Rain

"Well there's not a lot for you to give if you're giving in. And there's not a lot for you to feel if you're not feeling it. You bring it up and bring it in and we'll get you fixed up in no time..."-Tegan and Sara

Not gonna lie, this week has been tough. I've been going through a bit of a crisis of confidence as far as what I'm doing here. For some reason I just got in this really homesick, depressed mood that I couldn't shake. When I'm in the village I try to be productive and usually am but there's still a lot of downtime and if you know me you know that a bored Carrie is an unhappy Carrie. So as of right now I'm just taking it day by day, sometimes moment by moment, trying to remember that it's not about me.

On Sunday I had a slightly revalatory moment. I went to church w/ a few of my neighbors, about a 40 min. walk away in the next village. It was good to go but church services drag on forever here so I eventually realized I was going to have to leave early to be on time for a scheduled meeting. As I was trying to decide what time to sneak out, I kept hearing thunder getting closer and closer, obviously it was about to rain. So of course I left at the most inopportune time possible and the rain started about five minutes into my walk. So stubborn me, I am not going to turn around and spend all day at church waiting for it to stop, and of course I'm completely unprepared w/o umbrella or raincoat, but I keep going. Now when it rains here, it rains Biblically. So I'm walking down this dirt road as fast as I can in my skirt and Birkenstocks, and the heavens just unleash a DOWNPOUR. I was completely drenched in about 10 minutes and still far from home. At 1st I felt like the world's biggest idiot but then I realized, "You know, there's nothing you can do to prevent this so just give up!" And I started to embrace it. I took off my glasses which were useless and carried my shoes, and kept walking barefoot down the road which instantly became a muddy river. It was the most soaked I'd been since the beach and closest thing I've had to a bath in 5 days. I actually wished I had my shampoo! So it was good for something. Honestly, I kind of enjoyed it because it was marvelous to witness with every pore and every sense how hard it can rain in this place that was a dry desert just a couple months ago. Now everything has become green and lush! As I finally neared home I was splashing through huge puddles and sure my cell phone was drowned (it still works, knock on wood!). I was soaked to the bone but feeling strangely renewed. 'Cause really, Idk when the last time I didn't try to avoid or get through a rainstorm as fast as possible was. How often do we ever completely surrender ourselves to nature and the elements? Not that I want to make a habit of taking long hikes in monsoons with no protection, but this one time it was exhilarating. And maybe exactly what I needed.

2010!

Happy New Year!!!!! I truly hope it's been an awesome one for all of you out there! I beat you to it by 8 hours though! I don't have much to update but I did have an amazing Christmas and New Years and am now ready to start getting some serious work done in my vill (aside from a Dar trip and an Iringa trip already scheduled for this month for meetings and trainings). First up is hopefully a community garden Hadija is helping organize now, starting to teach Life Skills at the primary and secondary school, and hopefully a chicken project to raise money for my orphans' school fees. So for those of you who were interested in contributing to help out with that, I'm planning to write a grant for start-up money for the project ASAP. As soon as the grant gets through it will be posted online and you will be able to donate. I'm hoping that raising chickens and selling the eggs for income-generation will give the kids a sustainable way to raise their school fees rather than just relying on donations from America year after year. So as soon as that is up for donations I will let everyone know. May take a few more weeks though. Things move slowly in Africa and in Peace Corps bureaucracy.
Well, that's about it, time to go waste time on facebook until my Internet time runs out!
Mwaka Mpya Njema!!!! (Happy New Year!)

Merry Christmas from TZ!

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE HOT LAND OF AFRICA!!!

Real blog later. But know this, everyone:

I AM COMING HOME IN MARCH FOR JUSTINE'S WEDDING!!! March 2-16, Cbus.

Get excited. Get ready for Graeter's trips.

