My American Year

It's been exactly one year since I left Tanzania. Wow, time flies. I'd be hard pressed to decide if this year or the year I was actually in Tanzania was crazier. Probably the year I was there, but this year has been pretty darn close. So much has happened. I think I'm finally at a place where I can celebrate all the awesome things I've done this year that I wouldn't have gotten to do if I had stayed in the Peace Corps.


1. I watched my best friend get married and stood beside her as Maid of Honor. She was the first of my group of friends to tie the knot, and I'm still oh-so-happy for her! Her marriage brought a lot of changes to our friendship and a lot of learning about this new phase of life we find ourselves in. Marriage changes all your relationships and married/very committed friends seem to live increasingly different lives from single/still-mingling friends. It's taken some getting used to and kind of makes me feel old that many of my friends (and myself, kind of) are settling down. But it's a good thing.

2. I went on so many awesome road trips! First, there was the super spontaneous "I'm-not-going-back-to-Africa-so-let's-drive-to-California" road trip. Before we left, Zach’s mom (who I had just recently met) commented, “Well, I guess you’ll know if you really like each other after 2 weeks in the car together.” Our response: “I think we already know that since we spent 9 months on opposite sides of the globe.” Hahaha. Needless to say, we survived 2 weeks in the car together. Highlights included our first couchsurfing experience, my first visit to California, falling in love with the city of San Diego, and spending time at the house in Williams, AZ (Zach starting to sneakily convince me to move there).
Then for Memorial Day weekend we drove to Chicago and took in that ginormous city. We went to Cleveland for the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros show and talked to the lead singer on the street. We had an awesome camping/rafting trip with lots of friends in West Virginia.
The second big road trip was the Northeast and Canada. I got to catch up with many dear old friends from college days and introduce Zach to New York City. Then we hit all the great cities in eastern Canada, learned a few words of French, and met awesome people through couchsurfing.
After that was another drive to move to Arizona. Since here we have visited Lake Havasu, Sedona/Jerome, Durango, Colorado, Verde Hot Springs, San Diego again, and Tijuana, Mexico (for a few hours).
And the road trips will only continue!!!!!!

3. I’ve learned about cultivating and sustaining a loving relationship. For the first time in my life I’m in a relationship that I know is totally right. I’m not worried about getting bored and I don’t miss being single. I’m in it to win it and loving that “I finally found my person” feeling. It doesn’t mean that every day is hearts, stars, and rainbows though. Living together has definitely taken some getting used to. I think it’s been made harder by the fact that we’re new in this state and don’t have friends close by to turn to when we need to release tension. I have nowhere else to go with my moody side and he doesn’t have the alone time he used to get sitting on his roof in Columbus. So yeah, we get on each other’s nerves sometimes. But we’re learning to understand each other more and more each day. I’m realizing that I may just have to get used to telling him to do the same thing 100 times, and he’s realizing that sometimes him cleaning the kitchen means more to me than a hug.

4. I’ve become more honest about who I am. I’m definitely still a bit of a people-pleaser but I think I’ve become a lot more open over the past year, especially with those closest to me. I’m allowing myself to accept that many disagree with me but it’s okay. If I was exactly the same as all my family and friends what fun would that be? I’m genuinely happy with my life and my choices, even if they are “against the grain.” I no longer hide anything about my life in an attempt to keep everyone happy.  The people who really love me will love me no matter what.

5.  Not to pat myself on the back too much, but one quality I think I've exhibited this year that I'm proud of is "actually doing  what I say I'm going to do."  I know so many people who are always saying "Someday I'll go here..." or "Yeah, I said I'd find a new job this year but then x and y came up..."  I hate that!  Don't talk about it unless you're really going to WORK to make it happen!!!  I said I'd drive to California and back on $600.  Check.  I talked about the east coast road trip for months before and then did it.  Check.  I said I'd move to Arizona and find a new job.  Done.  And this will continue!  I've talked a lot about going to South America now and I am not full of hot air!  It is happening, October 2011!  Just 8 short months from now!  Because you all know I can't stay put in America for too long!  ;-)

I'm sure the next year will be even crazier than this last one!!!

