Andrew in Africa

News From Tanzania

2008-02-07T05:22:00.000+03:00

Last night I heard from my good buddy Kajuna who's another teacher at the school where I was teaching. I heard got some very good news from him and some very bad news.

The good news was that the results for the Form IV students were out and I could look them up online. I did, and I was very pleasantly surprised. The girls did extremely well on the tests and they're the best results the school has ever had. None of them failed their exams overall, and not very many failed math. This is very exciting. Most of the girls are going to be able to continue their education in advanced level. It's great to see the vast majority of the students succeeding. I'm extremely proud of them and how hard they worked and that it all paid off for them.

A little while later, while I was still pretty euphoric from the good news, I got the bad. I've mentioned before that largely because of the school being a boarding school in an isolated area I became extremely close with a lot of the students, and many of them began to feel like kid sisters to me. There was one in particular who would always make a point to say hello and talk and joke with me and came to me almost every day with math and physics problems she had done and asked me to grade them for her. She is an extremely bright and hard-working girl. Most of all, she was really good at figuring things out, which is so, so rare in a culture that discourages asking questions and too often emphasizes rote memorization in education. She wasn't the smartest kid I taught and she goofed off a bit too much, but there were very few kids I taught who I felt had as bright a future as she did. What I found out though, is that she's pregnant. In Tanzania the law says that girls are not allowed to attend school if they are pregnant or have kids, so she's been kicked out of school. She's only 15 and now her future has been completely derailed. I'm angry because she knew better, but also I feel awful that because of this one mistake she may have ruined her chances of ever getting a good education. It doesn't completely rule it out, because she will be able to learn on her own or get a tutor and sit for the exams, but now it's going to be much, much harder for her, especially with a kid to take care of. I know her family is well-off, so hopefully something can be worked out, but it breaks my heart. And of course, in a place with the HIV rate at almost 10%, pregnancy isn't close to the biggest thing to worry about from unprotected sex. I keep thinking about how she was so upset about me leaving Tanzania. She could be very stubborn and insisted that she wouldn't like her new math teacher just because he or she wouldn't be me. She was also one of several of the girls who wrote a note for me before I left. I just hope she can learn from this and think about the consequences of what she does. I think she can be a great mom, but she's just so young.

The job search for me continues. Hopefully I'll know about grad school soon and then I'll be able to go more decisively for either a long-term or temporary job.

America

2008-01-24T20:13:00.000+03:00

I've been back in America for two months now. It was pretty great to come home. I managed to see most of my family in close friends in the first week or so I was back. It was great to see everyone and great to be home for Christmas. Of course, the food has also been amazing. It still feels a bit strange to be in America, and I miss Tanzania, and especially Kongei, a lot. I hear from my friend Kajuna now and then and I got an email from one of my students, but for the most part I feel kind of out of the loop. Of course that is the way it'll be. A big part of me wishes I was still there, but the time's up.

Probably the main reason I kind wish I was back is the boredom. I'm working on applications for grad school and jobs, but for the most part I have nothing to do. I heard a lot about people coming home and getting really bothered by certain aspects of America like the rampant consumerism. Fortunately, I guess, that bothered me before I left so it doesn't bother me any more that it has for awhile. It's also real nice to watch football and college basketball, and it'll be great to watch F1 when the season starts. I've also been doing a few programs about the trip for my mom's school, at church, and a couple of other places. It's nice to have a chance to talk about Tanzania for awhile. As for the future, I'm not entirely sure where I'll end up for the long term, getting a life started is slow work.

It took me a while to update this, and the reason is that I don't feel like I have anything to say. As time goes on I may want to summarize some things about the whole experience on this blog, but at the moment I'm not ready to do that. That's all I have for now, except to say thanks to everyone who has kept up with me and what I've been doing through this blog.

One more thing. I put a lot of pictures online yesterday. So far mainly just pictures from around the school. There's a link under my picture on the left side of the page.

Leaving

2007-11-16T14:28:00.000+03:00

Now I'm in Dar waiting to go back to America. My flight leaves next Thursday. Before then I have a host of medical appointments and meetings to take care of, then it's good by Tanzania.

Saying goodbye to everyone at my school wasn't easy. They organized a goodbye event for me where the students sang songs for me and everything. A lot of them have cried then and other times in the days before I left. A lot of the girls had become like little sisters to me, so it was very hard for me too. I already miss some of them a lot. I don't know if I'll ever have such a big impact on so many kids again. I am nowhere near to being able to write down a summary of the PC experience and what it's meant to me, but it's probably safe to say in a quick summary that the first year of service was the hardest and the second year the best year of my life. In the next few weeks I will keep writing here and talking about my experiences and my thoughts on returning to America.

During this week I'll just try to have a good time and say goodbye to more people. PC volunteers I've been close to are heading out in a gradual stream that has already started and will continue for a few weeks after I leave. Others have another year to go. I wish I had something profound to say, but I'm still feeling like I did when I rode on the bus through the valley where I lived for well over year, and that is I simply can't get it through my head that after a vacation in Dar, I'm not going back there. I'm not going to go back in the classroom and see those girls again. I'm going to start something new back in America. I doubt it will be teaching, but then it may be. Whatever it is, with what I've been through I know I can handle it.

Forty Days to Go

2007-10-14T09:54:00.000+03:00

Exactly 40 days from today I'll arrive back home. It seems to be coming shockingly fast. It's really hitting home now that Isaac, my good buddy in the region who was in my training group, is leaving his site in about ten days. In a month I'll be packing up my things and getting ready to go. As I've written before, I have mixed feelings about this. I'm excited to go home, but I also like it here a lot. It doesn't help that the girls are already starting to lament my upcoming departure. "Sir, when you leave we will cry so much!" is a common comment. Enough of this, it's been quite awhile since my last update, so I should say what's been going on.

The Form 4s have started their exams. The math exam was first. The test was a bit tough this year, so I hope they'll get through alright. The results won't be out for another three months, so nothing to do but wait. Before their exams we had graduation (I'm not entirely sure why graduation is first, but it is) and several other volunteers came for the party. It was a good time. I have a lot of pictures of the event and after party which sometime in the future will be put online. Now that the Form 4s are finished with everything, my teaching load has decreased and I can focus on the Form 2s, which means a lot of testing and grading to get them ready. It's been a lot of work, but I'm finally starting to see some serious improvement, which I think is the result of these kids finally taking things seriously. I think we'll have some good results from them.

As I've mentioned before, most of my teaching was to the Form 2s, so as a result these are the kids I'm closest to. They really are quite upset about me leaving so I've been spending a lot of time after school and some weekends hanging around and chatting with them. I also finally gave into their oft repeated requests and let them play with my hair. Despite the fact that they have to keep their hair cropped short a lot of them keep combs and there have been a couple of times where several of them will be around my head working away. There's always a crowd around watching and vigorous debate about how it would look best. It's all very cute, if a bit overwhelming sometimes. There was no reason not to give in, though. Before I let them, girls would sneak up behind me to touch my hair and sometimes give it a little tug. They've also begged me to find pen pals for them when I get home, so anyone out there, particularly girls around high school age, interested in swapping letters with a kid in Africa, let me know.

There's not too much else to talk about. There will probably only be a couple more posts before go home, but keep reading after. There are a lot of things I want to write about here after I get back. I'm not writing them now for a few reasons. One is that I need a little distance before writing about a lot of generalities of life here. Two, now I don't have time to write to much and since I only get internet every couple of weeks, at most, often I only write what is on my mind that particular time. Also there are certain things that I can't write about while in the PC. I'll leave it at that. Good bye for now.

Pictures

2007-09-01T11:41:00.000+03:00

This week we had our Close of Service Conference in Arusha National Park. This is a time when we get together with all those we arrived in country with who didn't end up leaving early. We started with 37 and have 32 left, which I'm proud to say is a very high retention rate. The first of us to close their service and go back leave next week. They had some extenuating circumstances that allow them to leave early. There will be three more at the end of October, but the rest of us will be leaving in November or December. The purpose of this conference was to get us ready to do all the paperwork and other preparations to leave our sites and get back into life in America. I think though that PC also knows what close bond you have with the people you came into the country and trained with and gives us this one last time to all be together. We come in the country together on the same plane, but we leave at different times and return to different places. A lot, maybe most, of the people there I won't see again until I'm back in America. I have no doubt we'll do a good job keeping in touch. Isaac's wedding in December will be a mini reunion as well.

I also have some pictures here I'd like to post. Here's one of me with several of my Form 2s. From leftto right in the back is Neema, then Dora (one of the kids who cooked grasshoppers for me), me (I know I blend in), Veronica, and Lulu. In the front on the left is Grace and kneeling is Eunice.

They were all out harvesting beans that day and I got some pictures of that as well. When they collect all the bean pods, they put them in a pile and beat the pods with a stick to knock the beans out. This next picture is of another form 2, Janet, beating the beans.
You may notice that the students are required to wear uniforms and that all students, even girls like my students, are required to shave their heads. I'm sure that would go over brilliantly with American girls. The first time you teach here it is a bit disconcerting that you look out to a bunch of kids all wearing the exact same clothes, the same race and gender, and with the same haircut. Not at all like an American classroom. This final picture I'm putting on here I'm doing just because I think it's a really cute shot.

This picture shows Nancy on the left, then a couple behind whose faces I can't see, then Neema and Faith. Naomi is the one really hamming it up, then Clever, and Eunice back in the sun. Unfortunately it takes too long to upload pictures, so when I get back to America in a November I'll put a whole lot of pictures up.

I'll start back in school on Monday, then it's only a few weeks until the graduation, then shortly thereafter exams start. I'm going to be very busy for awhile. It'll probably be best to be working hard and not focusing too much on how little time there is left. It seems like either you're impatiently waiting the day you can go back or wishing it wouldn't come for awhile longer. Very seldom do I feel completely content with the passage of time. Anyway, I think I'll be able to post again next week, but after that it will be awhile. Is this Labor Day weekend? If so, enjoy the holiday.

Rats

2007-08-18T09:41:00.000+03:00

I don't have my pictures of this with me unfortunately (oh yes, there are pictures), but this post tells the story of my recent and eventually successful battle with rats. Most volunteers have to deal with this problem at one time or another, at least here in Tanzania. Many get cats for this reason. I often on my own in this one though. I did however get some help from Josh, to whom I'm grateful.

It all began in early June. I heard some noises coming from my bathroom and went in to investigate. It was dark so I was using a flashlight (remember I have no electricity). I heard something behind the door, so I peeked behind it and came face to face with a rather large rat (perhaps six or seven inches long, excluding the tail). He was climbing on the door so he was just below my eye level. We both froze and stared at each other for a second, and then he took off with impressive speed. He ran into the courtyard and made it safely to some hiding place. I didn't make too much of it since pests are a common issue here, but then he started causing problems.

The first incident was when my friend Laura came to visit. She had gone into the bathroom to brush her teeth when I heard a blood-curdling shriek. Apparently the rat, who by this time I had named Pedro, had run across her foot. Needless to say she wasn't pleased. Pedro also started making a lot of noise at night, even waking me up sometimes, but I could never catch him. Then came the last straw. Pedro moved on from trash and things and started eating my food. This was completely unacceptable. War was declared.

I bought a huge mouse trap. It looked like it was large enough to take care of even a big guy like Pedro. I baited the trap with peanut butter (rats love peanut butter) and figured Pedro's days were numbered. Unfortnately Pedro was a more worthy adversary than I thought. He managed to eat the peanut butter from the trap without setting it off. He pulled this off not once, but maybe five or six times. By this time I was going on my vacation so I figured that rat problems could wait. Pedro won that round.

By the time I got back from my vacation Pedro had established himself and apparently multiplied. There was another, smaller rat residing in my bedroom somewhere. He managed to hide in my wardrobe, I think. The worst problem though, was the kitchen. Pedro had gone nuts in there and it was quite frankly a disgusting mess. It took the better part of a Saturday to clean it up. He had chewed through plastic bags and wrappings, gotten into my rice and flour, and actually chewed through the lid of my peanut butter jar. I tell you, he loves the stuff. He'd also been kind enough to leave his droppings everywhere. The fighting had escalated. There was no longer possibility of peaceful coexistence. I went to town and bought some rat poison.

I mixed the poison in some peanut butter and left some outside for Pedro and inside for my new roommate. What I left inside disappeared the first night, but I could never find it. This concerned me a bit. However, several days later a lovely odor tipped me off. Apparently it had worked. I followed my nose to my late roomy and managed to find him.I was a bit disgusting. One rat down.

Pedro, not surprisingly, was more formidable. He seemed to have eaten some of the poison peanut butter, but it didn't kill him. He was still running around. I knew with him I'd have to be more creative. I studied the trap and thought about how he could pull off the peanut butter without setting off the trap. I realized that if he came at the bait from certain angles he would be unlikely to set it off with a pulling motion. I realized what I had to do was control the direction of his approach. With my plan ready, I set it in motion. I baited the trap and placed it against the wall. I then put buckets and other obstacles along the trap except for the one side I wanted him to come to. Then I waited. About an hour after dark I heard the sounds of my success. There was a loud snap of the trap slamming shut and a loud racket of steel (from the trap) slapping plastic (of the bucket). Pedro was snared. The metal arm of the trap and caught him right on the neck, pushing it into the steel teeth of the trap. It is a vicous device. Somehow, Pedro was still alive and trying violently to free himself. I was glad I'd had the foresight to tie the trap down. Pedro put up a long fight until it seemed that he was having trouple breathing. After an hour I went to check since it had gotten quiet and found his breathing was quite labored. I actually felt sorry for the guy until I remembered all the chewed vegetables. Pedro died shortly thereafter. I had won.

There was a brief epilogue to the battle. One night recently I heard a noise in my kitchen and thought it sounded like a rat. This surprised me because I thought all approaches to the kitchen were well sealed, and recently I've been keeping it quite clean to avoid rodents and bugs. I walked in though, and there it was, another rat. This one darted into the fireplace and up the chimney. The chimney! That was how he'd gotten in. And before you ask, yes, I live in Africa but there is a fireplace in my kitchen. I figured a good way to take care of this guy would be to, well, use the fireplace for it's intended purpose. So I built a fire. I just kept it going for awhile until I figured he's either run or asphixiate. It seemed to work. For several days he didn't come back. The next day as a precaution though I had baited the trap and put it in the fireplace. Two nights ago, the rat returned. This one set the trap off immediately. Not only was this one a lot dumber than Pedro, he was a lot smaller, so it killed him instantly. Another victory.

My battle against rodents may not be over, but I seem to be holding my own. I doubt there will ever be one who is as worthy an opponent as Pedro, but we will see. Also, I now have help in my struggle. Last night as saw an owl sitting on the edge of the roof by the courtyard. It was a big one, gray and white and quite beautiful. As I watched him he took off and seemed to be swooping toward the ground on the other side of the wall. With the owl on my side, I figure I can't lose now.

One more piece of news. I'll be arriving at Charlotte airport around 2pm on Friday, November 23. That's the day after Thanksgiving. Just over three months.

The Home Stretch

2007-07-28T09:41:00.000+03:00

I've started my last semester teaching here in Tanzania. I'm pretty busy trying to get the kids prepared for their exams, so I guess I haven't dwelled too much on how I feel about this. It was actually good to get back. Teaching as gotten much more enjoyable as time goes on. I really do enjoy the work and as great as my vacation was, I'm glad to be back.

Speaking of vacation, after my last post I attended the wedding of Steve Veryser, a former PC volunteer who was marrying a Tanzanian girl he met in the first of his three years of service. I met Steve during training when I visited his site for a few days for my "shadow visit" where you go see a volunteer at site to get an idea of what life's like there. He gave me some interesting, and I see now quite true, advice about being a volunteer. He said, "there are some people who come here hoping to change the world, but they all went home." I can see now that he's quite right. You're not going to come here and fix all the problems of Tanzania or even your one school. You can do some good of course, and I'm sure that I have, but the main motivation for this kind of thing has to be, well, selfish. Otherwise during one of the many times when you're beating your head against the wall because it seems like nothing you aren't accomplishing anything you'll give in and go home. If you're here for what you'll get out of it, how you will change, and the with the idea that you'll have a positive impact, even if it's quite small, you'll do fine. I've always been idealistic, and I still am, but I also have a very practical mind and I have certainly learned a lot about what I can and can't do to help people here, and what the people here need to do for themselves.

Anyway, back to Steve, we hung out a few times later on as well, and we ended up having an interesting parallel in our service. He started in Mwanza, like I did, and then had to change sites to a rural mountous region, only in his case it was the Southern Highlands instead of Lushoto. So The wedding was quite interesting because it was obviously a mixed crowd. The wedding was done in Tanzanian fashion and most of the guests were Tanzanian, but Steve had his dad and a group of eight or nine current and former PC volunteers to act as his family. The wedding was a blast, and we tried to mzungu it up for Steve a little bit so he could feel a bit more at home. I think his dad particularly appreciated it because I think he was pretty overwhelmed by the whole thing.

I took some great pictures of some of my kids harvesting beans the other day, but this computer isn't cooperating with my camera, so I'll post them in a couple weeks.

That's all for now. Enjoy the rest of your summer. We're about to head into springtime up here.

Chimpanzees

2007-07-11T10:27:00.001+03:00

Updated: Pictures from Gombe. I uploaded them on flickr, which I'm not yet too familiar with, so I hope it works ok.