Shagalabagala Kabisa

So! It has been awhile! Sorry I tend to be ADHD when I get to Internet and spend all my time putzing around on facebook instead of gathering my thoughts to write blogs. And now I only have 15 minutes left so this will have to be short. I'll try to highlight the craziness of the last month with a few main points:
Thanksgiving-- we celebrated early and did it up as best we could for being in TZ. It was a great time full of laughter. Although it does NOT feel at all like the holiday season and it's starting to sink in that I probably just won't really have Christmas spirit for the next 2 years. It's too opposite from how Christmas-time is supposed to feel here!
"Murder! In the Village"-- (like "Panic! at the Disco" Erica haha) So I had a crazy experience in my village recently. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving I had just gotten home and around 8:45 pm I heard a loud bang outside my house. I thought "Wow, that sounded like a gunshot." then immediately thought "No....this is Dosidosi, it couldn't have been, it was a car or something." Then went to bed. The next morning I was casually working in my garden when my neighbor came over and I asked him why there was no school on a school day. He proceeded to be the 1st to inform me that one of the teachers from my school had been SHOT AND KILLED right between my school and the row of teachers houses where I live the night before. So I was FREAKED OUT. It was so upsetting and more so by the fact that he was a friend of mine, I had had dinner at his house and everything. And it just came out of nowhere to me. So of course I left the village for a couple days and hung out at Keith's and talked to Peace Corps about the situation. It basically came down to whether I felt safe in the village or not. Obviously I don't feel as safe as I used to but changing sites would be horrible. As much as I might have wanted to had this been week 2 or something, a site change after how far I've come would just suck. And as far as the alleged reason for the crime, it has nothing to do w/ me so I'm not fearing for my life or anything. But it was a terrible couple of days, and to top it all off when Keith and I returned to my house on Thanksgiving Day to cook and hide out from gunmen we found that sadly Sloopy had passed away. So Buttercup is now the lone ranger. I was really sad. Sorry this is terribly written but I'm running out of time.
IST--So NOW life is great again because I am in Morogoro for In-Service-Training with my whole group! It has been awesome to see everyone again, celebrate a bunch of people's birthdays, hang out at a pool, eat pizza, and stay up til 3 am just laughing like crazy. I missed certain people from other regions SO much and it is so great to hear their stories and experiences and just catch up. Also we are learning some awesome stuff about grant-writing, project implementation, and cool things like how to make batiks and plant trees. After a session today I am totally pumped to go back home and teach people how to make solar cookers! They're gonna think I'm crazy bu it is gonna be AWESOME! So looking forward to more useful info, more fun times, and our counterparts arriving on Sunday.
So just in time I think I'm done with this completely scatterbrained update. So lots of ups and downs but things are now on the upswing! Peace out!

Survival Mode

"I always believed in futures...I hope for better in November."

So occasionally when I'm bored at the Internet cafe I browse my other PC buddies blogs, some of which are linked on the right. I think this entry by my friend Cessie so perfectly describes what being here can be like that I wanted to link it directly: http://cessieintanzania.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/homesick/
So yeah, I totally empathize with what she's talking about there. I think many things in this country come down to the problem of "Survival Mode." Most Tanzanians, definitely most of my villagers, are so poor that each day is a struggle for survival...getting water, putting food on the table and keeping a roof (and often not a very good one) over their heads are difficult enough tasks that they consume everyone's time, energy, and thinking. Lack of electricity, water, good roads and all that make everyday tasks take up much more time than they do in the western world. So basically, very few Tanzanians are ever encouraged to have goals, plans, dreams for the future. Most of them don't think further ahead than the next day. And who can blame them, because the life expectancy is so short here, and every day they do more hard work than most Americans just to SURVIVE. But how do you get people to realize the importance of making plans and having dreams? Ni shida kubwa (It's a big problem.)

