE MATH PRACTICE AMONG MY STUDENTS, WHILE SATISFYING MY OWN LOVE FOR KEEPING STATS ON THINGS, I STARTED A COMPETITVE "MATHLETES" LEAGUE AT MY SCHOOL. I QUICKLY LEARNED THAT MANY OF THEM ARE NOT FAMILIAR WITH THE WORD ATHLETE, LET ALONE ABLE TO SEE THE HUMOR IN THE PUN, AND I CAN SAY FROM EXPERIENCE THAT ME TRYING TO EXPLAIN IT GOES A SHORT WAY IN GETTING US ALL ON THE SAME PAGE. FORTUNATELY DESCRIBING IT AS A SOCCER LEAGUE BUT FOR MATH WAS GOOD ENOUGH. I SPLIT THEM INTO BALANCED TEAMS BASED ON THEIR PAST TESTS AND MADE MY BEST STUDENTS CAPTAINS, HOPING THAT IT WILL HELP THEM DEVELOP LEADERSHIP SKILLS TOO. THEY TAKE WEEKLY QUIZZES AND I USE THE TEAM AVERAGES TO GIVE THEM WINS AND LOSSES. NOW TO FIND A WAY TO KEEP THEM FROM COPYING OFF OF EACH OTHER....

WORKER'S DAY (AKA TANZANIAN LABOR DAY). FOR THE HOLIDAY MOST OF THE SCHOOL STAFF WENT TO A BIG WORKERS GATHERING PARTY IN A NEARBY VILLAGE. THE CLOSEST VOLUNTEER TO ME, WHO TEACHES AT ANOTHER SCHOOL THERE, ALSO CAME, SO IT WAS NICE TO HAVE ANOTHER AMERICAN TO SHARE IN THE HUMOR OF EVERYTHING THAT WENT ON. AFTER PILING 16 PEOPLE INTO THE SCHOOL PICK-UP TRUCK, WE ARRIVED FASHIONABLY, TANZANIAN-LY LATE, WHICH IS ANYWHERE FROM 1-3 HOURS AFTER THE STATED ARRIVAL TIME, WHICH WAS FINE, GIVEN THE ACTUAL STARTING TIME OF ANYWHERE FROM 4-6 HOURS AFTER THE STATED ARRIVAL TIME. WHEN WE FINALLY GATHERED TOGETHER, THEY WERE DOING A KIND OF "WORKERS VS VILLAGERS" COMPETITION THAT I CAN ONLY LIKEN TO SOMETHING BETWEEN THE TV SHOWS NICKELODEON GUTS AND MXC. COMPETITIONS WERE IN SOCCER, OF COURSE, BUT ALSO SHOTPUT AND JAVELIN THROWING (QUESTION MARK). I DIDNT KNOW THOSE THINGS EVEN EXISTED HERE, THOUGH THEY MAY IN FACT NOT, JUDGING BY THE WAY THEY ALL THREW THE SHOTPUT LIKE AN 8-POUND BASEBALL. I WATCHED THROUGH CRINGES OF WAITING FOR THE FIRST ONE TO THROW THEIR ARM OUT. THE INTERMISSION WAS BY FAR THE MOST ENTERTAINING THOUGH, AS WE ALL GATHERED AROUND AND FORMED A BIG CIRCLE, INSIDE OF WHICH WERE 4 TANZANIAN WOMEN AND A MAN WITH A WHISTLE HOLDING A LIVE CHICKEN. MY HOPEFUL ASSUMPTIONS WERE CONFIRMED WHEN HE LET THE CHICKEN GO AND WHISTLED THE START OF THE CHASE FOR THE MAMA'S. IT TURNS OUT THAT EVEN FOR LARGE, MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO TO MAKE TANZANIANS MOVE QUICKLY IS TO PUT A CHICKEN UP FOR GRABS. IN MY HEAD OF COURSE I WAS PLAYING THE BENNY HILL THEME MUSIC AS I WATCHED THE CHICKEN DODGE, DUCK, DIP, DIVE, AND DODGE PAST THE LITERALLY DIVING MAMA'S UNTIL HE WAS FINALLY TACKLED. AS I LOOKED AROUND, I SAW THAT ALL THE OTHER TANZANIANS WERE LAUGHING ALONG WITH ME, BUT I COULDN'T HELP BUT THINK THAT IT WAS SOMEHOW FOR DIFFERNT REASONS.