The trip to Gombe National Park went extremely well. We flew out to Kigoma on the 6th. Josh and I were immediately impressed with the town. Kigoma is quite small, but it's a nice, well-organized town that offered a lot of nice places to eat and drink. There are few tourists so none of these wasn't much catering to the tourist crowd, which was fine with us. We found a great bar right away where we got a good dinner of chips and goat meat. The next morning we asked around about information to get to the park and found we could hire a private boat for a ridiculous amount of money, or we could take the "lake taxi" which is basically a floating dala dala. This means that hundred or so people were piled in a small boat that puttered up the lake at around 5 mph. We got on just before it left so we were forced to settle amongst the cargo in the bottom of the boat. To let you know how packed it was, I counted 16 people who I could reach out and touch without stretching. Needless to say, it wasn't the most comfortable ride, but it got us to the park for a 2000 shillings, or less than two dollars.

We were dropped off at the park guest house, which has about six rooms and was empty when we arrived. On the boat with us were two girls from the University of Edinburgh and an Australian woman who's been travelling around East Africa. They had managed to book ahead of time, but we had not because the only way to communicate with the park is by radio. Fortunately, there was plenty of space. The house was located right on the lake shore and surrounded by the forests of the park. There were frequently baboons wandering around the house. Lake Tanganyika is extremely beautiful, and quite big. If I'm not mistaken it's the fifth largest freshwater lake in the world, and the second deepest (almost a mile in places). Very steep mountains come right out of the lake. The mountains are densely forested in the park, but unfortunately outside they've been stripped bare of trees. Deforestation is a problem all over this country. However, wherever you are the lake is gorgeous, and I will grudgingly admit I found the lake perhaps even more beautiful than my beloved Lake Victoria.

In the morning a park boat came down to the house and took us to the park entrance, perhaps three-quarters of a mile down the lake. When we got there, we paid the fees (getting the residence rate was a big bonus for us) and hired a guide. The way it works is you walk into the forest and hope to come across some chimps. If you do you are allowed to follow them around or sit near them for an hour or so, then you must move on and look for another group. You can't get too close because chimps are susceptable to human diseases. A TB outbreak a few years ago reduced their numbers by a third and now there are fewer than 100 chimps in the park.

When we set out into the woods I was immediately taken aback by how beautiful and unspoiled the forest was. Except for the trail, there was no sign of human activity. We quickly saw some baboons and a couple of kinds of monkeys (the park is quite thick with them). Of course, we were really waiting to see the chimps. We didn't have to wait too long. We'd been walking maybe 45 minutes when we stopped because we heard some crashing in the trees. We looked up and a huge male chimp came swinging down the tree and landed right in front of us. He was huge! I guess we don't usually think of chimps as that big because the ones you see and movies and things are pretty small, but this was a big dude. He had to weigh over 200 pounds. He started to walk down the path the way we had come. Quickly another chimp came down after him, then a mama chimp with a baby clinging to her and finally a juvenile. They all proceeded down the path and we followed them from a distance. The first two quickly went ahead out of site, but we were able to watch the mama and the two young ones pretty well. The baby rode on his mama's back while she walked down the trail. The others didn't pay too much attention too us, but the baby was extremely curious and kept peeking over his shoulder at us. It really was an incredible site. After awhile we let them move on and we turned to walk farther into the forest.

I quite enjoyed the walk through the woods. We went by a small building Jane Goodall had built to study the chimps from and then heard on the guide's radio that some of the research assistants in the park were watching another group feeding in the trees fairly close to us. We walked to where they were and sure enough, a mother with three children were in the tree eating. The oldest child looked almost fully grown, but the other two, who are twins, were quite young. They were way up in the canopy of the huge tree, so we could only see them from a distance and the view was often obscured, but we sat near the base of the tree and waited for them to come down. It was worth the wait.

The mother came down first and sat at the base of the tree waiting for the kids. We were actually quite close to her so we could watch her for awhile. She just sat there, looking up at the kids and waiting. After awhile of the twins came crashing down in reckless, youthful manner, I suppose. Finally the other twin came down, with his older sister helping him. She was encouraging him to go on his own but sometimes he would grab onto her for support. The most amazing thing was when the little one grabbed hold of her and she swung down a vine and passed maybe ten feet in front of me. Once they were all on the ground they went off somewhere else. Overall, we watched this group for about an hour. Other than occasional glances, the chimps barely seemed to notice our presence. We were extremely lucky to see two groups in the same day (before lunch!) and watching the chimps was amazing.

The rest of the day in the park was also nice, although we were done watching the chimps. There was a beautiful waterfall where we ate lunch, then we climbed to the top of a mountain they call Jane's Peak. From there the view of the park and the lake was amazing. At the end of it, we walked down the mountain to the park headquarters and sat in the shade by the lake having a beer. There were some mischevious baboons around and one came really close to snatching my bag away. Baboons are notorious for stealing peoples bags looking for food. On the Serengeti they're even known to jump into the vehicles.

Later on we went back to the house and had a swim in the lake, which was great. The house would be great to stay in just for the beach and walks through the woods. The next morning, we got back on the packed boat for the trip back to Kigoma. We spent the rest of the time in Kigoma just relaxing until our flight yesterday, and now I'm back in Dar for the moment. It was an amazing trip. I think I may have enjoyed it even more than the Serengeti because it's nice to be doing it all on foot instead of from a vehicle. It was also a lot cheaper to do, except for the plane tickets. Once you get to Kigoma, you can do what we did in the park for less than $100 per person, but it would be about $60 more for a non-resident. I definately would like to come and do this trip again.

This was quite a long post. I hope to put up pictures soon. It's a lot harder to photograph the chimps than it was lions, elephants, and giraffes, etc. because you had to shoot through the trees and because they were also moving quite quickly much of the time. I'm hoping I have a few good shots though. If you want to know more, here's a link to Gombe.

School's Out

2007-07-04T09:20:00.000+03:00

We finally have closed the school for a short two week break. Right now I'm in Dar es Salaam waiting to fly across the country to Kigoma to enjoy a couple days in Gombe National Park where we should be able to see some chimps in the wild. Josh and I were hoping to take the train, but it's booked solid for the next few weeks. Thanks to an infusion of funds from Stateside, we can afford the flight, though, so all's well. This week we've just been hanging around Dar trying not to spend too much money. Unfortunately good food and beer can be awfully tempting. We haven't broken the bank yet, so we should be alright.

Shortly after we get back Steve Veryser, a former volunteer and a buddy of mine, is getting married here in Dar, so I'll be attending that. He's marrying a Tanzanian girl he met his first year of service. He extended for a third year which he finished in December. He got a teaching job then and has been working her since, but they plan to both go to grad school in America before too long. It should be a fun wedding.

As usual, we've bumped into other Peace Corps people in Dar, so it's been a good time. It's hard to believe that we're coming up on two years being here. A lot of people are kind of in a malaise and are ready to finish, but as I mentioned before my feelings are a bit more mixed. Once I get back to school in a couple weeks, there will only be a little over three months of teaching for me, then exams. It's going to go by really fast.

It's the 4th of July. There's not to much going on in Dar about that, not too surprisingly. The one place where there is a celebration is at the American Embassy, but this year Peace Corps Volunteers aren't invited. It's a long story, but I do assure my loyal readers it's not this guy's fault. I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to have a drink in honor of America.

I did have an unpleasant experience the other day. Josh and I were at a bar near the hotel and some guy comes up to talk to us which happens all the time in such a social culture, especially if you stick out. So we greet this guy but it quickly becomes clear he's a barely coherent drunk so we try to ignore the guy. He then starts yelling at us accusing us of being racist because we don't want to talk to a black guy. It was the first time that'd happened to me here. Even if people are assuming your just a rich tourist they quite seldom resent your presence or say something unfriendly to you. It's the kind of thing that you should just ignore becaue it's just a belligerent drunk, but you almost feel like jumping up and yelling at the guy about how you're no tourist or some miner here to make a ton of money and you've been here living with the people as they do, etc., etc., and you want to say "my problem with you isn't your skin color, it's that you're a drunken ass!" Of course that wouldn't help things, so you just ignore the guy and complain about him later. Of course, like I said, this is an extremely rare thing, but it's irritating.

I may be able to post again soon with the ape report. I'm excited. Happy 4th.

Unasikia baridi? That's a big yes.

2007-06-23T09:22:00.000+03:00

Right now most schools in Tanzania are closed, but we're still open to tutoring for Form II and Form IV students because they have their national exams this year. Most of my teaching is in Form II so these are the students I've become closest to and will often refer to as "my girls." It's a bit of a drag to be around when most of the other volunteers are taking vacation, but if I have to be at the school, at least my girls are too. They've been constantly expressing disappointment that I'll be gone in five months, and I must admit, if it weren't too late to make such a decision, I'd probably cave at some point and agree to stay another year. It's all for the best I suppose.

I actually am starting to think about going back home now that's getting close. Unfortunately I have few plans. I'm excited to be back, but I know that readjustment can be pretty difficult. I think the best thing will be to find some kind of job, even if it's one I'll only want to keep for a year or two, to at least have something to keep me occupied. Well, there's still lots of work to do here before that comes up.

In other news, it's cold (the title to this post asks, "Are you cold?"). In the mornings you actually see your breath. I live just a few degrees from the Equator. This isn't supposed to happen. Of course, most of the time it's really nice because we don't experience the oppressive heat of most of the country. In fact, I do kind of enjoy this weather because it isn't horribly cold, and it's fun to tell shivering students stories about snow and ice and to let them know that they don't really know what cold is.

I've had a lot of visitors recently. Patrick, my old buddy from the Lake Victoria region, came with his lady friend for a few days. Josh, Laura, Isaac, and Krista, all volunteers here in the Tanga Region, have been up at various times as well. It's been a lot of fun having visitors, and it's always quite exciting for the students.

Another event not too long ago was our big Memorial Day Party. Nine of us gathered in Korogwe, a transit town down the mountain where Dan lives. We got a goat and paid some guys a couple of bucks to kill it, skin it, and gut it. They also got to keep the liver, so they were pretty pleased with the deal. Then we pit roasted the whole thing. It was pretty fantastic. Goat meat is actually quite good. Not surprisingly, it's a bit like mutton, though usually tougher. The pit roasting worked quite well to keep it nice and tender though. The people around were pretty shocked at our cooking methods though. Over here the only way they ever cook meat is to hack it in bite-sized pieces, then fry it, boil it, or grill it. Unfortunately the cuisine here is normally uninteresting (quite unlike Ethiopian food, which is amazing), so cooking something good and sometimes very elaborate is always a big part of any Peace Corps gathering. I've actually become a pretty good cook and I'm looking forward to having real kitchen facilities and easy access to a lot of ingredients that are pretty hard to come by over here, like a lot of spices. It also will be nice not to have to pick rocks out of rice, beans, and other things like that before you cook them. As far as material things go, probably the top ten things I miss from home are all related to food.

As usual, time is money in the internet cafe, so forgive my fast, unedited typing. If all goes as planned, five months from today I should be back on American soil. Remember, tasty things to eat and drink make the best welcome home presents.

Goodbyes and Grasshoppers

2007-05-19T10:45:00.000+03:00

The sad news this time is that one of the volunteers in the area, Rachael, has gone back to America, due to the situation back home. We'd become pretty close and she was our place to stay in town, so I'm real sorry to see her go. Fortunately that's the only bad news to report.

Yesterday I was talking to two of my students who seem to be quite fond of me despite the fact that they're failing my class. They do try, it just seems that math is a bit too much for them. Anyway, at the moment there are these huge grasshoppers everywhere. I guess it's their breeding season. They asked me if I'd ever eaten them. This question isn't as strange as it sounds because the Haya tribe on the western shore of Lake Victoria, not too far from where I used to live, eat them all the time, and I actually have had them before. They fry them up and they're actually pretty good with some salt. They make a good greasy, salty snack, which is an American staple sadly rare over here. When I told them I liked them they one said, "well, we will cook some for you." I didn't take her seriously because the students at the school don't have the means to cook anything. Much to my surprise, as I was leaving yesterday, they came up to me with something wrapped in paper. Turns out they had spent the afternoon catching a bunch of them and had somehow managed to talk one of the cooks into frying them. They were pretty good, if a little bit overdone. Consider that the Tanzanian version of the apple for the teacher. It's going to be hard to leave these kids.

Right now we're getting prepared for the end of term exams. After that we have a three week tutoring program for the exam year kids, which include all the ones I'm teaching. And after that, it's the chimps! I suppose that's all I have going on.

Short break and back to work

2007-04-21T10:31:00.000+03:00

We had a week off from school that I am proud to say I made the most of. It was mostly quite intense with a short relaxing interlude at the beach.

Just a couple of days before the break I celebrated my 26th birthday, and the students were very sweet and sang to me at the morning parade they have every day before classes. Some also gave me cards that they had bought or made. It was very nice.

A couple of days after that was the big party I had been planning for awhile. It was a huge success. It had originally been planned for just one night, but it extended into two, with the second night even bigger than the first. We cooked chilli one night and cooked a chicken and a duck from the school the second night. Thankfully the sisters were kind enough to kill and clean the birds for us. There were fifteen people sleeping in my house and despite the remoteness of my place we managed to keep well supplied. I have to thank Kajuna, another teacher and my school and a good friend, for a lot of help getting things together. He helped me organize a lot of things like having crates of beer delivered. This is a big deal because they had to be pushed about five miles over the mountain on a bicycle. This upped the price a little, but it was well worth it. Some people from quite a ways away managed to make it out, which was quite nice.

Afterwards we went into Lushoto for a day and did a little hiking and had a nice relaxing dinner. I went to Dar the next day and went to the beach for a couple of days before going to a short meeting in Dar I had to attend. This gave me a couple of days to enjoy a place with actual nightlife. It was a successful trip because I discovered a great Chinese restaurant, and Irish pub, and a few other new places. I love where I live, but there are quite a few fun things you can't do in the village. I was, however, quite glad to come back and get out of the heat.

School's been back in session this week and the rains have finally come. I'm glad I bought some rubber muck boots because I've been wading through sometimes ankle-deep mud to get to school every day. Today, however, it's actually sunny, so it was a pleasant walk to get into town.

The exciting news coming up is that in July Josh and I are planning a trip to Gombe Stream National Park. This is where Jane Goodall studied the chimps and there you can basically hike up and hang out with them because they're used to people. I'm really excited about this. I won't have any time off until July, and that will be my last break before I come home in late November, but I definately think it'll be a good one.

Other than that, life goes on as usual. I'm going to be working really hard and trying to push these kids as much as I can. The Tanzanian syllabus for math in Form 2, which is mostly what I teach, is way too long for one year, so it's a struggle to get all the material in. So far we're in decent shape, but now I'm moving into geometry, which the kids really seem to struggle with. I think I'm going to have to make some teaching aids to try to help them visualize things a bit more. This is the kind of thing that's a bit of a struggle for me because I always found geometry very intuitive, so it's a little more difficult for me to figure out how to explain it. Fortunately I shouldn't be too pressed for time and I'll be able to do extra sessions with them on the weekends. The main problem, as usualy, is that too many kids just think math is too hard and don't even want to try. Well, in the next few months, we'll see how good a motivator I am.

2007-03-24T10:09:00.000+03:00

Hello all. Finally a few pictures. The first picture is my house. I really like it, though I must admit it's pretty big for just one person. As you can see it's a nice, solid structure. Those Catholic missions like to build stuff out of stone, which is pretty cool. To the right of the house you can make out a big concrete tank which holds my water supply and that for the other houses around. It catches rainwater from the roof of the big house in the background as well as getting fed from a spring on top of the mountain. The brick part of the house is the walled in courtyard, which is really big and probably my favorite feature of the house. It's a good place to sit outside while cooking or looking at the stars or something. Also great for parties.

The other picture is of the valley I live in. My house is to the left of the tree with the purple flowers. This picture was taken during the dry season so there's nothing in the fields there except for some banana trees. During the rains there's a lot of corn, tomatoes, cabbage, and a bunch of other things going there. The picture is taken along the road that goes to the school so every day I walk across that valley. It's quite a nice commute.

The last few weeks have been pretty good. St. Patrick's Day was every bit as much fun as that holiday should be. We even avoided a fight to the death between the volunteer with Irish Catholic roots (Clare, named for the county in Ireland) and the one with Irish Protestant roots (me). Guinness truly heals all wounds. The week at school has been ok, except my kids have gotten a little lazy and bombed a test I gave them. I'm going to have to push them to get their act together. The national exams are are a really big deal here and they're a long way from ready. Who would have thought that 14-year-old girls would be short-sighted?

I had a dinner at a neighbors place last night with a bunch of the teachers. It was to celebrate the one month anniversary of the birth of their latest daughter, which is traditional to do. It was a nice time, but the best part was how the new baby's older sister, Sharon, who's three, finally overcame here fear of the scary bearded white guy. All it took was having a little neighbor boy come by who was obviously terrified of me. Sharon decided to show him how afraid she wasn't by coming up and climbing on my lap. I think after that she realized I wasn't so bad, despite white skin and a hairy face. So there you go, a little understanding spread by the Peace Corps, with quite a bit of help from some desire to show off.

The only other thing that's been going on has been heavy pressure from my headmistress, my students, and other teachers to apply for a one year extension. I was surprised to find that a big part of me really wanted to stay an extra year, but I decided not to, so I'll be back at the end of November as planned.

That's all for now. Have a good Easter everyone.

Life is Seldom Dull in Africa...

2007-03-03T15:03:00.000+03:00

It's been quite a week. The worst thing is that Matthew, who was my best friend among the teachers at my school, has abruptly resigned and left after a row with the administration. I don't want to point fingers other than to say there is a lot of blame to go around in the conflict. I think it's really unfortunate because Matthew was very dedicated to the kids. He's planning on going back to school in August, so I wish him the best and hope it works out.