On the other hand, I have realized I have also been living in a kind of "Survival Mode" since getting to site. Not in the same way as Tanzanians because my life is definitely not as hard as theirs since I have enough money to live decently here and don't have to do hard physical labor on a farm all day. But these first few months at site I have been focused mostly on just survival. Mainly this is a mental thing. I got used to no electricity and bucket baths during training, and I can deal with the bugs and I like cooking for myself. But being the only outsider in a tiny village and trying to fit in with a completely different culture, make friends in a new language, trying to make people understand what I'm even doing there, trying to decide for myself what I'm going to do there, and at the same time dealing with homesickness and loneliness has been what is hard to survive. Some days in my village I've wanted to go home so much I don't think I can deal with it anymore. And some days in my village are great. Most are in between. But for the last few months I have been basically just trying to get through the days and make the time pass...whether that means I have a productive day or whether I need a day where I just read a book and make myself some brownies and ignore all the kids at my door. And of course there have been many "mental health" excursions to town. Basically, I've been getting through it. But I think that I'm finally coming to the point where I'm sick of survival mode. When I think about the big picture and get myself out of the day-to-day mindset I realize that being here is pretty awesome. Of course it's challenging, but two years in perspective is not a long time. And I get to spend it in a beautiful country, speaking a language hardly anyone in the west ever learns, and being welcomed with open arms into a village of amazing people who will appreciate anything I can do so much. So it's time to give myself an attitude adjustment and start seeing the positives more. I'm in freakin' Tanzania, in Peace Corps, getting opportunities to do so much amazing work and see the world. It's pretty amazing. So from now on it's time to get down to business, get my projects started, get out of my house and start enjoying every day, whether I'm in my village or not.

Dada Carrie Had a Farm...

Whew, it’s HOT! It is getting to be that time of the year when I guess I am going to sit in my house sweating no matter how physically inactive I am. And to think that back home it is probably nice and cool and fall-like, even cold by now perhaps! Don’t take it for granted people! I’m sweating enough for all of us over here!
So let’s see, what has happened since my last update? Well, I got TONS of packages I had been waiting for all w/in 2 days and it was just like Christmas! I now know that I’ll never starve no matter how broke I get because I can always live on granola bars. And Hershey Kisses arrived intact so send that chocolate people! Just make sure you put anything open-able inside Ziplocs because magazines soaked in exploded shampoo or iced tea powder are stickier to read. Seriously though, you should have seen Keith and I after we went to the PO and both got packages. We were SO happy we just ran to the bar at 9:30am to bask in the glory of People magazines and Crystal Lite powder (I have been much better hydrated now that my water doesn’t taste like mud). So THANK YOU Mom and Aunt Dawn!
Other news- I finally got all the bat holes in my house sealed up and my choo doors fixed (hoping the junk will be out by the end of November), my boss visited my site and met all my people, I barely saved Sloopy from drowning in my water drum, and I survived my first bout of some horrible sickness/may’ve been giardia. On Halloween, conveniently. So that was a great holiday.
On the work front, I finished writing the 1st draft of my VSA and am working on the presentation of it for IST. Keith and I are planning an event to have at my market day on Dec. 1 since that’s World AIDS Day. That will be our first big project. Also translating penpal letters, studying Swahili, getting a teaching schedule set up for next year. I also started some vegetable seeds inside although I think my garden is going to be a miserable failure; I’m too much of a city girl. So basically everything is in the planning stage still but I’ve at least decided a lot of what I’m going to try. Still looking for people to sponsor kids’ school fees (let me know if you wanna) and hopefully early next year I will have some other projects you can contribute to. Also found out none of the potential sites for new education volunteers in our district were ready so it will be just me and Keith still until at least next August! Woo, rockin’ it w/ no other friends!!!! And also, my villagers are trying to convince me to get a goat for some reason. I’m trying to resist, but part of me is like, “When else in life will I be able to say I have a goat?” So I’ll let you know if that ever happens.
All that and I’ve still had plenty of time for evening runs, cooking/baking sprees, and reading voraciously. Next week I’m going to bust out my camera and try to make a little video either for my VSA presentation or just for facebook to show people my new ‘hood. No promises how soon it will be done though.
So overall life is good. If you read this leave me a comment at least, or better yet email me! I miss my friends and I want to know what you’re up to!

"What you share with the world is what it keeps of you."

