Proof that it is time for me to go home? I got slapped in the head by a crazy lady on the street this week and I didn’t even mind. Seriously. There is this lady that walks around Mbeya town with an insane big red streaked weave, wearing bright crazy eye makeup and powder made for white faces, sometimes carrying a stuffed animal, always arguing with herself. Usually she just struts around town in her own little world, but not this time. She was walking down the hill and I was walking up the hill on the main street in front of the post office. She was yelling at herself, I was texting. Next thing I know, she’s yelling at me. I tried to ignore her and just step around her and keep walking, but she stepped in front of me and got in my face yelling who knows what. When I tried to step around her again, she was indignant and pulled back and straight up slapped me up the side of my head. Everyone walking around us on the street stopped and stared, waiting for my reaction. To my great surprise, I didn’t even skip a beat. I just kept texting and walked right on by her. That’s how at peace I am with finishing my service this week.

It’s weird. I feel I’ve been counting down the days until I get to go home for such a long time, that now all of the sudden that its down to 1, it feels like it just snuck up on me. I don’t really think it has hit me yet. I said goodbye to my village on Monday and it just felt so calm and normal, not like it was goodbye forever. Then I went to Matema Beach on Lake Malawi one last time for a couple of my PCV friends’ wedding. I didn’t feel like that was the last opportunity to hang out with those people in Tanzania. Sunday morning I said goodbye to my friends in Mbeya. But it didn’t feel like goodbye goodbye. More like a bye, I have to go to Dar, I’ll see you next week kind of bye.

But it’s real. It’s happening. It’s over.

And how can I really sum up these last 2 years? I can’t. It’s too much to process all at once. I don’t really know if I have done anything truly significant for the betterment of Tanzania. But (as completely cheesy as it sounds) I know that Tanzania has done something for the betterment of me. I wanted to grow up a little. To test myself. To push myself out of my comfort zone. To learn to survive and thrive out on my own, in unfamiliar territory. I’m more confident in my own skin. I feel like I know myself better. I’ve become more confortable with silence and stillness and just sitting. But I still have a thirst for more. I can’t wait for the next chapter in my life. I truly have no idea what the future holds for me. I’m not even sure which continent I’ll be on this time next year. But I’ve developed an ability to take life as it comes. Make plans if you want to, but adjust them when you need to.

I used to always need to know the next step. And although I still like to have an idea of what’s ahead, I can just enjoy the moment better due to this experience. It’s okay to slow down once in a while. It’s okay to change your mind. I’ve somehow come to the conclusion that I want to go to nursing school when I get home, even though I’ve never considering that career path before in my life. I’m craving something a little more concrete after two years of blowing in the wind. It’s been a great period to explore and grow, and now I want a little structure. At least for a while. Then maybe I won’t. And that will be ok too. That’s one aspect of nursing that really appeals to me, that you can do almost anything almost anywhere in the world with it.

And the best bonus of this once in a lifetime experience…finding the person I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. During my application process, my recruiter mentioned that a lot of people do find love in the Peace Corps. Mine may be in an unusual way, meeting a Brazilian in Tanzania rather than a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer or Host Country National, but I think that’s one thing that makes it so great. All of the tiny decisions we made that brought us here and put us together. Fate, if you ask me. I’m so glad that I’ll always have someone who understands this period in my life, because he experienced it right along with me. He’s been there through some of the toughest most stressful times that I’ve probably ever had (everything is a million times more dramatic feeling when you’re so far from home in a place so unlike home).

And now we get to let life take us wherever it will together in this next chapter of our lives. No, stratch that. I feel like this is the last chapter of an entirely different book in my life. Nothing will ever be quite like these last two years have been. A first year PCV friend of mine asked me the other day if I had to do all over again knowing everything that I know now, would I still choose to become a Peace Corps Volunteer, and I answered her, definitely. Despite all of the annoyances and the homesickness and the setbacks, this complete experience has been completely worth it. I don’t see how anyone could ever possibly regret being a PCV.

So though I’m here in Dar, completing the COS (close of service) process, I agree with what they told us at our COS conference in May. Not to think of this as the close of service, but just preparing for a continuation of service. For a lifetime of giving back to the world that has given me so much. For continuing to live life always wanting to learn more, to do more. To see as much of this playground of a world we live in as possible. And to keep asking myself the question that Peace Corps first asked me over 2 years ago, “Life is calling, how far will you go?”

Some things never change. In every part of the world. But it seems like here in Tanzania, MANY things never change. In fact, MOST things never change. But is that a good thing or a bad thing?

In America, we embrace change and progress. We sing its praises. We think it’s the only way to go. But what’s to say for things saying the same? In Tanzania, there is little uncertainty. People know what they are going to be doing, tomorrow, next weekend, five years from now…because it is what they have always done. And it is what everyone else has always done. And while that may sound sad to you, I think it is in some ways comforting and reassuring to most of the people living in that eternal cycle here. They know their role in their society, and they fulfill it, and they feel like they have accomplished all that they need to accomplish.

To me, looking at them from an American perspective, I tend feel sorry for many of them, working all day, one day to the next, never daring to hope for more, never getting those opportunities that I have taken for granted my entire life. And I don’t think that it is wrong to try to give them a little hope and encouragement, to show them that there is more for them in life if they are brave enough to go for it. To tell them that they don’t have to just accept their lot in life because its what their mothers had and their grandmothers had. To show them that it is possible to be educated and to travel and to excel.

But I also don’t think that I am the only one that has something to teach them. I see that they have things that I don’t have. Like that they are not always in a hurry, they know how to just sit and relax and talk with their neighbors. They don’t always feel like they need to be doing something or going somewhere. They don’t feel guilty for taking some time to do absolutely nothing. They don’t feel like there is a certain amount of things they must accomplish in a day or in a life in order to feel successful. They just wake up, and do what they can. They take their time. And that would be nice, to be able to take life one day at a time the way that they do.

And so with change and progress, there is a delicate balance. I personally believe that it is good to grow and evolve and try new and different things in life. But I have also learned that change just for the sake of change and progress for the sake of progress is not necessarily a good thing. It not only has to be needed, but it must be wanted. Which is what I’m gradually beginning to get into my thick skull. I can’t make anyone want to come learn new, more nutritious ways of cooking, they must feel on their own that it is something that they need and want. I can’t make anyone learn to save their money, or make a budget, or plant new vegetables, or make their own compost, they have to have that spark within that tells them that things don’t have to always stay the same. They have to know for themselves that many times change can be good and that progress can lead to an easier life. But its not my job to thrust that change upon them, I’m just supposed to be here when they ask for it.

Soooooooooo, we meet again. Sorry its been so long. For a while there I just didn't really have anything to say, then I didn't really have anything positive to say, then I got a little wrapped up in my personal life. But now I'm back. I'm going to try to get back on schedule. Really, you didn't miss too much. Apart from me getting engaged and going on vacation back to America for two weeks then on to Brazil for two more weeks to meet my future in-laws. I'm actually on my way back to Tanzania right now.

I definately believe that the vacation served its purpose. I feel rested and recharged and remotivated and ready to get back in there and try to do some productive things. I was kind of in a slump for a while there. I was starting to let my village's overall feelings of apathy get to me. I was thinking that if they didn't care about anything that I was trying to do, then why should I even try? But trying is the whole point. I'm supposed to give them the opportunities and the people that want to take them will. I'm supposed to show them what could be and those that want it to be will make it happen. I'm supposed to be the spark that gets the fire going, but the have to be the one to fuel it to keep it burning.

I knew it wasn't going to be easy, this whole experience, but I thought it would get easier. I thought I may work on an exponential curve, very slow at first then all of the sudden be so busy and accomplished. But I guess that old tortoise was right, slow and steady. I see now that I've just got to keep chipping at it piece by piece. Some of the ideas and concepts I bring to them are things that they've never really considered. Life has always been a certain way, for hundreds of years, and I am just now brining some new things to them that they have to digest. I know that I don't have to take my little village with no electricity or plumbing and turn it into a industrial metropolis in the two year period I've been given. All I have to do is be a resource for those that want to try to make their lives and the lives of their families and neighbors a little bit better. Step by step. Day by day.

So basically I plan on just doing what I was doing. Go to teach that English class and the kids that want to learn, will. Go to have that widow's group meeting and the women that want to participate, will. Have a nutritious cooking class for mothers and those that want to come, will. And that's all I can expect. And that's just fine.

So that's me making my peace with my challenging work situation. And my personal life is going great. My wedding planning is on track and my fiance's family is so nice and welcoming. Despite them not speaking English and me not speaking Portuguese, I didn't feel at all excluded. I immediately felt like a part of the family. Brazil is a great place to be. Not only are the people great, but it is so beautiful! My fiance, Joao Paulo, and I, along with his oldest brother and his brother's wife went for a drive in the mountains near his house a couple of days ago and went way up to a spot where paragliders launch and it was such an amazing view. A little scary since we were standing right on the edge of a mountain with no guardrails or anything like that, but still, so beautiful. Everything was so lush and green. There was even a waterfall in the distance. And the breeze up there was fabulous especially considering that it was 100 degrees down below.

That oppressive heat with no AC was a great contrast to the 20 degree weather that I came back into when I landed back in Florida. I actually even got to see a little snow flurry when we stopped for gas at 5 in the morning. It hasn't snowed in Florida since I was about 2. I think that's a good sign. I think that means 2010 is going to be a good year....

So here I am, a month after Mid-Service Conference (MSC), and what’s going on? ….Not much. I would say my village and I have hit some kind of mid-game slump. The perpetual hump-day if you will.

Mid-Service is a time to look back on what you’ve done so far and feel really good about yourself for making it this far. You’re past the half-way point. Pat yourself on the back. However, on the flipside, its also a time to think, “What? Only half-way? What am I going to do with myself for another whole year?”

It’s a time to think about what has worked for you and try to continue doing that. And to realize what has not worked and make adjustments. This isn’t quite as easy as it sounds though. By this time, you’ve settled into a routine. People know what to expect of you and you know what to expect of them.

The problem that I am most of encountering at this point is a difficulty getting people to show up to things. Anything. I tried to come back from MSC with a renewed sense of vigor and enthusiasm and forge ahead with new project ideas and revive old ones that have fizzled out. Unfortunately, my village has not been of the same mind. For every meeting that I have planned, people say they are interested and they want to attend, but when we actually plan the time and place and announce it, nobody comes. I understood while it was the peak time for harvesting corn and planting potatoes about a month or so ago, but now that’s done with. So now I’m just trying to figure out what exactly is keeping people from participating and finding some way around it.

I’ve got a few ideas that I’ve been trying to make work for the past couple weeks to no avail, but I’m not giving up on them. I have a couple people in my village who are really committed to helping me succeed and I think with their help, we will eventually find enough people to make these projects work. And I’m trying to remind myself that part of the issue is probably that I am the first PCV at my site, so they aren’t used to Peace Corps and our ideals and goals. I think that they just don’t understand what I’m doing there yet and what types of things I can work on with them. So even if I’m not getting the level of participation that I would like to have at this point, I’m at least telling myself that I am getting them warmed up for the next PCV that will come to my village after I leave. They’ll catch on eventually.

While I’m in not in the best of moods with Tanzania right now, after a week of being stood up for 3 meetings, dusty dirt in my face, and chickens pooping in my house, instead of complaining and downing it, I figure I’ll remind myself of what is so great about this country. It seems an appropriate time to reflect as I have officially been a PCV for exactly a year tomorrow. Weird. Team Mbeya is getting two new members tomorrow. The original Team Mbeya (me, Teri, Meesh, and Tristain) had our last hurrah last weekend at Meesh’s house. I made bagels and burnt blondies, Meesh made some scrambled eggs and tea, Teri provided the entertainment via a tiny version of the movie Mean Girls and a couple of episodes on her iPod, and Tristain, well Tristain didn’t really do anything, but that’s ok. It was kind of funny to see how socially retarded we’ve all gotten as we were all together in the village for once, people to talk to, board games to play, etc., and Meesh would be in the kitchen boiling some water or something and notice a prolonged silence and come into the living room to find us all reading. That’s all there is to do in the village usually and I guess old habits die hard.

So back to reflecting on what makes Tanzania great. Mfano (example) 1, if you tell someone you like something that they are wearing, they will offer to give it to you. Whether it be a bracelet of earrings or a khanga (colorful fabric wrap) or their shoes. Seriously. I told a girl in my village the other day that I liked her shoes and she said, Nitakupa (I’ll give them to you). People just like to give other people things in general. Last week I just decided to go for a walk around the village and I passed one old lady sitting in the dirt peeling sweet potatoes. I was walking past a certain stretch of huts that are in pretty rough shape, many of them propped up with limbs to keep them from collapsing. This bibi (grandmother) is certainly not one of the more comfortable or well off people in my village. And yet she insisted on giving me a sweet potato from her meager pile that I knew would be stretched to feed several of the dusty kids running around the yard that night. I wanted to say No! Feed those hungry kids instead. I have soooo much and you have so little. Even though I would spend what I get from PC for a month in a week’s time in the US, here my monthly allotment is more than what many people see in a year. But she wanted to give it to me. A zawadi (gift).

The day before yesterday my neighbor wanted to learn how to make pizza, so I went up to the family’s house that sells milk to get a liter so we could make the cheese. This family used to be my neighbors, but had to move to a different area of the village because other people didn’t like that they got to live in a house that they didn’t build that used to be housing for teachers. They always give me the milk for free, which is generous enough as it is, but that day she also have me a baggy with about 8 tomatoes and 2 oranges. People are just nice. They like to share. Sharing is a good thing people. (Please excuse my short political tirade, I don’t get to have them very often here because most PCV’s share my political views). But really, look at this example of those who have so much less sharing with those who have so much more. It’s just a nice thing to do for humanity. To each his own, of course, but even hearing secondhand people talking about how they’re “scared” of what Obama may due to this country because he’s a “socialist” is a bit frustrating. First of all, socialism is not communism people. America is not turning into the Soviet Union or Cuba here. Most socialist countries are fabulous places to live and are not at all repressed. They get long maternity leaves and cheap college educations and sufficient vacation days, etc. So just because Obama likes to adhere to the old Declaration of Independence line of, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” and seems to think that means that people have the right to be healthy, universal healthcare is not evil. And I just have to laugh every time I hear people being concerned for the deficit being created by programs such as this and the stimulus package, seeing how our last “conservative” president took us from a huge surplus to multi-trillion dollar deficit… to accomplish what exactly? (Ok seriously, sorry about that. No offense. Just had to air it out.)

Back to the point of this blog…other nice things people do for me. I’m extremely lucky to have running water in my house, the only person in my village or any surrounding villages to have such a luxury. They made my house special for me with a faucet in the shower and bathroom, a flushable choo (squat toilet), and even a little sink. But there has been a problem with the water intake and for the past couple of weeks I haven’t had water in my house. Does this mean I’ve had to go back to the old pre-service training method of getting water and actually walk up to the pump and get it? No. Every afternoon a group a girls from the primary school comes to get my buckets and fetch it for me. If they don’t, my neighbor goes to get it for me. The one time I tried to go get it on my own, the women at the pump got a kid to carry the bucket back to my house for me. They really try to take care of me in my village.

I mentioned being stood up for 3 meetings this week, which is always a bit frustrating, but the meetings have all been rescheduled for next week so hopefully we can get things rolling with my widows groups again. But work-life hasn’t been a total bust this week. I found out that the five girls from the primary school that I sent to the girl’s conference in June have actually been doing peer education on their own every Monday and Friday at the school. Which is great. No prodding or pushing or planning from me. They completely took the initiative. I went to the class that the two standard 7 girls taught to the other standard 7 girls on Monday. It was really good. They talked about (close your ears boys) periods and they did a really good job. A lot of girls don’t know what their period is when they first get it and they don’t have anyone to talk to about it. The peer educators gave them a good overview of what happens and what they should do then allowed them to ask questions. The questions strayed far from the issue of menstruation and addressed topics as complex as, “Where do babies come from?” and “Why is sex bad?” and “Why can’t girls wear pants?” It was a good discussion. And the peer educators answered most of the questions all on their own with only occasionally turning to me for help. Then after the class, a small group of girls stayed behind to ask me why it is dangerous for girls their age to have sex with older men. They knew that it was, but didn’t really understand why and they wanted to have the details so they could explain them to their friends that they new were engaged in this type of behavior so that they could try to convince them to stop. Wow.

In other less serious matters, I started teaching English to Standard 2 last Thursday. I’m going to try to teach for 30-45 minutes everyday Mon-Thurs, not only for the obvious reason that if they go on to secondary school all instruction is in English and it would help if they were able to understand what was going on, but also because now that we have shelves and shelves of fabulous new books for them to look at, it would be even better if they can eventually read the stories to go along with the pictures! They’re all fascinated with the books. Kids have been coming over to my house a lot lately saying, “Naomba kitabu kusoma.” (May I please have a book to read?) On Monday, we’re finally going to move the stacks of books from my house to the waiting library room, give them a little lesson on how they should wash their hands first and how to turn the pages without damaging them, and then give them their first shot at it. I have high hopes for my English class. It might take a while. I’m trying to ease them into it, I know they have short attention spans as all second graders do, and even shorter because they generally just sit in their classroom without a teacher most of the day doing nothing so when I make them focus it’s a bit difficult, but today at least was a pretty good day. Since most of them don’t know how to read yet, I’m trying to use a combination of drawing pictures and having them repeat the words over and over, but trying to mix things up so it wasn’t just the usual rote memorization. They seemed to start actually trying to think about things a little bit before just blindly repeating everything I said. That’s a start.

So a year in, maybe I don’t have that much that I can point to and say, “ I did that,” but I like to think we’re making progress. We’ve got a couple of things we’re working on and more projects to be started in the near future. When I get back from Mid-Service Conference in Dar in two weeks, the mama I brought to the community theater workshop in Morogoro and I are going to try to start a theater group to provoke conversation and debate about things like stigmatization of those with HIV and older men in using their positions of power to get younger girls to have sex with them. I think it’ll be good. We’ll just have to see how things go. So much has changed and so much has stayed the same since this time last year. It will be interesting to see where this next year takes me.

After a loooong couple of months packed full of traveling and trainings and teachings, I’m finally back in Mbeya. All of the things that I was doing while I was gone were all good and valuable things to be doing, but its nice to be home. Being away for so long then coming back here just makes me realize all over again how much better the Southern Highlands are than the rest of Tanzania. No offense, but its true. The weather is so beautifully chilly and clear here after the sweltering mugginess of Tanga. The laid back atmosphere is a stark contrast to the busy intenseness of Dar es Salaam. The familiarity is nice after being in Morogoro where you’re just another mzungu among the many. So I’m going to try to enjoy it for the few weeks that I’m here before I have to go back to Dar for our Mid-Service Conference at the end of August.