In a kind of bittersweet moment I witnessed very pointedly one of the big differences between African and American life. One of my students was gone for a few days this week. Kids can't really get away with skipping class at a boarding school like this, so you always notice when their gone. She left because her younger sister died. The first thing you notice here is that no one thinks it unusual that a 15-year-old girl would lose her little sister. Just because it's not uncommon doesn't mean they are jaded to such losses though. Far from it. In fact, when the girl arrived back at the school on Thursday, word quickly made it to her class that she was back and about 50 girls ran out of the class and surrounded her with choruses of "pole" and "karibu," meaning we're sorry for your loss and welcome back. It was such a huge outpouring of sympathy and genuine joy to have their friend back with them. So this girl for the next half hour was in the middle of this mob of other girls in a situation that I think most Americans would find unbearable, but she was obviously greatly comforted and moved by the whole thing. Life here is such a constant mixture of joy and sadness. No wonder my first year in this country was constant emotional turmoil.

Another event this week was I attended the A-level graduation at Kifungilo Secondary School, another Catholic girls' school in the area that is one of the top 20 schools in the country. Another teacher and I walked there. By road, this journey would have been more than 25 miles, but we went over one hill, across a valley, then straight up a huge and ridiculously steep mountain, on the top of which was the school. The walk was no more than three miles but took about two hours. This was a steep mountain. The school sat atop the mountain and had amazing views. I was amazed that we had just pushed straight up it. Fortunately we managed to get a lift by road much of the way back because I think the slope would have been fairly dangerous going down. It was also nice to see this really great school that was beautifully built. It almost looked like a German hamlet complete with stone-paved streets. My goal if to outperform Kifungilo in this year's exams. Right now they're number 2 in the region and we're number 3. Unfortunately we have a way to go, but I have confidence in my girls.

I'm sorry, but after more than a half hour of trying, it seems this internet connection is too slow to upload pictures.

Fashion note: my Form 2s, who now seem to see themselves as my little sisters trying to help a hopeless older brother, tell me that they love my hair but my beard has to go. Not to worry, I won't let my students ruin my dashing hippie Peace Corps volunteer good looks. The beard stays.

A Day in the Life

2007-02-16T10:36:00.000+03:00

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I've settled in to the point that my life seems comfortable but quite ordinary. It has occurred to me though, that my life is not ordinary for most of my readers, so maybe now would be a good time to talk about what a normal day is like for me.

I wake up at 6:30 in the morning to get ready for school. I usually make some tea and have some fruit for breakfast, get dressed, and I'm on my way to school by about 7:15. I have to leave my house and walk across the valley through fields of corn, tomatoes, beans, and many other crops. This is always the most beautiful time of the day because the sun is just starting to peek over the mountains and it gives the valley a lovely soft glow. Right now it's a particularly nice walk because butterfly migrations are coming through and at any given time there are thousands in the valley. I walk for about a kilometer and then I'm at the dirt road that leads to the school and walk about another 100 yards. I should note that when it's been raining (as it is often) this walk is much less present because the valley quickly becomes a muddy swamp. When it's dry though, it's great.

When I get to the school around 7:30 the students are all on the parade grounds, a big paved courtyard by the main office, where they listen to any announcements and those who have misbehaved are assigned punishment. Usually this means they will have to carry sand or gravel (for construction work at the school), fire wood (for cooking), or manure (for the farm). Then they are all dismissed to their classrooms and classes begin at 7:45. Students here are divided in to four forms, Form I being the first year of secondary school and Form II the second, etc. Each form is then further divided into streams, so you have Form IA, Form IB, and so on. Each stream is made up of about 40 students at my school, and each has it's own classroom that the students stay in all day. The teachers go to the class when their subject is scheduled. We spend the time when we aren't teaching in the staff room, where we each have a desk, and prepare lessons or grade papers or often students will come by with questions. There are nine periods in a day and I teach between four and six of them each day, so I have enough down time to get my grading done. Of course in a lot of those free periods I end up helping out other teachers because we do a lot of team teaching in the math department. This is a really good thing because too often in this country there is absolutely no flexibility in teaching style.

When I go to the classroom, one of the girls will say, "school motto" and the students stand up and say the somewhat corny school motto, "Forwards ever, backwards never. Good morning, sir!" I then say, "Good morning, how are you?" Then they say all together, "We are fine, and how are you?" Then it ends with me saying, "I am fine, you may sit down." Then they'll take their seats and we'll begin class. In math we usually teach them two periods in a row. Each is 45 minutes, so when I go into the class I have and hour and a half with them. I like having the much time because I will spend the first 45 minutes to an hour teaching them the material with many, many examples. Then almost every class I give them several problems to do for the rest of the time while I go around and answer questions and check their answers. This is the most valuable thing I do with them for a couple reasons. One is that the only way I've figured out to actually get kids to understand math is through repetition and lots of practice. The second reason is a lot of them will ask me questions and I'll sit down by the desk and explain it to just one or more often several of them. Especially with the language barrier, it is a lot easier to explain things to them one at a time or in a very small group. I think it also helps that I will sometimes explain to them a little bit in Swahili, which I refuse to do when I'm in front of the whole class because I'm also supposed to be helping them learn English. The students really seem to get a lot out of the individual attention, particularly the ones who are too shy to come to the staff room to ask me for help. When the period ends I leave and tell me to bring their notebooks to me later for me to check. I probably check each student's work once a week or so.

During the day we have a tea break for 15 minutes and lunch for 45 minutes. The lunch has to be so long because they feed the students in two shifts. The breaks are fun because we have a fairly small staff and we get along quite well, so it's nice to have the meal together. After lunch there's only an hour and a half of the school day left. At the end of the day the students usually have work to do cleaning the grounds or helping with the farm. Sometimes I stay around and help supervise, or if the students aren't working and have questions I'll help. Usually I leave by 5 and walk back home.

When I get home I turn on my blessed satellite radio and listen to Morning Edition on NPR while I do any chores around the house like sweeping or washing clothes. Sometimes I go cook with some of the other young single guys who are teaching at the school, but usually I just cook for myself. My diet varries based on what's in season and how long it's been since I've been to the market. If I have a lot of fresh vegetables I'll often make a stir fry with fried rice or a vegetable and potato curry. I also can make some pretty amazing tomato sauces now, and I can buy pasta at the one shop near my school, so I'll make that a lot now. Of course a lot of times I have some food that's been sent from home like tuna or something. After cooking and eating (by this time it's dark so I'll be going by candle and/or lantern light) I'll start heating water for a bath. I don't have a shower or anything, so what I do, which is what most people here do, is heat a pot of water, pour it in a bucket, then add cold water until it's the right temperature. To bathe you scoop water out from the bucket and pour it on yourself. So basically, you get wet, lather up, then rinse. It's actually a process you get used to, but showers are pretty great when you can get them. By this time it will usually be about 8 or 9. All I'll have to do then is read, if I want to brave candles or use a flashlight, or listen to the radio. I usually go to bed around 10 or so. So that's my normal routine. Feel free to comment with questions. This is all mundane and ordinary, so I don't know what you may find interesting.

One more quick thing, it looks like I'll be home by Thanksgiving, so all my faithful readers only have to hold America together for nine more months.

More Fun With Animals

2007-02-15T13:17:00.000+03:00

This is my new friend, Bob. Bob (the one on the left) is a monkey. He lives at one of the nice mountain lodges in the area. Bob and I get along really well so I've stopped by to visit him a couple times. Sometimes they have him in a cage, but they let him out to play sometimes. He also grooms by beard and hair for me. Isaac's theory is that Bob likes me because he thinks I'm one of his kind, what with all the hair. So as you can see, I'm not an enemy of the entire animal kingdom, just turkeys.

Right now I'm in Dar es Salaam because a filling that a crazy Swedish dentist put in my tooth last month (with no novacaine) has come out. This, as you can imagine, is a bit of an inconvenience since I must travel for six hours to get to the nearest decent dentist. Oh well, this is Africa.

School's going ok. My students are still working, but the results on the first test were a bit disappointing. It's hard to get them to study hard this early in the year I guess.

The results for last year's national exams were released. My school did quite well, which is great. Tanga Region, where I live, was unfortunately the lowest-scoring region in the country overall. Sadly this reinforces stereotypes a lot of the country have about the local tribe, the Sambaa. They're kind of seen by some as backward and lazy, kind of like the South sometimes is stereotyped in the US. There isn't anything like the tribal tension here as there is in some other countries, but people will dismiss this tribe as lazy (if they seem to lack ambition) or greedy (if they have ambition). It seems to be a can't-win. Oh well, such things happen everywhere I suppose.

This is short, but I'm planning on updating tomorrow too.

Back to School

2007-01-27T11:21:00.000+03:00

Unfortunately the computer I am using today refuses to acknowledge my flash drive. This is unfortunate because I brought some good pictures I wanted to post. They will have to wait until next time.

So the school year is underway. So far it's going well and it has been an easy transition back into things. I have a slightly heavier load than last year, but I don't mind. Teaching seems a lot easier than it did before I think largely because I'm more comfortable in the classroom. It's been great to see the other teachers. I get along well with all of them and have become quite close with a few. In short, as odd as it may sound, I now feel quite settled into a normal, comfortable life. As much fun as I had during the break, I'm glad to be back into it. I can't believe how quickly my time here is winding down. I only have ten more months! I guess some people at home may think that sounds like a long time, but I can't believe how soon it will be over. Oh well, I'm just going to make the most of it and I think I can help my students do well on their exams. Time will tell.

So my life's back in routine, but here's some rather unusual information I've come across lately. You may or may not know that hippos can be quite dangerous. In fact there are many areas of this country that have a bit of a hippo problem. My buddy and fellow PCV Patrick who's over on Lake Victoria not too far from my old place lives in a small remote village right on the lake. They've had a few people killed by hippos apparently. This kind of thing isn't too uncommon. Because of this, sometimes the villagers may decide a hippo is too dangerous and must be killed. As you may imagine it's not exactly easy to kill a hippo. Now, however, I have finally learned the common method for killing a hippo, but it is only real effective if the hippo is in a fairly small pond. If you have problems with lake hippos, I don't think it would work. Sorry, Patrick.

This method takes at least two guys. One has a gun and the other has a very large stick, almost like a log. This method is very dangerous for the guy with the stick. The guy with the stick goes up to the edge of the pond and begins to stir up the water. Apparently this annoys the hippo and it will walk out of the water. Of course if the hippo walks out toward the guy with the stick, it's bad news. Anyway, once the hippo is out of the water they guy with the rifle shoots it. Hippos, though, are quite large, and one bullet seldom does the job. Irritated by the bullet, the hippo will return to the water and the process much begin again. Sometimes it can take half a dozen shots or more to finally bring the hippo down. There are no hippos around here, so I haven't seen it firsthand, but I wanted my faithful readers to know how to protect their loved ones from a dangerous hippopotomus.

That's all for now, hopefully next week there will be pictures.

Holiday Fun

2007-01-04T17:11:00.001+03:00

New Year's on Zanzibar was a good time, which really isn't a big surprise. Going to a tropical paradise with a dozen or so good friends can't really be a bad time, can it? What was just as good, and perhaps more interesting, was Christmas.

As I mentioned before, the nine new volunteers in the Tanga region and I were celebrating Christmas at Rachael's house. Rachael is one of the new ones. Her house is on the edge of town and big, so it works well as a meeting place. I'd gotten word that some nuns in the area had a turkey they wanted to sell, so Neil, one of the new guys, and I went to the their farm to take it off their hands. The turkey was big. It was a little bit awkward carrying it back to Rachael's house, but we got it back and put it in a dog house that for some unknown reason is in her front yard. We nailed some boards across the door to keep the turkey in there until the next morning, Christmas, when we had to do the deed.

As before, Neil and I were on turkey duty. Early on there was a little trouble as we disagreed on the method of slaughter. I was in favor of cutting the throat, but Neil pointed out that the PC cookbook tells us to kill chickens by shoving a knife through its skull. After some debate, we decided we could do that. Neil took the knife while I held the turkey. The first stab did not get through the skull. The second did, and we were relieved that it was stabbed through the head and dead. Or so we thought. I let go of the bird, but then it jumped up, spread its wings and squawked with the knife sticking out of its head! It was like some kind of bizarre horror movie when the monster jumps up after you think its dead. Fortunately we acted fast. Neil grabbed the bird and I started cutting its head off. Unfortunately the good knife was in the turkey's head. Our backup knife wasn't exactly what you'd call sharp. After much hacking and sawing we finally got the turkey's head off. Neil and I were slightly traumatized, but better off than the turkey I guess. After that Dan helped us in the long process of plucking and pulling out all the innards. Once all that was done, it actually looked like a big old Butterball. Fortunately, it just fit in the oven we had. We made stuffing, gravy, biscuits, mashed potatoes, and a vegetable quiche to go with the turkey. It was an amazing meal. The turkey and everything else was delicious. I have to give the credit for the great food to Christa and Clare, two girls who have a Mama Clark-like flair for food.

Other than the moments when I found out how much of a killer instinct I don't have, Christmas was great. It's real tough being away from home, but I like the new group of volunteers a lot and it was nice getting to know them a little bit. In less than two weeks I'll be teaching again. I'm real excited, I feel like the next 10 or 11 months will fly by. Before all that starts though, I have mid-service conference where I will have a host of extremely thorough medical exams. I'm feeling pretty good about my health and even think I'm parasite free. We'll find out soon enough.

The other interesting incident was yesterday when I tried to go back to Lushoto. Turns out a bridge on the only road that heads up that way from Dar went out and it was impossible to travel. After waiting by the side of the road for hours, it turned out our options were to walk past where the bridge was out and hope we could get on a bus on the other side (talk about a leap of faith) or we could turn around and go back to Morogoro, which wasn't too far back. We have some friends in town here, so it seemed like the better option. So here we are. We'll be down here until our conference because at this point we'd just have to turn around and head back once we got home.

That's all for now. I hope everyone's having a happy new year. To everyone at home, remember I'm coming home this year. Seems pretty hard to believe.

Back to the Mountains

2006-12-16T16:03:00.000+03:00

Today is my last day in Dar es Salaam. I've had a really great week, and it's pretty cool to be in a setting that's pretty much the opposite of where I usually am, just because I'm one who likes variety. Having said that, I am looking forward to getting back. The main reason is the weather. It is hot in this town. And I mean really hot. It's quite humid too. Of course in a country like this, there aren't all that many places that are air conditioned, so the heat can be pretty oppressive. It's always lovely to wake up in the morning damp because of your own sweat through out the night. Fortunately I've been staying places with nice showers. It's also going to be nice to just take it easy, because I've been moving at a pretty fast pace all week and keeping busy. I should have at least a couple of days to relax at home in the cool weather. Of course, it likely will be raining back home, but that'll be ok thanks to my new purchase of rubber muck boots. Now wading through ankle deep mud and across small rivers to get to town will be no problem.

In about a month I'll begin teaching again. Things will start at the school before that. I think it will be a lot easier now that the students and I are used to each other. I will work very hard this year with few breaks, but as much fun as I'm having now it's not what I'm here to do. I still have Christmas and New Year's and a short PC conference before all that, so I'll just have to get all of my rowdiness out of my system I suppose. It'll be good to be back to things, actually. I have a good life at Kongei.

That's my short post for a dull day. Have a good weekend.

A New Side of Africa

2006-12-14T10:36:00.000+03:00

While I have been here in Tanzania I have seen many sides of the country. I lived just outside the second largest city and now I live in a somewhat isolated valley full of subsistence farms. Yesterday, though, I saw something new. I'm here in Dar es Salaam and I got a call from Matthew, a friend of mine who's another teacher at my school. I told him I was in Dar and he said he is too, staying with a friend of his. We decided to meet up so I went out there. Turns out his friend lived in what many people would call a slum. It wasn't as bad as the worst images you may have seen with pieces of sheet metal just piled together to form some kind of shelter. What it was however was narrow alleyways in which tiny houses were packed together. I've spent a lot of time in the city center of Dar without going out to see how most of the people in the city live. Fortunately people aren't starving, but the high density and lack of sanitation systems causes the occasional rather horrific outbreak of cholera or typhoid or some such disease. It was interesting for me to be there because I definitely seemed to be the only white guy for quite a distance around, but my presence didn't cause the kind of stir I normally do in a rural area. The kids were also real friendly and not at all scared of me. I played with several little girls who seemed pretty excited to have such a strange looking guy around.

Matthew and I spent the afternoon visiting people, eating lunch, and having a couple of beers in a surprisingly nice bar. I can't help but think how shocked I would have been by the place if I went there right after arriving here. I wouldn't have believed that people were raising there families in such an environment. Now however, it doesn't seem like such a horrible life, just different. Of course concerns about health are quite serious, but people, many of them working, are there and leading a decent life. We Americans put such a premium on having our own space that we can't believe that many people don't feel such a need. In fact, Tanzanians are often completely horrified that I live in a house by myself. They think I must be suffering unbearably. This isn't to say that these people probably wouldn't have nicer places if they could afford it, but it certainly isn't as bad as many Westerners would assume at first glance.

I was hoping to post some pictures this week, but I'm having trouble getting this computer to recognize my camera. Hopefully I'll be able to before too long.

Live Turkeys and Car Chases

2006-12-12T10:05:00.001+03:00

I was going to post some pictures and try to write about general life over here. I know that my every day life seems just like dull every day life to me, but to a lot of you back home it's probably interesting to know how I'm living. All of this will wait until later in the week though when I will also post a lot of pictures. It will wait because I had a rather interesting experience on the way into Dar es Salaam yesterday.