Mambo marafiki!
First of all, a big thanks to Uncle Ken, Stopa, and Pascale for sending me stuff! I LOVE YOU!
So since last time I have gotten a LOT of stuff done. I finished both my house-to-house surveys and 3 community meetings which involved doing a needs' assessment and a couple other activities to analyze gender roles and resources in the community. Oh, and I think I got rid of the scabies. And Sloopy killed the 1st rat! I also filtered my banana wine which is delicious, hung out w/ people in the village a lot more, met the District Med. Officer and my People Living with HIV group (PLWHAs) again. So I am basically brimming with project ideas but first I need to sit down and write my VSA to organize my thoughts and prioritize. So that's what I will be working on next. Otherwise I have been spending my days playing w/ the cats, wandering the village talking and mooching chai off people who invite me over, hanging out w/ Hadija and trying to jog every night to counteract all the chapati I end up eating while mooching. Trying to study Swahili too but I'm ADHD when it comes to that. Even with all the above activities I have oodles of reading time and am absolutely BLOWING through books (4 in the last 2 weeks) so keep them coming! I will read anything!
Other than that, bear with me through my first shameless plug. 1 thing I'm trying to get off the ground right now is getting support for Orphans and Vulnerable Children's school fees. Education is technically free in TZ but the costs of uniforms, supplies, and activity fees is still a hindrance to struggling families. And if they can't pay, then the kids don't learn. I already have done a census of the children of parent's living with HIV and am getting a list of orphans and other at-risk youth. The total yearly cost varies depending on what grade but for primary schoolers is no more than $50 a year! That's so cheap compared to America! The secondary schoolers pay a little more but I don't have the data yet. So if anyone has any way at all of being able to commit to one year of school fees for one child here, it would help SO MUCH. Not having to worry about school fees would allow these kids' caretakers to free up some of their little income for other things everyone is struggling with- food, water, buying seeds and farm equipment. And for the parents living with HIV, they have to pay bus fares to go to another village to get their Anti-Retroviral drugs. And for the kids, education has been proven time and time again to be the key to getting people thinking outside the box, out of the trap of hopelessness! So tell your parents, tell your friends, your church, anyone you think would want to help. Dosidosi appreciates it! Then if you're serious about it, shoot me an email so I can start making a list. I hope to get this started by the time the new school term starts in January. Asante sana!