Last time I wrote, I believe I was in Dar after a crazy three weeks of family vacay time. After that I made my way back up to Tanga region for my turn as PCV of the Week, which was really fun. It was nice having people ask me for my advice, it made me feel like I’ve actually made some progress here. I remember Pre-Service Training quite clearly and all I could think was that I was so happy to not be in their place. I know they are anxious to be done and get to their sites. Then, lucky for me, the week that I was there was their one free weekend away from their host families (when we went on the safari to Mikumi last year). Since PST was moved to Muheza in Tanga instead of Kilosa in Morogoro this year, they were too far away from Mikumi to make that their weekend trip so they ended up going to a beautiful beach resort in Pangani Beach and I got to accompany them. This place was really nice. Like the first thought I had walking up to it was I-feel-like-I-should-be-getting-married-here nice. Its run by a former Peace Corps Volunteer and she gave us a huge discount as a special favor to the trainees. So we spent a really nice relaxing weekend on what felt like a private beach or a deserted island in the lap of luxury eating delicious food. There was one little bout of excitement when I few of us decided to walk along the beach to the town to use the ATM while the tide was coming in and had a slightly terrifying moment of having to cling to a wall of coral as the waves got bigger and stronger crashing into us and we kept having to climb higher and higher to find footholds, but we made it out ok, and decided it would be best to take the main road back to the resort.

Last week I was in Morogoro doing a Community Theater workshop where we, along with a counterpart from each of our villages, learned how to use plays to teach about HIV. It turned out to be pretty fun and I actually learned some new presentation techniques and games to use in my village. And if there was an award for most improved actress, it would definitely have gone to my counterpart. She’s generally a pretty shy person, but by the end of the workshop she had really turned it on and gave a great turn as the star of the final play that we preformed at a local high school about stigmitazation.

I got back into Mbeya late Saturday night then Sunday I had another interesting day. I went with my boyfriend out to where he works cutting blocks of stone out of the mountains about 45 minutes away from Mbeya Town. His boss is here from Italy right now and wanted to do something nice for his Tanzanian employees and their families so he paid for an entire cow to be butchered and brought about 100 sodas for the village to have a little meat and soda party. They hooked up a radio to a car battery and had a good time dancing and singing and eating. And despite not particularly eating meat and having to ride down the worst road I have ever been on to get there, I was glad that I got to go. But seriously, that road was terrible. The first quarter of it was like driving through a pile of flour it was so dusty. On the side of the car against the wind, clouds of dust were being hurled up against the window like sheets of rain in a hurricane. I’ve never seen anything like it. But after we passed the dusty part, it seemed that we were driving on a dry river bed. I definitely would not have taken my car down there. It definitely required 4 wheel drive. There were huge rocks everywhere. I’m surprised I didn’t get a concussion banging my head up against the side of the car as we tumbled over them.

So now I’m just looking forward to getting back to work and trying to accomplish some things I wrote down on my to-do list while I was away. But first I guess I should just walk around my village convincing people that I didn’t go back to America, which is what I’m sure they’re all thinking at this point.

I realize its been a while since I've last updated this thing, but I haven't had much time to sit down and record what's been going on. I've been home 3 days in the last month and have yet a while to go before I can go home again. But while I have a minute here in the Peace Corps Volunteer Lounge in Dar, I'll try to bring you up to speed.

It all started back in the second week of June when I traveled to Tanga, in the Northeastern part of Tanzania, for a Training of Trainers to be PCV of the Week. Which feels kinda wierd. I can't believe I'm already in the position to be dishing out advice to the new class of health and education trainees. I'm no longer a newbie. I'm officially a second year volunteer. Well, I guess not until August technically, but now that a new group is here, I feel like my class can call ourselves the upperclassmen. I spent a week at the this year's new training site, helping Peace Corps staff develop new training implements and making up lesson plans for my own session that I will present on gender and development next week. It was nice to be able to have an imput into how to improve the training process for this year's volunteers, and I'm happy to say that it seemed like the staff really listened to our suggestions and made adjustments accordingly. The schedule for this year's trainees looks really effective.

After the week in Tanga, I went to Dar es Salaam to await the arrival of my parents and sister, who were coming to visit for 3 weeks. The day before they got here, the new class of PCT (Peace Corps Trainees) came in and I was able to go with the staff and a few other PCVs to the airport to meet them. It was kind of a surreal experience being at the airport again for the first time since we arrived seeing the newbies come in and realizing that this is exactly what we looked like at this time last year. As was expected, they we tired and overwhelmed and a little out of it, so we didn't do much talking until the next day. My family wasn't coming in until late so I got to hang out with them the whole day and get a feel for them and I liked the vibe that I got so far. It will be interesting to get back to them next week and see how far they've come and what questions they've been harboring for the last few weeks since I've seen them last.

That night, my family flew in to Dar and I went to meet them at the airport. Also a little surreal. I had never lived away from home minus a 7 week summer study abroad in Austria 2 years ago so to have not seen them for an entire year then suddenly have them show up in Africa, especially since none of them have ever done any traveling and haven't even left the country before coming here, was wierd. I actually didn't even recognize my dad the first second that I saw him. But to my surprise, I was spared a weepy, huggy, scene, and they relatively calmly greeted me and we proceeded to our hotel without incident. Well, sorta. They had A LOT of luggage and we didn't exactly fit so great into the taxi, but hey, I'm not complaining. Two of their six bags was loaded down with goodies for me! And I hadn't seen my big sister for a whole year so I didn't mind snuggling in the front seat with her and two backpacks.

Back at the Econo Lodge Hotel, which would be our home base each time we passed through Dar during our whirlwind Tanzanian tour, we stayed up til about 3 AM going through all my loot and adjusting the packing scheme for our trip to Arusha the next morning. Oh did I say the next morning? What I meant was about 2 hours later. Our bus to Arusha left at 6AM so we had a taxi coming to pick us up to take us to the bus station at 5AM and therefore woke up at 4:15. Hey, sleep when your dead, right? I told my family that I was just going to through them right in, to give them the authentic (aka budget) experience, but I didn't mean to toss them straight to the sharks. The main bus stand in Dar is an insane place. Shagalabagala, as we say in Swahili. Chaos. Maddening, ridiculous chaos all around. Even at 5AM. Especially at 5AM. And it was made 10 times worse by the good intentions of our taxi driver trying to take us straight to the bus instead of dropping us at the ticket office. Which would have probably worked out if anything in this country made sense like it might in America, but alas, tis not the case. A lot of times here, a company will sell you a ticket that may have a certain bus company's name on it which is in fact not the name of the company that you will end up traveling on. So we had a minor freak out when our taxi driver kept asking for where the bus line that was printed on our ticket was leaving from and people kept saying that there was no bus from that line leaving at that time. But no worries. After a frantic scrambling from the back of the bus station, squeezing between about 100 buses and horn-honking taxis with ALL of our riduculously bulky and uncooperative luggage up to find the guy I bought the tickets from so he could take us to the bus he intended us to get on, all was well. Pay no attention to that shell shocked look on my mother's face.

The first bus ride is always an eye-opening experience to newcomers to the lack of driving skills of Tanzanians. The buses like to pretend that they are trains. High speed lines. They just barrel through, speed bumps, pot holes, and pedestrians be damned. They just lay on the horn and expect everything to move. Nevertheless, we made it to Arusha Town alive and were met there by my Tanzanian's friend uncle whom we had arranged to be our driver and guide on our safari the next day in the Ngorongoro Crater. He delievered us to our bed and breakfast and we pretty much ate a quick plate of rice and beans and went to bed. The next morning we went on our safari and I think my family really enjoyed it. We were able to see all the African mainstays, even a couple of the more diffucult to spot predators like lions and a cheetah. Unfortunately they were all feeling pretty lazy that day and there wasn't much action to witness as they all lounged in the tall grasses, but it was cool anyway. And the crater itself is really beautiful as it is. That night was probably when the culture shock really started setting in for my family when we arrived at our guest house for the evening. I didn't see what the big deal was, as the place was reccomended to me by Peace Corps Volunteers that live in that region and stay at this place often and it wasn't so bad by Tanzania standards. But when I tried on a little sensitivity and looked at it from an outsiders point of view, the place was a bit ghetto. But as we sat down and ate some spaghetti and my parents saw more and more tourists and backpackers coming in to stay there that seemed completely at ease with their surroundings, they relaxed a bit.

After passing back through Dar for a night to break up the long journey home a little, we made it back into Mbeya Town and slept there for the night. It was cool for my family to meet my friends and boyfriend here and see where I spend my time when I go into town on the weekends. The next morning, we decided to splurge on a taxi all the way to my village from town since we had so much luggage to lug with us. One might presume that a taxi may be safer than a bus or a daladala...and one would be wrong. At least when it comes to the pedistrians well-being. Especially the particular pedestrian that we happened to hit on the way. Its ok, he ended up being fine. Our driver was really upset though. Not so much that he just nearly killed a person. Oh no. He was pissed because we he hit the guy he broke a side view mirror. So after having a hissy fit, he got back in the car and drove us the rest of the way like a bat out of hell almost running into countless other cars, people and stationary objects. Then finally...

HOME! It was great to have my family see my house and my village and meet my neighbors and see how I live. They got a kick of how much fun a group a full grown women who were taking a break from building a house next door to mine got out of a soccer ball that they brought me. They saw my dad pumping it up and shyly asked if they could play with it, and when I tossed it to them, the whole lot of them jumped up like excited little kids and ran around tossing it back and forth in soccer field in front of my house. Amazing how much laughter a $4 rubber ball can bring.

After three days impressing them with my village cooking skills, we ventured into another mode of transport and took a coaster (minibus) to Matema Beach on Lake Malawi. Despite being sandwiched between two rough and DIRTY coaster rides (I seriously don't think I've ever been as dirty as I was from all the dust when we finally arrived at Matema) , it made for a relaxing couple of days on the beach. After that we hung out in Mbeya Town again for a couple of days, before passing through the Masai Market in Iringa for souveiniers and continuing on to Dar then finally Zanzibar. And despite the annoyance of CONSTANTLY having someone in your face trying to sell you something or take you somewhere there, we were still able to enjoy the beautiful Indian Ocean and the delicious food. We ate a nice place near the ferry in Stone Town called Mercury's 3 times! (Named after Freddie Mercury of Queen who was born in Zanzibar, just a fun fact for you there.) I even got a pina colada! And how could our trip be complete without one last hellish trip on yet another mode of transport, the ferry. It was like the place was possessed. People were barfing EVERYWHERE! Some in the little blue plastic baggies they passed out, some off the side of the ferry outside, some on the floor, in the aisles, in the bathrooms, on themselves. It was crazy! It really was a rough 2 hours though. We were being tossed about quite a bit. I didn't feel so great myself.

But once again, we made it to the otherside alive, if not well, for one last night at good ole Econo Lodge. Their flight didn't leave until late the next night so we spent the next day going to see Trasformers 2 at the completely out of place very nice movie theater in Dar, walking around the grocery store in the 'mall', and eating some questionable Chinese food. To cap off this unusual day, we watched the Michael Jackson memorial on the t.v. in the hotel lobby before I saw my family off in a taxi that was to send them back to the airport.

And even though it got a little crazy at times and a little stressful in spots, it was cool to have the opportunity to hang out with my family for three weeks here in my new home. I was glad that they were able to get a little piece of mind knowing that I'm safe and adjusted here. That my neighbors know me and like me and look out for me. That I've become good friends with the other Peace Corps Volunteers in my area and that my Brazilian boyfriend is a nice guy. I would recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to host visitors to do it. It definately made me feel much more competent having to take care of people that had no idea what was going on here. To be constantly complimented on my Swahili skills, and knowing where I was going and what I was doing.

So I think that brings you up to date. Now I'm in Dar for a 3 day training for PSDN (peer support and diversity network), which is essentially a group of volunteers that make themselves available for the venting needs of other volunteers. Then when this is over, I'll be heading back up to Tanga to hang out with the PCTs for a week, then to a Community Theater Workshop in Morogoro region before FINALLY getting to go back home. I'll probably have to totally readjust to the whole living alone concept after spending so much time around my family and other volunteers these two months. But I look forward to getting back and getting to work on my library project. Speaking of that, big thanks to my grandparents and the High Springs Rotary and Kiwanis Clubs, and Ms. Weaver and High Springs Community School for the great support that they've offered so far in donations! Can't wait to get those books on the new and empty waiting shelves at the primary school. I know that teachers and students will all be very excited. If you're interested in reading more about the project or donating, you can visit peacecorps.gov and click on the donate button and search by my last name, Gillman, or my project number 621-188 or just follow this link

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfmshell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=621-188 THANKS so much for any help you can give.

I finally feel like I’ve accomplished something as a Peace Corps Volunteer! Yey! It only took about a year, but at least I’m getting somewhere now…maybe. Upendo Hoteli (Restaurant of Love) is officially open for business in Kimondo as of today. In the Tanzanian time frame, this happened at lightening speed. I’m really proud of my widow’s group. They’ve been really motivated up to this point. We’ll see how long it lasts, but they’re doing great so far! We went to town together last Saturday to buy all the dishes and a big bag of rice and things of the like. Yesterday we planned on starting, but we had to get the room that we are renting for the restaurant ready as well as going buy a few last touches, like charcoal and bananas. Last night we were trying to get ourselves prepared to serve food first thing in the morning by cooking a loaf of banana bread (which I introduced to them at our cooking seminar at my house last week). However, the whole thing was sold within about 4 minutes of coming out of the “oven.” We cut it up into ten pieces and sold it for 200 Shillings a piece (about $0.14). This morning we planned on baking another loaf first thing, but we had to wait until about 11AM before we found some eggs in the vil, but we went ahead with the chai maziwa (tea with milk) until we finally got all the ingredients we needed. You would think we were serving chocolate soufflé. People are very impressed. So we’re off to a good start at least.

In other commentary, they aren’t kidding when they talk about there being a rainy season and a dry season in Africa. In the rainy season, it literally rained everyday. Now it appears that the rainy season is coming to an end. Perhaps not all at once, but it is clear that the dry season is rapidly approaching. If it doesn’t rain for just one day the dust is back in full force. I’d forgotten how bad it gets. And it doesn’t help that giant trucks fly by going 90 mph on the dry dirt roads. (Survival tip number one for Tanzania: Pedistrians NEVER have the right of way. Ever.)

It’s amazing how a little taste of home can make a person happy. The paradox of sitting in the village reading a Shape magazine while munching on Girl Scout cookies…it’s a beautiful thing. I’m lucky to have a family so devoted to making sure I get my proper dose of processed foods. And even though we had to smuggle them in like cocaine stuffed in an Easter Bunny, I FINALLY got some iPod speakers!!! My life has been infinately better this week! And I was able to sew the bunny back up and give it to my favorite kid in Tanzania, the contraband ended up making TWO girls very happy instead of just one.

So besides trying to ration my Cheezits and enjoying my new coloring books, what have I been up to in the vil? I actually have a few things going on right now. Last Saturday I began training 20 peer educators, 4 from the primary school and 16 from the secondary school. It was a bit challenging for the first day because my counterpart Upendo, who works with a local HIV related NGO, couldn’t be there so I had to facilitate the session by myself. Trying to describe things like role models and qualities we admire in another language is a perfect reminder of just how not-fluent I am in Swahili. But they are good kids and they helped me out and were patient with me so we managed. This coming Saturday should be easier with or without Upendo though, because I will be talking about HIV transmission and prevention, which is what I do here, so I think I’ve at least got that vocab down. The training will be continued for five weeks total, each Saturday in May up until the summer break for school. (Well technically its not summer on this side of the equator but you get the idea). When the school reopens about a month later, the peer educators will be assigned one period per week to teach the other students about HIV, communication skills, decision making skills, relationship skills, and gender roles.

This Wednesday I started working with a widow’s group in the village next to mine, Igoma, and on Thursday I met with the widow's in my village, Kimondo. If it all works out according to plan, for two Wednesdays/Thursdays of the month I will talk about special topics like caring for children with HIV, proper use of ARVs, making budgets, and things of the like. The other two Wednesdays I will teach nutrition and healthy cooking. I showed them how to make biscuits at our first meeting this week and gave them some strawberry jam and they loved it! And we even made preliminary plans to open a resturant in Kimondo!

I’ve also been busy planning a girls’ empowerment camp with seven other volunteers in Mbeya region. We’ve got all kinds of activities planned teaching things like the life skills I’m working with my peer educators on, as well as fun stuff like a spa night and movies and popcorn. Bringing the concept of a sleepover to Africa, isn’t that what Peace Corps is all about? Maybe we can even build a huge tent out of sheets.

But the biggest thing that has gone down lately happened this past weekend. There is a health clinic in Mbeya Town that does HIV testing and they brought a group of people out to my village for a special event on Sunday, which is the market day so there are more people around. They had a group of people around my age that came to do all kinds of things to get people’s attention so that they would come in get tested. They did tribal dancing, and skits about HIV, and acrobatics. It was really fun and 73 people ended up getting tested for HIV and there were a bunch more that were waiting in line that didn’t get the chance to get tested, so I’m going to try to organize another time for them to come and do it again. It is possible to get tested in the dispensary in Igoma, but people are too scared to go down there because they feel like everyone will know why they’re going and they’re embarrassed. But it seems that the whole ‘everybody’s doing it’ idea works here because they were all for it on Sunday. Its sad that 14 people ended up testing positive, but at least now hopefully they can get the help they need to live the longest and healthiest lives possible.

So that’s pretty much what’s on my plate these days. Along with the usual trying to get used to kids staring at me while I eat and trying to remind people that my name is Katie and not Mzungu.

I just wrapped up a month long soccer tournament/HIV seminar for young guys in my village. During the last class, I answered general questions about HIV transmission, condom use, and the myths surrounding these topics. I decided to get one of the participants to explain and demonstrate how to properly use a condom using an empty coke bottle, which went fine. I ended up stuffing this demo condom back in the box to throw away in the garbage basket in my kitchen when I got home.

As I believe I have previously mentioned, I have a crew of boys in the hood that like to hang out/terrorize my house on a regular basis. My most faithful little friend underfoot is the youngest son of my neighbor. He likes to just sit on my kitchen floor and watch me cook (aka wait for me to give him some of whatever food I’m making) while he practicing writing the numbers 1-10 over and over on some notebook paper. Another of his favorite pastimes is to dig through my garbage and find things to play with…

So imagine my surprise when one day last week I am sitting at my ‘dining room’ table writing a letter and out of the corner of my eye, there’s little 6 year old Yosiah, with a bright red strawberry scented condom in his mouth trying to blow it up like a balloon. Priceless.