LAKE MALAWI HIKE #2 - MBAMBA BAY. A DIFFERENT ROUTE TO A MORE SOUTHERN PART OF LAKE MALAWI, THIS HIKE WAS DONE AFTER THE RAINY SEASON HAD ENDED, WHICH THEREFORE MADE IT INFINITELY MORE ENJOYABLE THAN THE PREVIOUS ONE. IT TOOK ABOUT 6 HRS TO REACH THE LAKE, THROUGH MODERATE UP-AND-DOWNHILLS, AND WE STAYED AT A RELATIVELY NEW GERMAN-OWNED CAMP ON THE BEACH. THE PLACE WAS HEAVENLY, WITH SHELTERED TENTS SET UP TO SLEEP IN, AND PRETTY MUCH OUR OWN PRIVATE PAVILION SINCE WE WERE REALLY THE ONLY ONES THERE FOR THE WEEKEND. THEY MADE US AMAZING FRESHLY CAUGHT FISH FROM THE LAKE, AND BONFIRES ON THE BEACH BOTH NIGHTS. PERFECT WEATHER, AND WE DIDN'T EVEN RUN INTO ANY OF THOSE PESKY CROCADILES WE'D BEEN HEARING SO MUCH ABOUT. THE ONLY PROBLEM WITH THIS TRIP WAS THAT IT ONLY LASTED FOR A WEEKEND.

UP, UP MATH DAY. AN IDEA THAT WAS ACTUALLY BROUGHT UP BY ANOTHER MATH TEACHER AT MY SCHOOL, WE GOT ALL OF THE STUDENTS FROM THE WHOLE SCHOOL TOGETHER ONE SATURDAY TO PROMOTE / DISCUSS THE IMPORTANCE OF STUDYING MATH, SINCE THE VAST MAJORITY OF STUDENTS QUICKLY DISMISS IT AS BEING TOO DIFFICULT, OR SIMPLY THE "NATIONAL DISEASE" AS IT IS OFTEN DUBBED. I HAD A PROBLEM-SOLVING ACTIVITY PLANNED AND WANTED TO TALK ABOUT WAYS THAT THEY USE MATH IN THEIR EVERYDAY LIVES AND IN OTHER SUBJECTS. AND A FEW STUDENTS WHO ARE REALLY INTO DRAMA DID A FEW MATH-RELATED SKITS WHICH EVERYONE REALLY ENJOYED. THE DOWNFALL, I LEARNED, WAS IN GIVING TANZANIANS FREE REIGN TO SPEAK FOR AS LONG AS THEY DESIRED, WHICH MORE OFTEN THAN NOT IS A REALLY REALLY LONG TIME. WE HAD ANOTHER TEACHER'S BROTHER, WHO IS GOING ON TO STUDY AT UNIVERSITY, TALK AS A GUEST SPEAKER, WHICH WAS REALLY NICE, AND A FEW OTHER TEACHERS WHO USED THEIR OPPORTUNITY TO COUNSEL THE STUDENTS ON WHAT I CAN ONLY ASSUME TO BE THE MEANING OF LIFE, BECAUSE IT WAS FAR MORE COMPLEX AND LONG-WINDED THAN MY ATTENTION SPAN COULD HANDLE. THE SAME COULD BE SAID FOR THE STUDENTS APPARENTLY BECAUSE THEY WERE ALL FALLING ASLEEP IN THEIR CHAIRS. IT WAS STILL A GREAT THING TO DO FOR THE KIDS, BUT I THINK THEY COULD HAVE GOTTEN MORE OUT OF IT IF IT WERE MORE INTERACTIVE.

WAGENI (VISITORS). NEWS OF THOSE TO COME, THAT IS. I AM EXTREMELY HAPPY TO HAVE LEARNED THAT OVER MY JUNE AND AUGUST BREAKS, I WILL BE VISITED BY 3 GHOSTS, I MEAN, MY SISTER CHRISTINE AND RAFIKI NICK GIANGRANDE, RESPECTIVELY. CHRISTINE WILL BE HERE FOR HER 4TH OF JULY BIRTHDAY, SO I'M ON THE LOOKOUT FOR THE NEAREST BOOM CITY IN TANZANIA TO BUY SOME FIREWORKS. OTHER HIGHLIGHTS SHOULD INCLUDE ZANZIBAR BEACHES, FROLICING WITH LIONS AND GIRAFFES, AND OF COURSE SPENDING AT LEAST HALF OF OUR TIME TRAVELLING ON LONG BUS RIDES. KARIBU ANYONE ELSE WHO CAN COME THIS YEAR OR NEXT!!