Dosidosi Cast of Characters

Mabojola: the primary school Headmaster and my neighbor. He’s a short little man with lots of energy and a good guy, helps me out a lot, speaks English, and always drops by to ask me random questions about American history or current events other things. He’s the one who helped me order all my furniture and get my cats and everything when I first got here.
Mwajuma: His wife. This lady is awesome. She’s pretty much my new mama. She feeds me whenever I wander over to say hi and feeds my cats when I leave for weekends. She taught me how to greet in Kinguo and pretty much helps me out anytime I need help with any chores or getting anything. If she doesn’t see me for a day she always stops by the next day to check on me. Also, her baby, Maua (Flowers), is the fattest baby I’ve seen in Tanzania so she definitely is a good mom!
Annette: new teacher who’s my age and just moved here from Kilimanjaro so she’s staying with my headmaster and his family. We’ve hung out a few times and we’re getting to be good friends. She’s really cute and trendy and funny. When she first arrived she was crying because of how remote Dosidosi is compared to what she’s used to, so we definitely empathize about that. She already invited me to come home with her in April to see Moshi-town and then again sometime later to climb Kili together.
Wilson: My closest neighbor, another teacher, he’s a young guy, still single. He’s helped me teach the couple times I did and get the penpal thing started. He’s a huge talker and we’ll end up having 2-hour long convos where he just asks me all these questions about America. It’s good for my Swahili, for sure.
Joeli: Wilson’s 18-year-old brother who lives with him. He’s starting secondary school next year but for now I guess he just does all the housework for the 2 of them. He’s a cool kid, always lets me know when my cats run off somewhere they shouldn’t be. They’re both from Lushoto but Wilson got moved here to teach. So they also invited me home with them sometime next year to see Lushoto which is supposedly gorgeous so I’m excited!
Paulo: the Headmaster of the secondary school, another neighbor. He’s been away a lot but from the few times we’ve talked while going to church, I know he’s super smart, super Christian, and really good at English. And he is an absolutely GORGEOUS man. But he’s married and just had his 1st kid born this week actually. Pretty much the only teacher at the secondary school who does anything I think.
The Frat Boys: These are about 5 young guys, single secondary school teachers who all share 1 side of Paulo’s house since the secondary school doesn’t have adequate teachers’ housing yet. I call them the Frat Boys because they’re basically as close as you get to that in Tanzania. They don’t seem to take their jobs seriously at all, or me for that matter. Whenever I hang out with them it’s just a bunch of questions about why I’m not married and don’t I want a TZ boyfriend? Since the government assigns teachers to where they will work I basically think since Dosidosi’s secondary school just opened they sent us all the most inexperienced and unmotivated crew. Oh well, they’re sometimes fun to hang out with.
Stephen: He lives with the frat boys but not really like them. Also new in town, goes to church w/ me and really smart and good English. But he's a huge nerd. He wants to be an accountant instead of a teacher. He asks me the dorkiest questions all the time and I just laugh because I konw I can make fun of him w/o him realizing it. I'm so mean.
Asha and Levasha: 2 married women teachers who live in the middle of the village. I basically go over to school every day and just talk to them while they're grading. They're super sweet and they both also have generators so I've been to each of their houses at night to chill and watch TV.
Maganga: The Ward Executive Officer (gov't guy) of Dosidosi. He got all the official PC scoop and everything. He's a silly-looking man w/ crazy muttonchops but he has a good heart and has taken me around the village and helped me out w/ tonsof stuff. Tracking him down is always an issue since he's never in the office. But usually he can be found cavorting around on his motorcycle or sipping chai and chilling in some cafe.
Stella and Mwanamvua: the 2 nurses at my clinic. They are AWESOME ladies who work so hard. They're always going to conferences and trying to learn more and really committed to improving health. BAsically, they're doing all they can w/ NOTHING and NO HELP so I'm really gonna try to help them out however I can.
Hadija: my Counterpart! This girl is really shy but she's got it goin' on! She's my age and graduated from Secondary School in Kibaya in 2005. She wants to go to college and be a womens' rights lawyer but $ is a problem so she's just at home helping with her family's farm now. She is great at English, so smart and motivated, and has such a progressive mindset and such awesome goals. So she went with me to do all my surveys and my community meetings, and she's coming to IST in Dec. w/ me for official Counterpart training. So basically I have high hopes for what we'll be able to accomplish here together.
Joyce: She's Keith's counterpart in Matui, but I lover her just as much as he does. She's a homebased-care volunteer and speaks no English but she does everything! And knows everyone important around. For income she runs a little soda and beer stand and also brings crates to sell in a tent every 2x/month market in my village. So needless to say she keeps us set on drinks whenever we're with her! One time I came to Matui Keith mentioned that later we were planning to climb this big rocky hill to get a view of the valley, so she just charges us across town and leads us up the steep slope in her flipflops and khanga. And she's like 40! She also loved one of the brownies I made and gave her once! Now she wants to climb 1 of the bigger mountains around Dosidosi with us sometime. Needless to say, I can't wait til IST! I think Keith and I, Joyce and Hadija, will be the Fantastic 4 starting PC in Kiteto!!!

BUGS

First of all, a warning: Don't read this if you ever want to consider me attractive ever again in your life. You've been warned.