Leaving Africa

9 months of my life. And it's taken me another 3 to even force myself to sit down and write about it. What happened? I was supposed to be there for 2 years...
There were days of magnificent highs, spent climbing through waterfalls, spotting elephants through bus windows, or even just sharing a meal and laughing together with Mama Maua, happy about the slightest victory over the language barrier. There were other days I could barely hold myself together, boiling over in frustration with strage bus kondas trying to cheat me in a country where nothing ever gets done easily or on time, or ignoring everyone because I was so homesick I would cry at any moment and you can't do that in front of Tanzanians. Moments were I felt on top of the world and couldn't imagine doing anything else. Moments I would've traded it all in a heartbeat for an old friend's hug and a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup. "The hardest job you'll ever love." Hmm. You can't understand how true that is until you experience it. In the end, I decided life is too short not to be with the people you love. That's the oversimplified explanation of why I left, but it gets the point across. That being said, I wouldn't change a single moment of the time I spent there. And not a day goes by that I don't think about the people I left, both the Peace Corps Volunteers and my villagers, and feel the sadness of missing them along with a stabbing guilt for abandoning them too soon.
Readjustment is so weird. Most of the time I feel like it's over, and it kind of saddens me how quickly I seem to have rejoined America. Then at moments I'm overcome with visions of Africa. I'll be at a bar or party in America, someplace full of careless fun. Next thing I know my brain will be back in Dosidosi, picturing the happy toddlers in their torn clothes, bellies distended, playing with sticks in the dirt. I get irrationally angry at the injustice between what I'm seeing here and what I saw there. I have to run away to go cry. How could I have left? I don't know if I helped there, but at least I lived meaningfully, with a pure purpose and no excesses. It's hard not to feel purposeless now, floating around empty with no idea where to go. I can only tell myself that I'll be back again, that this is only a brief intermission between adventures. Reentry...kind of makes me feel crazy.
Clearly Africa changed me. How could it not have? The thought of trying to sum up what I learned is daunting. How do I put 9 months of living/speaking/eating/breathing/sleeping Tanzania into a neat 500-word moral? Even now the tears are running as I remember all the amazing people I miss. Poverty is complicated and human. It is not statistics on a graph or images on a website. It cannot be solved by voting in elections or putting checks in the mail. Maybe it can't be solved at all. I lived in poverty alongside my villagers for 9 months and I've only begun to understand the factors at play. Everyone wants to save the world before they even experience it. The world is a crazy quilty of cultures and people who are all made of the same stuff no matter how differently they live. We can't make any progress without getting to know each other first. Peace Corps was the hardest thing I ever did because I was completely immersed in Tanzania. I learned their language, their foods, their work, their celebrations. I tried to teach a little bit but that will never compare to what they taught me. People are people no matter what and people are beautiful and amazing all over the world. I have family in Africa now. If you want my advice on how to help Africa, I would say to go and see it first. Go live and play and let it change your world. They say once your feet touch African dirt you'll always be back. I believe it.
Tupo pamoja.

Maisha Mazuri (Good Life)

Hey all my fans!!!! I don't really have time to post a detailed blog right now, and I don't think I could accurately recount all that's happened in the last 3 weeks even if I tried. So I'll try to be concise yet hilarious using handy dandy bullet points:

Interesting Things That Have Happened to Me in TZ So Far

• Getting charged by a water buffalo
• Scorpion in the choo (pit toilet) my first day at my host family
• Bat living in the choo
• Seeing a crocodile in the river while sitting on a rock washing clothes
• Teaching my host family how to make spaghetti and them loving it(Cultural exchange woot!)
• My host family me telling me every day that I'm "numba moja kwa Kiswahili" aka the best at speaking Kiswahili in my village and they're proud of me
• Getting my hair braided by my aunt while sitting on the ground outside looking up at a million stars
• Watching crazy Swahili music videos called "Taarab" and listening to Bongo Flava
• eating ugali at EVERY meal....ughhhhhh
• naming a baby after my brother...that's right Tim
• eating everything with my hands out of communal plates (including the aformentioned spaghetti)
• being the daughter of Mama Bonge (aka Big Mama), a witch doctor
• getting to watch Mama Bonge heal people using herbs, smoke, chickens, chanting, and all this crazy stuff
• watching a "scanner" ceremony in which people were speaking in tongues and going into comas due to "evil spirits" being in them
• cooking everything over a fire and taking bucket baths every morning
• riding my bike in a skirt and khanga because only prostitutes wear pants
• hearing about people in my village being attacked by pythons and crocodiles at the aformentioned river
• teaching all the little kids at my house the hokey pokey, the shark song, peace like a river, if you're happy and you know it, and any other song I can remember from childhood. THE KIDS HERE MAKE MY LIFE!!!!!
• learning tons of kid songs in Swahili from them
• carrying my baby nephew on my back in a khanga like a Tanzanian woman and everyone loving it
• learning Swahili from our teacher Chacha Busada (aka Chacha the Wise) every day
• speaking all Kiswahili with my family and actually being understood most of the time (though understanding them is harder)
• it being absolutely BEAUTIFUL everywhere!!!!!!!!
• making up songs with my fellow trainees
• eating a whole plate of chocolate peanut butter soup on the day we did experimental cooking
• 34 Americans singing the National Anthem together in the middle of a field in TZ on the 4th of July
• totally impressing the Country Director when she came to visit by showing her my house and Mama Bonge telling her that I'm "like her own daughter and she can't imagine me leaving"
• haven't been really sick yet, but my GI tract is definitely on constant high alert
• basically just being a total DBA living with no power, water, anything, and loving it (most of the time)

Basically, I've survived a month in TZ! This week I have my placement interview and my Swahili midterm (not worried) then we are going to the beach for a mini vacation Friday-Sunday! It's awesome but hard living with a host family and having them constantly checking up on me so a break is definitely in order! After that we have 1 more week of language, 1 week of tech training, and then we find out our placements! CANNOT WAIT to know where I'll be for the next 2 years. After that we shadow current volunteers for a week then come back to Dar for Swearing-In on August 19th. So the time is ticking down!!! I promise I'll try to post pictures soon but I haven't busted out my camera with my host family yet so I don't have too many. Life is good, crazy, and I love it. Miss you all so much though and hope all is well back home! Write me!