People are always wanting to know, so what is like? Really? Well, its hard to explain. It’s a world of opposites and contradictions. Its up or its down. Its exciting to be so far out of the box, out on my own, living my life…but then again there’s homesickness. Its exhilarating to see the enthusiasm for plans for development at village meetings…and incredibly frustrating when nothing happens beyond the planning stages. Its nice to be able to just slow down the pace of life and smell the roses a bit if you will…and also so annoying when that lack of concept of time means that if you plan a meeting for 8:00 nobody shows up until 9:45. Its great to have some time to myself to just read, relax, and just think…but too much time to myself turns into loneliness and extreme boredom. It’s the day to day that is the biggest challenge. I’m all about planning big projects and have several in the works. But most of them are things that may only last a day or two and that’s it. We have a health/career seminar coming up next month and a girl’s empowerment camp the month after. But we’ve pretty much finished planning them. What am I supposed to do until the time comes around for them to take place? Sleep. Cook. Clean. Read. Give the crazy neighborhood boys candy to make them stop running and screaming around my house. Clean up after crazy neighborhood boys. Cook again. Write letters. Read again. Cook again. Sleep.

There’s still moments when I ask myself what in the world I am doing with my life right now. Did I come to Africa just to read, cook, and sleep? Did I come to sit in a house all day alone and listen to the rain that inevitably comes at some point every single day? But then there’s those moments that remind me what the whole purpose of it all is. For instance right now I’m facilitating a HIV info oriented soccer tournament for teenage/twenty-somethings boys in my village. I, along with my counterpart Lupogo, teach a 45 minute lesson about HIV/STDs/condoms and things of that nature before each of the games. This Monday we played a fact/myth game to instigate discussion about various rumors associated with HIV. One of the questions was whether or not there are tiny wholes in condoms that allow HIV to pass through. The guys were supposed to go to one side of the room if they thought this was true, the other if they thought it was a lie, and hang out in the middle if they weren’t sure. The majority stayed in the middle, a good amount went to the true side and a handful went to the lie side. But what was interesting was during the discussion that followed the movement, one guy said that he heard that there were some condoms that carried HIV themselves! I tried to explain that HIV must live inside of a liquid (blood, semen, vaginal fluid, or breast milk) so it would therefore be impossible for a condom itself to be infected, but I’m not so sure he believed me. The point is, we threw out some pretty far reaching myths and every time there were at least a few people who believed they were true. So I felt like I was doing something semi-productive by at least giving them the facts and stimulating the discussion.

Things move along pretty slowly around here. It’s difficult to see real changes. There’s always setbacks. Like with my community garden project to improve nutrition and income status in my village. I wrote the grant, got the money, bought the supplies… now I’ve just got to get the people to show up to plant it! But at least the orphans have managed to take their share and plant a vegetable garden at the primary school and the group of people with HIV in my village have planted their own garden to share. The people who were most interested in the idea in the first place have yet to do their part, but oh well. The people who need it the most seemed to have benefited.

So there you have it. This is pretty much my life as a PCV.

Tanzania isn’t exactly a hotspot for Irish Pubs, but hey, I did hear a nice little tribute to Irish culture on The Voice of America Special English on the radio. They gave a lovely little history of Mother Jones and Bing Crosby. Not exactly green beer, but at least I’m remembering my roots somehow.

On to other reflections: for instance, how they manage to cut the grass without lawn mowers around here. I was pondering this as the rainy season progressed and the grass started getting ridic on the soccer field in front of my house. It was up to my knees and I was getting soaked every time I had to walk up to buy some candles or kerosene. I was thinking maybe the cows that like to hang out in the field would take care of it, but I noticed that even with all that they were eating, they weren’t even making a dent. Then the students came back to school from the winter break and I was enlightened. Everyday before the students go home from school, the teachers send them out to a different section of the field with machetes and the students go to it. And that’s the way its done. Try to imagine that happening in America. Let’s just envision giving a bunch of 12 year old boys machetes…

Other things you may wonder about: like how do all these kids wake up on time to get to school without alarm clocks, or even watches for that matter. Well, spend one night at my house and you’ll wake up to the answer. Every morning at about 6AM someone goes up to clang on the big circular piece of metal that is the school bell for about 2 full minutes to wake up everyone in the village. Then there’s another bell about an hour later to let everyone know its time to start heading towards school. Then at 7:45 every morning, just in case you haven’t made it there yet, all of the students stand outside and sing Mungu Ibariki (the National Anthem) with drum accompaniments. So there you go, that’s how its done.

Sasa Unajua (Now you know.)

Hello again. Just over here in Africa freezing my arse off. Not exactly what you might expect, but true nonetheless. I was hanging out with some friends outside last night literally shivering. I’m a little worried about how cold it’s going to get here in July (the coldest month here South of the equator). They told me there is even going to be ice in my village. That should be interesting.

I must admit, I don’t have much productiveness to report on. We had a great meeting in the village and planned out several different committees and meeting dates and times, then school let out, and the holidays came, and I had to go to Iringa for two weeks for IST and it all kind of fell by the wayside. But I’ve determined that this week things are going to start happening. If I can only gather three people together to come to my English class, then I will just have to teach those three people. I can’t sit around doing nothing anymore. I want to start a health club at the primary school tomorrow. Then Tuesday I’m going to visit the secondary school when there is supposedly an NGO that comes to conduct a peer education group with the Form 3 students focusing on HIV/AIDS prevention and life skills. In the evening on Tuesday I’m going to see if I can revive my adult English class that has been forgotten amongst all the craziness of my recent travels. Friday I will hopefully have the health club again at the primary school, this time with the older students. Then in a couple of weeks we’re going to have our first nutrition/cooking class on the 28th, which I’m really excited about.

In not the not so good news category, my kitten died while I was at IST in Iringa. Apparently she ate something poisonous while she was playing outside the day before I left. :( Hopefully I can find a new one soon. RIP Penny Lane.

Other than that, just been busy battling the rain. I’ve just gotten used to taking off my glasses and pulling on my hood and just riding my bike through the rain. There’s no use is waiting for it to stop. It’s not going to. It rains all day everyday pretty much. The other day I went to visit my friend Teri in her village and we had quite an adventure getting up to her house from the main road where the daladala drops us off. It was raining and we didn’t feel like doing the 30 minute walk to her house in the rain, especially since I had just received 4 packages from the post office and was going to have to try to carry all of the soggy, falling apart boxes. So we noticed a tarp-covered truck loading up crates of soda bottles nearby and decided to ask for a ride up to Iyawaya, her village. They agreed so when all their cargo was loaded up, we tossed in all of our bags and boxes and hopped in. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Then we started moving. Not the smoothest ride in the world. There are loads of bumps and rocks and potholes in the road and I’m pretty sure we hit every one of them. I was jostled around a lot, but fortunate enough to be sitting on a relatively soft sisal bag. Teri on the other hand was sitting on a crate of glass bottles, which ended up being not so comfortable. There are two bridges that must be crossed to reach Iyawaya, both of which are immediately followed by a steep hill. We made it across the first hill, no problem, but the second one is steeper than the first and the driver was afraid that he wouldn’t make it up with all the cargo and extra passengers in the back. So we all climbed out and walked up the hill, waiting for the truck to meet us at the top. It made it about halfway before rolling all the way back to the bridge. It tried again, but it just wasn’t happening. So the driver decided he would just have the take the long way around and would meet us at the primary school with all of our stuff we had left on board.

So we walked in the rain the remaining distance up to Teri’s house and waited. And waited. And waited. At some point we start to get a little worried. We had all left some relatively important things on this truck, like my laptop for instance, so it was going to be a big problem if this truck just decided to pass on through without dropping off our things. So we started asking the other villagers if they had noticed a truck passing by the primary school. Eventually we discerned that the truck had gotten stuck in the mud a ways down the alternate safer road it decided to take. So off we went on a search party and eventually came across it, indeed rather stuck in the mud. We stood in the rain and waited for it to get unstuck but that just wasn’t happening. So I decided to wade across the river that was flowing on top of the bridge to get to the other side where the truck was in the process of being dug out. I had to search a bit through all of the cargo to find all of our stuff, but eventually we had passed it all out of the truck to various villagers on hand to help carry it all back to Teri’s and hopped out. Throughout this whole ordeal, I had managed to stay relatively clean, if not dry. No easy task as anyone who knows me can tell you that if there is anything to trip over, or any whole to step in, or any slick surface to slip on, its going to be me that does it. This being said, the soil in Iyawaya does not drain very well and creates a very thick and slippery layer of mud when it rains. I was about 15 feet from Teri’s house when I had to go down a very small hill, but I knew what was coming. I looked at it, and even said out loud to myself, “I’m about to bust my butt.” And immediately after muttering these words, down I slide through the mud. Nice. Fitting end to the adventure I think. But nevertheless, we made it, and cracked open those soggy boxes and enjoyed some lovely instant mashed potatoes and Chex mix.

So much has been going on lately I don't even know where to start. I have had a fabulous last couple of months here in Tanzania. The holiday season went much better than expected. Not that I didn't still think of you all back home, but I had a good time with all of my new friends here too. Tanzania is beginning to feel more and more like home. I hate feeling rushed writing blogs at the internet cafe. I can't ever think of anything to say. Hard to believe seeing how I haven't updated this thing in about a month and a half, but I really don't feel like I have anything of interest to write right now. I just wanted to let you all know that I'm still alive and doing well. Thanks for checking up on me, and I promise I'll have some type of an update soon.

Ok so, it’s Christmas, and I’m in Africa, I couldn’t resist a little “Feed the World Reference.” But it’s also true. I’m in Dar es Salaam right now and it is soooooooooo HOT! It’s like standing in line at Disney World in August all day and night minus the little tunnels of fans spraying a cooling mist on you. Its taking a cold shower that just won’t get cold enough and sweating again as soon as you touch the knob to turn off the water. So basically, its really hot. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let me back it up to Christmas.

Christmas in Mbeya. Oh glorious Mbeya where the weather is so much better. Love that place. We kicked off the festivities on Dec 23 when we had a NewbieBQ at our Canadian friend Deborah’s house in Mbeya Town. Get it? NewbieBQ? BBQ for the Newbies? Yeah, we thought we were pretty clever too. So we invited all of the new education volunteers that recently arrived in Mbeya region to come eat and drink and be merry, which was fun times. Then on Christmas Eve, Deb’s orphans came to her house and we ate all day long. Ridiculous amounts of ridiculously good food. I even provided some some Christmas tunes via my ipod and some borrowed speakers. Although I didn’t find a lot of the oldie goldies until after Christmas on my way to Dar, but nonetheless, we had Christmas music. That night we went stood outside and sung Christmas carols with the kids and then they sang some Swahili songs and we danced in a big circle together. We even decorated a Christmas tree together and had an AMAZING stuffed turkey.

On Christmas day, after the kids opened their presents, my plans changed about 4 times before noon, but I ended up going to my friend Teri’s village to celebrate with her there. I’m glad I did because what we experience there is best when shared. As soon as we got there we had pombe (aka corn moonshine) forced upon us by 70 year olds. We told them we were ok with our beers, but we had to take a sip or two just to make them happy. Its gross, I do not recommend it. So then as I was dragged off into a corner to dance with a Babu (grandfather), Teri got out her camera and ended up having to a do a photo shoot of several different people variously posed with their pombe. Some wanted their picture to be taken squatting down scooping the pombe from the bucket into their big plastic cups. Some preferred action shots with their faces completely covered by the cup as they chugged the milky looking alcohol. Either way, hilarity ensued. Eventually it got a little hot in this particular hut so we moved into the more chill pombe hut and talked with some villagers and tried to learn some more Kisafwa (the local tribal language in both of our villages.)

What’s missing from this Christmas? Well, there was no “A Christmas Story” 24-hour Marathon on TBS. There was no watching “A Muppet Christmas Carol” on VHS with my sister 45 times. There was no “Charlie Brown Christmas,” although Teri had a great king-size replica of his tree. There was no flying mess of meringue and chocolate chips from baking all night long. But it was a good Christmas in Africa’s own way.

I went back to my village just for a couple of days then abandoned the poor people again to come to Dar to celebrate New Year’s Eve. A lot of volunteers from my training class went to a beach resort called Kipepeo Village. Some people camped in tents and some slept in thatched hut bandas. The beach was beautiful, although the absurd amount of sea weed made swimming a bit tricky. On New Year’s Eve we walked down to the next resort called South Beach, and I must admit, it was very Miamiesque. It was a huge place with lots of lights and loud music and mostly fun dancing, minus these Indian boys with no shirts that looked like they were about 12 that kept trying to dance with us. That was a little awkward. But overall, good times.

So there you have it, my first African Christmas and New Year’s. I can’t believe I left Gainesville 7 months ago. Time is going by so much faster now. While I did have a good time here over the holidays, of course I thought of all of you back home. You know how it goes, Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold. I’m not even going to apologize for the cheesiness. Hope everyone had a nice holiday wherever you celebrated it. Happy New Year!

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the village

All the mice began stirring to commence their rape and pillage

And I in my small bed, my cat on the floor

Had just hunkered down for the start of the war

When up in the ceiling boards there arose such a clatter

A knew without a doubt these rats had gotten fatter

My cat got warmed up by chasing her tail

She’d catch them tonight I knew without fail

So with torchi in hand and cat at my feet

I opened the door to see what I could see

I swung the beam from side to side

Trying to find where these rodents might hide

With the light trained on a crack in the wall

I gasped in surprise when I saw what I saw

For there was the rat I had come to fear

And down at her haunches were eight babies here

So I crept back into the bedroom with ease

For I couldn’t kill the whole family on Christmas Eve

‘Merry Christmas kitty,’ I murmered in my slumber

‘And Merry Christmas rats, but tomorrow I’ve got your number

Merry Christmas Everyone!

ps-I don't really have a rat family living in my ceiling, just in case you were worried. ;)

What a fabulous week. Got a kitty, had a productive meeting in the village, and I got a group of kids to actually call me Katie instead of Mzungu! Yey!

On Sunday I went to a fellow PCV's site in Tukuyu about an hour away from my site in Kimondo to pick up a kitten. He only had one left to give away and I'm pretty sure that she's the best one. She's so cute. I named her Penny Lane. Its nice to have a little company now. She gets a bit ferocious from time to time, my hands are definately suffering from that, but she's sweet too and likes to sleep on top of me. Everytime I want to roll over I have to try to gently move her off of me, but whatever position I end up in, she climbs right back up on me.

Yesterday I had a meeting with about 25 villagers and we actually got things accomplished. We planned meeting times for a nutrition/recipe class, the community garden/orchard that we will be planting soon, a village credit union and an adult English class! Yey, finally something to do. I have started teaching English to Standard 7 kids last week and that's going ok. They're coming along veryyyy slooooooowly. It gets a little frustrating, but I think it will pay off. (side note: I saw one of the students using a black erasable pen in class the other day and inwardly I was like HEY THAT's MINE!, but I decided to let it slide. How big of me right?)

And as a bonus, this morning, on my way into town, the gang of little kids in Igoma that always chant "Mzungu! Mzungu!" (Mzungu is a Swahili term for a white or foreign person) when I ride by on my bike actually said "Shikamoo, Katie." (Shikamoo is a respectful way to great people older than you). They actually remembered my name and used it! I'm not sure if this will last, but hey, its a start!

Thanksgiving ended up going much better than expected. We Mbeyans went through several different plans before we finally ended up at a former Peace Corps Volunteer’s house and had a really good time. Big Mike was a PCV in Tanzania several years ago and ended up marrying a Tanzanian woman and building a house here in Mbeya. He invited a bunch of current PCV’s over to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family, with electricity, and an oven, and satellite tv, and even a turkey he raised himself.

We couldn’t find any football on the ESPN channel his satellite picked up, but we did have most of the other Thanksgiving traditions…turkey and stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and apple pie. I missed my dad’s stuffing and my aunt’s éclair cake, but for Africa, we did a pretty good job with what we had. Of course I missed my family, but I had fun with my new Peace Corps family too. And it was really nice to spend 45 minutes being passed around on the phone at my family’s Thanksgiving dinner and getting to hear a lot of voices I haven’t heard in a long time.

Right now I’m in the neighboring Iringa region with some PCV friends. Peace Corps gave us 3 free travel days, that we didn’t have to subtract from our annual leave total, so Meesh and Teri and I decided to come visit some of the other nearby volunteers. We had a good time going out dancing last night and I anticipate more good times for tonight. Quite an international crowd we had last night. Americans, Finnish guys, Brtis, and a Spaniard or two. Our crew in Mbeya is getting more and more internationally diverse as we meet more people in the area too. There are of course the PCVs from the US, who are diverse even amongst ourselves, then there are the 2 French Canadian women who live in town whose house we stay at when we go into town for the weekend and the recent additions of a Korean volunteer and a German. Its so cute to hear all of the accents when we’re all together.

Off to do some shopping at the Masai market now. To be continued.

December 2, 2008

Back at home now. Last weekend ended up being a lot of fun. Really glad I decided to not be cheap and just go. As far as updates on the home front go, I finally tried to use my charcoal iron. Not to the best effect. It was pretty pointless in fact. I guess I didn’t put enough charcoal in to make much of a difference. But at least I tried. Maybe I’ll try it again after another 3 months. Never was much of an ironer in the US, why start now?

The school term just ended and I see that I had varying success as a first time teacher. It seems that my students didn’t do any worse in my classes than they did in any others, but still, the test results overall were a bit depressing. I really feel sorry for the ones that don’t understand English, as that is what all of the classes are taught in at secondary school. It was really obvious who didn’t given the answers that they wrote had absolutely nothing to do with the question I had asked. Here’s hoping that I at least got something through to some of them. I think next year I’m going to focus more on my actual assignment as a health volunteer and stop teaching at the secondary school. I may continue to teach biology form 1 because it covers a lot of info about HIV and other STDs, but I want to spend more time in my village here in Kimondo rather than only working in Igoma.

In fact, I’m going to try to start teaching an adult English class in the next couple of weeks. Schools are closed for winter break so I have nothing better to do, and lots of people have been asking me when I’m going to start actually doing something. I’ve been delaying, thinking that I need to wait to get funds for some of the bigger projects or learn to speak Swahili better for the projects that don’t require money, but I think I’ve put it off long enough and I need to get going. I’m going to try to start out with teaching simple conversational English to the villagers here by reversing my Swahili training. Although it may be a bit difficult as most of the villagers do not know how to read and write, but I’m sure we’ll find a way to make it work.

I’m also very excited to getting started on the primary school library project. I have in-service training in January where I will finally learn how to write grants and can get the money to put everything together. As I started writing a preliminary list of all of the things I need to buy to start it, I’m realizing this is going to be quite the undertaking. But I have high hopes that it will be worth it in the end.

I will definitely need to do some lessons on how to care for books properly first. These little boys that like playing at my house leave everything in such a mess all the time. My grandparents sent me some flashcards and a spelling book that they love playing with. They come over and ask for paper and pens to write everyday. Which is great, but they just leave dirt all over everything. I know they partly can’t help it, as it does rain every single day now so they is naturally mud all over everything, but still. I’m trying to at least teach them to put their garbage in the trash can when they finish with the lollipops that they come asking for everyday as well. And I came up with the bright idea to make them sweep all of the mud that they track into my house before they get candy now. Seeing how they’re 6 year old boys, it’s not the best cleaning job in the world, but it’s a start anyway.