So right now because my school is a boarding school and we're basically in our summer break, the students are gone as well as the teachers so it's pretty much a ghost town where I live. This has not motivated me to stay at home too much so I've been looking for some stuff to do on my own. A good opportunity is right now when several of my PC friends, including the two guys who were in Mwanza with me, are in town for the Close of Service stuff which largely consists of paperwork and medical exams. They'll have evenings free though, so we'll be able to go out at night in the big city. I figured it'd be fun to come down for the week and just have a good time then go back to Lushoto for Christmas.

Yesterday I hopped on the bus at 6 in the morning yesterday and made it to the bus station here in Dar a little before noon. I left the station hoping to get a daladala (the crazy, but dirt cheap, mini buses that are the primary mode of transportation) but it was a really busy time and it seemed like it would be pretty hard to get on one. A taxi driver then offered to take people into town for 1000 shillings each (about 75 cents). The dala is only 300 shillings, but no waiting and a more comfortable ride seemed quite worth the extra cash. So I get in with three other people and we're riding toward town. All of the sudden the car in front of us brakes pretty hard to make a u-turn, which wouldn't be so bad if his brake lights had been working. Since they weren't, our driver didn't react quite quickly enough and had to slam on his brakes. He managed to avoid hitting the car in front of us, but the dala behind us slammed into our cab (no one was injured at all). The taxi driver and the daladala driver were pretty irate at the guy who they believed (somewhat fairly) caused the accident. So the dala conductor jumps out of the dala and into our cab and we start chasing they guy! At this point I was thinking two things. One was that I couldn't come up with any scenario where something good would come out of this car chase. The other thing I was thinking was should they succeed in the chase that it would be pretty hard to explain to Peace Corps how I ended up involved in some horrific incident of vigilante justice. After some ridiculous swerving through traffic and a couple misidentifications of the car in question everyone realized we had lost the other driver. I was pretty relieved about this. So the dala and taxi guys traded insurance information and I ended up getting into town, a little shaken up but completely unharmed. The only other annoyance was at the hotel where I had made a reservation. Apparently making a reservation doesn't mean they hold a room for you, but that they'll give you one if it's available when you come. I decided it wasn't worth explaining to them what the word reservation means so I had to go to another hotel for the night. No big deal, but it wasn't exactly the smoothest afternoon. Fortunately I met up with several friends and we went to a really amazing Ethiopian restaurant and had a good time. I think it'll be a good week here in Dar.

As I mentioned, when I get back to Lushoto I'll start putting together our Christmas celebration. I think the highlight of this is that I'm going to get a live turkey from some of the nuns around and we're going to cook that hopefully with mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and green beans. I'm going to have to slaughter the turkey, so that will be a new experience for me. I'll write about that, don't worry. Fortunately Isaac, another volunteer in the region, has killed a turkey before and can give me advice.

Another funny thing that happened yesterday was a Tanzanian guy who saw me assumed correctly that I was in the Peace Corps and said, "Ah, Peace Corps, askari wa amani!" which basically translates to "guardians of peace." That was pretty cool and made me feel like a superhero. As I'm in Dar I have access to cheap and sometimes free internet, so there'll be more this week.

The End of Year One

2006-12-01T10:42:00.000+03:00

My first school year as a teacher is over. It’s been quite a time and I’ve learned a lot from the experience. I’m really glad to have time off, but I’m certainly not dreading the start of another year. For the next month or so I’ll be meeting new volunteers in the Lushoto area and showing them around and I’ll be traveling around a bit. It should be a real good time. I’ll do my best to fill you in on what’s going on.

First off, I was really pleased with how my Form Ones performed. About a month before the final exams I gave them a tough math test that they really bombed. I was pretty angry with them for not preparing and in one class I was yelling at the students. Finally a tiny 12-year-old girl named Theresia put her slightly trembling hand up, her eyes big as saucers and asked, “Sir, will you cane us?” Well, that was too cute so it softened me up a bit. I also thought it was funny that they thought I might hit them. As I’ve mentioned before, corporal punishment is quite common in the schools here, but fortunately at my school now it’s quite uncommon because the administration doesn’t allow it. I guess my students figured that like some of the other teachers, every now and then I would resort to hitting them. So anyway, apparently this test really scared them and they studied really hard for my final. The grades were really good. I’m real glad about that because after they had done so poorly in the previous test I had doubts about how well I had gotten through to them. It’s an interesting kind of pride a teacher has when his students perform well.

Now the school is closed and the students have all gone home, and almost all the teachers have left as well. It’s now really quiet since almost all my neighbors are other teachers. Since there’s so little going on there I probably won’t be at home too much, though I will likely be in the area a lot because I think I’ll want to go around the area and visit the new ones in their sites. A lot of them are in new sites that I’d like to check out and if their settling in time is anything like mine they’ll be real glad to have visitors. The first few months at site was the most difficult time of my life. That’s not to say it was bad, it was just really, really hard. Every day I considered going home for awhile. Once you get four to six months in, for most people, you can make it the whole way and now I’m really glad I didn’t leave. In fact in the last several months any ideas of leaving early seem pretty crazy. Of course the Charlotte 49ers in the Final Four would be a perfectly logical reason, unlikely as it is, but as often happens I digress. The point is I know that these kids are going to be going through a tough time and I hope I’ll be able to help.

Speaking of the new group I got to meet most of them, though they don’t move in until the first week of December. I’m here in the Tanga region, which is divided into two parts. There’s Tanga Juu, the Lushoto area, where I live. Juu is Swahili for “up” or “above” because we’re up in the mountains. Then there’s Tanga Chini. As you may have guessed, chini is “down” or “below.” This is the area near Tanga town on the coast. The two areas are physically close together, but the roads winding their way around the mountains make travel between them somewhat difficult. They also have very different climates because of altitude differences. So in the two areas we have four in Tanga Juu and one in Tanga Chini starting their second year. We’re getting loaded up with new ones. If I’m counting correctly we have a total of nine coming to Tanga region, six Juu, three Chini. I guess I may as well mention that of the nine, seven are girls, which led to my rather ridiculous happy dance on the streets of Dar es Salaam. When I told Josh (my good buddy and fellow Lushoto volunteer, and only other available guy in the area) the news he bellowed a celebratory “Sweet Fancy Moses!” It’s lucky for all involved that they sent more than one girl to the area so that Josh and I won’t necessarily be engaged in an epic battle for some poor girl’s attention. By “epic” I of course mean pathetic.

Besides closing the school it’s been interesting couple of weeks. Right when we were closing the school I had two trainees come visit for a few ideas so they can see what Peace Corps is like once you get to site. We had a real good time. One of the ones who visited will be in Tanga Chini, not too far away. After a hanging out at my place we went up to Josh’s and met up with all the trainee shadowers who came up to the area, seven in all. We had a good party and hiked around a bit. Josh lives next to a big mountain that has a great view of the Kenyan plains from the summit. Unfortunately when we got up there it was so foggy we couldn’t see much, but it was still a good hike.

After the trainees left I went down to Dar for the Thanksgiving celebration at the Ambassador’s house. It was a great party. Over 100 PCVs showed and he was ready for us. Apparently he imported 20 turkeys from Brazil and had a well-stocked bar. There was even cold draft beer which quite frankly was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. It’s kind of odd how much you miss the little things. We had a good time down there and even went to the movie theater. I emphasize “the” since it’s the only one in the country. Now I’m up in the Kilimanjaro region visiting some people in the area before heading home.

I’m updating this later on. I’m back in Lushoto awaiting the arrival of the new volunteers in two days. Several of the current volunteers will be here in town to welcome them. It’s been a bit strange being at the house with none of the other teachers around. The first day was good because I wanted to just have some quiet time, but I may get bored before too long. Fortunately, there will more travel, people to visit, and I just got a lot of great reading material and puzzle books in the mail (thanks to mom and Aunt Becky). As for now, I hope that I can recharge and hopefully begin to write some more detailed things about my experience so far. I hope I’ll have time to go to the school and use the computer a lot and prepare some long posts during the break. No promises though. I’ve learned not to put too much stock in planning over here.

It's been awhile

2006-10-28T09:21:00.000+03:00

My arch nemesis TANESCO, the monopoly power company here, has been beating me into submission. For well over a month there was no electricity during the day, making it ridiculously expensive to use the internet at the places that have generators. A lot has happened since my last post. I don't have too much time for details but I'll give a basic rundown.

I have now been in Tanzania for over a year and I'm more than halfway through my Peace Corps service. This blows me away. It doesn't seem like a whole year, yet America does seem a distant memory. I think the next year will fly by for me. We'll see. I think I've gotten quite well adjusted so I hope that in the next year I can really leave my mark.

I had a great visit from two RPCVs from Jordan who were travelling through East Africa on their way home after finishing their service. They stayed at my house for a few days and came to the school and talked to the students. It was real cool having them around and hearing how different PC service is in Jordan, which is much more developed but lives under the threat of terrorism.

I got stung just below the eye by a Nairobi fly, a rather nasty insect. If you don't know what it is, Google it, no doubt you have more internet time and bandwidth than I. Basically it meant that for a few days I looked like Mike Tyson had punched me in the eye. Fun stuff.

It's now the short rain season. That means maybe once a week it will rain for two days straight and the valley I live in becomes a muddy swamp. I've never seen rain like this. Fortunately a day of two of sun dries it out quite nicely. However, rain at the wrong time can basically cancel any travel plans.

I finish school in less than three weeks. I'm excited about the break. I should get some travelling in. I can't believe I've just about finished a whole year as a teacher. That actually suprises me more than making it a year in Africa.

When the Jordan RPCVs were around I went to Tanga for the first time. It's a fairly large town on the coast. Got some fish, went to the beach. Good times.

In a few minutes I'll be hopping a bus to Mlalo to visit Josh for the night. He has promised pork and cold beer. Frankly I can't think of a better offer. Until next time, remember that just because I can't update very much doesn't mean I'm in bad shape. No need to worry just because I'm in Africa.

Life in Africa Isn't All Fun and Games

2006-09-10T11:18:00.000+03:00

Warning: Parts of this post will be disturbing for some readers. At least the events described were disturbing enough to experience.

So the last post ended with the words "I can't help it if I'm lucky." Man, was I asking for it. Within 12 hours of writing those words it seems a virus carried on some food that I ate brought about my worst week in Peace Corps. It started with vomiting, a slight fever, and then things got serious. I think everyone is familiar with the word diarrhea, but I submit that most Americans don't really understand what that word means. I do. I was reminded approximately every one or two hours for three straight days, then five or six times a day for a few days after that. Oh, and I have a squat toilet. Up to then I had seemed to have a stomach of steele, but I now know that's not the case. I can safely say that was my worst week in Peace Corps. A week in bed running to the bathroom every hour with only my satellite radio for company. Actually, that's not fair, a lot of the teachers came by and brought me food and things. They were very good to me.

I continued to feel sick all of last weekend and finally Monday felt pretty good. Monday was the first time in nine days I managed to eat two meals on the same day. That was fantastic. Needless to say I was still pretty weak most of this past week. This weekend I came into Lushoto again to get out of the house and since I was out of food. I hope I never get a bug like this again, but these things happen. Life in Africa ain't always pretty.

Since I've recovered things are going well. In two weeks we have graduation at the school so everyone's focused on that right now. For some reason they do graduation before the national exams which I think is a big mistake because now the students aren't very focused on anything except the graduation. All the classes do a song and a dance performance as part of the ceremony so they are spending a lot of time rehearsing. It should be real nice and I'll try to get some pictures put up here. That's all I've got for now. I may not be able to post as often now because there is only electricity for two days a week now. I think many of my readers already know how I feel about the power company here, so I won't go into it.

So the moral of today's post, kids, is don't eat raw vegetables from questionable sources. Bad things happen when you do that. Really bad things.

2006-08-26T08:35:00.000+03:00

The picture is taken from Mbelei Secondary, the school in the foreground. This is where Isaac, another PCV teaches. I went up to visit him last weekend. He lives on top of a mountain while I'm on the floor of the valley. If you look directly above the building in the middle of the picture, at the back of the dirt area, you can just make out a rooftop in the valley below. That's Kongei, my school. Interestingly enough, despite what is obviously not that far, it took me over three hours to get from my site to his. That's how transport goes in the mountains.

I didn't get to write in advance this time, so not much to write. Tonight it's movie night because fellow PCV Becky was recently in America for her sister's wedding and brought back some movies. Exciting stuff.

School's still going well. The students are working, but it was a week of difficult material so sometimes it felt like I was beating my head against the wall trying to get them to understand. That's going to happen sometimes, no matter how good the school. I can't let myself get too spoiled at Kongei. It seems that now I'm experiencing Peace Corps Lite not because of the urban setting, but the quality of my school. As Bob Dylan said, "I can't help it if I'm lucky."

Small Victories

2006-08-20T14:58:00.000+03:00

Last week I got up to Mlalo where we had a get together of many of the volunteers in the region. It was a nice time. Hilary, the second year who hosted the shin dig, is a great cook and the proud owner of a meat grinder and a grill. That’s right, we had grilled burgers! We even had home made buns to go with them. Not only that, but she baked a cake, and made potato salad (first time having it in 11 months) and humus. It was amazing. When I have to live off my cooking, such days are really appreciated. I’ve really been spoiled so far since I’ve spent time with at least one other volunteer every weekend since I came to the new site.

School is going really well. I am really impressed by my students, especially the Form IIIs. Of course when you’re teaching they’ll be times when they don’t understand something the first time you explain it. My experience before was that most students gave up on math a long time ago so they just let it go and you really struggle to figure out when they are or aren’t getting it. My girls here at Kongei ask questions when they don’t understand! That’s right, they know that just because they didn’t immediately get it doesn’t mean that they can’t eventually figure it out or perhaps it could be explained better. I can’t tell you how exciting this is for me. In the practice Form IV national exams this year Kongei scored 5th out of 70 schools in the region and as good as the Form IIIs are they can perhaps do even better. By the way, with the attitudes this country has about women, it’s especially gratifying when a girls’ school does so well.

Another small victory I’m very proud of is with the local primary school kids. They would always shout “Good morning, sir!” when they saw me home in the afternoon. So now and then I would call one over and explain in Swahili that in the afternoon you don’t say “good morning” but “good afternoon.” Apparently the few I explained this to told all the other kids because now when I’m walking home I hear, “Good afternoon, sir!” Because of that, even if I left today, I think my Peace Corps service would be a success. Fixing the little things, that’s what it’s all about. One little thing down, only eight million to go.

Now that I’m getting more used to life in Tanzania away from the big cities, certain things have become easier. For example, now that I’ve been here awhile, that 50 minute walk to the road seems like nothing, and in fact I’m lucky to be that close. I can’t just walk out the door and hop on a daladala, but I have an easier time with transport than most volunteers. There are two towns I can get to in an hour and a half at the most. Granted, one of those towns, Soni, is barely more than a village and Lushoto’s no Mwanza, but I can get most of what I need. The variety of produce is amazing and most things are cheap so I’m not going to run out of money, which I could have done in Mwanza if I wasn’t careful. I’ll easily be able to save lots of money for travel which is going to be very nice.

So I have the satellite radio now, which has been amazing. I can listen to the BBC, CNN, and (oh boy!) NPR as well as lots of music stations. The sound quality is great too. The only problem is I am going to go through a lot of D batteries until (and if) I get hooked up with electricity.

Two more things. Some of the other teachers who are about my age are interested in having American pen pals. If anyone's interested, let me know.

The Cold and Wet

2006-08-12T11:13:00.000+03:00

One of the biggest differences at my new site is the weather. Lushoto is very cold and wet. Now of course the temperatures aren't freezing or anything, but you have to understand that buildings here are not built for cold. There is no insulation, let alone heat. In fact, often the windows don't have glass. This means that though it's not that cold, you can never get out of the cold so it kind of slowly seeps into you. I've kind of gotten used to it, but I find that I can't sit still too long before I get too cold and have to move around. They tell me that things will warm up in September. I hope so.

It's also raining quite a lot. No one seems to be able to tell me if it's the rainy or dry season because it's not torrential rain, but steady drizzle. It's enough to make many of the roads a muddy mess and there are some areas around where buses aren't running. Fortunately I can walk to the paved road in just under an hour so it hasn't really affected my transportation. Of course, walking in a cold rain doesn't make for a fun walk. Between the more or less constant cold rain and the fact that I live in this steep valley almost makes me feel like I'm living in a Scottish glen. For those of you who haven't known me that long, I spent about six months in Scotland and am quite attached to the Scottish highlands so this is quite a nice feeling.

Today I'm heading up to Mlalo, about two hours outside of Lushoto. Two volunteers are up there, Josh and Hillary. Josh was in the same group as I was in training and is one of my best buddies in Peace Corps, so I'm glad to be in the region with him. Hillary I've met a few times. Several of us are going up to Hillary's for a party tonight and are returning tomorrow. Fortunately they haven't been getting too much rain up there so we should be ok getting there and back. Again, I marvel at the great PC social scene here (no offense Ryan and Brian, but there are actually girls here, so, well, you know).

Things continue to go well at school. There are the usual frustrations with students used to rote memorization and not really thinking about a problem, but I feel like I'm starting to get through to a few of them. I actually am really lucky with the quality of my students, so I have hope. Also I'm getting along really well with the other teachers and am liking the whole working environment.

My friend Richard from Mwanza came to visit this week. He's a university student who was studying near my old site. It was really cool to have him around for a night, although the poor guy was freezing the whole time. Most Tanzanians are not used to the cold. Unfortunately his wallet was stolen on the bus so it's not just wazungu who have problems with theft.

Ok, well that's it for today. It's actually warm and sunny today so maybe that will keep up. It's hard to believe I'm starting to get close to a whole year in Tanzania. Until next time.