So I’ve realized a lot of you are probably wondering what a typical day is like in PC TZ. Well, the answer is that there is none. Each day is full of incredibly random occurrences that either frustrate, amuse, or inspire. To illustrate this point, allow me to tell the tale of October 7, 2009, or as I like to call it: WAR ON SCABIES DAY. I wake up at 6 am after a fitful night due to bats squeaking and my skin itching and realize it’s time to face facts. The facts being, unfortunately for unlucky me, that I have scabies. I’ve come to this conclusion finally after almost a week of itchy red hives on my knees, waist, and elbows, countless consultations w/ my medical handbook and Where there is No Doctor, a speculative conversation with the PC Medical Officer, and several days of popping Benadryl trying to deny reality, all to no avail. Since I just had my sheets washed, I’m sure I caught this lovely gift from one of the guestis I’ve stayed at in my travels. Oh, thank you TZ. So despite my revelation, I still have to do something productive, so at 7:30 I’m off to do the last two surveys with Hadija in one of the sub-villages. It turns out to be an hour walk each way, so that’ll be my exercise for the day. I struggle to pay attention during the surveys because there’s some really cute puppies playing at the house next door and I’m so tempted to ask if I can have one. I resist the urge though and we walk back. Before going home I run some errands, ordering a sweet outfit from a tailor and buying some beans and veggies. So I get home, still procrastinating dealing with my skin problem, and start sweeping my house. And what should I sweep into my dustpan but a random half-paralyzed bat that must have fallen from my roof behind my cothes cupboard last night. So that’s gross, but I take it outside and watch my cats have fun playing with it, although apparently they don’t eat bats, or they’re full. Next thing I know Mwajuma (my school headmaster's wife...basically my BF here) comes over and I figure it’s time to do something. So I ask her if she can help me get my sheets washed again because I have “a bit of a rash.” And she freaks out, of course. They cannot have the white girl being sick you know. So for 4000 shillings she washed my blanket and all my sheets again, as if she had no other work to do, bless her heart. So since that’s happening, I figure I need to go all out TODAY and get this problem solved. So I drag my mattress, pillows, and all my couch cushions (which I stole from the junk room rather than buy my own so they could be the culprit too) into my yard to lie in the sun all day. Then I douse myself in some medicated lotion I got at the only drug store here again and start laundry duty. I already had tons of dirty clothes but now I realize that anything I’ve worn since rashville prob needs a rinse. So I put my iPod speakers on loud and start doing my least favorite chore, washing by hand with my 2 little plastic basins and bar of soap, sitting outside my back door. Even if I wanted to do everything I couldn’t because a) someone “borrowed” half my clothespins and b) I pay a pretty penny for water in this drought land and need to save some of the little I have for the rest of the week’s cooking and dishwashing. Plus the last time I had water delivered it was basically Mississippi mud so I’m not excited to pay for that again. So I wash enough clothes to last a few days (heck, this is PC, a few weeks) and am starting to get my hopes up that I will get this infestation eradicated once and for all (knock on wood.) By now it’s afternoon and all of what was going to be a productive day working on my VSA has gone to my battle plan. When I do sit down to start tabulating survey results, my friend Annette, one of the teachers who’s my age shows up at the door and says she’s come to help me “piga deki”- basically mopping the floor except no one has mops so they just bend over with a piece of fabric and wash the floor. So basically people are talking about my little problem and are probably concluding that I’m an incompetent mzungu living in filfth. So I tell her I can do it myself but she insists and basically has my whole room scrubbed in 5 minutes. Then she makes me spray everything down w/ my bug poison even though I already did. So she’s awesome. So later that day she comes back with my neighbor friend Joeli to listen to Celine Dion and the Backstreet Boys on my iPod (TZs love their 90s American pop), look at my pictures from home, and hang out. I show them the Michael Jackson People my mom sent and they marvel at the picture progression showing all the stages his face went through. We all agree that he was crazy, but still the King of Pop. So after that I bring all my stuff inside, hoping the sun has worked its magic and killed all insects, please please please. Then I realize I’m starving and I have vegetables I have to use before they go bad so I make some delicious salsa and start cooking beans to make homemade refried beans. That’s like a 2 hour process so in the meantime I finish my survey writeup and Mwajuma comes over with my sheets all clean. She basically tells me she feels horrible that I’ms ick, tell her if I need help with any other chores any time, or if I ever am too busy or don’t want to cook tell her and she’ll bring me food. “Sasa sisi ni ndugu, wewe mdogo yangu” she says. “Because we’re relatives now, you’re my little sister.” I freaking love that woman. So to end my long day of battle I eat my delicious dinner (trying not to miss Chipotle), then heat up some water and take a bucket bath by lantern light because I had to leave the lotion on for 8 hours before washing it off, according to my handy books. So finally through with my arduous day of pest control, I look up at the sky. Maybe it’s just the exhuberant hope of a scabies-free future making me delusional, but I swear the stars are more beautiful then I have ever seen anywhere. There’s no moon so I can see millions of them SUPER bright. One of the benefits of no light pollution from land. So basically, I can deal with a night sky like that for as long as I live, but I cannot be itchy like this for 2 years. So here’s hoping my efforts succeeded. And I know, TMI, I know.