HOLY CRAP! WE DID IT!!! It was so surreal waking up at 4:30 in the morning to go to Mbeya Regional Hospital to watch CNN on a giant projector with some fellow Americans and a lot of excited Tanzanians and see what happened today. Me, the non-crier, teared up about 15 times this morning. I'm in the most euphoric and hopeful and excited mood right now! It seems that American can only go up from where we are now, but hopefully we'll really turn a corner and get things accomplished and restore our image in the world. I'm so happy to finally have a president I can be proud of. I can honestly say I'm proud to be American today, which I don't think I've ever said before, and I still cringe at the cheesiness of the phrase and the conjured images of people wearing American flag shirts and singing "God Bless the USA" on the Fourth of July, but I'm saying it anyway. That's how much this election has inspired me. And if any ignorant bigot decides to destroy this radiation vibe that America is rolling on...Not so fast Lee Harvey! I will absolutely pull a Jack Ruby and make sure you get yours! Ok, so not really, but seriously, that would suck. We were discussing the John and Jackie-O/Barack and Michelle similarites and we certainly hope they will fall short of JFK's tragic end. OK, enough of the downer mood! Today is an awesome day in history! But you all know that, so let's move on.

In other fabulous news, I FINALLY received my solar panel yesterday! HOORAY! I'm hoping now I can stock up on pirated movies and watch them on my laptop in my village (and hopefully the CIA isn't tracking this post). I mean, the BBC on my crappy little radio has been great and all, but oh how I miss movies.

In keeping with the theme of awesomeness, GO GATORS! When I got the text message at 2:30 AM this Sunday that we had slaughtered the GA Bulldogs, I was reminded of matching pajama shirts that me and my sister had when we were little that said I Ain't Afraid of No Dawgs with a NO sign over a pound puppy. I wish I still had it because I definately would be sporting it this week! Keep it up Tebow and Co.! It really makes me miss college, but that has provided me with extra motivation to study to take the GRE around New Year's and start applying to grad schools next year.

In village news, not too much has been going on there. It torrentially downpoured all day on my birthday last week, as it always has. I was almost expected a hurricane warning here in TZ, it just didn't seem like my bday without one. So my bday was pretty lame in the village all alone, but I did go to a meeting with about 100 other villagers and my counterpart, Mwalimu Lupogo, presented my project ideas to them for me in Swahili and they seemed really excited about them. I'm actually really surprised by their willingness and idustriousness. I was expected to have to do everything myself, but I think what I really need to do is just improve my Swahili skills and just guide them in doing it themselves. I know I have tons of support back home in all of you, so stay posted for donating oppurtunities forthcoming.

I was able to make my little neighborhood gang of little boys very happy a couple of days ago with my fresh stock of cardboard boxes from packages to give to them. They absolutely love them. They come asking for them all the time, so I was glad to have a nice stock pile to hand out to them. You'd think I'd just give them all PS3's.

I feel like I had so much more to update on, but I'm just so flustered by the election this morning that I can't sit still anymore. Its awesome that we were able to get Obama into office, now I can't wait to see the progress still to come. I loved his little vignet about the 106 year old lady and all that she has seen during her lifetime. It brought tears to my eyes to think about how far we've come since the turn on the 20th century, but in seeing gay marriage ban ammendments passed in 4 different states, and admist hearing people calling Barack Obama a terrorist and even the Anti-Christ, I see that we have plenty of progress left to make.

And might I just say, for the sake of my more conservative readers, which I know is probably most of you, I really appreciated John McCain's concession speach. I don't hate him or anything, I just think Barack Obama is more of what we need for our country right now. I actually think that McCain is probably a good guy, and I hope that he will continue to show his ability to work across party lines and help move the US back in the right direction. Not so found of his creepy-looking-over-made-up-Barbie wife, and his false-accusation-throwing-creation-should-be-taught-in-schools VP, but McCain seems alright. ;)

My cheeseball factor is getting a little out of hand with this posting so I better stop before I get any worse. And might I just end up with a little..."YES WE CAN!!!" And yes, we did. :)

I have had a relatively eventful couple of weeks, and at every one of those events, you can bet on the presence of LOUD music. For instance, last week the primary school had a celebration for the students who were graduating Standard 7 (which is about 7th grade and the last grade before going to high school). And they set up a generator to blare their beloved gospel music to entertain us. Yes, gospel music at a school function. Its everywhere here. On daladalas, on the radio in the little stores, on every person who has a television's television,etc.

And of course, at revivals. There was some kind of a revival going on in Kimondo all last week. I just found out that they lady that lives next door to me is some kind of priest at some church that I've never heard of before coming here and their church was having what they called an "mkutano" or meeting. And since I'm their neighbor, they were sure to invite me everyday during the week. I'm not really a fan of religious fanatic gatherings in America, so pair that with the blaring, repetitive gospel music that I'm not so fond of and me not really being able to understand most of what was being said...yeah. But it was a nice cultural experience I suppose. I made the effort and went for a couple hours on a couple of different days, not that I needed to leave my house to hear the meeting going on. It was certainly broadcasted over the speakers loud enough. But I've got to start "getting out there" more and trying to hang out with the villagers and stop being such a hermit. I felt like I was integrating pretty well this week though. I certainly sacrificed and sat through enough church to last me a lifetime. Not only did I have the daily dose of revival but I also went to my neighbor's confirmation in the Catholic church, which lasted 3 hours, and I'm pretty sure we got there late.

I had a few more adventures to tell you all about, but I'm out of time at the internet cafe and I need to head back into the village before dark, so stay tuned...

I feel like I was relatively productive this week. I actually did something related to my Peace Corps assignment finally. I taught a lesson about HIV to my Form 1 Biology class and it went pretty well. It was kind of rough keeping ninety 14 year olds under control when you’re discussing things like condoms, but we made it through ok.

That class actually was easier to teach than my Form 1 Chemistry class a few days before. Apparently the Form 2 students just received their scores from their mock national exam and did not do well. So the other teachers had gathered the whole class together out on the grass in the middle of the school and were calling them up one by one to receive their strokes. Needless to say, this was a bit distracting to my class to see and hear their classmates getting hit right outside of our classroom. This whole corporal punishment thing here is very frustrating. I’ve had several discussions with the teachers at the secondary school about various topics, that being a frequent one. They think that if “you spare the rod you spoil the child” and if they didn’t use strokes that the kids would be crazy and do whatever they wanted and skip school all the time. They ask me what we do in America if we don’t hit children and I explained that there are other, more effective types of punishment, like giving them more work. That way they are punished and forced to learn something useful. They just laugh at me. There are many things that I disagree with concerning the education system here, but I suppose this is not the place to air my grievances.

One topic that I feel ok expounding upon that I have frequent debates with the teachers about is the current election in America. One of the teachers asks me pretty much everyday why I support Obama and says that he would vote for McCain, “because he’s old enough.” That’s the only reason. Old people are untouchable here. If you are old, then you are trusted to know what you are doing. Its so frustrating to get in these long discussions about how its not about age, its about ideology and how I disagree with the Republican party’s ideas, and how George Bush has run our country into the ground and gotten us into a stupid war, and how our economy is in shambles, and how Americans have lost respect abroad, etc. etc. (you guys have been there, you know how things are). So anyway, we discuss all these things, and he agrees with me, and I tell him that McCain is the one who wants to continue all those policies that we both disagree with and Obama is the one who wants to change things, then he just says, “Yes, but I think McCain is old enough.” UGH!

Continuing on the realm of frustrations of the week, my cooking has definitely taken a hit. I’m starting to get lazy when it comes to that. There are times when a refrigerator and a microwave would be fantastic instead of waiting 3 hours for some beans to cook. Speaking of which, I planned ahead the other day and was going to make some beans for dinner so I started my fire and put my beans on early in the day. But I forgot to check on them at one point and after they had been cooking for about 2 hours, I burned them. So I threw them out and had Nutter Butters for dinner instead (thanks Grandparents, those have come in very handy). However my goodies from America are running low and I’m starting to get really annoying with the post office because I know that packages were sent a while ago and they still aren’t here! I have a big zipped up bag that I keep a lot of the snacks from my last packages in and though it is dwindling, I made a wonderful discovery a couple of days ago when I reached in there and found a bag of barbeque roasted peanuts that I had completely forgotten about, and devoured them.

Despite all these rantings, it really has not been a bad week. I’m starting to feel more “normal” here. I’m actually starting to like the quietness of my house, although I will be very happy when my Ipod speakers finally get here so its not quite so quiet. I finally caved in to my laziness and got a couple of “housegirls.” Some people have girls that come everyday to cook and clean for them, so I don’t feel so bad having them come once a week. I just hate washing my clothes so much and it gives me blisters all over my hands. And once I tried washing my blankets, I knew that just wasn’t going to fly. So my neighbor got two of his students who have just finished Standard 7 and they are going to come every Thursday to help me wash and mop and such. They started this Thursday and it was fantastic having their help. They washed my clothes while I finally planted my garden.

Hate to say it, but the green thumb does not exactly run in my family. Unless it skipped a generation. (No offense Mom). I don’t know if my seeds are actually going to grow but at least I tried. My flowers aren’t making much progress so far, so we’ll see how the vegetables go. I got a little ambitious and planted a variety of things: basil, cilantro, oregano, chives, okra, cauliflower, green peppers, and watermelon. Good for the garden, and not so good for the blankets that were hanging out to dry, it finally rained on Thursday. And the saying when it rains it pours really applies here. This is the first time its really rained since I got to my site and it was quite a thunderstorm. At one point I even thought it was hailing, but I think that maybe it was just pebbles bouncing around. It was kind of cool to take a bucket bath to the sound of the storm, almost like I was taking a shower in the rain. It was easy to pretend I was at home with a Florida Thunderstorm and the power out. I did notice a leak in my ceiling already, but its good to see it now so hopefully I can get it fixed before the rainy season starts in a few weeks.

I also treated myself to a badly needed pedicure this week. I bought a pumice stone at the market and it worked wonders. I was finally able to scrub of the layers of dirt that had cemented themselves to my feet. Gross I know, but I thought I’d share anyway. I even painted my toenails to boot.

Before I sign off for the day, I would just like to include to little scenarios that occurred this morning that I feel could only happen in Tanzania. First of all, on my walk to the next village to get to the daladala to get to town this morning, I passed an old woman and greeted here in the tribal language. She stopped and greeted me back, then offered me some pombe (moonshine). This was 8:30 AM. Another thing, when I was on the daladala, I was sitting in the front seat next to the driver, who was young guy about my age probably. Then a Celine Dion song, “I’m Alive,” came on the radio and he got all excited and turned it up and started singing along. They love Celine Dion here. Its great. On that note, I guess I’ll wrap it up here.

This past week I had a visiting volunteer come stay with me and its been nice having someone to speak in English to. We’ve mostly passed the time cooking delicious food all week. We made bean burgers with guacamole, meatless meatloaf, pineapple upside down cake, chocolate chunk cookies, falafel and pitas and all kinds of other delicious spicy soupy concoctions. Its been good times. Other than that not too much to report. Still been teaching biology and chemistry and that’s going ok. Just kind of frustrating that the kids have been taught with rote memorization style for so long that its almost impossible to make them think outside of the box and come up with any answer that is not a direct dictionary definition from their notes. But we’ll see how that goes. I have an interesting lesson planned on HIV for next week with my Form 1 (9th grade) biology class so hopefully that will liven them up a little. This weekend I’ve come into town for a fellow volunteer’s birthday so it should be fun hanging out with a bunch of other volunteers in the region…and hopefully I’ll start feeling better eventually. I’ve been kinda queasy feeling all week (too much delicious food maybe). Plus all the dust in the air has left me with a month long upper respiratory infection that for some reason really makes my ears hurt when I swallow, but I suppose there are worse things one could obtain in this country. I’m sending in my absentee ballot today (BARACK THE VOTE!!!). I’m pretty excited about that. And while I’m at it, I might as well throw in my two cents that if I can get my vote in from the other side of the world, then all of you need to make sure to get out there and vote in America! Its not that hard. As long as you are voting for the right person that is… ;) And from what I hear the country is going to hell in a handbasket over there. Jeez, I’m gone for four months and you all let the Great Depression 2 hit, and UF loses to Old Miss in the Swamp…ouch! I’m glad me and my little bit of money are safe on another continent with no televisions to watch this torture! I did watch some coverage of the Capital by BBC right before the Senate Voted on the Wall Street bail out package, and I might I say if you didn't pay attention to how scary it was, it was quite funny. The Brits were interviewing the most ignorant sounding Senators from the Midwest saying things like, "Isn't this package completely Un-American for rewarding failing businesses?" When you're starved for News Coverage its awesome though. I'm going to try to get a radio so I can listen to the rest of the debates and hear the election results as they come in. Until then, you guys keep things under control over there!

It has been confirmed: Tanzania is indeed a beautiful country. Last weekend I took a mini vacay to Matema Beach to meet some of the other volunteers in my area. Matema Beach is located on the shores of Lake Nyasa (or Lake Malawi if you’re talking about it from the Malawian side). Even though it is technically a lake, it is really a beach at heart. There’s a pretty good wind coming off the clear blue-green water that made little waves to float around in. The sandy shores are lined with huge green mountains and brightly colored fish splash around in the shallows. We even had a fire on the beach one night when it wasn’t too windy. We slept in a cozy little bungalow right by the water. (I feel like I’m writing a tourism brochure, but really, it was nice. We decided it would be a very romantic little honeymoon spot actually.)

On Saturday a few of us decided to hike up to a nearby waterfall. Good thing one of the guys I went with turned out to be Spiderman, because it was a pretty treacherous hike. Not so good for people who are scared of heights (i.e. me). Teri and I would have hobbled over like 2 rocks and we’d look up, and Spiderman would be able a mile ahead of us scaling a giant boulder. He even carried my bag for me in a part where I thought it was too steep and decided to swim through that part instead of fall to my death. Ok, it wasn’t the Grand Canyon or anything, but it was enough to be really scary. It was worth facing the fear and battling the fire ants that were all over everything on the way up once we made it though. The waterfall was beautiful and we were able to swim in a little pool underneath it for a while before heading back.

The hike contributed to the demise of my poor hands. Turns out my pitiful skin isn’t really cut out for life in Africa. I already had what I affectionately refer to as “fua marks” the day I left for the beach. Fua is the Swahili word for “to wash, as in an article of clothing.” The detergent here is pretty intense and I always end up with these little blisters on my knuckles and fingertips that look especially knarly when they start to scab over. Add to that the blisters that took up about half of my palm on both hands from clinging to rocks during the hike and the extra ones I added the day after I got home had to hoe my soil to plant some flowers…. Yeah, my hands are looking pretty rough. Every time my neighbors see them they apologize then show me their calloused hands and tell me I’ll get used to it. Everybody is a farmer here, so you can imagine how rough their hands are. I’m just hoping that the flowers actually grow so it will be worth it. I planted some orange and blue flowers in the front to represent the Gators and some sunflowers in the back and some pansies on the side so we’ll see how it goes. And as soon as these blisters heal I’m going to plant my vegetable garden and hopefully be able to eat my own food that I’ve grown for myself.

Things are starting to pick up around here in areas other than gardening as well. I start teaching at the secondary school on Monday, which is both scary and exciting. When I was making my lesson plans for my 9th grade biology class I noticed that there is a lot of time in the syllabus devoted to HIV/AIDS/STI education but it is not covered in their textbook at all. I figured that meant it was fate that I was supposed to teach that subject there seeing how that’s actually what I’m here to be teaching rather than Biology and Chemistry. So I used my Life Skills Manual and HIV in Tanzania book that I got from Peace Corps during training and planned several interactive games and discussions that hopefully the Headmaster will approve of and let me do. I figure it’s a great way to get my foot in the door and spark interest in the health topics I came here to teach. If there’s enough interest, I hope to be able to start a health club and a peer education group. I’m also thinking about doing a health bulletin board with a question box at the school.

I started my Swahili tutoring today. The Headmaster of the elementary school found a young girl, that’s probably about my age, that will help me with Swahili 8-12 Tues and Thurs. She initially said Saturday too, but I told her that was too much. I need at least one day when I don’t have anything to do and since I’m teaching Mon Wed Fri and I’m expected at church every Sunday, Saturday is the only day I have to go into town and such. We get a little bit of money from Peace Corps to pay for a tutor to help us improve our language skills throughout our service. And when I say a little, I mean 15,000 Tanzanian Shillings per month, which is a little less than $15.00. Imagine paying $15.00 a month for 32 hours of tutoring in the US. People want more than that for one hour.

With my mornings starting to get busy, in the evenings my house is rapidly becoming the place to hang out. One little boy that’s maybe 9 years old and his little brother have been coming over every night for the past 2 weeks and I’m pretty sure its going to be a regular thing from now on. The come over around dusk and stay until a little past dark. They’re my favorites. They’re so sweet and polite. They just come sit on my couch and don’t say anything for like 2 hours. I’m starting to think that maybe I should feed them or something when the come over. I felt so bad the other day because it was really cold and I told them that they needed to wear a jacket and they told me they didn’t have one. Then I realized that they do wear the same thing everyday and its nothing very warm. I watched them when they left the other night and they just pulled their little arms inside of their short-sleeved shirts to keep warm. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me too much. I found out the other day that of the 300 students at the primary school in front of my house, 100 of them are orphans. That’s insane. I asked if it was due to AIDS, and they said that they don’t know. It probably is a major factor but just isn’t an acknowledged and talked about thing because of the stigma.

There’s also the crew of little boys that have been hanging around here since the first week I got here. They are all of my neighbors’ kids. Most of them are a little rowdier than the two mentioned in the previous paragraph, and they like to play in the dirt in front of my house which does not help with all the dust that accumulates daily in my house, but they’re growing on me. They crack me up how they go through my garbage and pull out the most random things to play with. It will just be something like a plastic bag or a Cheez-its box and they’ll think it’s the greatest thing ever. The saying “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” really applies here. And I bought a bike last week and last night I let them play with that until the sun went down last night and they seemed to really have a good time with that. I’m a little worried they’re going to break something, but oh well, I guess I can always fix it if they do.

Another regular is a high school boy that likes to come by to read the biology book. Like that would ever happen in America. Imagine a 17 year old boy swinging by his teacher’s house to bring her a gift of potatoes and sit at her table and read a text book by candlelight, just because he wants to. I guess when you consider that I have the one text book for the whole school that covers biology 11th and 12th grade, you realize how valuable it actually is. It certainly makes me appreciate all of the resources I had throughout my education. Its crazy when you really stop and compare the two. In an American high school, often times there’s enough textbooks to have a class set and one to collect dust under your bed at home or grow mold in your locker. You have a library filled with books. Everything from updated encyclopedias and dictionaries, to biographies, to fiction. There’s generally more than one computer lab equipped with enough computers for an entire class to be on the internet at one time. There’s powerpoint, overheads, smartboards, DVD’s. There’s unlimited photocopies and stocked up science labs. We think 35 kids in one class is too many.