Personal Goals for the Next 3 Years

1. Successfully complete Peace Corps. Duh!

2. Travel back to Nkubu, Kenya and visit the Huruma Center orphanage where I volunteered in 2007 and fell in love with Africa and the kids there

3. Travel to Victoria Falls on the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia and go bungee jumping there!4. Make a documentary about my experience in Tanzania

5. Travel on my way home to the US, either through Europe or Asia

6. Master Swahili

Random hodge-podge of ideas that were in my head...these are of course missing all the deeper, more meaningful goals of Peace Corps, such as having a positive influence on my village, making a difference, etc. Rest assured, those are definitely foremost in my mind, but thinking about all the awesome side things I'll hopefully be able to do also gets me really excited!

Staging Info At Last!

I finally got the information about my Pre-Departure Staging today! So my travel plans are solid and I leave Columbus in exactly 1 month!

Sunday, June 14
9:45am Fly from Columbus to Philadephia -- 2 hours
1:30pm Register and check into a Holiday Inn in Philly, meet the rest of my training class!
3-7pm Training and info sessions

Monday, June 15
6:30am Check out and go to a clinic to get shots
9:30am Bus ride to JFK airport in New York City (so I will be back on Long Island again) -- 4 hours
5:40pm Fly from JFK to Amsterdam -- 7.5 hours

Tuesday, June 16
10:20am Fly from Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro then Kilimanjaro to Dar Es Salaam -- 10.5 hours
9:40pm Final arrival in Tanzania!!!!!!

So with all the time changes and layovers and long flights, I will be traveling for 2 full days. I'm going to watch so many movies on the planes because I can never sleep on planes and it will probably be my last chance to see any good ones for awhile! I'm excited about the stop in Amsterdam; even though the layover isn't long enough to even leave the airport at least I'll be able to say I've been to a new country (sort of)!

So yeah...ONE MONTH!

Rosetta Stone

PC (Peace Corps) was nice enough to give me a free online subscription to Rosetta Stone, so I've recently been using it to jump-start my Swahili skills. I'm supposed to complete 40 hours before leaving, and I'm already at 11. I'm hoping to surpass the 40 and just do as much as possible because I know the more I can cram in before leaving the better off I will be when thrust into a homestay with a non-English-speaking family for PST (Pre-Service Training) in Tanzania. Rosetta Stone is so repetitive and immersing that I can definitely see that it's helping me. So far it hasn't been too hard thanks to the 2 semesters I did take of Swahili in college, but I just finished Unit 2 and I can tell it's definitely increasing in difficulty. Some of the sentences are just so dumb it makes me laugh. When am I going to need to say "The dog is not a man"???? Or my favorite so far: "There are 2 balls in the right hand of the woman and 2 balls in the left hand of the woman." Wow, so many balls! She's got her hands full! (Oh, the places my mind takes me...) Obvsiously the hardest part is the actual speaking. I'm sure I can understand a lot more than I could say right now, which is normal with language learning. Some of the words just get me so tongue-tied though...especially when a 3 syllable word somehow has 4 'Z's in it. Crazy.
Here are my plans for the rest of the day in the best Swahili I can muster:

Nimesoma Kiswahili. Sasa Mama yangu ni mimi tutatembea mwenye mbwa yangu. Nitaenda kucheza ngumu na kunywa bia mwenye rafiki yangu Justine.
Salama! (Peace!)

Tanzania It Is!

I just got my invitation in the mail! And it's for Tanzania!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll have staging in the US on June 14-15, then I'll be serving in Tanzania as a Health Education Extension volunteer until August 18, 2011!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think I'm the first person to get invited to this program, because it wasn't on the timeline and I haven't heard of anyone else in it yet. That just makes it even more exciting! I'm so happy because had I known that Tanzania was an option for me, it definitely would have been 1st or 2nd on my list of places I wanted to go! Now I have to read all the Peace Corps handbooks and information they sent me and start filling out some more paperwork to get everything finalized. I'm so happy that I finally have closure on where I'm going!

Reasons Tanzania is Awesome:

1. Birthplace of the Swahili language! (I took 2 semesters, used it in Kenya, and now I can hopefully become fluent.)

2. Wildlife. Home of all the Big 5 safari animals, the famous wildebeest migration, and tons of amazing national parks.

3. Mt. Kilimanjaro. The tallest mountain in Africa. Doubt I'll have the guts or physique to climb it myself, but it's still pretty badass.

4. Swahili coast/Indian Ocean. I love the beach!

5. Zanzibar. Famous island archipelago off the coast with an awesome blend of Indian and African culture!

6. Directly south of Kenya! So hopefully on one of my vacations I can go back and visit Nkubu to see the kids at Huruma!

7. Many, many other reasons I will be learning more about as I start my pre-departure research!