EDIT: So last night I talked to my dad (a daktari) and he said he does not think it sounds like scabies, probably just an allergic reaction. and it's going away now. but i had already written this so i figured might as well post. more later.

This is your life...

“It’s when you cry just a little but you laugh in the middle that you’ve made it.” – Jason Mraz
First of all, I want to give my heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Joseph Chow. Peace Corps TZ suffered a horrible loss this week when Joseph, an Education volunteer in Songea, passed away after a rock-climbing accident. I never met Joseph but PC TZ is just one big family, so I’m still deeply saddened to lose a brother. My heart goes out to all the other Volunteers in his class and region who I’m sure knew and loved him a lot. RIP.
It’s weird to be in the village and get news like that via text message. It’s like business carries on as usual except you can feel the shock waves vibrating throughout the entire PC population of the country and the sadness everyone shares. So that news was really hard.
Other than that, this has been a productive week. I was pretty much a culinary genius and made PB-Choc Brownies and an excellent loaf of bread jiko-style. It’s amazing what baked goods will do for your mental health. I also made a bucket of banana wine, so if all goes as it should that is fermenting now and will be delicious in 3 weeks! My villagers probably thought I was crazy buying 80 bananas to make “juice.”
I also am starting a penpal exchange between a class of 5th graders here and a class of 5th graders in America through the World Wise Schools program. So I went to the class to introduce the idea and ended up basically teaching a lesson on what students do in America and what the similarities and differences are. And of course this was all in Swahili except for when they made me sing the US National Anthem solo for them. Great.
I also went back to help out at the clinic, where I can’t believe how overworked the nurses are. I basically just weigh people and fill out their charts. But they need so much help I’ll probably end up going there 2x a week as a main project to help them with Monday baby-weighing and Thursday pregnancy exam days.
This week I also started House-to-House surveys to help complete the VSA. I’m working with Hadija, a 23-year-old girl who finished secondary school and wants to be a lawyer someday. So she speaks great English and is wonderful help. She’s also pretty cool to hang out with. We’re both quiet but I’m hoping we’ll get to be friends. We’ve visited 4 households so far asking questions about the village schools, health, agriculture, what they do for fun, etc. Just to get some baseline info on the village stats.
I also met Mariam, this lady who was sitting outside her house making beaded rings. So I told her I loved jewelry and she said she’d teach me how to make them! And she gave me a ring as a gift which I love. So possible income-generating-activity for a Mama’s group? Or just a fun craft hobby either way!
So in other news my cats like to run away to school and the neighbor’s houses, I eat an inordinate amount of peanut butter because I’m too lazy to cook more than 1x a day, and it has gotten HOT. Nights are still comfortable but in the daytime the sun is intense. Also, I’ve realized my biggest animal problem is bats; they keep me up all night squeaking and every morning I have to sweep up all their poop. Gross. I’ve also had a cold for the last 2 ½ weeks which is annoying. The overriding theme of this month has been just trying to handle the extreme mood swings of being here. Every time I see another PCV and get to speak English and hang out Marekani style it’s awesome, but then it makes the return to the vill that much harder. My worst days have been the ones I’ve returned from hanging out w/ Keith in town or something to being by myself. It is really lonely and difficult sometimes. There are definitely days where I’d rather lie in bed reading than get up and speak Swahili and integrate. But every time I get out there it gets better and easier. I’ve never had more than 1 bad day in a row so that’s good. And I always knew this settling-in period would be the hardest part. I just wish I could fast forward to after IST in December when I’ll have friends, better Swahili, and project ideas. But this is Tanzania, “polepole ndiyo mwendo” (slow and steady wins the race). Well that’s about it. Know what makes me the happiest person in the world? Getting mail!!! So write me letters or send me trashy magazines or postcards or anything!!! My address is on my facebook group, or you can message me to get it. If you write me a letter I’ll have your address and I’ll guarantee to write you back!!!!!
And HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!
-Mboza (my Kinguo name...yeah, I'm not a fan either...)