AVOCADO SEASON. OH YES, IT HAS ARRIVED. ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS I HAVE BEEN GIFTED BAGFULS OF GIANT, FRESH AVOCADOS AT SCHOOL, AND IN TOWN THEY ARE ALL OVER THE PLACE AND VERY CHEAP (EQUIVALENT OF 15 CENTS OR SO APIECE). LOOKS LIKE WE'RE OVERDUE FOR ANOTHER BATCH OF 50-AVOCADO GUAC-IN-A-BUCKET DELICIOUSNESS.

SO THOSE ARE THE PLAYERS, HERE'S HOW THEY MATCH UP IN TERMS OF BEST THINGS TO HAPPEN SINCE MY LAST BLOG POST....

ROUND 1

NJOMBE JAM------
                        ----------NJOMBE JAM
LAKE HIKE #1-----

NOT MUCH OF A CONTEST HERE. SPORTS, FUN AND FRIENDS VS FALLING ON MY BUTT 20 TIMES.

MATHLETES--------
                             --------WORKERS DAY
WORKERS DAY-----

AS MUCH AS I LOVE MATHLETES, IT'S TOUGH TO BEAT GROWN WOMEN CHASING AFTER A CHICKEN.

LAKE HIKE #2-----
                         --------LAKE HIKE #2
MATH DAY---------

DID I MENTION WE DIDN'T GET EATEN BY CROCADILES? NO WHAMMIES HERE.

VISITORS----------
                       --------VISITORS
AVOCADOS--------

...PROVIDED THEY BRING EVEN MORE AVOCADOS WITH THEM

SEMI-FINALS

NJOMBE JAM------
                           --------NJOMBE JAM
WORKERS DAY-----

6-2!!

LAKE HIKE #2----
                       --------VISITORS
VISITORS--------

TWO! TWO VISITORS! AH, AH, AH!

FINALS

NJOMBE JAM------
                         --------VISITORS
VISITORS--------

I LOVE HAVING PEOPLE COME TO SEE ME!!! HINT, HINT...

The Monthly Tanzanian - March 2012

9 months in to my time in Africa and 1/3 of the way through my Peace Corps service, I am beginning to see what a regular regimen in Tanzania is like. Since coming back from IST and starting the new school year, things have certainly gotten into a groove and I've developed my own daily routine of sorts in some ways, although I am trying to avoid this by doing things out of the ordinary (which is always easier when you're the only white person within miles). But the things that still always remind me that I'm in Africa are the amazing sunrises and sunsets EVERY day, and the ridiculously clear night skies that just do not exist back home.

It's been a while since I've been able to get into town, which has given me a good opportunity to do more things at my school. A few weeks ago we got the results back from last year's national exams...and I guess they weren't very good - worse than the year before and lower than the nearby Ward school, which we are supposed to do better than apparently because we are the more expensive private school in the area. We had a few meetings to discuss what can be done to improve the test scores, even the school Manager came, who I had never seen before. A lot of the teachers said we need more books, since even most of the teachers don't have the books for the "new" (6 or 7 year old) syllabus. The only ones who do are those who I've given Peace Corps-supplied books to. Some of the kids do have a few books of their own. Our library (which I finally saw opened for the first time!) has a good number of donated books, mostly math and science, but they are not all that compliant with the Tanzanian syllabus, or at least organized very differently, so I don't think they get used too much. I agree that there needs to be a better supply of books, but the secondmaster said he was concerned that they would be outdated soon too if the syllabus changes again. I suggested that all the teachers make their exams as much like the national ones as possible, even for monthly and midterm tests, so that the students aren't totally shocked when they see how difficult those are. That's what I've been doing for my Math students, and it seems to be helping. They decided that the students who failed last year in Form II would be sent home, and those who almost failed have to get a certain score on the first midterms this year or else they will be sent home too. I guess that is common practice for private schools to keep up their overall scores and reputation, though I don't know what will happen if they end up sending everyone home.

I also found out where the bar is set for the Math exams this year. Of 130 who took the test last year, 8 DIDNT fail math - 2 C's and 6 D's. But I already know we will do much better this year - I really do have some very smart students, and I think this group of Form IV's has had a Peace Corps teacher now all 4 years for Math, so they are my golden children, and hopefully a good Peace Corps success story.

