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?