Life at Kongei

2006-08-04T17:16:00.000+03:00

I found out my school has a computer. There’s no internet, but at least I can type things for this blog ahead of time. Since half of my internet time was usually just typing, this makes things much easier for me. I can either pay for half as much time, or spend more time feeding my insatiable appetite for news. All in all, this works out very well for me. The only weird thing will be that I’ll often post these entries days or even a week or two after writing them, so I’ll try to keep the dates straight.

The week of July 17 was a really good one. I’m really getting the hang of the school and how things work here. I already feel at ease in the class as I did at Nsumba. I also like the teachers here a lot, and it’s nice that I have my own desk in the staff room. I didn’t have a desk at Nsumba, so it was harder to get any work done at school, so I usually took it home with me. Here I can get everything done at school so I’m always really done when I go home for the day. I think that’s a luxury many teachers in America don’t have. The highlight of the week though was my old buddy Wes came through.

Now by “old buddy” I mean from training. My dad and my brother, who visited recently, are the only people I’ve seen since I came to Tanzania who I knew before, well, I came to Tanzania (or, actually two days before when we had staging in DC). So, since we were in the same four-person group in training, he’s as old as my Tz buddies get. Anyway, his girlfriend’s visiting from America and they’ve been doing a wee bit of traveling and they decided to come through our area. My new place isn’t so far out of the way and Josh, who was also in our four-man group, is around here as well. Wes and Christina, his girlfriend, came here on the 17th and stayed for the night, making them my first visitors. It was a real good time catching up. Tuesday they left, but they came back Friday and we went into town to Ness’s house (the volunteer in the area with a house in town, so a frequent gathering place) where we met Josh and Jen. Wes and Christina could only stay one night, but the rest of us stayed for the weekend. I had a great time. Yet again I think it’s nice to have so many other volunteers around and be in a region where people from other regions, like Wes, can visit without too much hassle. I love my site, but there’s not too much there. There’s the school, but that’s it. Even the nearest village is 5 km away, so it’s nice to get out and be in the bustle of town and see some friends. Plus, I need to go to town anyway for banking, internet, and buying food, so it’s great that when I go to town there’ll usually be some friends there.

The area where I live, as I’ve said, is pretty remote, so at the moment I’m still very much a curiosity. On walking back from the road not too long ago, a couple kids shouted, “MZUNGU!” and began to walk after me out of curiosity. Gradually more children joined the group until I was walking down the road with a pack of about 20 kids right behind me. It was somehow both cute and a little disconcerting. They stayed with me until the one daladala that goes to the village 5 km past my house came by and I hopped on for the last 2 km back to my house. It is a nice, though long, walk to my house from the road. The other times I’ve made the trip I’ve gone by bike taxi. The first time I tried that, I was scared out of my mind, but now I enjoy it quite a lot. At 1000/= (about $.85) I’m pretty sure I’m getting overcharged, despite haggling a little bit. Of course, just knowing Swahili immediately got the price down from 2000/=, so I guess 1000/= isn’t so bad. By the way, the /= is the symbol for a shilling, the currency here.

So, like I said, things are going really well. Sometimes it’s slow and there’s not a whole lot to do at night in the dark, but things are really good. I miss Mwanza and the lake a lot and a lot of the people back there, but the moves going as well as I hoped. Luckily, yet again I’m in a place where it never gets as hot and humid as I’m sure it is in NC right now. It’s still pretty cold here and should be until September. Enjoy the rest of the summer.

Week One

2006-07-15T09:05:00.000+03:00

So far things have been good here in Lushoto. The school's been good and my students seem excited to have me there. I'm getting along well with the other teachers and even adjusting well to life without electricity. It's quiet and peaceful here, which is nice, but I will miss the more things to do Mwanza has to offer.

One encouraging thing is that my school seems to have a lot more resources than my old one. There is a well-stocked library as opposed to a pile of a couple dozen books. And perhaps the most shocking, almost all of my students have a math text book. Before in a class of 50 maybe two or three would. I don't have to tell you this makes things for me and my students much, much easier. I suppose that the difference is that now I'm at a Catholic school instead of a public one. Even at a good school like this, though, they struggle to get enough teachers. Perhaps because it's not right in town. Anyway, so far it's been great and I'm excited to be at Kongei.

Today I made the walk to the road and it was very nice, except for one disturbing incident. Apparently a truck hit and killed a child and there was a big crowd around the stopped truck. Some women were wailing and many of the men had knives and machetes. I've heard a lot about mob justice here, even for accidents like someone getting hit by a car, so I really didn't want to stick around to see how things turned out. The hardest thing to deal with here is how common a child's death is. If it's not malaria it's a car accident. It's also disturbing that it's so common you almost get used to hearing about the death of the child or grandchild of someone you know. Life goes on though.

Lushoto

2006-07-11T08:35:00.000+03:00

A lot has happened since my last post. Last Wednesday I got a call from Peace Corps. They told me that at 9 the following morning I'd be getting on a plane for Dar es Salaam and the day after that I'd drive to Lushoto. Needless to say Wednesday was a hectic day of saying goodbyes, packing, and giving away stuff that wouldn't fit on the plane. I didn't get to say goodbye to everyone, including my students, which I really regret. It's just the way these things go sometimes.

In Dar I had a good time because a lot of PCVs were in town. PC was also good enough to reimburse me for a lot of my losses in the theft. I didn't expect that so it was a nice surprise. After a crazy night at the weekly "Thirsty Thursday" hosted by the US embassy contingent of Marines, I left Friday morning for my new home.

I'll spread my impressions over several posts as there are so many. First of all, it is incredibly beautiful here. Lushoto is in the Usambara mountains and my school is in a beautiful valley filled with maize fields and banana trees. The school itself is beautiful and well-maintained. It is a Catholic girls' school and much of the staff are nuns. They've been very helpful, as has my second master. He even brought me into town on Sunday and bought me things like cooking utensils for the house. It was a very nice gesture. I'll be teaching math again, and should start teaching tomorrow. Today I had to come into town so I can open a bank account. It's not too hard to get into town from my site, but it's certainly not as easy as it was at my last site. Really though, I have to say overall I think I'll like this place more. It's certainly safer, it's quiet, and the school is really supportive so far. The only down side is that for the first few weeks I'm sharing my house with a couple of other people. It hasn't been a big deal so far, but having my own space to relax was pretty important to me at my last site, and I'm sure it will be at this one. A few weeks won't be bad though.

There is so much more to say about the new place. In my next few posts I'm sure I'll elaborate more. By the way, new address:

Kongei Secondary School
PO Box 61
Lushoto, Tanga, Tanzania

I'll have a lot less internet time than before, so letters would be appreciated. In fact, letters always make my day. I may be able to update this weekend.

Waiting

2006-07-03T12:04:00.000+03:00

Well, Kenny and dad have left, so I'm back on my own. There isn't a whole lot to report about my impending move, but I'll write what I know.

It still looks like I'll go to Lushoto. One school PC was looking at didn't work out, but another looks like it will. I should know in the next day for sure. If I do go there I'll be close to some other volunteers and not far from town. If it is indeed my new site I'll post some more details about the school.

It is possible however, that this school also will not work out. If it doesn't then I will probably be send to the southern highlands. There are a lot of PCVs down there, so that could work out too. I did visit Njombe down there in November, and had a good time.

So basically it's all up in the air. Hopefully I can post again this week to write something definate. Meantime, thanks for all the comments.

Kwa heri, Mwanza. Karibu Lushoto

2006-06-29T10:46:00.000+03:00

Well the big news is that due to my continuing security problems Peace Corps has decided to move me to a new site. In the very near future I will be leaving Mwanza and going to a school near Lushoto, though I'm not sure which school yet. I have very mixed feelings about this, but I'll go ahead and give the pros and cons, only in the opposite order.

Cons:
I like Mwanza, in fact I've grown to like it a lot. It's a nice place to live, very beautiful and I like the people there. I feel like I have only recently started to really get a handle on things. I like the teachers at my school and have made a lot of good friends--Tanzanians, Americans, and Koreans alike. I regret that I have to leave them. Most of all I regret leaving my students so abruptly without a teacher. They are the ones who are really suffering from this decision and I hate that it has to happen to them. I will also have to again go through the adjustment of living in a new place.

Pros
Obviously it's not good to be in a place where I am such a consistent target of crime. I was extremely stressed for a long time but thought that the problems were over. Now as long as I'm here I'll jump at noises in the night when I'm alone in the house. That's not a healthy situation. Also, I'm moving to a good place. Lushoto is in the mountains close to the coast just south of the Kenyan border. The climate is nice, it's beautiful, and there are already several PCVs there, some of whom I'm already good friends with. If I stayed here I'd be the only PCV in Mwanza next year, which would be hard. Lushoto will also solve my travel problems because it's a lot easier to travel to Dar and other parts of the country.

I think overall the pros outweigh the cons, which is good since it wasn't my decision to make anyway. I'm looking forward to getting out there with the Lushoto crowd and I'm sure that I'll get used to things there and be able to do some good work and have a good time. I'm not sure exactly when I'll move, but it should be within a couple of weeks, so please hold off on sending mail until I have a new address. Thanks for all the comments on the blog. It's been a hard time but I'm getting through alright.

In other news, Kenny, dad, and I have been having a pretty relaxed week, which is good. I'm glad they're here while all this stuff is going on. They'll be leaving on Saturday, so then it'll just be me waiting to be moved. It's definately an odd time in my PC service and I haven't quite sorted out how I feel about it all. It's just amazing how fast everything can change.

Ups and Downs

2006-06-24T17:07:00.000+03:00

I know I've mentioned before about how Peace Corps is such a series of ups and downs emotionally. This week is a case in point. My dad and brother arrived on Tuesday, real exciting, but they were a day late. The reason was that dad had to go to the hospital in Nairobi for a partially collapsed lung. Fortunately he's fine now and made it ok and was well enough to go on the safari.

The safari was just amazing. We went through the Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It was amazing. We were at some point within ten yards of elephants, lions, cheetahs, a leopard, zebras, wildebeasts, and many other amazing animals. We also saw hippos, rhinos, and crocs and farther distances. It was simply amazing. We took hundreds of pictures and I'll post some shortly I'm sure. Then last night we returned to my house.

When we got back, the back door was open. Someone had broken through the lock and also the locks on two of the bedroom doors and a locked cabinet. Basically everything I had of value in the house was taken. Some of my dad's money and mine was taken, about $1000 worth in all, also my bicycle, my laptop (just brought to me from home), luggage, food, and even my photo album full of all the pictures I brought from home. Needless to say I'm pretty upset. Peace Corps has told me that since this isn't my first security incident I may have to change sites. This is pretty shocking. I love Mwanza despite my problems and frankly don't want to leave. Starting over at a new site is also pretty terrifying and I'm not sure I have the strength to go through it all again. Basically right now so much is up in the air and I don't know exactly what I think about it. Who knows, in a month I could still be here, anywhere else in Tanzania, or maybe even back in America. It's so frustrating because I thought my security problems were behind me. And to be honest, there's a good bit of anger that my house is the only one on the school ever broken into because someone sees me and assumes I'm wealthy. I almost feel a little betrayed because I'm here trying to help out and someone still feels justified in stealing from me.

Having said all that, the people at the school and my neighbors, and I should add PC staff, has been really helpful and supportive. And if I have to go through this, I'm glad it's when family's here. The way the people around have been behind me makes me feel particularly bad about the possibility of leaving. By next post maybe I'll know where I'll end up and how I feel about it. Hopefully I can now have a nice relaxing time with my family for a little while.

A Day in Wazunguland

2006-06-14T11:28:00.000+03:00

My good buddy and fellow lake volunteer Rob posted some great Mulletfest pictures here. Also check out his blog for an exciting account of our ridiculous bus ride.

I came to Arusha today, heart of tourism in Tanzania, hoping to get a bus back to Mwanza but I couldn't get a ticket until today. I'm leaving around 2 pm and will again be travelling overnight through Kenya. I am not exactly what you'd call excited. Arusha has been an interesting experience. It's a little smaller than Mwanza, but much more chaotic. There are also tons of people trying to hawk overpriced souveniers to every white person (or "mzungu," the plural is "wazungu") they see. They are actually pretty shocked when I come back to them in Swahili. They're pretty much used to tourists who don't know a word of it. In Mwanza most of the foreigners you see are people who live there so it isn't surprising to the Tanzanians if you speak a little. Now being a big tourist center has its advantages. There are nice coffee houses and an actual Western-style supermarket. The supermarket completely blew my mind. I just wandered the aisles in a daze for awhile. It's amazing how quickly ordinary things become strange once you leave them. I guess in my mind certain things belong in America and certain things in Tanzania. Here the supermarket blows my mind, but I guess the site of a Maasai warrior walking down the street in traditional dress would shock me at home even though I see it about every day here.

Alright, I'm off to grab lunch before the bus ride. Maybe by this time tomorrow I'll be off the bus.

Pan African Mulletfest 2006

2006-06-10T12:05:00.000+03:00

Right now I'm up in Moshi for a few days to visit the Kilimanjaro area, an area with a high density PCV population, and break up the ridiculous 31 hour bus ride from Dar to Mwanza. In Service Training with the group I spent to months with in Morogoro was great. The highlight was beyond a doubt Mulletfest 2006. That's right, about ten of the guys and one very brave lady in my group grew our hair out in order to have a mullet cut this past week. We even had shirts made. My new look is pictured above. Unfortunately it's hard to see the hair in the photo, but I think the mustache is the best part anyway. I also figure you can't go wrong with a Tanzanian flag headband. Somehow I think I have stumbled on my natural state. Oh, and by the way, with the mullet I am no longer known as Andrew, mild-mannered Peace Corps Volunteer, but as the obnoxious redneck "Jugs." My fellow PCV Justin (down in the deep south, very, very far away from me) posted more photos here.

The whole week was a really great time. We were a really close training group and most of them I hadn't seen in a little over six months, so it was great. It's also amazing to compare notes with other volunteers and hear about the differences in the different parts of the country. Unfortunately it'll be another six months before we're together again, but right now I'm taking advantage of vacation time and visiting some other volunteers. And in just over a week, my dad and brother will be arriving so it should be a great school break. So I'll check in again soon. Have a great summer everyone. So far mine's been great.

Long Week

2006-05-26T11:48:00.000+03:00

It has been a long week at Nsumba. Supervising exams and most of all, grading. I put in a few 12-hour days this week getting all my papers graded, but they're done now, so I took off a little early today.

As I expected before I got here, many of my students struggle with math. Last year my Form III students took national exams and only 30% passed math (this put Nsumba among the top 20% in the region). It's kind of discouraging to think that it would take a miracle for me to get half of them to pass their exam next year. Their performance on the end of term test is not encouraging. I think part of the problem is a lack of effort because some of the problems were almost identical to examples we did in class, so if they studied they should have done alright. On the other hand, it's pretty tough that since they have no books, if they don't see something written on the board by me they don't see it at all. Under those conditions it's pretty hard to get what you need across in four hours a week. I'm still pretty new at teaching, so I know I could be better at it. Still I know it's not only my fault. Hopefully in the next year and a half all of us can do better.

One interesting and somewhat related point was a conversation I had with one of my students one day. He actually said that I was his best teacher, and knowing he wasn't exactly enthusiastic about math, I asked him why he thought that. Well, it turns out that it was because I hardly miss any periods. Of course I'd noticed that many teachers seldom leave the staff room and go teach something, but I guess I hadn't noticed the scope of the problem. Now some teachers are really good and always show up, but apparently this student didn't have many of those teachers. So I thought that it was interesting and kind of sad that I'm considered a really good teacher just because I show up.

So most of the hard work is over. It'll probably be hectic Monday and Tuesday next week, but soon I'm off for some time off and a chance to see all the PCVs I trained with. Hard to believe most of them I haven't seen for six months, which is hard after how closely we bonded in our shared trial of Peace Corps training. Until next time.

Term Winding Down

2006-05-22T14:20:00.000+03:00

It's been a really eventful week, so here goes:

Last Monday I met Joshua Berman (a returned PCV from Nicaragua) and his wife Sutay (likewise an RPCV, but in the Gambia) came through Mwanza for a couple of days. They are in the midst of a very long trip you can read about on Joshua's site. They got in touch with me thanks to this blog and called me up when they got into town. Of course, all Peace Corps Volunteers love visitors, so I was excited to meet them and show them around town. The following day, before they left, they came out to my place for a little while. It was really interesting to talk to the two of them about their Peace Corps experiences, both to compare with my current experience, and also because I'm curious about what it's like when the service ends. I heard from them, as I have heard from others, that returning home after service is very difficult. That doesn't surprise me. I've often heard that "reverse culture shock" is worse than the original culture shock, and this was certainly true when I returned home from Scotland four years ago. Oh well, all that is a long way away. Anyway, Josh and Tay, thanks for stopping by and karibuni tena!

Also last week we finished up classes and this week we have end of term exams. The math exams will be given Wednesday, so after that I will be very busy because one other teacher and I will have to grade all of the school's math exams in just over a week. After that I'll be rushing off for Peace Corps training. It's hard to believe I've effectively finished a quarter of my Peace Corps service. It doesn't seem like almost half a year in Mwanza.

Saturday I went with my buddy Kassim and another teacher with about fifty students to Kinango Secondary School, about an hour and a half east of Mwanza, for our schools to compete in a debate, and sports (volleyball, basketball, and, of course, soccer). The school was in a pretty isolated place and the land there was absolutely beautiful. It was a lot of fun to go out there, and the students seemed pretty happy that I'd come along. It's nice for students to have diversions like this because I feel bad for them being stuck at a boarding school with nothing at all to do on the weekends. That's kind of a recipe for teenage boys to get into trouble. It also gave me a chance to see how luck I am to be at Nsumba. While Kinango is beautiful, it would be very, very hard to get to a town from there and of course there's no running water or electricity. Yeah, I'll take my Peace Corps Lite any day.