We had our first monthly test a couple weeks ago, which was difficult, but not impossible since there were still a couple A's. But in my one slower class, most of them failed badly, and because of mistakes in simple things like adding and subtracting that they just never learned well enough. I know there are definitely those that are lazy and don't want to study, but I'm sure there are also some who just never got a good foundation in Math from their Primary schools and now don't have a chance to keep up with what we're doing this year. But it's not like they are incapable, they just need to start back from the beginning. So when I gave back the tests, I gave all those who failed a post-it note attached. And I told them starting tomorrow we are doing extra math in the mornings before school, starting back as early as we have to so everyone at least knows the basics. i told them to be there at 630 and not a minute late, and they said they understood. Well, at 630 the next morning I stood there waiting by myself, not a single one made it on time. About a quarter of them trickled in over the next hour, but I didn't even bother doing any math. I was pretty upset because I'm going out of my way to give them extra practice and they didn't even care to show up. So after the afternoon assembly, I had the student leaders call all of their names, and lined them up and had them do running in place, up-downs, and push ups for about a half hour. It must have had some effect because the next morning there was a big group waiting for me when I got there, and almost all of them showed up.

It was good because most of the students see me as much more lenient than the other teachers, which I definitely am since I don't hit them with a stick. But at least they saw that I have my own methods of punishment to use. I'm still trying to use more of the rewarding good behavior tactics than punishing bad. The school store/ point system has been going well so far. I've been getting a lot of students asking for more problems to do and almost everyone comes to class now. Though I think they're all hoarding their points to try and get soccer jerseys- no one's really bought any school supplies yet. I've been working on organizing all the old NECTA problems I have by year and subject, into like a class binder, so they can all study what they need help with. And I also got a ton of digital copies of old exams, so they are taking practice tests in the evenings when we bring out the computers. If they still fail this year, it won't be because they didn't have anything to study from...

So that has been my life for the last few weeks, with much of the remaining intermittent time spent spitting seeds on my porch while it downpours around me. It's kept me much busier than I ever thought I would be during Peace Corps, but I prefer that to having nothing to do. In other news, I've successfully introduced 16 inch softball to Africa! And of course by introduced I mean taught them how to swing a big stick at a ball. There was a guy at school fixing up old desks, and I gave him some crude bat blueprints and he said he would try to make it. It turned out really well, except that it's probably as heavy as 4 or 5 real bats - I guess I estimated poorly in the specs. So the thing weighs about 10 pounds and I was surprised none of the tiny children threw their back out swinging it, but they still seemed to be having a good time. The name of the game quickly became: one kid hits the ball and the other 30 in the general vicinity run in circles around the pitcher until someone finally gets the ball. I managed to get some pretty priceless video footage of it as well.

In other sports news, our basketball court now finally has rims! Although it was pretty fun just dribbling, passing and running around (should have even taken away the basketball to do an Air Bud reenactment) and especially good for our fundamentals. [We no able to dunk, but good fundamentals. It more exciting that way.] Besides, it's pretty hard to do a layup anyways when theres a pool of mud right under the hoops. I'm still hoping we can get some concrete laid out soon. Not sure if the school will front the cost for that though.

The solar power project is still invoking interest, at least for my headmaster. A technician came to the school to give a cost estimate, and after cutting back a bit, it should at least be in the range for grant-writing opportunities. There is one through the U.S. Ambassador's office that may be the best option. It would be around $5000 and could feasibly run our computers, printer, and most classrooms to lower dependency on the oil-guzzling generator. The only issue was the headmaster initially wanted me to do all the grant writing, but I told him (although that sounds like a very sustainable solution...) I wouldn't do anything unless someone else was in charge of it. So he designated the physics teacher to lead it with me - I'd still rather have someone who actually has interest in the project and wants to do it than someone he tells to write it, but it's a start I suppose. There's another Peace Corps site in Njombe that did a similar project a few years ago, so I will probably go visit there to get ideas/contacts.

I found out that this year Tanzania is doing a nation-wide census, which is going to throw off the school year schedule apparently. They want all the kids to return home for the census in August, so instead of our usual June-long break, there will be a couple weeks off in June, and then school will close for the month of August. I'm a little worried for the students' exam prep since the tests will be pretty much right when they come back from break, but it is nice that the schedule is the same all over the country, so I can plan travelling with other volunteers (and all of you who are coming to visit!). For our week break in early April, I think I am going hiking in some mountains around Njombe, and I still have my sights set on doing Kilimanjaro - maybe for the August break. Some others are also talking about doing a trip to go rafting on the Nile, which would be pretty amazing as well.

Please try to keep me posted on your lives at home as often as possible! And thank you everyone for your birthday well-wishings! It was an interesting one in Tanzania, with about 12 hours of it spent traveling for a trip that should only take 5 or 6...but eventually arriving and getting to see everyone was great! And of course the funfetti cake mix sent from home was a welcome addition!