Here, an average class had about 90. There’s no electricity at the school, much less any tech equipment. There is no science lab. There’s no library. There’s only one textbook for the whole school and I have it. There’s no budget to make photocopies of notes or worksheets. You pretty much have a teacher, a blackboard, and a notebook. And yet they soak it up like sponges.

I’ve been in an interesting dilemma of emotions this past week; I am starting to get used to living on my own here in Kimondo, but still feeling homesick too. I was rereading the letters some people gave me before I left and looking at pictures and hearing about how the football games are going and such and it really made me miss home. Its easy to get into that negative space when you start to ask yourself what it is that you are doing here in those moments. It seems crazy to leave everything that I know and all the people who love me back home to come here and live all alone for 2 years.

But then again, I’m starting to integrate little by little here into my new home.

I’m finding things to keep me busy. I’ve pretty much turned into Martha Stewart, or a retired grandma, whichever you prefer. I’ve been cooking all kinds of stuff. I’ve made rosemary sourdough bread, pineapple upside down cake, eggplant parmesan and I’m planning on making some cinnamon rolls today. I guess it’s a stress relief tactic, or maybe it just gives me something to do. I made some picture frames yesterday, which makes the place feel a little more homey. I worked on some cross-stitching this morning. I started that baby blanket about 4 years ago for my friend who was having a baby and then the baby grew up before I finished and I quit working on it. I decided that I’m not coming home until that thing is done. Maybe I can give it to my own children by the time I finish it!

I started my garden yesterday. Its really hard work! I only got one seed bed made and I plan on making 5 or 6. But I got so filthy dirty and tired and blistery after just one, we’ll just have to see how that goes. I did get my compost pile made though. My neighbor came over to help me and said he wanted to learn how to make it so he could make his own because fertilizer is so expensive. It made me feel useful to be able to teach something already.

Speaking of teaching, apparently I’m going to start teaching at the high school in Igoma in two weeks. I’m going to be teaching 9th grade Chemistry and Biology and 11th grade biology, which should be interesting seeing how I have zero training on how to teach and I’m going to be teaching in English to a bunch of kids that don’t really know English. I feel like life is playing some cruel joke on me by making me teach Chemistry, the one subject that I hate with a burning black passion. I tried to tell them that I suck at Chemistry and that I didn’t want to teach it, but they don’t have a Chemistry teacher right now so they got me to agree to at least try to teach 9th grade. I looked at the book and it doesn’t seem too complicated (and by the book, I mean THE book. There is only one text book for the whole school and it is a 13 year old paper back and I have it to make lesson plans.) So not only is there the whole language problem, but I have absolutely nothing to teach with. There is no electricity at the school so its not like I can make a powerpoint presentation or show videos. There isn’t really a lab with beakers and Bunsen burners so we can’t really do experiments. There’s not even a budget for me to make photocopies of worksheets. All I have is a chalkboard. I’m going to try to figure out some type of fun things they could work on it groups or just use some of my living allowance to make worksheets and such, because I just don’t see how they are supposed to learn by just copying what I write on the chalkboard, especially if they don’t know English well enough to know what it means. All secondary schools are supposed to be taught in English here, but the most of the kids just don’t know it well enough to learn that way. I’m going to have to use English for now, but when I learn more Swahili I think that I will start using that to teach. And the icing on the difficult cake is that the classes are huge. The teacher who was making my schedule was saying that there aren’t that many 11th graders so I could combine them and just teach one class. I thought that sounded good so I would have to wake up at the crack of dawn to get there at 7:40 to teach the first class, but then he told me that there were 87! I decided that I would just teach 2 classes rather than try to deal with 87 kids at once, which is apparently a small class here.

I also went to visit the dispensary (small health clinic) in Igoma last week and I’m going to try to see if I can get involved volunteering there as well. I found out some interesting info, like the fact that all services are free for pregnant women and children under 5 and all other services are only 500 shillings (less than 50 cents) which includes seeing the doctor and any medicine that you need. That’s amazing. And that the doctor also serves as the dentist, treating oral diseases and pulling teeth and such, which I thought was interesting.

I’m trying to start talking to more people. I started off just trying to take a little walk everyday, using buying kerosene as an excuse. I’ve made friends with a couple of ladies that sit up on the hill where the little string of stores are and peel potatoes everyday. They are teaching me Safwa, which is the local tribal language. There’s also usually a group of kids that come by pretty much everyday just to say hi and sit with me for a little while. I must admit, it was kind of annoying at first. This group of little boys would just come in my house and just stand there watching me and following me around. It was kind of awkward. There was the whole lonely but never alone dilemma going on. And then small groups of students from the primary school started coming by after school to say hi. And I realize that is what this is all about. I’m starting to get used to just sitting around doing nothing and saying nothing with people. Awkward silences don’t exist here apparently.

So while I am still missing home, which I don’t think will ever completely go away, I think that I’m going to make it here. I’m setting up my house. I’m talking to my neighbors more. I’m going to start working soon. I just have to keep reminding myself, holy crap, I’m living in Africa right now! What an amazing experience. Home will always be there when I get back.

I went to a soccer game yesterday and it actually ended up serving as an ok substitute for gameday Gainesville. Our village played another village up the road on the soccer field right out in front of my house. It was a pretty tight game most of the way, with the score tied at 1-1. Then right near the end of the game, the goalkeeper on the other team let a pretty easy attempt at scoring past him and Kimondo secured the win. Then our fans went singing and dancing over to the other side and stood in front of the other fans rubbing it in as much as possible. One lady standing next to me kept saying "Jaribu tena. Karibu tena" (Try Again, You're Welcome Again). I've heard from my fellow PCV's here that Gator fans are well known for being obnoxious in ways such as this (hey we can't help that we win everything) so it brought the feeling of The Swamp to Tanzania. That feeling was also helped along by all the drunk men hobbling along the sidelines. The action got even better when the ref made a controversial, and probably unneccessary penalty call against the losing village in the final minutes of the game. After that, an all out brawl broke out. I'm not exaggerating. The other team was chasing after the ref trying to hit him and the fans from both sides starting going at it in indivual little skirmishes all over the place. It was crazy. But it was ok. Just a bunch a crazed fans, you know how it is. I wasn't in danger or anything. Just a little something to make the place feel more like home. :) PS- I'm trying to upload a video tour of my house, but its taking forever so stayed tuned til next time I guess.

I don't have much to add since yesterday but I had to come back into town today because, despite standing in line for almost 2 hours at the bank, I was not able to get my money because Peace Corps has not given me my bank card and I only have a copy of my passport because they have the original, but hakuna matata, all's well now.

I would also like to give a little love for my three years of riding RTS around campus for preparing me for the experience that is the daladala ride. A daladala is essentially a dalapadated run-down something like a 15 passenger van that serves as a city bus. Despite having around 15 seats, there is generally about 30 people on each one, there's always room for one more paying customer you see. So as you can imagine, its not the most pleasant experience in the world. However today, depite being smooshed between two ladies with babies and having my knees crammed into the seat in front of me and having the person behind me's knees jammed into my back, I found myself actually being quite comfortable. Its amazing to see how much standards can change here. :)

One standard that hasn't changed for me however is that I am so out of shape! Which I was reminded of this morning at the crack of dawn as I borrowed my neighbor's bike to get into Igoma to catch the 7 am daladala to town. I'm pretty sure its just going to be easier for me to do the forty-five minute walk than to try to ride a bike in these mountains, I really felt like I was about to die. I like to blame it on the altitude and the cold air, but I'm pretty sure its simply because I've been so lazy before coming here. I think that I'm going to buy a bike anyway and keep on trying to make that trek each week and maybe I'll be in marathon-running shape when I get back.

I'm starting to feel more comfortable with my surroundings here in Mbeya and I think I'm already ready to get started working. The people have been so nice and helpful that it really makes me want to do good things for their community. I feel like a lot is expected of me so I hope I can deliver. I think I'm going to spend this week rereading all of my Peace Corps manuals about community entry and such then get going with meetings and see what happens from there.

I still have a lot of setting up house to do. I think I'm getting all my furniture delivered today, which will be nice. Hopefully it will make my house more homey. And if anybody has any pictures or posters or things of the like that you want to send, feel free because I've got nothing right now.

I have a new address now too that I think that I forgot to include yesterday. It is:

Katie Gillman, PCV

PO BOX 2501

Mbeya

Tanzania, Africa

Oh and one last thing... GO GATORS!!!!!!!! It sucks that I won't be able to watch the games this season, but you guys keep me posted and cheer a little extra for me. Maybe have a beer and some tostitos in my honor today. ;)

August 28, 2008

I’m official now. I was sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer last Wednesday. (See picture included to have a laugh at the ridiculously wonderful outfit my family had made for me, which was even better because I was matching both of my mamas.) I left the next morning to head to Mbeya. It was a really nice drive actually. Beautiful scenery. “The Great Valley” from The Land Before Time came to mind as we drove past all the green mountains and sparkling streams. We also drove through Mikumi National Park again on the way and I got to see some more zebras, giraffes, and elephants. Then further along we passed through an area that had monkeys all over the place. We stopped to stay the night in Rujewa to drop off one of the five of us going to Mbeya Region that is staying in that area. We had dinner at a married couple of volunteers’ house. They have a pretty sweet set up where they are: electricity, electric oven and stove, refrigerator, and two computers with internet access in their house. They decided that since they were going to be here for a while they would go ahead and make sure they had everything they wanted. The next morning the remaining four of us took off for Mbeya Rural District where we all will be staying. We met our VEOs (village executive officers) and had lunch, then I was the first to be dropped off. I’m only about 40 minutes away from Mbeya Town, where I can go to use the internet, bank, and post office, which is nice. When the car pulled up to the school, I almost cried. Not because I was scared off being dropped off, but because THE WHOLE VILLAGE was there to greet me. They were all singing and dancing and drumming and all crowded up to the car to meet me. Then I got all of my luggage out of the car and they left and I sat in the middle of a giant circle of my villagers and watched the school choir sing and dance for me for a little while. I was introduced to some of the teachers I will be working with, including my neighbor Lupogo, who has been a big help settling in. I ate dinner over at his house the first night and met Mama Jasitini (who has also been helping me out a lot). I think that she is he sister-in-law. I finally got to go to my house after dinner and it is really nice. I have 3 rooms. One is my bedroom, one I use as a kitchen, and one I use just as a storage place for my books and such. I also have two other small areas inside, one being the shower area and one the bathroom. I am sooo happy to have a bathroom indoors. I would have been scared to go outside at night. I’m scared enough just walking across the living room in the dark! It kind of sucks not having electricity, mainly for that very reason, because its kind of scary at night. I guess I just have to get used to it. It is my first time living alone after all. I do have running water however, which is really nice. I have a little sink where I can wash my hands and brush my teeth next to the bathroom area, and I have a spigot in the bathroom and the shower area, as well as a flush choo (which is still a hole in the ground, but it’s a classy porcelain hole in the ground that flushes.) I also have a shower head, but that is pretty useless for the time being because it is FREEZING here right now. Ok, maybe not freezing, but to my standards its pretty dang cold. Especially at night because the wind blows like crazy up here in these mountains. So I have to heat up some water on my little kerosene stove and take a bucket bath like usual. Maybe when it gets warmer I will appreciate a cold shower, but right now I think I would die of hypothermia. Its pretty miserable as it is with the warm water bucket bath because while I’m washing I’m standing there wet and freezing. Its amazing how industrious the kids are around here. They just do whatever they are told without asking why or expecting anything in return. Like today, a group of about 25 kids showed up after school and built me a fenced in area where I can garden without the chickens messing with my plants. I hadn’t even asked for one. And they built it fast too! They also dug me whole for my trash. And I needed some kerosene for my lanterns and stove so Lupogo, who was helping with the fence, sent a boy to go get me some, presumably at the store that’s just up the hill from my house that usually sells it. So some time passed, and he hadn’t come back with my kerosene yet, and I almost started to get annoyed because I wanted to heat the water for my bath and cook my dinner. Then here he comes running up, a little out of breath, and apologized and said that he had to go to Igoma to get it, which is the next town away from Kimondo that is about a 45 minute walk. I felt so bad. All the kids just came and did all that stuff for me, a complete stranger. It was really nice. So even though I know that I’m wanted here and that the people are really nice, its still been a little bit tough this first week of being here. Its just kind of lonely and boring. I don’t know what to do with myself. I feel like they want me to be doing something and I want to be doing something, but I don’t know what to do and I don’t know enough Swahili really right now to do anything. I ordered a bunch of furniture to be made that should be ready Saturday (because right now I only have a bed, a table and 4 chairs). When that gets here, maybe I can occupy myself decorated and setting up house. Until then I try to at least go for a little walk once a day, just to get out of my house and attempt to talk to people. I’ve already at least learned how to greet people in the local tribal language, which people really like when I say it. They’re impressed that I know it. Today my little walk got kind of interesting. I passed by a little hut and there were a couple of old ladies standing outside of it and I greeted them and we talked for a minute, then they invited me inside. And inside, there was a bunch of older people sitting around the perimeter of the hut and in the middle was a table with about 5 big buckets of pombe, which is their word for moonshine. They gave me a cup to try and laughed when I drank it. I only had a sip, but they thought that was great. They didn’t think that Wazungu drank alcohol. So I sat in this dark hut and hung out with a bunch of drunk old ladies for a little while. It was pretty fun. I’m starting to feel a little better and more comfortable here the more that I try to get out there and talk to people. I know that I’m an impatient person and that makes this a little bit more difficult, but at least in knowing that I’m wanting to rush things along that can’t be rushed along, I’m aware that I need to chill out and just let things happen as they happen. I know its going to take some time to learn enough Swahili to really be able to have conversations. I know its going to take some time to be able to make friends and establish trust and start projects. I know its going to take some time to get used to living alone and without electricity. For now though, its really helping me to get phone calls from home and reading letters. It helps me feel less disconnected from everyone and everything. So keep those letters coming, I really appreciate everyone who is writing to me, and even all of you who care enough even to read this blog. Its nice to be loved. J I think my computer is about to die so I guess I’ll stop here for now and try to snuggle under my three blankets and not freeze to death tonight.

The verdict is finally in....it looks like I'm going to be living in Mbeya in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania for the next two years. I think I'm going to be really happy there. They said that it is cooler weather and mountainous and there is good food available in town (i.e. I can buy CHEESE!!!) Its everything that I asked for the way it sounds on paper anyway. I will be living on a primary school grounds in a brand new house, and by brand new, I'm talking I hope its finished by the time I get there next week because apparently I didn't have doors or a toilet and other things of that nature the last time my APCD was there a couple months ago. But he said its ready for me now so here's hoping anyway. Its kind of exciting to get there and start all over. I will be able to pick out everything that I want for my house, which is kinda going to be a pain to get everything to my house to start with, but I like the idea of everything being what I want it to be. Not even considering how difficult it ould potentially be to buy and transport the initial necessities like a bed and charoal stoves to my house, its going to be insane trying to carry all of my luggage! I had to much stuff to begin with and now I have all kinds of new materials and books from Peace Corps and 4 lovely and wonderful packages of junk food and such from home (thanks for loving me family :)

I'm insanely excited to get to my site and start making my house a home and meeting my new neighbors and co-workers. I'm not even worried about the fact that I'm not going to have electricity, I'm actually kind of glad that I don't. I'm telling myself it will make for a more authentic experience. And I'll be able to charge my phone and such in town, because I'm only 38 km and maybe 45 minutes from my banking town. And if I get desperate for some movie watching on my computer, I can always look into solar panels. Right now I'm just going with the whole relaxing and cozy reading by candelight picture.

I'll have a new address soon so keep your eyes out for that if you're one of those cool people that want to write me letters. I just want to go ahead and toss in that I really appreciate everyone's support and I love hearing from you, even when its just a comment on the blog. And even if I don't get back to you right away, it still means a lot. :) I should have some new and exciting updates in a couple of weeks as I start settling in to my new home.

This past week I have had an amazing shadowing experience in the Kilimanjaro region of Northern Tanzania. It is fabulously beautiful here. I am shadowing a really sweet girl named Hilary who is an education volunteer that teaches Physics in secondary school. Her house is on a mountain and has a great view of the surrounding area, albiet a slightly treacherous hike to get up there everyday.

A couple of days ago me and Cristina, the other PCT that I am shadowing with, went on a five hour hike in the mountains around her house and it was absolutely beautiful. I took some pictures that I will try to post soon, but they just do not do the actual scene justice. Plus it smelled like something that Glade would bottle up and sell at Christmas time on the top of the mountain. I can't even describe how awesome it was. It actually felt kind of wintery near the top as well. And on the way down our guide took us by his grandfather's house and gave us some sugarcane, which I thought was really nice. I was thinking it would be pretty sweet to climb Mount Kilimanjaro while I'm in Africa (Which I can see from where I am right now and it is pretty beautiful) but that is a 6 day hike and I was pretty tired after just 5 hours. Maybe if I get placed in a mountainous region I'll get in shape just walking around.

On another day Cristina and I went to Hilary's school to help her facilitate a session on AIDS transmission and the amount of questions that the students had about that topic and about condom use in general was pretty impressive. You can tell that they have really put a lot of thought into it. For instance, one person asked if you can get AIDS when you get your hair cut, which I guess you can if they use infected instruments then cut you with them. They had a lot of questions about whether or not condoms were actually effective or not. For whatever reason, they all seem to want to believe that they don't work. It made me realize that they already know a lot about AIDS, but I'm going to have to do some work to dispel some cultural myths that surround the issues.

Today we all traveled into Moshi to get some delicious food and go out on the town tonight. This has just been a good week overall when it comes to food. First, when we passed through Morogoro on the way to my shadow site, we all went to this really western style grocery store and stocked up on ice cream, cheese, crackers, nutella and peanut butter, wine, and candy bars. I had the most delicious twix bar that I have ever had in my life. I was really tempted to buy some Frosted Flakes, but they were 10,000 shillings, which is about $10 and is a lot of money here. We also went out to a pretty nice resturant, complete with kareoke and all, and I had some mac and cheese there. Although I'm pretty sure the "cheese" was actually white gravy, but whatevs, it was still tastey. Then later in the week during our shadow, we made some delcious pancakes and veggie omelets everyday for breakfast, and had burritos with guac and refried beans one night and some noodles with a really good peanut sauce another night. And word on the street is that the resturant we are going to tonight has pizza!