I may be able to post again before I leave for Morogoro on June 2, but I may not. If not, it may be three weeks or so until my next post, so don't be alarmed if that's the case.

My final word is I want to say a big congratulations to my brother Kenny "Special K" Clark for graduating with his Master's from Wake Forest a week ago. Also congrats to my best friend Woody Pike and his special lady Michelle, who will be getting married on Saturday. I hate be missing all this stuff, guys. Best wishes to all of you!

Africa vs. the West

2006-05-13T15:06:00.001+03:00

The other day I walked down to the dining hall around sunset and many of my students were out eating their usual dinner of ugali (boiled maize flour with the consistency of mashed potatoes) and beans. Some of them invited me to join them and we began talking. They all seemed to want to talk about history and current events, particularly Africa's relationship with Europe and America over the last couple of hundred years. It was a very illuminating conversation.

Many of my students are very passionate about how much harm slavery and colonialism did to them. I think they are completely right about that. There is still an attitude among so many people here that Africans just aren't as smart and capable as Europeans and Americans. This self doubt is certainly at least partly because of colonialism. However, many of them see it, and the globalization they call a new colonialism, as the only reason Africa is still poor. This I argued vigorously with them. Now, before I go into detail in this argument remember that I am very liberal and am in what some conservatives call the "blame America first" crowd. I'll plead guilty to this, but it is because I feel that to be a country, or even a good person, it is much more important to see what you can do better than what others can do better because you can actually do something about your faults. In the end you can criticize others, but they have to make the decision to improve themselves. So I say that it's fine to talk about the bad things other countries or people are doing, but first let's look at what we are doing.

Having said that, I did defend America from my students, or at least tried to pursuade them to look at the things Africa can do to help itself. One thing I point out to them is that globalization does hurt many people, there's no doubt about it, but it helps many as well. Resisting it to me seems rather useless because it's a fact of life, and quite frankly poor countries that embrace it, like India and China, are doing a a lot better than poor countries that reject it, like Zimbabwe and Bolivia. So good or bad, I feel like you have to play the game. Of course many policies of the West hurt developing countries, but I feel like screaming tp these countries to change isn't going to help the situation here.

The other thing I point out to them is that there is another very important reason Africa and the Middle East largely stays poor--the treatment of women. Women in Tanzania and much of Africa are for the most part just expected to have as many babies as possible and stay home and cook, clean, and watch the kids. I told my students that doing this means half of the working age population isn't contributing to the economy. Now I'm not saying being a stay-at-home mom is so horrible, my mom was when my brother and I were real young. However, if she were African, she would probably have had 8 or 9 kids and most likely would have been out of the work force for a good 30 years. I told my students to look at the countries in the world that are rich, be they in America, Europe, or Asia. These are very different countries with different cultures, but the common factor is that in all of them there are good opportunities for women. Even countries that are poor, but richer than Tanzania, like South Africa, have more equality for women. Of course, countries made rich by oil don't have to fit this mold, but oil definately changes the equation. Anyway, I'm generalizing, but I don't have time to write a thesis, though I think it'd make a good one.

So anyway, I'm glad that my students are so interested in the world, but sometimes I'm discouraged that they don't want to help themselves, but just make excuses. Some of them also have crazy conspiracy theories. One even asked if as a Peace Corps volunteer I have to write a report for the CIA. Overall though, I really enjoy hearing the students' points of view on these things. I'm just going to be careful they don't provoke me into a political debate while I should be teaching them math.

Who's the Real Do-Gooder at Nsumba?

2006-05-02T15:50:00.000+03:00

The kindness of some of teh people here really touches me sometimes. Take my friend, Kassim, another teacher at my school. For no real reason one day last week he invited Cha, the Korean volunteer at our school, and I to have chips (in the British sense) after school. There are several places by the road where they sell beer and soda and usually there's a guy who pan fries chips and grills beef shishkabobs call mshikaki. A popular thing to do with the chips is to add beaten eggs as he fries them. This comes out as sort of a french fry omlette, which sounds strange but is really good. It's called chipsi mayai--mayai being Swahili for eggs. So Kassim, who makes less money than I do and a lot less than Cha, insisted on paying. This is real normal for him. He often insists on paying for bus fare if we go somewhere and things like that. I've learned it's pointless to argue. I tried to make up for it a little this time by buying our sodas. So they guy made chipsi mayai and mshikaki one serving at a time since he only has one pan, and of course Kassim took his last. Everything up to then was nice enough, but what really touched me was when he saw a little boy walking home from primary school, called him over, and gave him half his food. By then it was 3 in the afternoon and that kid probably hadn't eaten since breakfast at 6. Needless to say, he was quite hungry and extremely grateful. I often think of the things I'm missing at home and lament my, by my old standards, spartan existence. Then there's Kassim, who's working as hard as I am but doesn't have a relatively luxurious life to look forward to after two years. I'm often amazed by how much people with so little can give.

Back to Teaching

2006-04-25T15:56:00.000+03:00

So far it's been a very good week. First of all, Sunday I got most of my lights replaced, finally, so I now get to read by glorious artificial light after 7 pm or so. Teaching is going well, it's actually kind of nice to be back into the old routine, but that doesn't mean the news I got today was bad. Turns out, tomorrow's a holiday. It's Union Day, celebrating the union of TANganyika and ZANzibar to become--TANZANIA. Pretty exciting. What's funny is how many teachers at the school didn't realize tomorrow was a holiday until today. So in honor of the holiday we will be celebrating volunteer solidarity as the Peace Corps and KOICA (that's Korea's Peace Corps) of Nsumba and Nganza Secondary Schools will get together and make a huge pot of chile. The Koreans have cooked Korean food for Ryan and I before, so we are finally going to return the favor with some wicked hot American chile. I'm pretty excited. Ryan's recent purchase of a pressure cooker(brilliant) and meat grinder (more brilliant) make this exciting event possible. I can hardly contain myself.

On top of all that great stuff (electric lights and chile are enough to make a week great in the Peace Corps) finally, finally, it looks like I'm going to get that security gate on my door. My headmaster brought a fundi (that's Swahili for a guy who makes and/or fixes stuff, I guess you could say "handyman") to my house today to look at my house and give him an estimate. He should start in the next couple of days. I'm glad this is finally being done because both I and the Peace Corps were losing patience with my school. With the extra security I won't be too worried about leaving my house to travel in June and July.

So I notice my mood is dramatically different from my last post. Well, let's just say that emotions are pretty far from constant here in the Peace Corps. In fact most days I will experience the mood from this post and from the other each several times a day. "Emotional roller coaster" really is the best way to describe this service. The ups and downs are more extreme and come more quickly than I have ever experienced before. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's horrible, but it is never boring (except when you're sitting at home alone in the dark, but that's not a problem at the moment). It's an amazing amount of stress and I imagine I'll look five years older instead of two next time most of you see me, but it's an amazing experience that I'm lucky to have. Who knows, maybe I'll even have a positive impact here? So until next time, this is Andrew Clark, signing off from the University of St. Augustine computer lab, Mwanza, Tanzania.

Electricity

2006-04-14T13:00:00.000+03:00

As loyal readers know, TANESCO, the company that holds a monopoly on electricity in this country, and I are not exactly the best of friends. Well they managed yet again to find a way to foil me. No, my electricity isn't exactly out. In fact it's been on pretty much all week. However, there seems to be a problem with a transformer around my school and for a couple of days the current was so low it hardly lit the light bulbs and wouldn't start the fluorescent lights. Then for a short time things went normal, then the current spiked incredibly high. This blew out all my fluorescent lights, most of my light bulbs, and my phone charger. They said they have to get another transformer from God knows where and install it, so I'm sure it'll be here by year's end. In the meantime, there's no use replacing bulbs that will just blow out in the periodic spikes, so we're waiting until the transformer is fixed. The school will replace my lights which is a good thing because one fluorescent tube is a good four days' pay for me, and I lost three of them. So despite having electricity, I still am again stuck with candles. I did replace my phone charger, which cost $10. Even that's pricey as I make $6 a day.

Ok, sorry about that rant. On the other hand it's been a pretty quiet week. I'm catching up on my laundry and grading tests. I kind of wish I could have travelled but I don't want to leave my house until the security improvements are done. Unfortunately, still nothing but promises there.

So a lot of whining this entry, but I guess I have too much time on my hands. Next week it'll be back to the old routine, which will be ok. There will only be about six weeks of classes before the long break when I will have a lot more going on. Hopefully things will be relatively calm until then.

Conference Over, Life Back at Site

2006-04-10T10:38:00.000+03:00

The conference is over, so back to normal life. After the conference, the people going back to Bukoba couldn't leave until last night because of the ferry schedule, so they came up to my place Saturday with Meena (from Musoma) and we had a big dinner. They stayed around until last night and then got on the ferry. The whole time was really great and it was nice to see everyone. The only problem was that when I returned home on Saturday I found that even though a student was staying in my house to watch it someone tried to break open my bedroom door (which I had locked) and a few small things were stolen. The whole security thing is becoming really frustrating, so I'm really pressuring my headmaster to improve the security at my house. He's being very responsive. He was not around for the last few weeks so he likely wasn't aware that promised improvements have not yet been done. Hopefully it'll be done soon. I'm certainly not going to leave my house overnight again until I have more secure doors and windows. I think PC will put a lot of pressure on him too so I hope it can be taken care of shortly. I know volunteers who have been temporarily or permanently removed from site because of security concerns, and that's really something I don't want to deal with. People back home shouldn't worry to much. I've never felt physically threatened. I think stuff will be stolen but I think it's extremely unlikely I'll be hurt.

Anyway, other than security things are fine. I think I'm going to enjoy a week to relax. Of course there is also a lot of house work to do and tests to be graded, but it won't be too bad. And after the break it's maybe six weeks until we have the much longer break between semesters. Time actually is going pretty quickly right now. So I'm off for at least one day of utter laziness. Since I have a lot of time this week I may be able to use the internet a little more so I may update this again in a couple of days.

Break from Teaching!

2006-04-05T17:19:00.000+03:00

Well, in the continuing saga, my electricity is back now, but I'm not at home. This week I'm staying at a lovely Catholic conference center in town where six other volunteers and I are at a conference for PEPFAR, which is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Tanzania is one of the 15 target countries for the program and Peace Corps carries out some of the programs. Most of those are done by the health volunteers, but the rest of us are encouraged to do some secondary projects in HIV/AIDS relief. It is an area where there is a lot of grant money available, so if something comes up I may go in that direction. There are a lot of options though and I'm still pretty new at site so I haven't made up my mind on what kind of project I'll do. Time will tell.

The conference itself has been a blast. I hadn't seen most of these volunteers in several months and one I just met. It's been real cool to get together and go out on the town each night, including a great time last night for my birthday (25, now, which according to my cousin Erika means I'm "half dead"). Following the conference I'll have about 10 days off from school, so it will be nice to rest and collect myself. I won't travel too far, but may make some small trips or have a visitor or two. We'll see.

I got a text message today from Laura, a volunteer out in Tanga (on the east coast near the Kenyan border) who is a good friend of mine. Apparently her students just killed a 12-foot python that had just eaten a goat. Unfortunately I have no exciting wildlife stories to report. Being at a site so close to a big city, in many ways I'm just "Peace Corps Lite," except I have more security problems. Like I've written previously, it's different enough being where I am, but you get out in a village and it's another thing entirely. It's really amazing how much the PC can differ between volunteers in the same country. I'm sure I'll get out there to Laura's site sometime and get a little more insight into the differences. Until next time.

Almost at Midterm

2006-03-24T15:09:00.000+03:00

Hard to believe but after only one more week we'll be at midterm exams. In a way time seems to have flown by. It doesn't seem like I'm about halfway through my first of four semesters. This month has been interesting because we have had nine student teachers from the local teachers' college student teaching at Nsumba. It was nice having these students around. They were all bright at seemed extremely dedicated, which is what I have noticed from the young teachers at my school as well. If I'm seeing a good representation of the younger generation of teachers, then it seems like there is indeed some promise in the future of Tanzania's schools. I certainly hope that's the case.

Unfortunately, my electricity has cut off again. I had none for two weeks, had it for a week, and now for the last few days it's been out again. I kind of gave up on getting to use my electric stove too much so today I went out and bought another kerosene one. Now I can cook rice and beans at the same time! Still, the grading papers by candlelight is not getting any more exciting. Hopefully I'll have it back before too long, but I've learned not to get my hopes up. TANESCO, the monopoly Tanzanian power company, has officially become my representation of all of Africa's evil. I haven't figured out exactly how they are responsible for HIV and malaria, but I'm sure there's a connection.

Last weekend I went up to Musoma on the eastern shore of the lake and spent some time with the three PCVs up there. It was a good time and it was nice to get out of town for a little while. I like Mwanza, but as many of you know, I do enjoy a change of scenery now and then. The highlight of the trip was that Meena, my host in Musoma, is an amazing cook, so I had some great food. She even baked a cake, which is quite a feat in a world without ovens.

Other than that things have been more or less routine. I get up before sunrise, hope there is water pressure because bucket showers are a pain, go to school and teach, go out to the road and buy some food, visit with some friends, cook, eat dinnner, read, and in bed by 10 or so. It's become a pleasant routine, sometimes broken with trips to town, a beer on the lake with PCV Ryan, or a movie and some Korean food at Cha's house (he's a volunteer at my school from KOICA, Korea's version of the Peace Corps). It's turning out to be a pretty nice predictable life. And best of all, no one's tried to break into my house in almost a month. Pretty exciting. I think in a couple of months I'll be ready to start thinking about some secondary projects, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. For now I'll just concentrate on doing my job and staying sane. Fortunately the latter is steadily getting easier.

Another world 30 km away

2006-03-13T13:45:00.000+03:00

I've been here in Tanzania for almost six months now, so for the most part I'm pretty used to life here. This past Saturday, though, I realized how limited my experience has been. Almost all of my time in the country has been in places that are either urban or the Tanzanian version of suburban. Unlike most PCVs, I have spent very little time in rural settings out in the villages. This past Saturday though I did spend the day in the village, and it was quite a time.

Right now at most of the schools in the area there are student teachers. One of them at Nganza, my PC neighbor Ryan's school, invited the two of us and Brian, the PCV in the town of Misungwi not too far from here, to go up to her family's place in a village outside of Misungwi. It sounded like a good time and something different, and I knew I'd get a good meal out of it, so I went along. It really was an amazing ride. The first thing was that the landscape was completely different even though Misungwi is only about 30 km away. Where I live it is very hilly and wooded and there are huge rock formations, especially right on the lake. Once you get a few kilometers further way though you come to grassland that is almost completely flat. Picture images of the Serengeti without animals and you're pretty close. It was a really beautiful and clear day so the scenery was quite amazing.

Once we got a ways off the main road another difference was how empty things got. Like I said, I've pretty much only lived in fairly densely populated areas. The sheer amount of empty space was amazing. You really could imagine a herd of wildebeast come thundering through at any moment. Another difference is so far from town, Swahili is no longer the predominant language. While most people know Swahili, they mostly speak Kisukuma, the language of the Sukuma tribe which inhabits this region. Brian, living in a much more remote site than Ryan or I and being gifted with languages, actually knows a good bit of Kisukuma, but Ryan and I don't know a bit. Fortunately in the house we were speaking Swahili, which Brian and Ryan have no problems with and I can muddle through.

Perhaps the most significant difference was transportation. By Western standards, my normal transportation may seem primitive. I get around in mini buses about the size of a VW van called daladalas that they cram as many as 30 people into. It's not the most comfortable way to get around, but it's cheap and convenient. I have one come by my house every five minutes or so and get to town for the equivalent of a quarter. It's pretty nice. Out of town, however, it's a little different. So, let's say the closest point any daladala comes to your house is five kilometers, and you just want to drop in for a visit so it's kind of ridiculous to walk the ten kilometer round trip in the heat, but there aren't even any cars around, let alone buses. What do you do? (Oh, and don't think horses. I've actually seen significantly more elephants than horses in this country. I've seen one elephant so far). Well the solution the rural Tanzanians have come up with is an interesting one--bicycle taxis. That's right, a guy with a bike that has a small platform over the rear wheel for the passanger to straddle. Now I have to tell you, I'm not all that comfortable on bike's in the best of circumstances, but when I'm the one pedalling, at least I'm in control of things. Riding on the back over bumpy roads dodging cattle was at first downright terrifying. Once I got used to things and relaxed though, it actually became a pretty fun way to travel. For the sake of our pedalers I was glad it was so flat where we were. They got us there (sometimes alarmingly) quickly and each got the equivalent of 50 cents for their trouble, which doesn't sound like much, but for the time it took it's only a little less than what I make. Once in the village we had a great time walking around and had a great meal, so I was really glad I got to make the trip. I'm also excited because this weekend I'm going to Musoma on the eastern shore of the lake to visit Meena, another PCV. I haven't been up that way yet, so I'm excited about it.

In other news, last Thursday after 15 days my electricity finally got fixed. It was one of the most exciting moments of my life. Grading tests by candlelight, while possibly the most quintessential Peace Corps experience, is no fun. Everything else has been going pretty well and it's only a few more weeks before we have a PC conference where I'll get to see most of the lake volunteers who I haven't seen since Christmas. So, until next time, kwa heri (goodbye).