Weekend Update

Just a "brief" update on things here over the last couple weeks. Classes have still been going well, and the workload is a good amount. I have class every day but am always done by early afternoon and have time then to work on my next lesson plans. It also gives me time to work on other kinds of practice and review for my math students. I'm trying to do a different review focused on their old math topics from the last three years each week or so to give them enough practice for the national exam at the end of the year. My only concern now is having enough time to get to all of the topics on this year's syllabus since things always seem to move slower in class than I plan on. The test is about 60% old topics and 40% Form IV so they definitely need to review while learning new things.

The new FEMA life skills club has gotten off and running pretty well so far. There are 4 or 5 of the older students who have been organizing and running the meetings. I go just to be available if they have any questions, but they are all talking in Swahili so I usually understand little of what is actually being said. I'm hoping more of the other teachers will come regularly so they can at least catch it if false info is being given out. But I know the student leaders know good amount about the topics and they have the books to go off of too. So far we've had about 250 or so students come each time, which is great. Most of them are the Form I and II students, so it's good that they are curious and interested to learn about these things.

So that is on Fridays, when we have our social clubs, and academic clubs are on Mondays, so I attend the Math Club. It's mostly led by my best Form IV student, whose name is Mansweet a.k.a. the "King of Mathematics" as he's been dubbed. It's actually really great to go to those meetings because it's all students who actually like math! What a concept! And then Wednesdays are for Debates, which the whole school is supposed to attend and is done (more or less) in English.

And I'm still bringing out the computers in the evenings - 3 nights for students and 2 nights for teachers. The students love using Encarta and listening to different countries' national anthems. The teachers have gotten hooked on this typing program that gives out stats on your accuracy and words per minute. It shows them how to type with both hands though, so it's not too bad of an obsession. I guess a couple of the computer charges I brought to get fixed actually got fixed (shocking!) so I'll try to get them this weekend so we can have more functioning computers.

We had a staff meeting a couple of weeks ago - there is usually about a 5-hour minimum, but somehow this one was only like 4. And I brought up a couple ideas as suggestions for this school year, one of which was the possibility of trying to get some sort of solar system set up at the school so that the computers could be used during the daytime, which I had already discussed a bit with my counterpart. They seemed to be pretty interested and the headmaster said he would like to try and do it. From what I've heard, grant writing is always a long process, but hopefully it won't be too difficult. The first step is to get an idea on how much power would be needed so we can see how many solar panels and all we would need. I think it could be very helpful - even though there is the rainy season for a few months like now, there is still sunlight for a good part of the day most of the time, so there should be enough power available.

This past Saturday was the Graduation for the Form 6 students, who will be taking their final exams and leaving soon. Naturally I was the photographer, being the only one with a digital camera. I'll get some of the pictures developed for them in town this weekend. They played this game after lunch called "Jenga" -unfortunately it didn't involve moving little wooden bricks like I'm familiar with. Instead, it was like a fundraising game, I'm not sure exactly what for, maybe their exam fees or something...? So it's kind of like a truth or dare auction from what I could gather. One person tells someone else to do something goofy, like roll across the room on the floor apparently, and puts a price on it. Then the person either has to do the dare or pay/increase the amount of money, and then they can make up their own thing for someone else to do. Luckily for me they all showed the mercy not to drag me into the game, since I still didn't really know what the heck was going on, but it was sure entertaining to watch!

Sunday was a typical laid back Tanzanian Sunday - cooking, laundry, cleaning around the house, and putting in work on my new Risk board. It's not nearly as impressive as the first one made on the ping pong table - just poster board size. I was wishing I had the old crew here to help with it - especially Ray's drawing skills, but it's coming along pretty well. Soon I will be able to occupy my free time by playing myself in Scrabble AND Risk! Yea one-person game nights!

Oh yea, and I finally decided to set up my tent outside in my courtyard to sleep under the stars/rain, but it didn't work out so well. I set it up in the daytime, but when I went outside at night to brush my teeth, I felt some stings on my feet and ankles... and then all over my legs... and then I ran inside and feverishly scrubbed myself and sprayed all over. When I went back outside with a flashlight, there were swarms and swarms of ants all around the tent- it looked like the ground was moving. So I unloaded about a full can of spray. Luckily the tent was zipped up, so they didn't infest the inside, but needless to say I did not end up sleeping in there after all. My only idea was that the ants saw some new foreign object and decided they wanted to take it to their queen, so they sent every living ant in the area to retrieve a giant 7x7 foot tent. Anyways, they were gone the next day luckily, save for the carcasses of the unfortunate spray victims, and I cleaned up my tent and put that idea of backyard camping far out of my head.

But in between ant attacks, life is good, as I hope it continues to be for everyone back home.