So overall this has been a fabulous week so far. Its been so peaceful and quiet and the freedom has been wonderful. I can't wait to get to my own site. And it was interesting seeing how the other volunteers had decorated their houses and really made them home. I'm really excited about that. I'm trying not to expect too much so I won't be disapointed if I don't get it, but I am still hoping for electricity. Hilary's site had electricity and she had a portable DVD player so we got to watch some of the first sesson of Prisonbreak which I hadn't seen. I'm sure it would help stave off the boredom, but we spent the night at another volunteer's site last night who did not have electricity and it really wasn't all that bad. I guess I'll find out on Tuesday! Woo-hoo!

July 27, 2008 Almost There

It’s hard to believe that training is almost over. We only have 3 and a half more weeks, and only two of those weeks are here in Kilosa, and not even two of those days are left to be in the classroom. I realized that I’ll only be with my host family for another week and a half if you subtract the time that we will be shadowing and in Dar, so I tried to spend some time with them when I got home from school today.

We learned the national anthem in class today so we all sang that together while we were waiting for dinner. Then of course they wanted me to sing the American national anthem, which kind of sucked, but I did it anyway. Then they were asking me to sing Akon and Ne-yo, as usual, so I suggested that I get out my computer and put on my music, but when I got it out they all wanted to watch a movie instead since they all saw a little glimpse of one that I was watching last week. So I put on The Princess Bride and had my whole family come sit in my room and watch it. It was great. Most of them don’t speak English, so they were just guessing what was going on, but I think they understood that one a lot better than they were following Say Anything the other day. They loved Andre the Giant and they thought it was hilarious when the Spaniard kept repeating, “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” I’m always happy to spread a little Princess Bride love.

Before that happened, we went to MATI for peer teaching from the environment volunteers today. We had the options of learning two of three options: jam making, composting and gardening. I signed up for jam making and composting, but apparently I missed the cue to switch sessions and I ended up staying with the jam making session and made some pretty awesome papaya jam. I think I might actually try to make it for myself when I’m at site. It didn’t seem that complicated, but then again I am kind of concerned that I would end up giving myself botulism by not sealing the jars properly or something ridiculous like that.

I had another rat run-in today, literally. This time when I was outside helping with the jam making rather than inside our classroom though. A little field mouse scurried up and hit me in the foot and ran off and hid. It was interesting. I felt kind of bad for it because I saw it get eaten by a cat a few minutes later. Pole sana panya.

Friday night I cooked for my family. It actually worked out really well. I was kind of worried about cooking for 14 people, but it was fine. I felt kind of bad because we had gone to MATI that day to play sports again, like the 4th of July, and we got home a little later than usual so I didn’t get to start cooking as early as I should have. It took me almost three hours to cook and we didn’t start eating until about 9:15pm and by that time a couple of the younger kids had already gone to sleep. But those who stayed awake to eat seemed to really like what I made. I cooked garlic mashed potatoes, fried okra and corn and we had oranges for dessert. They really like the fried okra once they tried it. They were really confused as they all sat there and watched me cook it because I think that they just usually cook it in a sauce pan with some tomatoes. It was my first time making all of those things all by myself and I’m proud of the way it turned out. Except what you would probably think would be the easiest to cook, the corn, turned out to be the most problematic. Their corn here is just different. I thought it was different when I ate it before just because of the way it was grilled, but that’s not it. It’s just a lot tougher and not sweet like American corn. I still like it, but I don’t think it’s meant to be boiled. It boiled for about an hour and was still really tough.

I finally got my first package from home Thursday. I say finally only because I’ve know that I had Hot ‘n Spicy Cheez-its and Fruity Pebbles in the mail for a month now and the anticipation has been killing me. Now that I have that, plus the glorious additions of animal crackers, honey roasted peanut butter, and Wheat Thins, I’m really trying to save them for when I really need them. I’m not sure how long that’s going to last. I’ve had kind of a rough week and I really thought I deserved some Hot ‘n Spicy Cheez-its, but I’m trying to ration them. I’m pretty sure I’m going to bust into them next week though. Otherwise I’m worried that I’ll just save them until they are stale, and that would be tragic.

July 28, 2008 My First Bout of Sickness

I finally got sick for the first time today. It seems like a lot of people have been coming down with something lately and I was just waiting for it to get to me. I got to school this morning and felt really nauseous and ending up puking and going back home. Lovely I know. It wasn’t so bad though, I pretty much slept it off. It was kind of funny that it is true that people think any time you are sick around here you have malaria. I came home early from school and told my mom that I was sick and the first thing she asked was if I had malaria. Then the rest of the day they kept telling me to take some medicine (which I don’t think they have a medicine to make you not puke, but they weren’t accepting that explanation that I was just going to let it run its course). So if I wasn’t going to take some medicine, they at least wanted me to eat some ugali (that play-doh like food they eat all the time here that is just corn flour and water), so I finally came out of my room to eat some ugali and okra and managed to keep it down so I think I’m over whatever it was that was going on this morning.

I did however realize that it is going to pretty much suck when I get sick here. Because in the States, I’m a pretty pitiful sick person. I like to lay in bed all day long and watch tv and eat popcicles. It’s going to be really boring to be sick here with no tv to veg out in front of. It wasn’t so bad today because I have power here at my host family’s house so I ended up watching Across the Universe on my computer, but if I don’t have electricity my computer battery isn’t going to last long enough for me to sit around watching movies all day.

Being sick today I missed out on our practice teaching in the schools. We had prepared a pretty fun lesson on how to keep the immune system healthy and showing them how to wash their hands properly and whatnot. I was really wishing that I could show the episode of the Nick Jr. Show Yo! Gabba Gabba that talks about germs because that one was my favorite from my days of working in the Kid’s Club at Gainesville Health and Fitness, but unfortunately they don’t get Nickolodean here. What a shame.

They may not have Nickolodean, however they do have Pretty Woman. Oh yeah, that’s right, I said it. Yesterday afternoon the five people in my CBT went to our friend Kenneth’s house for lunch. He runs a drug store across from our school and he speaks really good English so we hang out with him for a few minutes on most days after school or during our lunch break and he wanted to have us over sometime before we left Magomeni. So yesterday we went over there and had lunch and sodas and sat on some fluffy couches and watched Pretty Woman. He had one of those disks that have like 40 movies on one CD that you can get around here, because don’t we all love a little pirated entertainment? And the whole disk was of Julia Roberts movies in English and/or something like Korean. Good stuff. That certainly wasn’t something I expected to do here in Tanzania. You just never know what this country has in store.

July 17, 2008 Getting Antsy

I’ve definitely been slacking on the blog writing. Sorry about that. I just feel like pretty much the same old stuff is happening everyday so I can’t think of anything new and exciting to write about. We’re going to Mikumi National Park on a safari this weekend so hopefully I’ll have something to report about that. But until then, I guess I’ll try to bring you up to speed on what has happened the past couple of weeks.

Yesterday I had my one-on-one interview with the APCD (the program director). Its purpose is to see what kind of experience you’ve had before the peace corps, how you feel about your training and skills at this point, what type of projects you have in mind to implement at your site, and to discuss any preferences you may have for them to consider when placing you. I’m not sure how much the later is taken into consideration. I know that they want us to be happy here and will try to place us in a place where will want to live for 2 years, but I also know that their main consideration is to place us where our skills match the community’s needs. I have faith that wherever they place me is where I am supposed to be. I’m a big proponent of fate.

However, I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to let them know what may potentially make me happier. I only mentioned a couple of things. Number one of the list? I want to be in a region where I can buy cheese and a variety of fruits and vegetables. Yeah that’s right. I said it. Cheese was my top priority. To that they said, “So if you were placed in a more rural area that didn’t have it readily available, you would at least want to be close to town so you could get it.” I thought that seemed fair enough. Here’s hoping anyway.

I said if I could choose the weather for my site, I would prefer a cooler region, but of course I can handle the heat being from Florida and all, to which they didn’t say anything. Which kind of makes me feel like they have a warmer site in mind for me, but I could be reading to far into what was left unsaid. When it comes to weather, I really feel like either way has its costs and benefits. I’ve always liked winter in Florida, but then again winter in Florida is always short and not that cold. In some regions here it gets really cold. I heard it was 0 degrees Celsius a couple weeks ago in the Southern Highlands. That’s pretty intense. I’m not sure if I could handle that. I definitely did not pack for that. And it would suck to take a cold bucket bath in freezing weather. However, I’ve heard that is a prime spot for cheese buying, so I may be able to sacrifice. ; ) As far as the warm weather goes, that’s just what I’m used to so I don’t really think it would be that big of a deal. And in that case, a nice cold bucket bath in the middle of the day would be pretty nice.

I mentioned that electricity would be nice, but I can live without it if I need to. I want to have it so I can use my computer whenever I want to write these blogs or pre-write emails so I don’t have to pay to use time in the internet cafes and of course so I can watch movies. It will be kind of sad not to have the battery power to watch a whole movie. I finally watched one of the movies I brought for the first time the night before last. I watched The Princess Bride and it was great. That one is a classic. I’m glad I brought it. I’m considering watching Say Anything later tonight. The APCD told me that only 4 out of the 46 sites are in more urban areas so they are the only ones that he knew would for sure have electricity. But most of us will be very rural and not have electricity so I’m trying to go ahead and get used to the idea now. It will be kind of unfortunate, for the reasons mentioned above and because I’m such a nocturnal person so I will be spending a lot of time in the dark trying to read by candle light. But I also think that I would somehow have a more legitimate Peace Corps experience without electricity so either way I can get by.

We had our Mid Language Oral Proficiency Test today and I feel like it went pretty well. The conversation flowed well enough between me and the tester and I felt like I understood everything she was saying to me. I kind of struggled through explaining how to cook rice in Swahili because I couldn’t think of the vocab for grating coconut and sifting through rice to pick out the un-husked ones, but I did the best I could with what I had and managed to pantomime the rest. We are only expected to score Intermediate Mid on a scale from Novice-Intermediate-Advanced-Superior with low, medium and high at each level except for superior, and we don’t even have to score that until our final test 2 weeks from now. And even if you don’t score that it’s not like they fail you and send you home. I hear you get a tutor for a few weeks then you’re good to go.

I’m sad that we have to change LCF (Language and Cross Culture Facilitators i.e. Teachers) next week. I love my teacher Loyce. She is so funny. And she’s really flexible. Seeing how we’re going to be health teachers, we’ve learned a lot of vocab about the human body and sexually transmitted diseases and such, and we make up a lot of impromptu skits and role plays to practice using our new vocab, so you can imagine the ridiculous things that we come up with and she always laughs right along with us. But we really only have about 2 more weeks of learning Swahili. After that we shadow a current volunteer for a week (which I am very excited about) and then we’re in Dar for half of the next week for site announcements (which I’m even more excited about), then we’re just wrapping everything up at the end of that week and saying goodbye to our host families. We also get to learn how to garden at the end of that week (which, you guess it, I’m excited about). The week after that we swear in and move to sites! I can’t wait!

July 20, 2008 Mikumi Safari

I had a fabulous weekend! Our whole group went on a trip to Mikumi National Park and it was so nice to be able to get away. Nothing against Magomeni, but it was nice to be able do something different and to stay up as late as we wanted to, which ended up being pretty ridiculously late.

We took two rickety old busses the 80 Km to Mikumi, which took about 3 hours because the roads are so horrible. When we got there, we walked across the street to eat some lunch and were almost offended by how much more expensive things were in Mikumi than in Kilosa because Mikumi is more tourist friendly I suppose. Everything cost at least double, in some cases triple what it does in our village. For instance, in Kilosa Town, rice and beans is about 1000 Tanzanian Shillings and chipi mayai (this potato omelet like food that we eat a lot here) is around 800 Tsh. In Mikumi, the rice and beans were 3000 and chipsi mayai were 2000. It is kind of funny when you look at it in perspective and realize that 1200 Tsh is about $1, but we’re living on a budget here. And something exciting happened when I was walking around waiting for people to finish their lunch… I found ice cream! It was just a tiny little scoop of something like soft serve strawberry in a little baby cone. It was only 100 Tsh, so I got two! ;)

There was also a snake park at our hotel, not sure why, but it was there and it had a lot of scary snakes. They had spitting cobras, and green mambas whose venom can kill you within 40 minutes, and black mambas whose can do it in 3. I took some pictures so I can recognize them if I see them around and be sure to avoid them, because that would be really freaking scary. They had some pretty big crocodiles that were chillin behind about a three foot wall that you could walk right up to and peer over and see them laying right beneath you. Very safe. (Don’t freak out mom, its not as bad as sitting by Lake Alice, where there’s no wall.)

After that great start, we made our way to the park and actually got to see a lot of different animals. We saw elephants, zebras, giraffes, wildebeests, impalas, crocodiles, hippos, and buffalo. We went up to a really cute little bar on the park grounds to watch the beautiful sunset then made our way back to the hotel, which was really nice. We had a really really delicious buffet dinner. I mean, I would think it was delicious in the States, but here, holy crap, you have no idea. We had warm fresh baked bread with real butter, like you might find at a nice restaurant like Bonefish or something like that. Then we had a really good creamy peppery vegetable soup. The main course was some type of vegetable curry with herb spiced potatoes and other vegetables on the side. And we even got dessert! I don’t know what it was exactly, but it kind of tasted like bananas foster. It was a banana that looked like it was fried in funnel cake batter then sprinkled with powdered sugar. Ok, I need to stop talking about it, I’m making myself hungry and I know I’m not going to get another meal like that for a while. But it is nice to know that food like that is available in this country.

After dinner, we all hung out in the courtyard of the hotel around the bar until the wee hours of the morning and really had a good time. Minus it being the coldest night I’ve experience here and not having brought a jacket with me, it was really fun. We woke up early this morning, about an hour after going to sleep for some of us, at around 5:30 AM. We had a nice breakfast of toast and scrambled eggs and bacon then headed back into the park again. We were trying to get there early to see some lions because they tend to come out early in the morning to get water, but we didn’t end up seeing any unfortunately. We mostly saw the same stuff today, but we also saw some monkeys, a baboon, and some warthogs (like Pumba, without Timon or Simba). We did see some zebras mating and that was interesting.

So overall, it was really a great weekend. It was fun and relaxing and a nice break from doing the same old same old everyday. I have a feeling the second half of training is going to go by so fast now. I just can’t wait to find out where I’m going!