Roller Coaster

2006-03-02T15:52:00.000+03:00

It has been an eventful couple of weeks with some crazy ups and downs. School is going really well. My supervisor from PC was here and got a really positive evaluation of me from the administration at my school. On the other hand, my electricity has been out for a week and my best buddy in PC, Nathan, is heading home early. I must say I'm disappointed to hear that news. I was also sick last week so I missed the Nganza graduation (see last two posts) and all my fans (who were the ones graduating) have left and I can't roam the school like a rock star anymore. Oh well, such is life. My buddy Ryan, the one at Nganza, tells me how everyone has crazy highs in lows in the Peace Corps and I have to tell you it's completely true. Most days I'll at some point feel like I'm the luckiest guy in the world to be here and at some point be desperate to be back home. It's a strange roller coaster ride, but it's starting to seem normal. Problems come, but I deal with them. If I can't deal with in by myself, then most likely there are friends or neighbors who can help me out. It's a strange life I'm living here. It's usually not easy, but that's ok. I didn't come here for an easy life.

Not much internet time today, so keeping this short.

Security

2006-02-18T10:35:00.000+03:00

Yet again there have been many ups and downs since my last update. First, there have been security concerns. On several occasions someone has attempted to reach through the bars on my windows and take anything close enough for them to grab. On one occasion a bag containing my camera and passport was taken, so I lost all my pictures, which is why none have appeared on the blog. Even more serious, though, was last Friday night when I returned to my house with a couple of Tanzanian friends. We caught someone with a crow bar trying to pry open my front door. I'm glad there were three of us, since he had the crow bar, and he just ran away. He did not succeed in getting in, but he did do enough damage to the lock that it would no longer open and I had to used the back door until we could replace the lock this week. Now people stealing stuff is one thing, but the fact that someone was almost in my house is a little more disturbing. Fortunately, my neighbors and the people at the school have been great. My headmaster has agreed to put metal gates on my doors (a fairly common security precaution here) that would probably prevent someone from breaking in. My neighbor, who is also in charge of maintenance at the school, brought someone to fix the lock, is hiring a welder for the gate, and brought students over to my house to clear out all of the large bushes surrounding my house, taking away a potential thief's hiding place. Once those gates are finished I feel like my house will be pretty secure.

On other fronts, things are going well. Classes are starting to feel fairly normal and I think that it will be a job I can handle just fine. I'm also starting to spend more time with the several Tanzanian friends I've made. I think that is helping me feel more part of the community. At first it was extremely hard to feel like I belong there, and in some ways it still is, but I don't feel so out of place anymore.

I've taken some more time to explore some of the areas around the school. As you go away from town from my house, you quickly come to sparsely populated farmland close to the lake. The area is quiet and beautiful and there are always some amazing birds down there. There's even an out of the way place to have a drink, and a really nice hotel/bar they are building that will be spectacular when it's finished. Of course with the speed things get done here, it may not be open until after I'm gone.

An update on my Nganza fan club: they convinced Ryan to invite me to their Form VI graduation on Wednesday. It's going to be quite a party.

School Daze

2006-02-06T14:57:00.000+03:00

So I've started teaching and it hasn't exactly been easy. Teaching is something I'm completely new at, and the language and culture barriers I must overcome are often difficult. Also, with recent health scares from two of my grandparents, I've felt guilty about being away from my family during tough times. I've also been profoundly disturbed with the practice of hitting the students with wooden sticks for pretty much every misbehavior, however minor. At one point I was watching a student getting hit and I wondered how I could possibly stomach that for two years. I still don't know. However, having said all that, teaching is getting easier, however slowly, and the students seem extremely grateful that I show up for class--get this--on time. I found out the day school opened I'd be teaching Form II as well as Form III. The Form III classes are great and there are only about 25 students each, but each of the Form II classes has around 60. That makes things extremely difficult and means I can give almost no individual attention. Of course, I expected difficulties like this when I came, so I'm sure I'll manage. As often as I wish I were at home close to family and somewhere I can walk down the street without sticking out like a sore thumb, I feel like I'm doing the right thing and that I will get more and more out of this experience as time goes on. Time, as always, will tell.

One of the more interesting, and I admit quite nice, things recently is that I've become somewhat of a celebrity at Nganza Secondary School, and all-girls boarding school about 1 km from my all-boys boarding school. There is another PCV there, Ryan, so I go down and visit now and then. Ryan tells me that many of the girls were quite taken with me (don't worry, he teaches Form VI, so his students are 20-22). One told Ryan she'd even be willing to marry me if I shave my beard. I must say, it's nice to be a celebrity among those girls in their early 20s. Since they are also graduating in a few weeks, I suppose any relationship can be completely guilt-free, right? With the Nganza girls and a university across the street, opportunities abound.

In other news, the continuing East African drought is fortunately not causing water shortages for those of us lucky enough to be less than a mile from Lake Victoria. However, low water levels are causing problems for hydroelectric dams and there is now power rationing all over the country. I know many PCVs don't have power at all, but it's still nice to have the lights on at night. Hopefully rain will come and we'll be able to have power all the time. It's particularly annoying because I've just gotten my conflict with the power company resolved. They had cut me off because the PCV there before me hadn't paid his last two bills. We'll see how this goes. In reality I'm lucky because as you may have heard the drought is causing famine in NW Kenya. While food prices are rising here, there certainly isn't a shortage. Next month the long rainy season should start, so we'll hope it does better than the short rainy season and actually show up. If it doesn't, the lake may drop low enough that I will no longer have running water. This would be much more annoying than the power problem.

Anyway, thanks for the comments and keep them coming. The next two months will be busy, but it's only two more months to Easter break! How sad that I already count the days...

"The Staff Meeting" or "The Depth of Human Suffering in Subsaharan Africa"

2006-01-21T14:29:00.000+03:00

Warning: This post is not approved for younger viewers, those with heart conditions, or anyone who is or may be a wuss.

Last Monday it happened. I knew it was coming, but that's not to say I was ready. I walked into the staff room at the school on Monday morning as I always do. Even though we're not teaching yet, we have to "report" every day. This time on the announcements board a message was written by the assistant head master. "Staff meeting today." There was no time on the message, and none of the other teachers knew what time it would start, so we just had to wait.

Now, waiting is the national pasttime of Tanzania. Nothing ever starts remotely on time. You rush to catch the bus that ends up leaving an hour late. School years sometimes end up starting a couple of weeks after scheduled, but some of us aren't quite used to this.

So we waited. Eventually the meeting started, and before I get into the description I'll go ahead and say in lasted five hours. FIVE HOURS! The meeting was also in Swahili. Now I can scrape by in Swahili and usually get a message across, but can you imagine trying to pay attention to someone for five hours in your native language? It's impossible, you can't do it! Inevitably you start to drift. You can't focus. You can maybe pay attention for an hour in your native language, but in another you last maybe two minutes. We went through complaints about discipline and who knows what else and then, sometime in hour three the rain started.

Ok, so we were inside, so it's not like I was getting wet, but it sure didn't help the mood. Ok, well maybe I was really excited to see rain because the rainy season was real late to start and Lake Victoria is at record low levels so it actually probably brightened my mood, but remember that the point of this story is my suffering!

As hour five approached we were served tea. This was quite nice but consider that this was just a clever plot to get enough sugar and caffeine in our systems to take more punishment.

Then, after an announcement that we will indeed be getting satellite TV in the staff room which I'm actually quite excited about the meeting ended, OR DID IT? Afterwards we had to have meetings in our academic departments. NOOOOOOOO! THE HORROR! Ok, so we'd already discussed what I would teach so that meeting lasted about ten seconds, but by then it was well passed lunchtime so it seemed a lot longer.

So that's my tale of inhuman suffering. Wait, you ask, "In a country ravaged by poverty and disease how can you in good conscience call a boring meeting suffering?" My response is: if you think you're so tough, you go two months without a cheeseburger. TWO MONTHS! What's that? You're a vegetarian? Well you really should try chicken. It's delicious.

The School Year is Set to Begin

2006-01-21T14:16:00.000+03:00

Finally Monday I will start with the reason I came to Tanzania. The school year begins this week, and I am ready to have something to do. I've enjoyed my time here in Tanzania, but so far I haven't really accomplished anything so it's nice to finally be getting going. Hopefully all will go well, but I know there will be difficulties as the students get used to their mzungu teacher. Hopefully I'll be able to say how teaching is going before too long.

New Year in Tanzania

2006-01-07T11:24:00.000+03:00

So it's a new year and I'm going to start a new job in a country that is still sometimes quite strange to me. If things go as planned, 2006 will also be the first year of my life that I've spent entirely outside of the United States. I start teaching in two weeks, so it's really time for me to get serious on the preparations. I feel like I'm ready for the job, but we'll see. I am definately ready to start teaching, because at the moment it is a fairly lonely time since I have way too much downtime and I'm not quite at the point where I feel like I fit in my community. Fortunately it does continue to get a little easier and I'm sure once I'm working things will be easier.

As for the ACFGK, I forgot an important Kiswahili word that translates perfectly into a Southernism. The word niliweza can be translated as "I used to could." Have a good new year and enjoy the cold. I hardly remember what that's like...

The Andrew Clark Field Guide to Kiswahili, Vol. 1

2005-12-31T13:03:00.001+03:00

Christmas was good, but not too much going on now, so I thought I'd bring you the Andrew Clark Field Guide to Kiswahili. The following guide will help you understand the basics should you ever come to Tanzania or at least understand the occasional Kiswahili word I am sure to through on my blog now and then. the ACFGK goes way beyon an ordinary dictionary to give you the nuance behind what you're saying and hearing.

Habari za...: Habari literall means "news." However, it is used as a greating asking you how your doing. The word after za can be anything such as Habari za asibuhi (how's the morning?). The third word doesn't matter really, you always respond with something like nzuri (good) or salama (safe). Responding anything other than the positive only leads to a lot of annoying questions you don't want to deal with. Of course, we in the Peace Corps take this to ridiculous levels like "Habari za cheeseburger." Salama, incidentally, is also the name of the leading brand of condoms, which I think is appropriate.

Shikamoo: This is a greeting you give someone older than you or in a position of authority over you. It literally means "I hold your feet." The response is marahaba which means "delightful." Personally I don't know what's so delightful about someone holding your feet.

Karibu: This word means "welcome." You will hear it when someone invites you into their home or if you are a visitor or new to an area. You will also hear it when offered something, like food (karibu chakula) or tea (karibu chai) or whatever. Also you can offer somone a glass of tap water and say "karibu amoebic dyssentary." The correct response is asante (see below).

Pole: This word is a way to express sympathy for someone from the trivial to the devestating. If you trip or if your mother dies you'll hear pole. It sounds strange, but it's the correct, polite thing to say in either case even though the best translation I've heard for pole is "it sucks to be you." Again, the response is asante (again, see below).

Asante: This means "thank you." You also use it as a polite way to refuse somethign you're offered, whether it's more tea or if some guy on the street is trying to sell you a spear or something. In the case of responding to a pole or an annoying vendor, the best translation is "screw you!"

Safi: This is one of my favorites. It means "clean" but is used as slang like "cool" in America. If something's really cool you say safi kabisa which means "completely clean." The PCVs tend to love this one and I know we will confuse and/or annoy a lot of Americans with exchanges like the following:

Someone else: How was the food?
Me: It was completely clean.
Someone else: But did it taste good?
Me: I just said it did!

Fupi: This means "short." No big deal, but I just think it sounds cool.

Another great thing about Kiswahili is that there are many cases where it doesn't translate directly into standard English, but it does translate into Southern English. For example:

ninyi: y'all
Habari zenu: How y'all doin'?
Kule: over yonder. This actually is the best translation because pale means "there" but kule means a less specific "over there somewhere" kind of thing, so the best term for it probably is "yonder."

So that's it, you're first few words of Kiswahili. You already know as much as a Kenyan! Look forward to further installments of the Andrew Clark Field Guide to Kiswahili.

Merry Christmas from Bukoba

2005-12-24T12:51:00.000+03:00

It's Christmas Eve in Bukoba, and most of the lake PCVs are up here to celebrate Christmas. I took a long ferry ride across Lake Victoria to get here yesterday, but it's certainly been worth it. The PCVs up here have great sites and it's really beautiful on the western shore of Lake Victoria.

This will be the first Christmas in my memory that I haven't spent in Polk County with my mom's side of the family, so that's real sad. I hate to miss the annual event, but I'm glad I'll at least get to spend Christmas with some people I'm close to. Have a great Christmas in Columbus and I'm sorry I can't be there!

Not too much to report right now. Things at site are starting to feel normal so I'm having an easier time of things but just the same I'm glad to have this little trip. After this it'll be about ten weeks before I'm allowed to leave site again for more than one night. Fortunately now that I have some buddies at the school, that won't be a problem. So anyway, Merry Christmas everyone, and of course, Happy New Year.

Getting Settled In

2005-12-21T14:30:00.000+03:00

It's been about ten days since my last post, but things have been moving at a relatively slow pace. I spent most of my time last week exploring both center city Mwanza and the area around my house. I took some long walks along the lake and discovered a very beautiful beach. I have also met most of the teachers at the school and am getting along quite well with them, particularly a few who are around my age. It has been a strange time because for the first time since July I've been living at a place on my own. The privacy's nice but the quiet in a new place can sometimes be disconcerting. Fortunately I have a very nice house with electricity (most of the time) and running water (at least some of the day). That has made certain things a lot easier. Hauling water can really be a drag, especially those who walk a kilometer a more to the lake to carry it home by the bucketload.

The school seems very nice, but I haven't met any of my students yet since they are on break. I have met some of the older students who are in A-level (for advanced). The way the system works here the secondary school is divided between O-level (o for ordinary) for four years and A-level for two. Very few students make it to A-level, and they are on a different schedule than the rest of the students. I will be teaching O-level.

I am taking a trip up to Bukoba for Christmas. Bukoba is a fairly good sized town on the western shore of Lake Victoria. I'm taking a ferry up there with Kathryn, a volunteer from my training group whose site isn't too far from here. We're visiting Rob, Aaron, and Jodi, all from our training group and all in Bukoba. The five of us, plus Patrick (who won't be making the trip) were the six who had all the time in Dar and Zanzibar. We were around each other constantly for awhile, and then all of the sudden I was on my own, so it will be good to see them again. Of course, now it's already getting a lot easier than it was last week since I'm making friends with some of the other teachers. Before too long I'll actually start preparing to teach. The school opens one month from today.

Oh, also my new address is:

Andrew Clark
PO Box 4058
Mwanza, Tanzania

Getting mail always makes my day, so send something! Only 80 cents from the US. Have a merry Christmas.

I'm Home!

2005-12-12T14:36:00.000+03:00

So I finally made it to Mwanza, which will be my home for the next two years. The area around my house and my school are incredibly beautiful. I'm a 15 minute walk from Lake Victoria, and I can take a short hike up a hill and get a great view of the surrounding area and watch the sun set over the lake. I have electricity and water, but right now the rainy season is late in arriving so the lake is really low. This means that my water is intermitent. Still, since I seem to have water at least some of every day, I can stock up and I won't suffer too much. I hope the rains come soon though, apparently the lake is the about lowest people around here have ever seen it.

My house is perhaps a 20 bus ride outside of the city center. Mwanza is not a beautiful city, in fact it suffers from some horrible urban sprawl, but I like it anyway. There's just something about the activity of cities I find appealing. There are a few really nice restaurants that are too expensive for me to enjoy often. There's even a casino in one of the nice hotels. A great thing about Mwanza is that you can take a ferry from here to other parts of the lake, including some beautiful islands, and hire tours of the Serengeti, which is fairly close. I'm looking forward to having a chance to do that sometime. I've met all the volunteers in the lake region now, and they all seem like good, interesting people. Of course, there was a lot of turnover in this region this time as six of the nine volunteers here were in my training group. Some who are on other parts of the lake I won't see too often, but two of them are really close.

I've met a few of the teachers at my school and they are very nice and helpful. I think they will be good to work with. Classes don't start until January 21, so I have lots of time to get used to things and get to know the area. Readjustment will take a little time since I've been surrounded by people, either my host family or other trainees, ever since I've been in country. Of course, there are lots of people around where I live, but I'm living alone. It will be quite an adjustment, especially all the cooking. I have a kerosene stove and a pretty nice kitchen, so I'll be alright. Real soon I'm planning on posting some pictures both from training and of the area I live. I'm in town now, but I hear there is internet at the university right by my house, so I'll probably be able to get online more frequently than in training. Of course, I will actually be working and have limited funds, so no promises. As for now, it's kind of a relief to be at my site, but I am a little nervous now. I'm now on my own and it's up to me to do my job and make some sort of difference here.

Zanzibar

2005-12-05T21:44:00.000+03:00

So it's my last night in Zanzibar. I've had a blast hear. We spent two nights on the northwestern coast of the island on possibly the most beautiful beach I've ever seen. Even though there are four hotels right in a row, the beaches are very far from crowded. Each hotel also has a restaurant and bar along the beach so there were a few places to choose from. Today we came down to Stone Town, which is a very old town with incredibly narrow streets that wind around like a maze. We spent much of the day wandering through them aimlessly never really knowing where we were. Tonight we ate dinner along the harbor where you can pick out some fresh fish that will then be grilled for you. It was pretty nice.

Zanzibar is an interesting place because of the mixture of African and Arab culture. It's also the most touristy place I've seen so far in Tanzania, so the locals are pleasantly surprised when you speak Kiswahili to them. I'm feeling a lot better about my language skills because as long as I try not to be too deep, I have very few problems communicating with people. I feel confident that I will continue to improve even though the formal lessons are over.

Tomorrow we go back to Dar where we will be until we leave for our site on Thursday. It will take maybe 2-4 days to get to Mwanza. I've been having a great vacation but I'm ready to get to site. I will probably have an opportunity to post again before I leave.

I'm Going to Mwanza!

2005-12-02T14:13:00.000+03:00

I'm sorry I haven't updated in awhile, especially because a lot has happened since I last posted. The biggest, most exciting news is that I will be in Mwanza. Mwanza is the second largest city in the country and is located right on Lake Victoria. I will be living inside the city limits about eight kilometers south of city center teaching at Nsumbe Secondary School. It is a fairly large school that is in the process of converting to an all-boys boarding school. It also has a very good reputation in Tanzania, so I'm excited at the opportunity. I'll be living in a three-bedroom house on campus that is within walking distance of the lake. My neighborhood is also home to a university and a seminary, so there will be a lot of students around. Mwanza is the point where many Serengeti tours leave and there is also a national park on an island in the lake you would take a ferry to from Mwanza. Supposedly it is an amazing park that has a population of chimpanzees, but is the least visited of all of Tanzania's parks because of the relatively remote location. Mwanza also has some great restaurants including Indian and Chinese places right on the lake. For those of you who may wish to visit, I will have lots of space and you can fly straight into Mwanza. If you're a little squeamish about living the Tanzanian lifestyle, they will soon complete a five-star hotel 2-3 km from my house that will be ridiculously cheap by Western standards. So basically, karibu Mwanza (that means you're welcome in Mwanza)! I am extremely happy about my site.

In other news, Thanksgiving at the Ambassador's place was great, and the food was great, while it lasted. Fortunately I wasn't at the back of the line and I got my fill of turkey and dressing. I did feel pretty bad when I found out it had run out, but there wasn't really anything I could do. I must say though that it was real cool of the ambassador to invite Peace Corps somewhere where there was an open bar.

This past Monday I moved out of my host family's home. I will miss them, especially little Tina, because they were really great to me. Before long I'll post some pictures of them. The day after I left was the swearing in ceremony, so I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer. It's a pretty exciting thing. I am so, so glad that training is over and I can get on to my site. Even better, I get a week-long vacation first.

Right now I'm in Dar es Salaam. They are driving us out to our sites and all the cars are out taking other people now so the six of us in the lake region have to wait for them to return. Fortunately PC is covering our living expenses while we're here. Yesterday we went to a beautiful beach resort outside of town and stayed in these great huts right on the beach for $8 a person. They also had a bar and great food. The beach was absolutely beautiful and the water was great. We had a blast, but it's going to get even better because today we got permission from the country director to go to Zanzibar! We don't need to be back here at the PC office until Thursday, so we're going to take the ferry out to Zanzibar for a few days. If you don't know anything about Zanzibar, look it up on the web. It is an amazingly beautiful and exotic island off the coast of Tanzania. Zanzibar was briefly an independent country before it joined with Tanganyika in 1964 to form Tanzania. A lot of PCVs take vacations out there and it sounds pretty amazing. Since over land I am about 2-3 days away from Dar where you take the ferry out there, it will be pretty difficult to make the journey out there later. I'm glad I have the chance now.

Sorry this jumped around a lot, but a lot has happened. I'll try to post about Zanzibar and first impressions of Mwanza ASAP. I should arrive in Mwanza on the 10th or the 11th. And seriously, anyone's welcome to come. I am not free to travel during school, but I am always free to have visitors for up to one month.

Njombe

2005-11-19T11:26:00.000+03:00

So the last few days I've been in the Njombe area and last night we came into town. I was visiting Steve, an education volunteer about an hour out of town. His site is right in the highlands and is absolutely amazing. I'm really hoping to get placed down here now. Njombe is a pretty nice town too and there are a lot of PCVs in the area. They seem to be a pretty tight group because it's a little bit isolated from the rest of the country, though not as much as some places. The weather here is beautiful. It's not hot and there are no mosquitos. I was actually a little bit cold last night. In just two days I will find out where my site is, so I can't wait. Of course first I have to get through the seven or so hour bus ride I have tomorrow. It actually won't be that bad because the scenery is amazing and we go through one of the national parks. On the way down I saw an elephant, some giraffes, antelope, a zebra, and some baboons. It was my first good look at wildlife here so I was really excited. Unfortunately there was no time for pictures. This afternoon we're going to take a short walk out of town to one of the waterfalls. A lot of the PCVs in the area came to town this weekend so we should have a pretty good group. I really can't contain my excitement about being done with training in a little over a week.

Last night I had a really interesting conversation with a Tanzanian and a couple of PCVs about Tanzania. We were talking about how Tanzania has been so successful in uniting all the different groups of people (an amazing feat compared to so many African countries) but has so far been so unsuccessful at pulling people out of poverty. Grant, the Tanzanian, was very frank about the certain areas where Tanzanians themselves are to blame. For example, many people here focus on providing one day at a time, never looking to go a bit beyond and build for the future. On the other hand, Tanzanians will always share whatever they have with their neighbors in need. In America of course, people tend to look out for themselves and other people's problems are other people's problems (of course, I'm generalizing). We agreed that there must be some sort of medium of doing for yourself but helping others who are in need. Part of the conversation came around to what motivates us to leave the wealthy world behind and come to Tanzania. It's an interesting question. I suppose it's because the wealth of the West isn't enough to satisfy us, and yet more wealth here would make life so much easier and in many cases possible where now it is not. At the same time, the sense of community and of caring for others that exists here would make life in America so much easier and better. I think our two societies have a lot to learn from each other, and I think I'm incredibly lucky to have that opportunity. I am just blown away by how much I've already gotten from this experience even though it has hardly started. Again, I can't wait to get done with training and get to my site! Hopefully next time you hear from me I'll be able to tell you where I will live for two years.

Howdy from Dar es Salaam!

2005-11-15T14:30:00.000+03:00

Howdy everyone. Sorry for the errors in the last post, the Morogoro network is a bit unreliable. Fortunately I am now in the bustling metropolis of Dar es Salaam, which I'm really enjoying. It is much nicer and seems a lot safer than I expected. Tomorrow I will leave for three days of shadowing a volunteer in Njombe, which is in the southern highlands not to far from Lake Nyasa. I'm very excited because I love mountains and I hear there are two patches of rain forest and several waterfalls within walking distance of town. Also it is actually very cool there and there are almost no mosquitos. From what I know about it I'd think I'd really like it if that is where I am placed. The only drawback is that it's almost 12 hours from DSM. Monday we will find out where our site actually is. I am very excited and hope that I'm in the highlands, either north or south.

The other big news is that I now have a phone. Anyone who wants to call can because it's free to receive, but keep in mind that I'm 8 hours ahead of EST. The Tz country code is 255 and my number is 787 212 257. I really would love to hear from everyone, so please feel free. Also you can try to send text messages because I can receive them, but I'm not sure how well they work with international calls. Also keep in mind that there are many places in country where service is not very good, so sometimes you may not be able to get through.

In other news I have been having a great time the last few days. Dar has been a lot of fun and it has been so nice to be out of Morogoro and see some more of this country. I also had quite an experience last week because my buddy Wes's host sister had a send-off. This is a big party a bride's family throws a few days before the wedding. My host mama was the "matron" which means she is the maid of honor but in the send-off it is even more involved. She is almost as much a part of things as the bride. It had quite a lot of interesting ritual and was quite a party. Wes, Michael (another trainee) and I even participated by opening and spraying champagne and then running around the room giving everyone a little in their glasses for the toast. It was a lot of fun and incredibly hard to describe. If you ever have a chance to attend an East African send-off, I highly recommend it. I imagine I'll see quite a few before I leave. It was also a very late night. We didn't get back home until 2:30, which was quite late considering we're up with the sun pretty much every day.

I hope the post goes through this time. Thanks for the comments and keep them coming. Hopefully I can post soon after Monday to tell you where I will live for the next two years.

Training is Winding Down

2005-11-05T11:11:00.000+03:00

Only 26 short months left. Where does the time go?

2005-10-22T13:20:00.000+03:00

Last Sunday I came into town to use the internet, but the Morogoro network was down. Fortunately, I bumped into Nathan, one of my good PCT buddies and we decided to go have a soda. We ran into some PCVs at our watering hole of choice, Mama Pierina's, and later went out for ice cream where we met an Australian man and Irish woman travalling together. Our now fairly large group ended up having quite an exciting afternoon. I ended up getting to do everything except what I set out to do. Such is life, especially in Africa.

The last two weeks have been very good. Each week is easier and going by faster than the week before. I'm making a lot of progress with the language and am to the point where I can get basic information across and understand simple things said to me. Teaching has started off great too. My first lesson was a little rough, but the second one went extremely well. I am becoming extremely confident about my ability to perform both in the school and in this culture. I know it's going to be far from easy, but at the same time I know I can do it.

I'm enjoying the Swahili. As I mentioned, it's really coming along, but it's also a great sounding language. The language uses a lot of prefixes for agreement between nouns and adjectives and subject prefixes for verbs. The cool thing about that is that it means Swahili often lends itself to a lot of fun alliteration. For example: "Watoto wetu wawili wafupi walikuwa wanifunzi wazuri." That sentence means, "Our two short children were good students." The stuff with the noun-adjective agreement is pretty complicated and to large extent it seems arbitrary why a noun is in this "class" or that one. The class of the noun is what tells you what prefixes you will need on adjectives, numbers, and even the Swahili word for "of." This aspect of the language is what I'm finding hardest to learn.

As exciting as linguistics are, I will move on to different things. I am definately getting comfortable at home. Communication is much easier and washing clothes by hand and bucket showers now seem pretty normal. Pretty soon our training schedule will get much more exciting. We're going into Week 5, and in Week 8 we will visit Dar es Salaam and shadow a volunteer in the field. The week after that is Thanksgiving and we have been invited, along with all PC staff and volunteers, to the US ambassador's residence for Thanksgiving dinner. We just found out about that this week. Needless to say it's a very nice surprise. Five days after Thanksgiving, we swear in, and then it's off to our site.

We still don't know our sites, but that's mainly because Peace Corps hasn't matched people to sites yet. We talked to them about what we want in a site, but I figure I'll most likely be ok with it no matter where it is. I did tell them I like mountains though. It would be really great to be in the southern or northern highlands, both because of the scenery and the weather. Time will tell, I'll find out in about a month.

Unfortunately, I'm running out of computer time. It's very hard to focus my thoughts so quickly. I may start writing the entry before I come and just type it in here. Things are still going well, and I appreciate the emails, letters, and comments posted here. Keep them coming. Bottom line of my situation is that while it's far from easy, I'm having a good time and I'm adapting well. Until next week, or perhaps the next.

Updating already?

2005-10-09T10:50:00.000+03:00

That's right, I was here just three days ago, but I'm back at the internet cafe. We are still training hard, but on Sundays we have the day off. Earlier I washed all my clothes by hand. That was quite a chore, and now my knuckles are rather raw. Fortunately one of the girls who works for my family helped me out. Tomorrow I will start observing math classes in Kihonda Secondary School. I'll probably observe three or for classes, and then teach my first lesson. Friday we practiced teaching to each other in our language groups, and I think I did ok for the most part. I need to speak slowly and carefully because my students will not be that proficient in English, and I need to practice writing on the chalk board because I'm not used to that and my hand writing is terrible. I'm feeling good about it though. My organization was good and I think I am able to present the material in a way that will be understood.

Communication is improving day to day. I am getting much better at understanding what people say to me. Most of the time I'll still struggle to find the words to respond, but I'm definately making progress. I'm still impatient for training to finish so I can get to my site. I believe it's seven more weeks before I swear in.

First Two Weeks in Morogoro

2005-10-06T16:44:00.000+03:00

It has been a very hectic two weeks. This will likely be stream-of-consciousness, so bear with me.

My host family is great. They are a fairly young couple (mid 30s) with two little girls, 6 and 1 1/2. The older is in boarding school and I haven't met her yet. The little one, Tina, is really cute and hopefully I can eventually post a picture. Baba (dad) speaks fluent English but since I'm learning Swahili, we try to communicate in that until we hit a brick wall, then we'll use English. Mama speaks some English too, so when communication is really necessary, we're ok. There are also two girls at the house who are hired to cook, clean, etc. I found out one of them is Mama's younger sister (Mama has 19 siblings). We live in a village called Kihonda outside of Morogoro. It's about a 45 minute bus ride from there into town, so unfortunately I probably won't be able to update this as much as I'd like. I'm doing my training and internship teaching at Kihonda Secondary School. Our training group has four people with our language and cross-cultural faciliator, a Tanzanian named Peter. Peter's a great teacher and a nice guy and I feel like I'm making huge progress in the language considering I didn't speak a word of it two weeks ago. I will also begin teaching a lesson or two week after next, so I'm a bit nervous about that.

The last two weeks have been very fulfilling, but also challenging and stressful. Communication with a lot of people is very frustrating because very few people speak English. We also have very little down time. We did have some time off last Saturday though and several of the area Peace Corps Volunteers were in town. They were all extremely laid back and said that training was intentionally like a boot camp and that the actual service isn't so quickly paced. They all seem to be having a great time and to love what they do, so I am extremely excited. I just am kind of impatient to get through training. The people I'm training with are great, so I hope I will be posted close to some other volunteers so that we can visit each other.

Tanzania is a really great place. The mountains here around Morogoro are beautiful. The food is good, though there isn't too much variety. A lot of rice and beans and a spinach-like vegetable (called mchicha). The coolest thing though is that I am yet to have a meal without fresh fruit. My house actually is very nice by Tanzanian standards. We don't have a shower, but we have a tap in the shower room and choo (squat toilet). We also have electricity and even a TV. It is extremely unlikely I'll have such luck at my site. I'll sign off for now. There are about eight more weeks of training, and then the swearing in. I hoping I may get in here on a weekly basis to update, but that may be too optimistic. Until next time!

I Made It!

2005-09-24T17:30:00.000+03:00

Unfortunately, I don't have much time, but here's a rundown. I've arrived in Tanzania and am in a town called Morogoro, where I will do my training. It is a beautiful town in the mountains and so far it's been great. We began our training in Swahili today and in two more months I should be pretty close to fluent. There are 36 other volunteers in the group and we are all going to be teachers. It's a great group of people so I think I'll have a blast during training before I go off on my own. More soon.

Expectations

2005-09-09T23:03:00.000+03:00

I think it's an understatement that I tend to be easy-going. In general, I don't go into a situation with too much anticipation. Instead I just take things as they come, with very few expectations. I guess I find it's easier to just react to what happens than to make often incorrect assumptions about what will happen. Having said that, with something as big as a two year commitment in the Peace Corps, I do have a few expectations.

The next few months are going to be extremely challenging. I am going to learn a languange I have so far had no exposure to, and I'm going to need to gain a high level of fluency. I'm also going to be living with a family, which overall is going to make things a lot easier, but I'm hoping that it won't be too much of a difficulty for them. I know that this will be a tough adjustment for them, though, and I hope I'm easy enough to live with. I think I am up to the task of adapting to life over there, but I imagine it will at times be frustrating. As I've said before, I think teaching will be hard for me as well. I'm going to go in with extremely limited training. It'd be nice if I could student teach for awhile, but no such luck. Teaching will I think bring my toughest challenging.

If my time in Scotland is any indication, after three months or so it'll really start to feel like home. I'll have friends, know my way around, and really feel like part of the community. I'll settle in to life there and it won't be much stranger than my life in Charlotte. As for the details of what this life will be like, that's anyone's guess.

I'm also expecting a beautiful country that will give me a lot of great travelling opportunities. There is so much I'd love to see in Africa, but there is so much to see in Tanzania alone that I may not leave that country. I am going to see some amazing landscapes unlike any I've seen before and all the famous African wildlife. The more I think about it, the more I think that I'm very lucky to get this assignment.

In the coming months we'll if I'm right about any of this. The next week will probably be a frenzy of preparation. Hopefully I'm right that there will not be any panic. One more thing, my address for while I'm in training is:

Andrew Clark (trainee)
Peace Corps Training Site
PO Box 9123
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

The mail will mean a lot to me, so write! My email address is available on my user profile.

It's sunk in a little...

2005-08-12T20:56:00.000+03:00

Over the last two weeks I've been reading my Peace Corps materials and filling out some paperwork. I think it's going to be extremely challenging. I'm actually a little more worried about the teaching part than the fact that it's in Tanzania. I do fairly well trying to teach people one on one or maybe a small group, but I think I will find it very difficult and nerve-wracking to be in front of a class with as many as fifty students. I couldn't ask for a better location, though.

Tanzania is home to Mt. Kilimanjaro, much of the Serengetti, Lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, and Malawi, a national park where you can actually visit chimpanzees in the wild (this group is used to people), and the exotic island of Zanzibar. I don't know what part of the country I'll be in, but no matter what part of the country I am I think it's going to be an amazing place to be.

My salary is going to be $165 a month. That sounds pretty paltry, but when most of the country lives on less than $1 a day, I'll actually be doing pretty well for myself. Most likely I'll have my own place, though I read that Tanzanians don't share the American concept of privacy and that there will likely be people, especially children in and out of my place all the time. I'm really looking forward to this because of the huge challenges I'll face because of culture shock and as I learn a new language and profession. More thoughts as they come.

Tanzania It Is

2005-07-29T17:13:00.000+03:00

My name is Andrew Clark and I have just accepted an invitation to become a Peace Corps volunteer. In late September, I will travel to Tanzania to be a math teacher. I will be using this weblog to post my thoughts about preparation and hopefully, once I'm there I'll occasionally be able to post about my experiences. I'll add more thoughts later as all of this sinks in.