June 30, 2008 Oh the Joys of Peanut Butter My issue with the food here is starting to get a little better. I’m getting more used to eating rice and beans everyday, so it’s not as bad for me anymore. I wish that I was getting more vegetables and less carbs and fried stuff, but I figure I’m eating less overall than I was in the States, so hopefully my weight will stay about the same. My typical day of eating generally consists of 2 vitumbua (basically a fried piece of rice batter, which is delicious) and a banana with hot tea at 7am. Then at 10am, we take a break at school and have more tea and usually some type of little omelet with whatever else on the side, whether that be more vitumbua, or some peanuts, or fruit or whatever. Lunch is at 1pm and we either have another omelet like thing that has potato chunks in it with spinach and sliced tomatoes on the side or rice and beans and spinach. Either option is usually followed by papaya or more bananas. Then I usually don’t eat again until about 8:30pm, when I almost always have rice, beans, and spinach or cabbage, followed by an orange and a banana that I split with my host sister. At home for dinner, I sit on a mat on the floor out in the courtyard with the other females while the males of the family eat at the coffee table inside. They all eat off of a communal platter, but they give me my own little bowl to eat out of. I do eat with my hands though, which I have gotten a lot better at might I add. On the weekends for lunch, I eat ugali, which is a really thick porridge made from corn flour and water. Its really not all the scrumptious, but I’ve found if its eaten with the right side dish, it can be a welcome break from rice and beans twice a day. However, today I made a wonderful discovery. I found some peanut butter in one shop in town and a loaf of sliced bread in another and I am so excited about bringing a pb and banana sandwich for lunch tomorrow, because I’m pretty sure we’ll be having rice and beans seeing how we had the potato omelet today. My baba also just returned from a business trip and brought my back some apples and pineapple, which is hard to find and expensive in my region. I also found a little shop that sells individually wrapped little pieces of chocolate in town so I’m pretty excited about my new options. I’ve found that I am really missing milk and cheese here too. I haven’t seen any cheese around, but I found out today that you can get powdered milk. It’s expensive, and I’ve heard tales from my mom about how gross it is, but I’m thinking I’ll get desperate enough for it eventually. Word on the street (i.e. my parents told me) that I’ve got some Fruity Pebbles in the mail and it would be pretty awesome to have some milk to pour on them when they get here. This week’s PCV of the week said he can find milk near his site in the Southern Highlands, so I’m going to make it my mission to tell the people that decide the placements to get them to put me in a place that has cheese nearby. Things are looking up in other matters as well. I got a phone last weekend, so that makes me feel a little more connected to the world. So far I’ve only been able to talk to my parents because its pretty expensive for me to call America and our weekly allowance is not enough to be calling everyone everyday. But I’m hoping that everyone else back home can figure out a way to call me that’s not too expensive and I’ll be able to stay in touch with people that way, because it is free for me to receive calls and texts. Regardless, it’s nice to at least have the option to connect with people when the opportunity arises. I had a pang of homesickness for a little while last weekend one morning, but I wrote in my journal for several pages to get out all of my frustrations then took a minute to remind myself why I am here in the first place. I thought about what I would be doing if I was at home instead of here right now and decided that I’m in the right place and I’m here at the right time. I really need this time to decide what I want to do with my life, if I want to go to grad school and which program I want to apply to, what career direction I want to pursue, where I want to live, who I want to be… There’s so much to be gained from this experience. I know that I just have to be patient and take things as they come. Being the daydreamer that I am, I often find my thoughts wandering to far into the future and I’ve wondering about what I could potentially be missing by not being in the US for two years. But then I think about what all I would be missing out on if I never came to Tanzania. Who knows what’s in store for me here? I don’t know, but I’m excited to find out. As many times as I doubt her, I know fate does her thing and she does it well. July 3, 2008 Busting out the Camera Today I decided I could wait no longer to take some pictures. I see a Kodak moment pretty much everyday and it has pained me to keep my camera kept away for this long. I tried to keep it in my room because I know that crime is opportunistic here so if people know that I have it and where I keep it then it is more likely to be stolen. And they kids loooooove getting their picture taken so once they know you have a camera they all want 5 million pictures taken of themselves. But oh well. I keep my room locked when I’m not here so I’m not too worried about the theft (knock on wood) and I’ll just have a bunch of adorable pictures of a crowd of random kids cheezing. Its funny how I’ve already noticed some correlations to some things that we talked about in my African Pop Culture class last semester when we were discussing photography, like the use of props to convey an image of the person being photographed. For instance, one of my brothers acted like he was reading my English-Swahili dictionary in every picture I took of him tonight. And Amina wanted to have her picture taken while cooking the rice. And Mama Mdogo wanted to have her picture taken while making the dough for mandaaze. And the kids all just try to get as close to the camera as they can, which makes it kind of difficult to capture the whole group, but makes for some nice shots of just a mouth or an eye or things like that. Besides the picture taking, everything else has been going really well too. The first couple weeks I would generally experience a little dip in my mood for no reason in particular for a little while at some point during each day. But this week has been going really smoothly. I’ve been in a really good mood and I feel like I’m really starting to get into the swing of things. I’ve actually found recently that eating rice and beans everyday isn’t bothering me as much anymore. I’ve actually even started helping to cook the rice most nights. I’m understanding more Swahili while listening to my family talk to each other in the evenings and we finally got our Swahili to English dictionaries today which should help things along even more. I got my first letter from home today (thanks fam) which was pretty exciting. Even though I have a phone now and have talked to them a couple of times, its still just fun to get mail. So everyone feel free to send me letters, even if you don’t really feel like you have anything important to talk about. Just in case you don’t have my address for during training it is: Katie Gillman, PCT Peace Corps PO BOX 9123 Dar es Salaam Tanzania, Africa I did have kind of a strange and slightly scary experience the other night though, only because I am ridiculous. I woke up around five thirty AM in the dark and saw a light flashing outside my window. My first instinct, strangely enough, was that someone was trying to shine a flashlight into my room to get my attention, which kind of freaked me out so I started thinking that it was probably just heat lightning. So I let my mind rest with that idea for a minute or so then I opened my eyes again and noticed that this light was flashing a little too much to be heat lightning and sometimes it stayed on a little too long. So then my mind went back to the flashlight idea and I started pondering that. I was thinking to myself, would this be another Volunteer in my village trying to get me to come out or someone in need trying to get some help. So I peaked out from behind my curtain and saw that it was indeed a light flashing from the front of the house and not heat lightning. And then I started thinking about Morse Code and what the pattern for an SOS was. And I could swear that I picked out a 3 long 3 short 3 long pattern. I don’t even know if that’s the pattern or visa versa, but I convinced myself that if there was a pattern, then that’s what it was. I kid you not people, this was my thought process. Even though I’m pretty sure the average person in my village has no idea what Morse Code is, much less the signal for an SOS. It starts getting light around 6:15 here so I pretty much just stayed awake until it was time to get up because that intense and absurd thought process got me pretty pumped and awake. And just so everyone knows, everything is fine. I’m completely safe where I am, and no one was sending an SOS so don’t freak out….mom. I saw that there is a fluorescent light in the front of my house and that was what was flickering because the bulb was burning out. I thought it was kind of funny how deep my thought process went all because of a dying light bulb. The only other negative thing that I can thing of, not that I’m trying to dredge up as many negative things as possible or anything, is that I feel like I’m going to barf pretty much every time I ride in a car here. The roads are so terrible and everybody drives cars like one might drive a train. Pedestrians do not have the right of way, ever. Cars slow down for nobody and nothing. If they are driving through a crowded area they just blow their horn to let people know that they are coming and keep going full speed ahead. And you know how most people like to try to go really slow over pot holes and such, well that is definitely not the case here. I’ve tried to start sitting a little closer to the front of the car and that seems to be helping. Other than that, I guess I’m just going to have to get over it. July 4, 2008 Who Says You Have to be in America to Celebrate the 4th of July Today we had a very welcome break from our Swahili studies to all meet together at MATI, no work, just play. We divided into 6 teams and did a relay race (which my team won might I add), played some ultimate Frisbee (which my team also dominated in, I think they score ended up being somewhere around 12-0), some mpira wa miguu, i.e. football, i.e. soccer (which ended up being tied 0-0 but I must say that I was much better than I thought I would be for playing in my first soccer game ever) and last but not least we also got to play some volleyball. (Notice I don’t include a score for that one). Since it was the Fourth of July we decided to sing the national anthem to kick things off and hung an American flag on the side of the volleyball net. No fireworks, but hey, we did our best. It was really fun to be able to relax and run around outside a little after 3 weeks of 9 hours a day of learning. I sustained a few minor injuries, but it was worth it. First, I pretty much got tackled while playing Ultimate and cut up my left knee a little, but that was no big deal. Then on the way to the soccer field I stepped in a hole and twisted my ankle, but I got over that too. I’m actually really surprised that I haven’t broken my leg yet being the clumsy person that I am and having these fields and roads that I walk through daily rife with opportunity to hurt myself. And lastly, I was tackled once again while playing soccer and got a knee slammed into the inside of my right knee and have a pretty sweet bruise forming there. If I was anything like the professional soccer players I see on TV I would have writhed around on the ground until they carried me off on a stretcher just to come back in the game 2 seconds later, but seeing how I’m not, I took it like a G and kept playing. I got a few more pictures of the beautiful landscape today too so hopefully I will be able to upload those soon. The green mountains, and orange sky spilling over a field of sunflowers, it really looks like a page from National Geographic. Looks like its time for dinner. Guess what I’m having, yep, rice and beans! Woo-hoo! July 6, 2008 Playing with Matches…literally For the past couple nights, the power has gone out for about an hour around dinner time. Its not that big of a deal, we just get out the kerosene lanterns, and I get out my flashlight (that they all want to hold and shine in each other’s eyes) and we just keep on keeping on. It’s kind of nice because the stars shine so much brighter when the whole village is dark. However, I’m still thinking that I would like to have electricity when I get to my site. Mostly because I want to be able to keep my electronics charged and use them whenever I feel like using them, but also because it really is so much darker. The kerosene lanterns work fine for some things, like seeing what you’re eating, but when I tried to read or write by the flame in my room it was a little difficult to see. And since I like to do that for about an hour every night before I go to sleep I could see how that might cause a little bit of a strain on my eyes. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to see how that goes. So anyway, back to the lanterns. I’ve come to the conclusion that these kids here can do whatever they want and not get hurt. For instance, the 1 year old Sakina kept grabbing matches, or even the whole box of matches, and sticking it in her mouth. And then she kept trying to stick her hand in the flame of the smaller, uncovered lanterns. And she would hold it there for a second without getting burnt. Everyone in my family seems to have a high tolerance for heat. There’s no such thing as oven pads here. My mama will be cooking with a metal pot directly over lit charcoal and when she needs to take it off the heat, she just grabs in with her bare hands and moves it. And sometimes when we start eating (we eat with our hands) the rice is really hot and burns the tip of my fingers when I try to grab some, but it doesn’t seem to bother anyone else. Maybe I’ll learn to desensitize myself to heat the same way I’m learning to not be as concerned with germs as I used to be. Amongst all of the progress we are making in our Swahili learning, I’ve noticed something kind of fun about the language. There are a lot of words that either are the same word with two very different meanings, or words that if you change just one letter or sound become something that you would not want to use in everyday conversation. For instance “kunywa” is to drink, “kunya” is to poo. “Kuna” is the verb to have, “kuma” is a slang term for a woman’s vagina. And just a little side note on that one, I’ve already almost messed up there. We had formed some questions to ask the district government officials, and one of them was “If we have an idea for a project, who should we see about it.” The word for if or like is “kama,” but I had written “kuma”. Fortunately slang terms that we had learned randomly came up in conversation before we spoke with the officials and somebody mentioned that word and I checked it in the dictionary, and sure enough, I had written the wrong thing. Wouldn’t that have been an interesting thing to say to a government official. Let’s see. What else is there? “Zina” is a conjugated form of “to have,” but “zinaa” is adultery. And the word kojoa could mean either to urinate, or to reach orgasm, depending on the context its used it. And just so everyone knows, I wasn’t just searching for the dictionary for inappropriate terms. Since we’re going to be health teachers talking about sexually transmitted diseases and HIV, we learned some of this vocab in class the other day. Even though today is my “pumzika day” (rest day), I better get going. Its 9AM and I’m still in my room so my family probably thinks that I’m being really lazy and antisocial. I was going to try to sleep in today, but when I heard kids playing rather loudly outside my window and it was lighter than usual outside, I thought that maybe I had slept in too long… it was 7:15. But my host sister just knocked on my door to ask me if I was going to wash my clothes this morning so I guess I’ll go get on that and get a fresh set of blisters on my knuckles. My poor skin, it’s not very well suited for Africa. But hopefully it will toughen up along with the rest of me. Addition: I just climbed a mountain with some rafiki and might I say, all I could hear was Bear Grylls in my head as we wandered through the tall grass and braved the potential disasters of the wild. But no fear, we made it up and back down unharmed, and even passed a guy hanging out in front of a mini hut on the middle of the mountain where he apparently lives. Good times.And the pictures at the top are of me with some of my brothers and sisters here in the courtyard of our house, my CBT group from left to right Luke, me, Catherine, Teri, Korie, and our teacher Loyce in front of our "school" and some of the scenery at the place we stayed in Morogoro before heading to Kilosa. I'll try to add more pictures later, but it kind of takes forever.

June 24, 2008 Visiting Local Government Officials

Today we took some time from our Swahili lessons to go visit the village government. We had already visited there briefly last week just to introduce ourselves. But today we went to learn about the structure of the government and how we would interact with the government in planning projects. It was kind of a practice for when we get to our sites so we know how to work the system to get the help that we need.

We learned that the population of Magomeni is 9860, which is more than I thought, but then again I’m terrible with guessing populations. I have no idea how many people live in High Springs even. There are 4 primary schools and 1 secondary school here. I think this is because primary school (standards 1-7) is the only level that is mandatory. There are 1888 students in primary school and 207 children under 7.

Most residents are peasants who keep chickens or goats or have small businesses which sell necessities like laundry soap or flip-flops, which I had pretty much already figured out for myself. It seems to me like almost everyone has one of these little shops built into the front of their homes. If they don’t, then they usually sit in front of their house selling something that they have cooked, like my family does with the donut-like food called vitumbua. Only about 50 people, out of the 5570 that are employable work in an office setting.

Corn, rice, cassava, sweet potatoes, sunflowers, and sesame are what are mostly grown in this area. And if I have not already made it clear, they usually eat rice, beans, and spinach or cabbage (as I have generally eaten 2 times a day since I have been here).

The average income of a villager in Magomeni is about 750 Tanzanian Shillings per day or roughly 273,750 Tsh per year. This is about $0.75 a day or $273.75 a year, which I thought was pretty staggering. But I guess that gets them what they need. I asked my teacher how much she pays for electricity and she says that she buys a card with a certain amount of energy allowed on the card, and when that card is gone then there is no more electricity. She said it usually costs about $10 a month in Dar, which is a big city here and would be more expensive than it would be here in Magomeni.

Talking with the village leaders today really got me thinking about what I could do to improve the situation around here already. I was reminded what I am here to do in the first place. It’s hard to access what they feel like they are missing and what would work if implemented; then again, I’ve only been living in this village for a week. I guess that is the point of having us live in one place for 2 years. So we can make a comprehensive assessment of what the village feels like it needs and how to best create a program to meet that need that will be sustainable after we leave. I haven’t really asked, but it seems like people are ok with what they have here. I’m trying to think of things that I had growing up that they don’t have that they may want, but in doing that I realize that we are more similar than I might have thought. A lot of what I did growing up I could do here. Playing in the streets with my friends, writing stories, using my imagination. But I hope that I eventually get the opportunity at my site to start some type of an after school program that has organized activities that will encourage more development within each person. Maybe a writing class, or a girl’s club or a sports league.

I think that there are kids willing to participate in these sorts of things if only someone would organize it for them. For instance, yesterday after school we didn’t feel like going home yet so Luke (a fellow trainee) got out a soccer ball and we walked to the soccer field that is by one of the primary schools here, within 5 minutes, there were about 25 kids gathered around to play. Three of my fellow trainees played soccer with a bunch of little boys while I sat on the sidelines and practiced talking in Swahili to about 25 other people that had gathered around me. I feel like I did pretty well. I was able to tell them what I was doing here, when I got here, how long I would be here, where I came from, etc. They even asked me about George Bush, Osama bin Laden, and Iraq. Then through charades I was able to determine that one of them was talking about the execution of Sadaam Hussein. So yeah, good times there.

I know it’s too early in the game to be making all these kinds of plans, but it at least got the wheels turning. We talked a lot about how there are similar problems in America with people who get educated leaving the smaller towns to move to big cities and leaving the small towns underdeveloped. I’ve only been in Tanzanian for two weeks and already I’m seeing a new perspective on things. JFK kept coming to mind with, “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” But then again, it was JFK who started the Peace Corps in the first place, so I guess he had it figured out. We can all do something to improve the lives of others, no matter where, or for who, or how small. I know that sounds cheesy, but I think it’s a nice attitude to try to keep in mind.

June 26, 2008 Sometimes All You Need Is A Little Time Lying in the Grass

It’s been an interesting couple of days, but then again, I’m pretty sure that’s going to be a regular occurrence here for a while. Yesterday we pretty much did the same thing that we did the day before except for instead of visiting the local village government officials we went to see the Kilosa District government officials, and I got a taste of some potential frustrations that I am going to face once I actually have to start working on projects here. First of all, we were about 45 minutes late being picked up from our CBT in Magomeni to get to Kilosa Town, but this is a pretty regular thing, and we definitely were not the last group to arrive. So once we all got there, we stood around outside waiting for about 30 minutes, then they informed us that the people we were supposed to be meeting with were still in another meeting, but they had sent a message in to them to let them know that we were here and they would be out in a few minutes. They moved us inside to sit and wait for another 30 minutes or so and one of the trainers came in at some point with a classic line, “Eventually things may about to get started soon.” I feel like that is pretty much going to be the way that time works around here. Current volunteers that have been coming to visit us at our training sites have told us to expect meetings to start as much as 6 hours late. It actually even says in our cultural adjustment book that time is the tool and servant of the people; there is always more time. Relationships come first here. If you have a meeting to go to but a guest stops by when you’re on your way out, the meeting can wait.

So anyway, the meeting got started pretty late. And when it finally did get started, we weren’t really getting straight answers to a lot of our questions. When asked if the students received any direct sex education in schools or any type of info about the prevention of HIV, the answer was at first yes, then a muddled up version of kind of, then one of our language teachers who also works as a teacher here pretty much said it doesn’t happen. They train the teachers to teach the kids about health issues, but it’s not really a mandatory curriculum that is enforced. Sex is a really taboo and private subject here so it is a little difficult to teach them how to prevent STIs when you can’t talk about sex openly.

Later that day me and the other trainees in my CBT were walking around Magomeni and we stopped to talk to some Masii that were playing pool in the middle of town. I may be spelling that wrong, but the Masii are the most well known tribe in Tanzanian. They are cattle herders that live in the bush and dress in traditional garb. However, at least in Magomeni, they also come into town to hang out and play pool and talk to us Wazungu. Its pretty interesting. One Masii man was trying to sell another Masii man to my friend Catherine for four cows so she could take him with her back to America. Unfortunately she didn’t bring her cows with her that day so we couldn’t seal the deal.

Today was MATI day, which is the day that all of the CBTs get together at the MATI training center in Ilonga. I think I’m really going to continue looking forward to these days. Its nice to see everyone else and hear what’s been going on in the other villages and just to get out of Magomeni for a little while. We heard that two more people have decided to go home, so that means we’ve lost three in our first two weeks. We got another vaccine today, which makes that I think the fifth one I’ve had in the last 3 weeks, but it’s all good. Today we talked about mental health and the prevention of STI’s and HIV for ourselves, not to teach others. We even brushed up on how to put a condom on correctly, which had that whole awkward 5th grade sex education feel to it, but it made for a fun day.

I laughed a lot today and I was in a really good mood until the ride home from Ilonga. The roads here are so bad, which is not so good for those who get car sick. So I was feeling really nautious when we got back, and when I’m sick, I get in a bad mood. Which was made worse by the fact that as soon as we got out of the car a guy on a bike stopped to talk to us and tell us all that he wanted to marry us so he could go to America and whatnot, which can get kind of old pretty fast when you’re already not in a good mood.

I was kind of upset that my good mood was ruined so fast. This is the most bipolar experience you could possibly imagine. So feeling pretty annoyed/depressed, I decided to go lay in the grass with two of the other girls in my group, which turned out to be all I needed. We spread out a cloth and lied down, and pretty much immediately a crowd started forming. First it was just one man, who I think was asking us in Swahili why we weren’t at home cleaning. Then he started asking us what a bunch of different Swahili words are in English. Then he just kind of stood there staring at us. And a couple more guys came up and stood there staring at us. Not saying anything at all, just standing over us staring. So when the three of us evaluated the situation, we discovered how hilarious it was and we just cracked up laughing and talked in English about how awkward it was to us and how it was not awkward at all to them to just stand over us staring. Then eventually a crowd of kids came up and we had an all out audience sitting there watching us lay in the grass. Apparently that was entertaining enough for them. And it was entertaining enough for us, because we just kept thinking about how weird it was and laughing hysterically. Laughing is good for the soul. So I soon forgot about how down I was feeling just a few minutes before and was able to find the humor in the situation. I know that’s going to be essential for me to survive here. You just have to be able to laugh.

June 28, 2008 Rats, and Bats and Spiders, Oh My!

So as you can tell by the title, the creatures have started to show themselves for the wazungu. One of my fellow trainees was telling me that there was a bat dive bombing her mosquito net the other night, which sounds pretty horrible. I had a spider on my wall the other night, and might I say, one personality development that has already occurred for me is that I have turned into an insect killer. I used to just let them do their thing as long as they weren’t bothering me, but I have no qualms about squishing a bug these days. But at least I’ve only had a few bugs in my room so far.

However today we did have a rat in our classroom. It was a very interesting experience, as most things have been here in Tanzania. None of us saw this rat when we came in this morning, but about two hours into our lesson, Catherine (a fellow trainee in my CBT) looked under the table and very calmly said, “Um, has that been there this whole time?” And I, who was sitting right next to her, looked down and saw a considerable sized rat chilling by our feet, so we all got up relatively calmly and soon realized it was dead. We’re all convinced that it had eaten some rat poisoning earlier in the day and crawled under the table and died without us noticing, which is really weird. But it made for an exciting morning anyway.

Other than that things are moving along quite nicely. I’m feeling pretty good about my Swahili and I can’t wait to learn more and more everyday. I’m still feeling that daily short little pang of “what in the world am I doing here?” but I’m at least starting to get into a routine and I’m becoming pretty good friends with the other 4 trainees in my CBT, which is really helpful. Yesterday Catherine came over to my house and we just sat and talked about life, and love, and all kinds of existential and important things like that. And it was nice to be able to see that we’re all in this together.

6-14-08 Arrival in Africa 10:00PM

It feels so strange to finally be here. I have been imagining what it will feel like for a while now, but somehow this isn’t what I had in mind. I thought I would be scared, or anxious, or feel out of place, but I actually feel fine. I know I’ve only been here a few days so it’s hard to tell but so far I think I’m going to really enjoy my time here.

The flight here definitely felt like it took forever. We had to check out of our hotel in Washington DC at 5:30 AM on Tuesday, then go get a Yellow Fever vaccine, then chill at the airport for several hours, then fly 8.5 hours to Frankfurt, then wait, then fly an hour to Zurich, then wait, then fly another 8 hours to Nairobi, then about another hour to Dar es Salaam. When all was said and done it was about 9PM Wednesday at the time we arrived to the place we stayed in Dar es Salaam.

We stayed in some kind of Catholic Mission School in Dar where most of us had our own room and shower and sink and toilet with running water. Granted that water was cold, and sporadic, but it was more than I thought we would have which was really nice. And to top it all off we even had electricity with an electric fan. I was pretty excited about that. In Dar, we pretty much just hung out mostly. We went over a few important things to keep in mind for food and water safety and got 3 more vaccines, which were really not cool. Generally I don’t mind needles, but I must admit these kinda made my arm hurt all day long. But I decided I’d rather have a Hepatitis A Vaccine than have Hep A so I went with it. We had some time to get to know fellow trainees and just try to recoup from jet lag, which I don’t really think I had in the first place, but it was nice to be able to relax a bit.

The other day a few of us walked around the back end of the compound to throw a Frisbee around and a couple of Tanzanian boys riding their bikes around stopped to play with us. They were so cute. Later another man stopped to play with us to and he was so friendly. He really wanted us to come by his house which was pretty much right where we were playing. He spoke a little English and we tried to speak whatever Swahili we knew. He introduced us to his sister and sister-in-law and they taught us a few things. It was really nice. Tanzanian people really are warm and friendly. We talked about how to deal with all the attention we would most likely be getting in our villages because a lot of the people we will be living around may have never even seen a white person and they will probably all be staring at us all the time. In Dar, I’m sure many of them have because it is a big city with an international airport, but nonetheless, people looked at us of course. But I found that every time I greeted them in Swahili they smiled and greeted me back.

We also had a little boy come play hackey-sack with us (and by us, I mean the people who know how to play hackey-sack and not so much me). He was so funny. Instead of kicking it, every time we gave it to him he would walk up to this little slab of concrete and throw it as hard as he could like a pitcher. And we kept trying to ask his name in Swahili but he was being shy. We he finally kicked it, he thought it was so funny and he just kept kicking it and laughing hysterically. It was so adorable.

Today we left Dar and had quite a life experience bus ride over to Morogoro three hours in from Dar. Let’s just say that our bus driver was in a hurry and he was very confident in his control of the road. As if it’s not enough to get used to that they drive on the other side of the road here, apparently there are no traffic laws either. But hey, it’s all part of the adventure. They’re from here and I’m not, so I’m going to go ahead and trust. I figure I ride with enough crazy drivers in the US to be used to it (you know who you are people).

Morogoro is really beautiful. There are giant mountains right behind the place we will be staying for the next two days and just really nice landscape all around. And there are fewer mosquitos here so that is nice.

We finally started our formal Kiswahili lessons today but we didn’t do too much. We pretty much just learned greetings, which most of us had already learned on our own by interacting with Tanzanians that we staying at the same place as us in Dar, but I know we have to start somewhere. I just can’t wait to learn it. I really want to try hard to be as fluent as possible. I feel like the more language ability I have, the more personality I will be able to have, and I really want to integrate into Tanzanian society as much as I can.

So I am really looking forward to training. Pretty much everything is going well. I am kind of concerned that I am already starting to get tired of eating the same thing everyday, but I think once I get to my site I will be able to have more control over that so it won’t be so bad. Not that it is bad now, I mean the food is good, it’s just always the same. For breakfast its generally some kind of bread that has been fried that tastes somewhere between a biscuit and a donut, some wonton like thing with meat inside, hard boiled eggs, watermelon and either mango juice, coffee, or tea. Lunch and dinner are usually rice, some stew like substance with beef chunks (I’m guessing), shredded cabbage dish, something like lo mien noodles, fried potatoes or bananas, fish and or chicken wings, and some other lentil dish. At the place in Dar they served us pizza they tastes like the Chef Boy-R-Dee kind that comes from the box and hamburgers, but I feel like maybe that we just because we’re American and they thought that would be a nice thing to feed us. I don’t really know if they actually eat that themselves or not.

Just so everyone knows, from what I can gather it’s going to be about week 8 before I get a phone, so hopefully you can try to not forget about me from now until then. I’m hoping I will have some internet access during the wait until then, otherwise these blog entries will be pretty useless, but please feel free to write letters until then. I promise I’ll write back.

6-18-08 Settling In

Tonight is my third night in my CBT village. CBT stands for Community Based Training. Our group of 49 has been divided up into several small groups of 5 or 6 and placed in smaller villages in the district of Kilosa. The village I am staying in is called Magomeni. Every morning, Mon-Sat the four other trainees in my group and I will meet with our teacher at the house she is staying at in Magomeni for Kiswahili lessons. Except every Thursday will go to Ilonga to a place called MATI to be will the entire group of 49 and learn more about health and security, have workshops for our technical job training, get vaccinations and things like that.

I am staying with the Kigaile family and they are wonderful. There are a bunch of kids that are always around their house. I know that most of them live here, but I’m not sure about some of the others. I was a little confused at first because my “mama” told me she had five kids but there were definitely a lot more than five kids around. And later I asked the oldest daughter Fatuma to write down everyone’s names for me and she wrote about 4 girls and 3 boys. It made a little more sense today when I found out that my “baba” has two wives. So the first one I met is “mama mkubwa” (which means big mama) and the other one is “mama mdogo” (which means little mama).

The older kids are helping me learn Swahili and one of the boys that is in school has me pronounce some of his homework words in English, and might I say, they are teaching him so strange and difficult English words. Last night he asked me to pronounce “grooved” like a grooved wheel. I wanted to tell him that we never use that word so he shouldn’t worry about it. He also had me say “adultery” and I really wanted to ask why his school felt like that was an important word to know. Tonight he wrote down “urine” and asked me how to say it, which I thought was pretty funny.

The younger kids are making this process so much easier for me. It started to hit me yesterday that this is how I am going to live for the next two years. I’m not going home in a couple of months. I’m in it for the long haul. I got a little freaked out so I started getting homesick, which was made worse by the fact that I do not have phone yet so I can’t call home to talk to anyone. The fact that they do not have a post office in Magomeni doesn’t help either. I have to go into Kilosa Town for that. Our group figured out that we can rent bikes and try to ride there on a Sunday when we have to day off from studying to use the internet café and post office, which makes me feel little better. I think some of that fear comes in realizing that almost everything is different. The language, the bathing methods, the cooking, even the way they tell time is different. Here, when you wake up in the morning (which is assumed to be 6am) that is twelve, so seven, when you have been awake for one hour that is one, eight is two, etc. I was feeling a little overwhelmed with it all and started to question my ability to finish what I started. But then I realized that today was only my second day in Magomeni and everyday by the end of the day I feel better than when it started. I’ve learned a little more Swahili. I feel more comfortable talking to the villagers. And everyday when I get home all of the little kids want me to dance with them. They have a radio that is always on. Every time a song comes in English they want me to sing it. Sometimes, when its 50 Cent for instance, I don’t know the words and they don’t really understand why I don’t because they know that I am from America and 50 Cent is from America so I should know his songs. They all seem to like 50 Cent and Akon, and I’ve actually heard several people ask me about Shakira. If we aren’t dancing around in the kitchen, then we are sitting out in the courtyard area and they are teaching me songs and words in Swahili.

I’ve had more than one person start singing the Akon song “Nobody want to see us together but it don’t matter, no…” But what is funny about it is that they don’t understand what he says after that so they’ve just made it up in Swahili as far as I can tell. Instead of saying “…cuz I’ve got you” next like Akon says, they say “…saa tatu” which means –its three o’clock-.

Today when I got home they taught me a game. It’s basically a combination of dodge ball, jacks, and monkey in the middle. Two people stand a little ways across from each other and they are the ones who throw the ball. One person stands in the middle. In the middle there is also a pile of bottle caps on the ground. The object of the game is basically to pick up all the bottle caps and then drop them all and pick the all back up again as many times as you can before the people hit you with the ball. But if you catch the ball that is thrown at you then you can toss it away so the people on the outside have to go get it which gives you more time to pick up the caps. It was pretty fun, but I was pretty much no good at it. They were impressed that I at least understood the rules just by watching a couple of times though. I guess I’ll have to practice.

I understand what Peace Corps means when the say that you are going to feel like a rock star in your host country. Everywhere I go I have a little posse of kids following me around. A lot of times when I great them in Swahili they will answer me then laugh and run away, then sneak back up and follow me around. Its really cute. When I’m with the kids in my host family, they all want to dance with me or sit with me or hold my hand. It is really cute. However, what is not so cool is that the baby cries every time she gets close to me. I’m pretty sure I’m the first white person she has ever seen and she is so scared of me. They kept saying to her, “Sakina, dada.” (Sakina, this is your sister) She would look about it quizzically, but if they tried to hand her to me, she started screaming. Yesterday they were trying to tie her to my back the way that they carry their babies here and she was freaking out. I felt bad for her. One of the neighbor babies started crying when she saw me today too. Its funny. I think they’ll warm up to me eventually.

Everyone wakes up really early here. I don’t have an alarm clock but there are plenty of roosters around to make you aware of when the sun is coming up, and to them that means get up apparently. The first day I thought they would wake me up when I should get ready for school, apparently not, I was like 25 minutes late to school, oh and I broke a plate when I was trying to eat breakfast quickly before I went. Great start, huh? But it got better. I really like the other people in my CBT group and it’s nice to be able to hang out with them all day and share this experience with other people going through the same thing. Today I tried to get up earlier so I wouldn’t be late. I got up at about 6:25 and I felt like I had plenty of time, but tonight Fatuma told me to wake up faster tomorrow. Apparently I’m going to have to get used to going to bed early and waking up early. I guess that makes more sense because there is more to do in the morning than at night. I have to wake up early enough to walk to the well to pump my water, which is kind of exciting. I have not attempted to carry the water on my head yet, but I think I will soon. It’s just that there are a lot of people out at the well early in the morning getting water for the day and I don’t want to look dumb if I can’t figure out how to get it on top of my head without spilling it everywhere. I do have electricity where I live, but that doesn’t mean much. We have one radio in the kitchen which is nice, but it’s not like I can sit around watching HBO after dinner or anything like that. I am glad to some electricity though so I can keep a charge on everything that needs one. Only three out of the five of us have it, so I am lucky.

I feel like such an old lady going to bad so early, but I think I have to if I am going to make myself into a morning person. Lala Salama (Sleep Peacefully).

6-20-08 Surviving Week One

I’ve only been studying Swahili for four days now and I am already feeling a little more confident in my ability to talk to people. In Tanzanian culture, greetings are very important, so you’re off to a good start if you know a variety of greetings. Greetings can take 10-15 minutes sometimes…(How is your father, how is your mother, how is your studies, are you well, how are your chickens and so on and so forth). Its kind of nice actually. I’m starting to get to know some of my neighbors. They all remember my name is I’m trying really hard to remember other people’s names. I must admit, this has been a pretty exhausting few days though.

When everyone kept saying that all you’re going to want to do at the end of the day of training is to go right to sleep, I was saying to myself that I wouldn’t, that I would be the one that was up all night with nothing to do. But that is most definitely not the case. Last night I went to sleep at 9PM and I was half asleep an hour before that. I really wanted to just skip dinner and go right to bed, but I thought that would probably be rude. Its tough to adjusting to feeling like a child again, like I can’t make my own decisions. I eat when I am given food and I eat what I am given. They’ll tell me when the day is for clothes washing. I don’t feel like I can go sit in my room alone until its time to go to sleep because all of the kids want me to play with them. They are fun, and I do want to spend time with my host family and learn as much as I can, but when I’ve been at “school” for 9 hours, I would kind of like to just sit down and relax for a few in relative quiet. I say relative quiet because these kids LOVE the little noise makers that you blow for New Year’s Eve. EVERYONE has them and they start it up at around 6 or 7 am and keep it going until probably around 9 pm. But I’m in my room with my “relative quiet” (i.e. I definitely can hear all the noise makers outside) right now writing this, so I guess next time I need some time to myself I should just ask. I found out last night that I am the third volunteer that this family has had so I think they’ll understand.

Yesterday our teacher stopped class a few hours later and walked with us into Kilosa Town so we could see what all is available there. I was finally able to mail some letters, which makes me feel a little better, and we found an internet café that we plan on walking to every Sunday afternoon. Loyce, my teacher, said it would be ok if we ended class a little early once every couple of weeks so we could make it to the post office before it closes. There are shops that sell ice cream and chocolate in Kilosa Town too, which is pretty exciting I must say. I looked into the phone situation to see if a SIM card from a service that operates around here would work in my old phone that I brought with me from America, but that test failed. So it looks like it is indeed going to be about 2 months before I can get a phone because even though I have the money in US Dollars, I don’t think there is a place around here that exchanges money. So I have to wait until the end of week 8 when we go to Dar es Salaam again for site announcements so I can exchange money to buy the phone and SIM card. So it looks like its going to be mostly email for now. So definitely email me (kgillman@ufl.edu) or send me a message on facebook or whatever you want.

I’m still basically experiencing the same ups and downs, but that’s what the Peace Corps handbook said it would feel like. Some people get in country and start counting down the days until they can go home, but for most people they get comfortable and that feeling goes away. Right now it’s just difficult because everything is so different from what I know so there is so much adjusting to do. We all have to remember to celebrate the small things. For instance, yesterday I carried a bucket of water on my head from the well to my house for my shower. I don’t see how these women carry so much stuff on their heads. I just had that one bucket of water that I was supporting with both hands and didn’t have all that far to walk and it hurt my head pretty bad, it actually left a bump. I think next time I’m going to try to wrap a khonga (piece of cloth) around my head first for some padding. I’m just going to take is slow. I saw a girl with 2 buckets of water stacked on her head today, I have no idea how she did that.

Every time I walk to or from school I have a little posse of neighbor kids that follow me for a while jumping up and down chanting “Mzungu! Mzungu!” which is what they call foreign people. Its not an insult, its just a label I guess. I think it’s funny when the kids say “Shikamoo Mzungu” to me. Shikamoo is the proper way to greet a person who is at least four years older than you to show respect.

So as of right now, I’m just going to keep on keeping on. It’s been an interesting experience thus far and hopefully I’ll settle into a routine soon.

6-21-08 First MATI Day

Not too much to add today. Just that today was our first day meeting as our whole group again since we all went to our homestays. We will be meeting once a week at a place called MATI in the village Ilonga. One person decided to go home the day after she got to her homestay. Nothing against the family, I think she had already decided that this just wasn’t for her. Which is understandable, it is definitely hard. But other than that, it was nice to see everyone else again and talk with other people about how their homestay families are and hear stories of what kinds of funny cultural misunderstandings have gone down so far.

For instance, one of my friends was trying to practice her Swahili with her family and she was telling the all what they were doing at the time in Swahili. However, whenever she tried to tell her host sister that she was drinking water, which would be unakunywa, she accidentally told her she was pooping, anakunya. I think that who ever invented this language made those two words so similar on purpose just so that situations like this could occur.

Another one of my friends was trying to tell her host sister that she thought that she had pretty eyes, but her host sister was not understanding what she was saying at all. She came to find out later that what she was actually saying was more like, “I think you have an eye.”

I found out there have been several instances of dropping or almost dropping things down the choo (the hole where you use the bathroom). Glad I’m not the only one. The area where I take my bucket baths and the area where the choo is, is only separated by a short wall at my house. When I take my bucket baths I put my soap and such on this wall. Yesterday I nearly knocked my face wash down the choo, which would have been unfortunate.

After all the story sharing, we had a nice long lovely chat about malaria, and got our second dose of the lovely rabies vaccine and talked about our training site’s emergency action plan. Then finally we divided into our health and environment groups and got an introduction to technical training, which was very energizing to me. We went over what the Health Education Program’s goals and objectives are and discussed some possible projects to implement that would address the different goals. It helped remind me what exactly I am doing here and it made me very excited to get out there and do something!

Tomorrow I am going to hand wash all of my clothes and help sweep and clean up before walking to town to use the internet so I better go ahead and get some sleep. More to come next week…

I've officially made the transformation from Peace Corps Invitee to Peace Corps Trainee this weekend. After not knowing what to expect at all... of my training, of the specifics of my assignment, of the people I will be around for the next 27 months, etc., I feel very reassured about my decision to do this after staging.

When I first arrived in Washington DC, I must admit I had a slight fear of what the other people would be like and if I would find people that I clicked with and could see myself becoming friends with. I worried that other people would find fast friends and I would be left out. Luckily, that is not the case. We've had so much time to mingle and get to know one other the past two days that I feel like I at least know the other 48 people's names and even feel like I've been friends with a couple of them for years because we are clicking so well.

I feel reassured that other people have the same mixture of anxiety and excitment that I do. Its really important for me to remember that we are all in this together. I know that there will be days during my service that I feel frustrated or sad or lonely, and having such cool people to turn to when you are not in the best of moods is a real comfort to me.

These two days in DC have been really helpful, and not just in the way that they are intended to be, by giving us a lot of information that we need to help us stay safe and healthy and to be successful. The whole idea of not necessarily being home, but also not on the other side of the world has provided what I think will prove to be a crucial transition period. Its has been nice to be able to have my phone here and know that I'm still going to get to talk to whoever I want to at the end of the day and for as long as I want. Its been nice to be able to check my email or update my facebook one last time (as lame as that sounds). But I know after tonight all bets are off. I don't know when I will hear those voices on the phone again after we said goodbye tonight. I don't know how often I will be able to use the internet or when I will be able to purchase a phone in Tanzania. And that is both scarry and exhilerating. (On a side note, please feel free to write me using snail mail until I can get the other logistics figured out. I've always loved getting mail regardless.)

I'm really going to try to go with the flow and be flexible. Not to have too many expectations. Not to be worried about what I'm missing back home, but instead focusing on the incredible opportunities and experiences that I am going to have as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

I'm excited. I'm pumped. I'm psyched. I'm ready....

Five more days. It has come up on me so fast.

People keep asking me if I'm scared. I don't think that I am anymore.

I wasn't worried about leaving at all until about a month ago. When the people that are close to me started to realize I am leaving it made me realize that I am leaving and I started to second guess myself. I worried about life in the US moving on without me, missing out on what was going on in my friends' lives. People might get married, have kids, and I would miss it. I started to worry about people forgetting about me.

But by now I feel like I've had a chance to say goodbye. To reminisce on old times and look forward to making new memories when I get back. I've been reassured that people will actually miss me. I've had time to buy all the things I need to bring with me (and I'm sure much more than I really need). I feel ready.

So with these last few days, I'm determined to take in every moment. Between shoving as much Swahili as possible into my brain and eating those last few pieces of sushi before I go, I'm determined to spend time with the people I love, have a few last good times, take lots of pictures, hold onto the memories, make them last me 27 monthes.

So now instead of feeling scared, I'm excited for the chance to make new friends, to explore, to grow. I know this experience is going to push me to the limit and I can't wait to see how far I can go.